Finally get started with the stock pension

Money is getting tight

The contribution rate of the statutory pension insurance threatens to rise inexorably in the near future.

(Photo: imago images/Patrick Scheiber)

The traffic light coalition has no plan how the pension can work in the long term. The problem of aging is not mentioned anywhere in the coalition agreement. Hardly anyone is talking about the share pension announced by the self-proclaimed progressive coalition, or there is only a dispute about the start-up financing of ten billion euros from the state budget.

A mixed-financed old-age security system with a share of capital, albeit far too modest, would be the right way.

The older ones among us will still remember Harald Schmidt. The former entertainer is retiring soon. Today’s “doctor” on the ZDF dream ship has now revealed that it is exactly 272 euros. “I’ll collect that too, I’ve paid in, I’m entitled to it,” he says.

You can smile about that. Nobody has to worry financially about the actor. But his zigzag biography is representative of that of many people in Germany. Also for the self-employed who, like Schmidt, have only paid into the pension insurance for about 15 years, but have worked all their lives.

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Above all, however, the young generation was rightly impressed by the idea of ​​the traffic light coalition. In other words, the promise that there will soon be a suitable pension offer for people with a wide variety of CVs who are not afraid to invest their capital for decades.

Stock pension instead of savings account

Much scorn was poured out over the “Sparbuch-Olaf” during the election campaign on social media. The SPD chancellor candidate at the time had stated that his money was only in the savings account. But his predecessor in office now receives a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros. You don’t have to worry so much about the right investment.

>> Read also: The repressed problem – pension policy needs more awareness of reality

The critics of stock rents never tire of pointing out rising interest rates, volatile stock markets and the energy crisis. But it’s not about the right timing, i.e. “buy when the guns bang, sell when the violins play”, as the banker Carl Mayer von Rothschild is said to have said.

It is about a fund managed under the umbrella of a state authority or the Bundesbank, which can replace the previous system to some extent in 30 to 40 years, but above all supplement it. It’s also true: stock annuity is not an adequate answer to one of the proverbial biggest demographic bombs that will soon be thrown in our faces.

The gorilla in the living room

This is about the huge problem that will begin in 2024 with the retirement of the large generation of “baby boomers” and which the Handelsblatt economist Bert Rürup recently aptly described.

Still, something has to happen. If it then takes the pressure out of the boiler, all the better. America’s most famous economist, Paul A. Samuelson, liked to talk about the gorilla in the living room that no one wants to talk about.

But if the federal subsidy is not further increased, the contribution rate of the statutory pension insurance will start to rise inexorably in the near future. From 18.6 percent to 22 to 23 percent by 2035. At the same time, the security level of statutory pensions is falling, from around 49 percent today to 45 to 46 percent of insured wages.

The chancellor’s promises in the coalition agreement that everything will change have nothing to do with reality. The government should look at the Bundesbank’s latest report. That’s where all the numbers are.

Franz Müntefering, a social democrat of the old school, said when it came to issues of pension provision: You don’t have to be a mathematician, it’s enough “Sauerland elementary school” to know: “We have to do something”. Then let’s finally start with the stock annuity.

More: Interview with Martin Werding – “The really big pressure is still ahead of us”

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