Merz Urges Germans to Work More, Cites Greece as Model

And while you're at it, have more children.

Rich parasite who hasn't done any actual work in his whole life demands people work more for his and his leech friends' wealth.

Fuck him.

During a visit by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Berlin last year, Merz praised labor market deregulation in Athens that allowed a six-day workweek. He said Germans who consider a 40-hour week unreasonable should “take a look at Greece,” adding that Germany could learn from the country in this area. He acknowledged, however, that German labor productivity remains much higher.

Same shit different day, so here's what I said the last time this brainrot hit the news:

Someone does not understand what productivity means and how it’s meaningfully improved.

If you (you being the proverbial CDU brain here) need people to marginally increase their working hours, in order to achieve higher economic output, you’re in deep trouble. The increased output is also marginal and a one time boost. If you want meaningfully higher economic output, with sustained growth, you have to use machines and automation to achieve more with the same work hours. In other words you gotta do productive capital investment. Unfortunately conservative brains can only think of the cheapest solution (for businesses) first, at the expense of workers quality and quantity of life.

Short reminder that Merz had a 2-day work week during his time as chairman of the board at BlackRock Germany and got paid about half a million a year (150k base salary + bonuses) not to know or to decide anything but to facilitate political connections.

His famed "economy expertise" consists of lobbying work and board positions he only got to use his political influence (read: de facto corruption)

Halt die Fresse Merz

Maybe German government could stop buying from US and Chinese technology companies. Maybe block capital outflow from big German corporations to foreign countries with cheaper labor costs and start using domestic products ?

I'm stupid idiot so this might be all untrue.

The man owes his entire career to cronyism with the business world, especially his close ties to US corporations. Since he is much more of a US business lobbyist than a politician, his neo-capitalist drivel is self-explanatory.

Friedrich Merz (born November 11, 1955, in Brilon), the tenth Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany since May 6, 2025, has been the federal chairman of the CDU since 2022. A former business lawyer and long-time top lobbyist, he has held leading positions in a number of companies and business-related interest groups and networks. [1] Until the end of 2021, Merz was vice president of the CDU's business lobby group, the Economic Council, and a guest member of the presidium of the Small and Medium-Sized Business and Economic Union (MIT). In 2022, the MIT welcomed Merz's election as CDU chairman and stated that he was the first chairman to be a member of the MIT.[4] Armin Peter, most recently deputy press spokesman for the Economic Council and press spokesman for the then Economic Council Vice President Merz, has been deputy spokesman for the CDU and personal press spokesman for Merz since February 2022.[5] [6] Merz continues to be a member of the following organizations: Founding member of the New York section of the CDU Economic Council,[7] lobby organization Society for the Study of Structural Policy Issues,[8] Ludwig Erhard Foundation network, which brings together lobbyists and top politicians. Merz worked as senior counsel for the law firm Mayer Brown LLP until the end of 2021; prior to that, he was a partner for nine years.[9] During his time at Mayer Brown, he advised clients on corporate law, M&A transactions, compliance, and banking and finance law. According to research by CORRECTIV, he represented BASF as a lawyer on several occasions in 2010 and 2011. [10] He was a member of the board of directors at BASF Antwerp for almost a decade, where he headed the "Paints & Pigments" division of the BASF Group. From 2009 to 2019, Merz was chairman of Atlantik-Brücke [11] and from 2016 to 2020, he was chairman of the supervisory board of the German branch of asset manager BlackRock, for which he mediated relationships with important clients, authorities, and government agencies in Germany. [12] He was active in the Market Economy Foundation as a member of the Political Advisory Board of the Tax Code Commission. [13] In connection with his candidacy for the CDU party chairmanship, Merz ended his role as chairman of the supervisory board of Blackrock at the end of the first quarter of 2020.[14][15] At the 2021 CDU party conference, he lost a digital runoff election to his rival Armin Laschet. At the party conference on January 22, 2022, he was elected chairman of the CDU with 94.62% of the delegates' votes. [16] On September 23, 2024, Merz was officially nominated as the CDU and CSU's candidate for chancellor in the next federal election. [17]

Translated from German | Source with references

Just for everyone who doesn't know. Merz is negatively qualified (career-wise) and somewhat of an idiot.

I think a regular work week should be reduced to 30 hours/week, people can work longer but everything above that is overtime and paid accordingly.

Society's ultimate purpose should be to make our lives better, not to enrich share holders. Merz, and conservatives at large, work against society's best interests. Don't let them get or keep power, they are a plight.

I guess he is talking about how greece has a upper class that don't pay taxes and forces everyone else to work hard for basic needs.

My pay can‘t even keep up with inflation or rising prices and I‘m now expected to use AI for the tasks that I liked to do manually and instead waste my time fixing the garbage it puts out.

So yeah, thanks a lot „Christian Democrats“ and „Social Democrats“ for slashing the social state and putting our struggling economy to a halt even more all the while giving my employer even more leverage to squeeze labor out of me.

I‘m thinking I should take more paid health breaks before they cut that possibility too.

I'm confused, Musk is saying we're heading to abundance and work being optional. Merz is saying we need to work more. I don't know which overlord to listen to. They really need to compare notes at the next "rule the pawns" meeting...

I would like to say, how the tables have turned. But I would wish for any country to have the fate of Greece after the GFC. Whatever the headlines and the numbers may say, Greeks havent recovered financially since 2008.

Working conditions are completely shit, the lowest collective bargaining, worst housing crisis in EU, 6 days weeks, 13 hours of work per day, pension at 67, highest tax burden in the EU, 2and to last in PPP and many more.

I can't understand why would anyone take Greece as an example to adapt fir their workers

So we all need to work 14 hours a day to find the rich?

Fuck that shit, fuck the rich, I want wealth caps. Nobody should be able to have a networth of over 1 million dollars, anything income beyond that should go to taxes. Everyone can now be the same

Just shut the fuck up!

These botches want 6 days of work like we ain't got a life or something.

He is 1 dick

Maybe he could start with himself? Stop whining about others and do something productive for the first time in his life?

Soon Merz is going to stand up there with a whip, in a full dom suit, shouting that the peons have to work or get lashes.

Politicians: "we need to make this problem worse"

Germans might work more if they pay lower income tax and contributions on salaries. Why not tax income from sales of financial products more to make up for it?

Merz is wasting time. It is now that Europe would need to invest massively in automation and the skills to develop it on their own. Once the US have a sufficiant gap, and have locked down copyright again, Europe will be incapable of closing the AI intelligence gap. Without a usable offer, nobody will use European AI which means there is no training data to develop their models, and no profits to finance development. Then Europe will be forever dependend on US technology, like any third world country that couldn't close the technological gap to the West.

Okay so this is how you bait communists takes notes