Germany’s False Generation War: How Boomer-Bashing Masks Political Failure
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
Yet, recognizing a problem shouldn’t lead young conservatives to blame elderly citizens. In doing so, they’re merely parroting the rhetoric of Germany’s left-green elites.
“Boomer-bashing has become Germany’s latest intellectual fashion,” writes economist Peter Bofinger, pointing to Marcel Fratzscher’s book Nach uns die Zukunft (After Us, the Future). In his book, Fratzscher, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research, delivers a sweeping indictment, claiming that no generation since the Enlightenment has robbed its children of as many opportunities as today’s baby boomers.
It’s worrying that so many young CDU members and other conservatives are singing from the same hymn sheet. If Germany has a financing problem—which it clearly does—then it has an even bigger political problem: a government that is unable to lead constructive discussions on important issues and a wider lack of historical imagination, or courage, to help us escape the mess we’re in.
A party in disintegration
The pension dispute reveals how far the CDU has disintegrated. The youth wing picked this fight because it’s easier than confronting other pressing issues, such as Germany’s failed energy or asylum policy—or even the firewall that forced the CDU into a coalition with the SPD in the first place.
The dispute is the young wing’s way of venting frustration with Merz, who was their star until he became chancellor and broke almost every election promise. Many of the young conservatives believe Merz owed his relatively narrow election victory to their engagement and support. Last year, they greeted him as a hero; now he’s seen as untrustworthy, incapable of keeping budget discipline, and buckling to his unpopular coalition partner.
The dispute’s odd form highlights this knee-jerk anger: it fixates on stabilizing pension benefits after 2031—a proposal young conservatives claim violates the coalition agreement (which they otherwise support, despite all its problems). They calculate it would cost €115 billion by 2040. But this is textbook future-tripping: projecting costs 15 years out when no one can predict which government will be in power in three years’ time, let alone which policies it will pursue. The calculation assumes everything else remains constant or worsens—a doomsday scenario that justifies their present grievance while ignoring that future governments (which will most certainly not be this one, already the most unpopular ever) will make their own decisions.
Young conservatives hoping to weaponize this dispute are wrong. They should recognize how much they echo their opponents. Consider the right-populist outlet Nius, running the headline “Cut the boomers’ pensions!” with a photo of elderly cruisers (as if enjoyment were somehow naughty).
The crude analysis: the elderly brake necessary reforms; they win at the young’s expense. “The boomers are not victims of this system; they are the system.” Like the political left and environmentalists, the commentator sees hope only in the young generation making up for their parents’ ‘sins’—including not having enough children.
This dangerous nonsense plays into the hands of inept politicians incapable of solving pressing problems. Though Merz is painted as the mouthpiece of the elderly, he’s fueled the conflict by telling the young that no one could win elections by lowering pensions in an aging society. Of course, no one wants living standards cut—and rightly so. But using elderly voters as a shield to avoid difficult discussions, to excuse the government’s failure to lead and explore constructive solutions (whether extending working age, reforming toward mixed pension schemes, or other bold reforms), is voter-bashing at its finest.
The real story
Many baby boomers have already accepted the fact that they will have to work for longer—the pension age has risen to 67. They have contributed throughout their lives to today’s substantially higher material prosperity, from which all generations benefit. They paid solidarity taxes for German reunification, and many of them, particularly the men, served in the army for up to 18 months when they were young.
More importantly, the view of the 60+ generation as greedy rests on a strangely homogeneous account, as if all boomers are blessed with affluence; as if class doesn’t exist. Most bizarre is the notion that this generation conspires against their own children and grandchildren.
The last thing Germany needs is a generation war, which will only breed further fatalism and grievances. This harms not just the elderly (whose living standards are squeezed just as much as that of the younger people) but also the young (who, after all, won’t be young forever). Blaming baby boomers distracts from the real causes of our economic decline (the decline in competitiveness and productivity, the rise in bureaucracy, the turn to technocratic politics, and a fear of a truly open and honest debate).
It lets politicians who’ve long hidden behind voters’ supposed ineptness off the hook. It’s a ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy by those who fear popular solidarity and anger.
Fortunately, most normal young Germans won’t identify with this backward anti-boomer debate. Most know that solving Germany’s big problems requires intergenerational solidarity. To correct the mistakes of our political class—disastrous energy policy, short-sighted anti-growth environmentalism (of which this pension panic is merely another symptom)—we need both the energy of youth and the wisdom of age.
We should not allow ourselves to be divided this way.
Sabine Beppler-Spahl is a writer for europeanconservative.com based in Berlin. Sabine is the chair of the German liberal think tank Freiblickinstitut, and the Germany correspondent for Spiked. She has written for several German magazines and newspapers.