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.