Well, my wife just received notice of her "generous" pension

[DFW]

She is 65, and she did get special consideration for her heavy cancer treatment, and the fact that she for all intents and purposes can't work a steady job again. Her before tax monthly statement is this:

She gets 1187.10 euros
minus - 86.66 euros retired person's contribution to health insurance
minus - 13.06 euros supplemental payment to her health insurance provider
minus - 30.27 euros retired person's contribution to assisted living if and when needed (basic care only)
___________________________
leaving before tax: 1057.11 euros a month, or $1257.96 at current exchange rates. Probably equal to a net of $1000-1100 a month after taxes, and then she would have to contend with the high cost of living here in the Rheinland.

If she were on her own, she'd either have to sell the house and move in with her 90 year old mother in her village up north in the middle of nowhere, or else with our newly well-off daughter in Frankfurt who, as of this year, now earns twice what I do.

She was happy she will get something, and this will facilitate her going on German Medicare, for which she has applied but not yet been approved. She wasn't thrilled. She would have gotten twice to three times that claiming to be an ethnic German refugee from Russia. She knows this because when she was working as a social worker, these people were her clients, and she dealt with them on a daily basis. All they had to do was claim they were an engineer in the former Soviet Union, and at 65, they got an engineer's pension without having paid in one cent to Germany in their lifetimes.

This is more like social insecurity. She got a hefty chunk withheld from her wages for nearly 40 years for this? Germany takes care of its government bureaucrats just fine, but people on the low rung of the salary chain who have no refugee stories of persecution as an ethnic German in Kazakhstan get the short end of the stick. I'm glad I'm still around to chip in. If Germany doesn't want a stealthy creep of its elderly voters to the right, it should start to take a look at this. I don't know where the poverty level starts here in Germany, but I'm pretty sure that 1057 euros a month is below it!

[AJT]

1. What would the right do to help the older working class population?

[DFW]

6. No one cares about them. Not the right. Not the left. No one.

They have no money to pump into the economy, and they are dying off slowly but surely. They aren't angry enough to stir up as a voting bloc, and the poverty cuts through all social and political strata. That's no constituency for a political party to chase after, not the AfD, not die Linken. The SPD has (or had--it's growing mold at this point) their slogan "mehr Gerechtigkeit," but they don't say for whom, or who will administer it. Germany is densely populated, and there is a strong sense of community here, especially in small towns like the one we live in and the one my mother-in-law lives in, and it is often the case, at least among the people we know, that communities will chip in where the government does not. Not the state confiscating where it deems fit and distributing as it sees fit (usually to the distributors), but people helping out in their circle because the government is either inefficient or unwilling, and neighbors are unwilling to look the other way. "Unterlassene Hilfeleistung (failure to render assistance)" is actually on the books as a prosecutable crime here. Communism with a small "c," not Lenin's version with a secret police to enforce his rule.

[steve2470]

2. is it because of administrative costs and/or excessively conservative investments ?

That is kinda low for a lifetime of working. I would think it would be at least twice that high, if not 3 times.

[steve2470]

3. quick google found this

In 2009, 15.6% of Germany’s population were at risk of poverty. This was almost unchanged from 2008 (15.5%). The issue of poverty amongst the elderly currently and low-wage earners in the future has been highlighted recently due to an aging population and asset / savings devaluation. Another area of concern is child poverty, which is especially serious in parts of east Germany where unemployment and single parenthood rates are high.

Germany follows the EU standard definition of a relative poverty line, which is 60% of the population’s median income. Poverty figures are reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), which follows the EU-SILC survey.

Note: Latest available standards and exchange rates were taken as of November 2011, when the photography was undertaken.

http://www.thepovertyline.net/germany/

going to look now for median income of Germany

eta:

Germany Average Gross Monthly Earnings

Germany 3745.00 Dec/16 Quarterly

https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/wages

So if one multiplies 3745 by 12, one gets 44,940 euros per year, but that's average, not median.

[DFW]

4. I don't know what the cause is

Even my wife doesn't know, and she's the social worker here. Obviously some people's pensions haven't kept pace with inflation, and another factor is that there has been a hug influx of supposedly "ethnic Germans" here since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Some of them were really what they said they were, but everyone with some faded ID card with a swastika and enough money or connections for a ticket west tried to show up here, say they were ethic Germans, had highly paid prestigious positions in the socialist countries they came from, and thus deserved commensurate pensions from Germany. The German bureaucrats, themselves protected by generous government pensions, were not prepared for the huge invasion of these people, and in more cases than not, just gave in and tossed money their was to get them out of their hair. The funds set up for this, originally meant to pay out from monies paid in by working Germans, were quickly emptied. The Germans who were here the whole time, had paid into the system all their lives without a whimper, got the short end of the stick. They have no powerful lobby, and often have relatives they can impose upon in a pinch.

My mother-in-law, at age 90, only survives because besides the few hundred a month for her, she also gets the pension of her husband who was a war casualty. He survived until age 74, but with one leg. He was drafted off his farm at age 17 in 1941, used for cannon fodder at Stalingrad, and returned at age 18 after a Russian Artillery shell blew off his other leg.

[steve2470]

5. sorry to hear about all this!

I'm really glad she has you!

[DFW]

7. I'm really glad I have her, too!

When I had my medical issues, or was seriously ill otherwise, she was always there for me, too.

[left-of-center2012]

8. $1257.96 a month

About what I get each month on Social Security,
which I've read is about the average.

[DFW]

9. Except that's the gross

Taxes come off of that, and the cost of living here is horrendous.

[left-of-center2012]

10. Might be interesting to do a cost of living comparison

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the U.S. $1,234.43

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-the-typical-1-bedroom-apartment-costs-in-50-us-cities-2016-6

[DFW]

11. Huge differencese here

The States, too, I suspect. I know NYC, Boston, DC and SF are hugely expensive. Same here for Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, München. Berlin is surprisingly reasonable compared to the rest, and I'm sure the outskirts of Elko, NV are a bargain compared to midtown Manhattan.

In Düsseldorf, where we are, if you go into the city, and want a decent 50 m² (550 Sq. Ft)apartment, you had better figure on $700 a month minimum plus utilities, which are brutal in the winter. That leaves you maybe $100-$200 a month for everything else if you get my wife's pension, and food is not cheap here. If you want to live out in the sticks, of course, you can get away with half that, but you're practically a hermit if you do that.

[left-of-center2012]

12. "$700 a month minimum plus utilities"

That's a little more than half of one in the U.S.

[DFW]

13. It's double in Mnchen

The three "Ls." How does one live paying $1400 in rent on $900 net a month?

That's like the story a Hungarian told me back in the days when they were a Soviet colony:

At an economic conference, the US president declared: "In the USA, one nets $1000 a month, needs $600 to live on, and what he does with the extra $400 is his own business."

The First Secretary of the CPUSSR declared: "In the Soviet Union, one nets 162 rubles a month, needs 160 rubles a month to live on, and what he does with the extra two rubles is his business."

The First Secretary of the Hungarian Workers' Party declared: "In Hungary, one nets 4000 forints a month, needs 8000 forints a month to live on, and where he comes up with the extra 4000 forints is his business."

[left-of-center2012]

14. yeah, you've lost me somewhere

Good day, Sir

[DFW]

15. Must be the time difference

Not "good day" here--more like good night.

11 PM CEDT.