German Seniors Will Get No Pension Raise, While 36 Billion Euros Goes to Migrants

In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel led the way for Europe’s misguided migrant boosters, opening up Germany that year to one million Muslim economic migrants. Since then, the tidal wave has somewhat subsided, but there have still been at least half a million Muslim migrants entering the country in each of the last seven years. It has been a financial disaster for Germany, and especially for Germany’s poorer retirees. More on the parlous state of those retirees, and the amounts spent on those Muslim migrants, can be found here: “After spending tens of billions on Ukraine and migrants, German leader laughs when asked why elderly receive no pension inflation bonus,” by John Cody, Remix News, September 12, 2023:

German leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, laughed off the possibility of providing seniors with a pension inflation bonus, telling an audience that the cost is far too great. The claim that the costs are too great to support seniors on meager pensions follows unprecedented spending from Germany’s left-wing government on weapons for Ukraine and social benefits for migrants.

Scholz’s callous laughter was nauseating. He, of course, will never have to worry about how he will be supported in his old age, nor will any of the people who govern with him. At a time of great inflation, for retirees to not even receive a COLA (cost-of-living-adjustment), at a time of great inflation and much higher energy costs, is a grave matter, not to be laughed about by Olaf Scholz.

As poverty rises in Germany, seniors on fixed pensions, known as “Rentner” and “Rentnerinnen,” have been hit especially hard. There are different categories of pensions in Germany, with those earning a higher pension, such as doctors and professors, receiving a far higher sum than those in the “Rentner” class. Those receiving smaller pensions, which totals millions of German seniors, are more acutely affected as rising costs for food, housing and energy eat into their income at a far faster rate.

More and more people are therefore demanding an inflation bonus for this vulnerable group totaling €3,000. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz had not yet commented on these demands, but finally addressed the topic for the first time at a citizens’ dialogue in Bendorf in Rhineland-Palatinate. When asked about an inflation bonus for pensioners, the chancellor reportedly laughed. He then said: “Well, multiply the number of millions of pensioners by 3,000 – and then sit down very slowly. That’s quite a sum of money.”

If 3,000 euros were now to be provided as a bonus the government provides to 4.5 million poor seniors, the total would amount to 13.5 billion euros. That amount is just a bit under what Germany has spent so far in military aid to the Ukraine.

Approximately 4.5 million seniors in the “Rentner” category survive on €1,500 a month.

As of March 2023, Germany has sent Ukraine at least €14 billion in weapons and aid shipments, which was six months ago. Since then, that figure has risen to €22 billion and is only expected to rise over time. It must also be noted that due to sanctions on Russia, which is tied to the war in Ukraine, there has been an enormous increase in the cost of energy in Germany, which has not only eaten into the pocketbooks of households but also led to an increase in bankruptcies and a recession in Germany.

The steep rise in energy prices, a result of the sanctions on the sale of Russian oil and gas, makes it all the more important for Germany to provide more money to its seniors — an increase whose mere suggestion elicited only laughter from Chancellor Scholz.

But by far the greatest expenditure, about twice the size of the amount of military and financial aid being given by Germany to Ukraine, is the amount spent on Muslim economic migrants. They claim to be “refugees” or “asylum seekers.” But very few of them are arriving from countries where, if they remained at home, they would be persecuted or killed. Having first landed in Italy and Greece, they deliberately set out for Germany, because the German welfare state is the most generous in Europe after that in Sweden. These economic migrants are provided with free or greatly subsidized housing, free medical care, free education (including vocational training), family allowances, unemployment benefits (even if they haven’t any work history in Germany), and more. And these benefits lavished on these overwhelmingly Muslim migrants add up to a great deal, and unlike the aid given to Ukraine, which will end when that war ends sometime in the next year or two, the expense of supporting these economic migrants will keep on growing, as each year there are at least half-a-million more of those migrants arrive in Germany.

In addition, the German federal government plans to spend €36 billion on migrants in 2023, which includes housing, social benefits, and education, but that figure is likely a lowball estimate, as there are numerous hidden costs as well, such as millions more spent for police and security at German swimming pools to protect against migrant assaults and sexual violence….

And how many hundreds of millions of euros are now spent in Germany each year on more police, more detectives, more prosecutors, more court-appointed lawyers, judges, prison guards and prisons, because of the high rate of Muslim criminality?

In addition, some critics online have joked that “retirement at 30” in the form of welfare payments, known as “a citizen’s income” was just raised by approximately €50 billion.

Of course, just as soon as migrants become citizens — and Germany recently made that much easier, by reducing the number of years one had to live in Germany to apply for citizenship from eight to five years — they will be eligible for the “citizen’s income” payments.

In short, the funds are theoretically there for seniors, they are just going to other priorities. At present, Germany’s booming elderly population is suffering from poverty at a high rate. Federal government data published under a request from several Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmakers revealed that 28.1 percent of the German elderly are at risk of poverty, a figure that is higher than the EU average of 27.4 percent and far greater than its Western European neighbors of France (19.1 percent), Belgium (17.4 percent), and Luxembourg (9.3 percent).

The Ukraine war will no doubt come to an end, and so will German aid to Kyiv, in a year or two. But the economic migrants who cost the government so much will keep on coming, and money that could be spent on elderly Germans will instead be spent on this ever-expanding population of Muslim migrants. The only solution is to halt all such migration, and impose measures that will decrease the number of Muslim migrants already in Germany. These could include immediate deportation of migrants convicted of crimes once they are freed from prisons, the denial of all state benefits to migrants during the first five years of their presence in Germany (which will discourage many from coming to, or remaining in, Germany), and a work requirement for migrants receiving any state benefits, which will also lead Muslims to leave the country. But none of those measures will be taken until the anti-Muslim immigrant party, Alternative für Deutschland, comes to power, likely not alone but as the head of a “right-wing” coalition. AfD is rising fast in the opinion polls, and is now the second most popular political party, coming close behind the center-right bloc consisting of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union. And with such policies in place, the tens of billions of euros now spent on people who have no desire or ability to integrate into Germany society, and who regard Germans, like all non-Muslims,as “the most vile of created beings,” can be redirected to the German elderly, whose desperate need for more financial support was dismissed with laughter by the intolerable Olaf Scholz.