Igor Ovsyannykov
Romania’s New Mega-Cathedral Reminds Us That Civilisational Rebirth Is Always Possible
The People’s Salvation Cathedral affirms that modernisation can only occur in harmony with a people’s spiritual roots.
Successive left-wing governments have empowered gender-ideology NGOs in classrooms, giving them legal cover to influence children without parental oversight.
Can we blame Germany’s problems on the baby boomers? That’s the unfortunate—and dangerous—tenor of Germany’s latest crisis discussion, triggered by a massive row between Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and his party’s youth wing (Junge Union).
At last week’s Junge Union gathering, Merz was visibly humiliated when delegates refused to support a pension agreement he’d made with coalition partner SPD. Some outlets suggest the government could collapse over the dispute. But while there’s much to criticize about this inept government, there’s nothing to celebrate about this pension fight.
The debate masquerades as centered on ‘intergenerational justice,’ but it really reflects a toxic mix of anxieties: fear of population aging, public spending concerns, and a general terror of taking responsibility for the future. Germany’s deepest political and moral confusions, it seems, are being refracted through the prism of an artificial ‘generation war.’
Germany’s pension system, introduced in 1957 by conservative chancellor Konrad Adenauer, lifted millions of elderly Germans out of poverty after enduring two world wars. Funded by current contributions and indexed to wage growth, it guarantees retirees 48% of past gross income. Adenauer’s optimistic dictum—”people will always have children”—assumed continued economic growth.
However, with the economy contracting and millions of baby boomers retiring, optimism has turned to pessimism. Germany has the ninth-highest median age in the world and is set to lose around 5 million workers by 2035. The system requires over €100 billion in taxpayer subsidies each year, in addition to pension contributions paid by employees. While six workers financed one pensioner in the 1960s, today it’s only two, and this ratio is set to fall further still.
Parroting elite rhetoric
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