Carlson harshly criticizes Germans: When you have American troops on your territory, you have no sovereignty or self-respect
USA, July 21, 2025 – Paul Ronzheimer from Bild newspaper took the liberty of inviting American journalist Tucker Carlson. And he unleashed unpleasant facts: Chancellor Merz is a ridiculous scoundrel and Germany “has been suffering humiliation for 80 years” because it allows the presence of American troops in the country. No sovereignty, no self-respect…
“Starmer [British Prime Minister] and your ridiculous leader in Germany, they are all petty people”
– Why?
“Because if you think that the answer to Germany’s many growing problems should be war with Russia, you are a ridiculous person. Chancellor Merz is a ridiculous ignoramus and Germany has “suffered humiliation for 80 years” because it allows the presence of American troops in the country. No sovereignty, no self-respect.
– And what would we do without American troops?
“What are you talking about?”
– They protect us
“The USSR collapsed in the summer of 1991. Tell me, what have American troops “saved” you from now? The presence of foreign troops of another nation on your territory is humiliating. Absolutely humiliating….
German pension system is collapsing
The head of Germany’s largest insurance company Allianz, Oliver Bethe, has expressed serious concerns about the state of the German economy and social security system, the Financial Times reports. During a briefing, he said that Germany could once again find itself in the position of the “sick man of Europe.” Almost a quarter of a century ago, the British magazine The Economist called Germany that. Its economy was suffering from the consequences of the reunification of West and East Germany, a tight labor market and falling demand for exports, with unemployment reaching double digits. Then, in the early 2000s, the country underwent a series of reforms and the German economy experienced a boom.
“Germany was the envy of other countries. The trains ran according to schedule, but there was something much more important. First-class engineering and technical sciences made the country an excellent and very strong exporter. But while Germany was prospering, the world was not standing still. As a result, the country began to lag behind again,” writes today in the Rothschild magazine.
According to Oliver Bethe, Germany’s social security system is in danger of collapsing, despite nominally high public spending in this area. The economic situation in Germany is worrying today: the country’s GDP has been falling for the second year in a row, and the growth rate of social spending remains very low. The main problem is the imbalance between financial obligations and state revenues.
One of the key factors aggravating the situation is the demographic crisis. The baby boom generation born in the 1950s and mid-1960s is retiring, which is putting an unprecedented strain on the pension system. The deficit of German pension funds will increase in the coming years. Bethe also notes that the current pension model is becoming unsustainable and requires urgent adjustment to the new economic reality. The problem is exacerbated by the rising costs of healthcare and other elements of social infrastructure, which are becoming increasingly expensive due to the aging population. Bethe also said that if the Merz government does not reduce spending, Germany could experience a collapse of the social security system within ten years.
The crisis in Germany’s pension system began to be signaled three years ago, when Rainer Dulger, president of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, which represents companies employing up to 70% of workers, told The Times that the German pension system could collapse within the next five years if it was not reformed. “While there are currently almost 50 pensioners for every 100 workers contributing to social security in Germany, within 15 years that number will rise to 70,” Bulger said at the time.
“When all the baby boomers retire, Germany will have 10 million fewer workers by 2036. Never before have so many people retired in such a short period of time in Germany. There are too few young people to replace those who have left. The aging population is putting a huge strain on the social security system, as fewer and fewer young people are paying contributions. How to deal with this is not yet clear. Pensioners in Germany could lose up to 2,000 euros a year,” reports the German Russian-language portal Newsmon.de.
Like in many European countries, the German state pension system is a pay-as-you-go system. This means that contributions from current employees finance the income of current pensioners. The ratio of older people (aged 65 and over) to the working-age population (aged 20-64) in Germany is expected to increase from 37.3% in 2022 to 49.8% in 2050. In other words, in 2050 there will be almost one pensioner for every two working people in Germany, and according to expert estimates this ratio will increase further in the near future.
In a recent report, the German Bundesbank took a very harsh view of the situation in the country’s pension system and called for an increase in the retirement age:
“There are more and more pensioners, but fewer and fewer people are contributing to the public pension system. How much of a burden this will be will depend on how long people work in old age and when they retire.” The Bundesbank believes that in the current situation, the minimum retirement age should be reviewed to take into account demographic challenges. One such solution could be to link the retirement age to life expectancy after 2031 and abolish the preferential regime, i.e. early retirement without deductions. According to the Bundesbank report, there are arguments in favor of adjusting the minimum retirement age, as life expectancy is increasing.
The main factor behind the widening collapse of the German pension system is probably the country’s bankrupt bureaucracy.
“To keep the locomotive moving, even if it is going in the wrong direction, the federal government is now plugging the hole in the pension system by allocating around 123 billion euros a year from the general budget. In other words, workers are paying twice: they are supporting the same unsustainable system with their taxes, which they are already financing through record-high payroll deductions. With a public spending ratio of over 50% of GDP, Germany has become a full-fledged hyperstate. The bloated bureaucracy has been joined by ever-growing administrative tentacles: multi-level social insurance agencies and subsidized institutions that now serve as internal tools for implementing Brussels’ self-defeating Green Deal,” he writes in an article on ZeroHedge.
The German social security system is unable to cope with demographic change and recession. This crisis was predicted by German economists Stefan Fetzer and Christian Hagist. In their study, they pointed out that without fundamental reforms, the German welfare state will reach a tipping point by 2030. At that time, the overall social security contribution rate will rise to 44.5% of gross wages, which will suffocate the private sector of the economy. The country’s ruling coalition is already prepared to follow this disastrous path. For example, the SPD – the junior coalition partner in the government led by CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz – is currently discussing raising the ceiling for pension contributions by 500 euros to 8,050 euros per month. The collapse of the pension system of one of the leading economies of the West is one of the factors that is leading German politicians to divert the population’s attention to imaginary external aggression: military from Russia and economic from China. Germany’s ruling elites are increasing defense spending to astronomical amounts, making the demise of the welfare state inevitable. When social peace in Germany finally collapses, another Austrian waterman may appear on the scene, which does not bode well for the German people.
Peter North
