pension | The legend of the generational conflict

Old and young should not fight each other when it comes to pensions, but rather stand side by side. Photo: Unsplash/Curated Lifestyle Recently, while listening to the news using a series streaming service, I was repeatedly played a disturbing advertisement from a major insurance provider. There, young people talk about why it is important to make private provisions for their pension - for example, as one young woman says, "not to have to collect bottles when they get older." Okay, advertising is advertising, and in this case you should be encouraged to seek advice on “building wealth”. But a discourse figure like "If I don't do that, I'll be forced to collect bottles" - the firm conviction that there is no alternative to old-age poverty with the statutory pension - must already exist in order to be able to build on it in advertising. And that's exactly how it is.

When, as at the moment, it's about pensions, and often about the "reform" of pensions, I often think: In hardly any other area of ​​the welfare state debate are the established basic assumptions as wrong as here (then Hartz IV comes to mind again, but still …). For years it has been discussed publicly primarily as a "generational conflict": because the boomers all have it so good (lie number one) and because of the demographics there isn't enough "left" for the young. The inevitable consequences for state-organized pensions were higher contributions, lower pensions and longer working lives. And private precautions are absolutely necessary if you don't want to, as I said, have to collect bottles later. The earlier you start saving and investing privately for your pension, the better, which is why the federal government is planning to subsidize such projects starting in elementary school.

Nelli Tügel is editor of the monthly newspaper “Analysis & Criticism” and a freelance journalist. Here she takes a close look at exploitation, workers' movements and left-wing strategies.

Nothing wrong with planning for hard times, really! But the pension discussion is lopsided from beginning to end - and for those who are putting the ax to pensions, this is incredibly practical. Because: The legend of the generational conflict conceals - and unfortunately very successfully at the moment - the fact that there is a class conflict here. That there is a connection between low wages and low pensions; that there is an absurd amount of wealth in society, which those who are supposed to work longer and longer and receive less pension earn, but from which they have nothing, not even in the pension fund, in which mainly wage earners insure each other; that the share of pension expenditure in gross domestic product has not increased but decreased, as has the pension level.

If all of this fades into the background, the conclusion is: the old people are to blame; and the problem can only be solved individually - with private provision - and politically with "reforms" (i.e. cuts). The opposite would be true: Since young and old people, working people and pensioners have common interests here, a generational struggle will lead them nowhere except perhaps into poverty in old age. You don't have to look that far to see that it can be done differently, namely collectively; a few hundred kilometers to the west is enough. In France, the defense of pensions regularly brings hundreds of thousands onto the streets: young and old.

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