A Grey Haired Dictatorship

I was always brought up to respect my elders, and I was told this by, well, my elders. Whether teachers, my parents, or other people's parents for that matter, it seemed like everyone older than me was heavily invested in making sure I knew who was deserving of respect. Unsurprisingly, the people who most required my unquestioning deference were the same people who demanded it. This irony wasn’t lost on me, even at a very young age, nor was I particularly happy about it either, given I was the youngest member of my family. It’s hard to internalise respect for your elders when they’re sending you to bed without dinner or, as my older siblings were wont to do, chasing you down and administering increasingly painful dead legs.

Now that I'm older, and have two children of my own, I wonder how much my opinion has changed. For one thing, I understand why my parents were so focused on getting me and my siblings to show respect for older people. I’m 40, four years older than my parents were when they had me, their fourth child. We have enough trouble trying to corral one unruly 4-year-old, so god knows what we would have done with four of the buggers smearing jam on the walls and periodically beating the living shit out of each other. Perhaps the whole focus on the “respect your elders” schtick was more a desperate need to survive, rather than anything regarding manners. We may not use the phrase in our own home, but both my wife and I fully appreciate the principle.

It doesn’t mean I’ve necessarily changed though; I still don’t offer blind reverence to anyone older than me. That might make me a hypocrite of sorts, but thankfully I’m living in Germany, so I’m probably in good company. After all, it was only in 2018 that an international study on attitudes towards senior citizens showed that Germans were less than reverent towards their Omas and Opas. With a result of 3.86 out of a possible 5 respect points, Germany sat in the lower half of the “respect your elders” league table. This begs the question: does Germany have a problem with its older generations?

Reading any German language forum or comment section on the topic of age and respect might lead some to believe that there is a serious divide between the generations. Once you get past the obligatory “OK boomer” comments, what you do find is that for many people, respect is very much a two-way street. Retail employees are especially vocal on the topic, given they come into contact with retirees more than most professions. Many of the commenters complain that of all the customers they deal with on a daily basis, it is the pensioners who cause the most problems, not because of their difficult requests, but because of their attitude. The rudest customers, at least according to those who work in shops and supermarkets, are older people, who seemingly demand to be treated with the same veneration we usually reserve for monarchs, popes, and lower tier deities.

I can’t say how accurate these opinions are, but I do know that every time someone has pushed in front of me in a queue, they’ve been several decades older than myself. I’ve been shouted at, admonished, and “advised” by pensioners more often than any other group, and always without having their opinions invited. On one memorable occasion, an old man complained that I was too tall, which I don’t think I can do much about, unless I seek some questionable medical procedure. Admittedly, I found the whole interaction hilarious, which from the tone of the complainant was not the intention, but it was hard not to laugh when you watched someone walk across the street to complain about your family genetics.

If there is a divide between old and young in Germany, it’s noticeable that one particular group seems happy to pick sides. Going by their public pronouncements, politicians are more than willing to go out to bat for the country's aged population. A recent example saw Federal Transport Minister, Volker Wissing, defend OAPs from an EU proposal to tighten the rules for driving licence holders aged 70 and over that would require them to submit to regular health checks for suitability to drive. "I trust seniors to deal with their health without government guidelines and bureaucratic control” he stated when asked about the topic. This is despite data that shows that accidents involving older people were often more serious, and, in more than two thirds of cases, they were primarily to blame.

Politicians offering succour to the older members of the population isn’t anything particularly novel; after all, many European politicians do the same, for the simple reason that older people are far more likely to vote than younger people. Given this truism, it makes strategic sense to target policies towards that segment of society. This strategy seems to be the motivation behind the German government's recent announcement on pension reform, which will see younger people paying increasingly larger percentages of their earnings into the pension pot as we move towards the next decade. Obviously this created some outcry, especially from those who’s retirement age is awfully far in the future. Thankfully, the announcement came with a sop of sorts; with the energy of a Bitcoin bro trying to convince their followers to invest in some dodgy currency, Federal Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, declared that a special fund would be set up, to invest in the capital market, thus potentially reducing higher pension payment hikes in the future.

Hailed as a modernisation of the system by Lindner, many economists pointed out that this didn’t really fix the system given that any money coming from investments would be a drop in the ocean of the overall pension budget. This all may seem a little complex, but pension discussions are serious business in Germany since there is a demographic bomb ticking away, as more and more “boomers” begin to retire, and fewer and fewer young people are there to replace them.

All across Germany we hear how the generational shift is going to impact our lives. Here in Bavaria, there is a massive drive to recruit more teachers, as large numbers of experienced educators swap their textbooks for Nordic walking sticks. The much maligned German bureaucracy is already facing trouble, with hundreds of thousands of positions still unfilled, a problem that seems to only get worse every time I hear about it. One obvious suggestion would be to attract more skilled migrants to the country, which, in fairness, the government has tried to address, by loosening the laws surrounding dual-citizenship. Even so, the current political climate across the country, and the rise in far right rhetoric from the opposition parties, suggests any more welcoming policies towards migrants will play badly with the voting public.

Ultimately, discussions about rising pension contributions, or the issue of demographic collapse, are ones we’ve had for as long as I’ve lived here, and which for decades Germany has failed to address with any real seriousness. Short-term fixes have always been the go-to, whether out of a lack of political will, or the bravery to tell the voting public the truth. Fixing the problem will not win any party votes, and so the political game of musical chairs continues, with all parties hoping they’ll not be the ones in charge when the music finally stops.

Proofreader: @ScandiTina

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