Pensioners should receive an energy price flat rate of 300 euros.
(Photo: imago/Schöning)
Well then: In its new relief package, the traffic light coalition also takes into account the more than 20 million pensioners in Germany who were not considered in the first two packages. There is now a flat-rate energy price of 300 euros. That will cost around six billion euros, so almost a tenth of the 65 billion euro package is reserved for senior citizens. They could only look forward to the highest pension increase in decades.
In this way, the demographic imbalance in government policy is not corrected, but exacerbated. Hadn’t the coalition reinstated the catch-up factor prematurely in order to prevent pensions from rising faster than wages and contributors from being overburdened? This dampening effect is now being partially thwarted, employees can, to a certain extent, pass on part of their energy price flat rate directly to the retirees.
>> Read here: Electricity price brake, direct payments, higher child benefit and local transport ticket – this is how the coalition wants to relieve the burden on citizens
The 60+ generation makes up almost 40 percent of the electorate, they have a better lobby than the younger generation, for whom the finance minister doesn’t even spend a few billion euros in the budget. And in Lower Saxony, an SPD prime minister is standing for election in October, so the traffic light probably didn’t want to alienate a powerful group of voters.
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Of course, there are retirees with little money who deserve targeted support. But pouring money out on all retirees with a watering can is not a sustainable policy – even if the lump sum has to be taxed. It would be more meritorious to avoid the additional burdens that seniors incur as a result of escalating care costs or rising rents. The fact that the coalition is now catching up on the energy price lump sum is one thing above all: a kneel before the Methuselah Republic.
More: Calculation by the federal government: Ampel plans tax cuts of at least 27 billion euros