In its latest report, the Advisory Council dealt in detail (almost 100 pages) with the reform of the statutory pension insurance. He wrote down what problems the statutory pension insurance is facing and what needs to be done to solve them. Much of what the Council is proposing is well known and not controversial among experts. There is only a dispute about the details. The proposal to link the statutory retirement age to “longer-term” life expectancy is just as much a part of this as the idea of expanding funded pension provision. Things won’t get any more controversial (yet) if the Council fundamentally calls for the sustainability factor to be strengthened. What is more controversial, however, is when he specifically pushes for more of the demographic burden to be placed on pensioners. Things become more critical when the Council of Experts proposes that existing pensions should no longer be adjusted based on wages, but only based on inflation. However, it becomes completely controversial when the majority of the Council advocates redistributing earned salary points from “richer” to “poorer” pensioners in order to better combat the (possibly increasing) poverty in old age. This would amount to further damage to the equivalence principle, one of the main pillars of statutory pension insurance.
Prof. Dr. Norbert Berthold (JMU Würzburg) in conversation with Prof. Dr. Bernd Raffelhüschen (ALU Freiburg)
The participants:
Prof. Dr. Bernd Raffelhüschen is Professor of Finance and Director of the Intergenerational Contracts Research Center at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and was a professor at the University of Bergen, Norway (1994-2019). Numerous stays abroad took him to the USA and also to the Scandinavian countries. In addition to his involvement in international research projects, he is involved in questions of practical social policy – for example as a member of the Rürup Commission, the Tax Code Commission or as a board member of the Market Economy Foundation.
Prof. Dr. Norbert Berthold is Professor (emeritus) of economics, particularly economic order and social policy, at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. He worked at the universities of Freiburg, Basel, Münster, Hamburg, Konstanz, Düsseldorf and Würzburg. Norbert Berthold is the initiator and operator of the economist blog “Economic Freedom” and therefore also the namesake and initiator of this podcast.
The regulatory policy journal