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So we all need to work 14 hours a day to find the rich?
Fuck that shit, fuck the rich, I want wealth caps. Nobody should be able to have a networth of over 1 million dollars, anything income beyond that should go to taxes. Everyone can now be the same
Society's ultimate purpose should be to make our lives better, not to enrich share holders. Merz, and conservatives at large, work against society's best interests. Don't let them get or keep power, they are a plight.
Maybe he could start with himself? Stop whining about others and do something productive for the first time in his life?
I guess he is talking about how greece has a upper class that don't pay taxes and forces everyone else to work hard for basic needs.
I thought that’s just capitalism 101?!
More like lords and surfs. Its bluntly written in to their laws.
Rich parasite who hasn't done any actual work in his whole life demands people work more for his and his leech friends' wealth.
Fuck him.
Short reminder that Merz had a 2-day work week during his time as chairman of the board at BlackRock Germany and got paid about half a million a year (150k base salary + bonuses) not to know or to decide anything but to facilitate political connections.
His famed "economy expertise" consists of lobbying work and board positions he only got to use his political influence (read: de facto corruption)
I would like to say, how the tables have turned. But I would wish for any country to have the fate of Greece after the GFC. Whatever the headlines and the numbers may say, Greeks havent recovered financially since 2008.
Working conditions are completely shit, the lowest collective bargaining, worst housing crisis in EU, 6 days weeks, 13 hours of work per day, pension at 67, highest tax burden in the EU, 2and to last in PPP and many more.
I can't understand why would anyone take Greece as an example to adapt fir their workers
Well all of this is pretty good for larger business owners. Merz is a rich pro-business guy. They take a part of every hour worked by workers in their firms, or firms they invest directly/indirectly in, more hours worked - more profit collected. So they'd directly benefit from Greece-like working conditions.
Easy: they're looking at who those workers work for.
Those folks are having a grand old time.
And while you're at it, have more children.
And stop going to the doctor when you're sick. That's not what the taxes are for.
Bad argument. German's public health is not tax funded. Merz seems to be more like "Don't take sick leave! When you feel sick, you're just lazy."
Beiträge zur gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung sind de facto Steuern. Ich muss sie zahlen und bemessen sich an meinen Einnahmen.
While social spending gets cut even more. I mean sure the social state did nothing to harm the struggling economy but… look, it‘s just getting cut, ok?!
He is 1 dick
The man owes his entire career to cronyism with the business world, especially his close ties to US corporations. Since he is much more of a US business lobbyist than a politician, his neo-capitalist drivel is self-explanatory.
Friedrich Merz (born November 11, 1955, in Brilon), the tenth Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany since May 6, 2025, has been the federal chairman of the CDU since 2022. A former business lawyer and long-time top lobbyist, he has held leading positions in a number of companies and business-related interest groups and networks. [1] Until the end of 2021, Merz was vice president of the CDU's business lobby group, the Economic Council, and a guest member of the presidium of the Small and Medium-Sized Business and Economic Union (MIT). In 2022, the MIT welcomed Merz's election as CDU chairman and stated that he was the first chairman to be a member of the MIT.[4] Armin Peter, most recently deputy press spokesman for the Economic Council and press spokesman for the then Economic Council Vice President Merz, has been deputy spokesman for the CDU and personal press spokesman for Merz since February 2022.[5] [6] Merz continues to be a member of the following organizations: Founding member of the New York section of the CDU Economic Council,[7] lobby organization Society for the Study of Structural Policy Issues,[8] Ludwig Erhard Foundation network, which brings together lobbyists and top politicians. Merz worked as senior counsel for the law firm Mayer Brown LLP until the end of 2021; prior to that, he was a partner for nine years.[9] During his time at Mayer Brown, he advised clients on corporate law, M&A transactions, compliance, and banking and finance law. According to research by CORRECTIV, he represented BASF as a lawyer on several occasions in 2010 and 2011. [10] He was a member of the board of directors at BASF Antwerp for almost a decade, where he headed the "Paints & Pigments" division of the BASF Group. From 2009 to 2019, Merz was chairman of Atlantik-Brücke [11] and from 2016 to 2020, he was chairman of the supervisory board of the German branch of asset manager BlackRock, for which he mediated relationships with important clients, authorities, and government agencies in Germany. [12] He was active in the Market Economy Foundation as a member of the Political Advisory Board of the Tax Code Commission. [13] In connection with his candidacy for the CDU party chairmanship, Merz ended his role as chairman of the supervisory board of Blackrock at the end of the first quarter of 2020.[14][15] At the 2021 CDU party conference, he lost a digital runoff election to his rival Armin Laschet. At the party conference on January 22, 2022, he was elected chairman of the CDU with 94.62% of the delegates' votes. [16] On September 23, 2024, Merz was officially nominated as the CDU and CSU's candidate for chancellor in the next federal election. [17]
Translated from German | Source with references
Halt die Fresse Merz
During a visit by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Berlin last year, Merz praised labor market deregulation in Athens that allowed a six-day workweek. He said Germans who consider a 40-hour week unreasonable should “take a look at Greece,” adding that Germany could learn from the country in this area. He acknowledged, however, that German labor productivity remains much higher.
Same shit different day, so here's what I said the last time this brainrot hit the news:
Someone does not understand what productivity means and how it’s meaningfully improved.
If you (you being the proverbial CDU brain here) need people to marginally increase their working hours, in order to achieve higher economic output, you’re in deep trouble. The increased output is also marginal and a one time boost. If you want meaningfully higher economic output, with sustained growth, you have to use machines and automation to achieve more with the same work hours. In other words you gotta do productive capital investment. Unfortunately conservative brains can only think of the cheapest solution (for businesses) first, at the expense of workers quality and quantity of life.
I already do way over 40 hours, I'm just not getting paid for all of it, so this changes nothing except my motivation to do overtime.
Maybe German government could stop buying from US and Chinese technology companies. Maybe block capital outflow from big German corporations to foreign countries with cheaper labor costs and start using domestic products ?
I'm stupid idiot so this might be all untrue.
While your at it – what about not destroying every single future technology that evolves in Germany and yield it to China? like maglev, solar panels, windmills, batteries, heat pumps, electric vehicles and so on and so forth?
Exactly that, giving capital and technology for free, call it "collaboration". Wait 5 years and those foreign companies build on top of that and sell it to you and don't share any capital or technology. It's been like that for at least 2 decades so what they expect from country that was brain and capital drained for 20 years ?
I'm confused, Musk is saying we're heading to abundance and work being optional. Merz is saying we need to work more. I don't know which overlord to listen to. They really need to compare notes at the next "rule the pawns" meeting...
The real answer is taxing the rich properly, and relieving the poor.
• 4-day workweek should be the new standard
• Back to 70% taxes on the richest percentiles through income-dependent fines, wealth-dependent tax, tax of stocks, tax of private property (with a prohibition on raising costs for inhabitants), and so on.
• Combat capital flight and combat tax havens. Support them with a modest reimbursement for the losses of abolition of tax haven schemes.
• Relieve the proletariat: lower tax for the poor and middle class. 0% for the poorest, 20% for the richer.
And other measures:
• Limit the power of large companies; break them up, foreign companies trying to do business here included.
• Foster small and mid-sized DUWOCs (decentral, unionised, worker-owned coöps).
• Tackle capital corruption within politics. Former non-DUWOC leaders cannot become politicians, and politicians once finishing their political career, cannot become non-DUWOC business leaders.
• Reduce tax for DUWOCs with small income differences between the worst- and best paid people.
• Foster juridicial independence
• Establish a European sovereign fund that invests in economic diversification, sustainable energy, support for farmers, and building homes. In good years, save up, and in bad years, spend a smaller part of it.
They have different strategies, Musk is trying to motivating pawns by selling them a utopia, Merz is motivating the pawns by making them fear the lack of growth. Maybe they did compare notes and decided to do some a/b testing lol
They're both talking or of their ass so it doesn't really matter.
They are both right. America gets the Technocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#The_technate while Europe falls aside and has to rent out bodies and minds for global market rates. Thus Europe can only increase profits by increasing work rate.
My pay can‘t even keep up with inflation or rising prices and I‘m now expected to use AI for the tasks that I liked to do manually and instead waste my time fixing the garbage it puts out. Yeah I‘m thinking I should take a paid break before they cut that possibility too.
I think a regular work week should be reduced to 30 hours/week, people can work longer but everything above that is overtime and paid accordingly.
Productivity in any case craters after about 30 hours per week, but people like Merz don't realize that since they haven't actually worked in their lives.
These botches want 6 days of work like we ain't got a life or something.
Germans might work more if they pay lower income tax and contributions on salaries. Why not tax income from sales of financial products more to make up for it?
We have this situation in the Netherlands, i don't know the numbers exactly but if you work 3 days a week and want to work another day your monthly salary doesn't grow by 33% but only by 10 or 15% or so because of all kinds of different taxes. Why would you work what feels a lot more, if in return you only get back what feels a very little.
Soon Merz is going to stand up there with a whip, in a full dom suit, shouting that the peons have to work or get lashes.
He won't do the whipping himself. That would be hard work. Merz and his ilk don't work. They have others work for their wealth and only pretend they're doing it all by themselves.
Merz is wasting time. It is now that Europe would need to invest massively in automation and the skills to develop it on their own. Once the US have a sufficiant gap, and have locked down copyright again, Europe will be incapable of closing the AI intelligence gap. Without a usable offer, nobody will use European AI which means there is no training data to develop their models, and no profits to finance development. Then Europe will be forever dependend on US technology, like any third world country that couldn't close the technological gap to the West.