this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Germany’s federal government is preparing massive cuts to social welfare benefits, pensions and healthcare starting in the autumn. Chancellor Friedrich Merz made this clear last Friday at his summer press conference. The business pages of the main media outlets are also full of suggestions on how to save billions at the expense of the needy, pensioners, the sick and wage workers.

It is now clear that the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Social Democrats (SPD) deliberately omitted the planned social cuts from their coalition agreement and delegated them to expert commissions in order to first push through the massive increase in military spending. They apparently anticipated tremendous resistance if they had announced a huge increase in rearmament spending and social cuts at the same time. But now, as Merz made clear, there is no more time to lose. Workers and the most socially vulnerable are to pay the costs of rearmament and war.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

It's so weird for a country as large and wealthy as Germany to have its Chancellor show up and say "Oops! All out of money!"

Have you checked... Zurich? Literally sitting on trillions of Euros over there. Nevermind the extensive domestic industrial capacity that's being idled because of what's effectively been a 20 year long capital strike.