The pension must be enough to live on

self-realization? Afraid of boredom and not feeling needed anymore? Yes, among the more than one million pensioners in Germany who are still working at the age of 67 or older, there will be some who do so voluntarily. One can still assume that most of them have to work rather than want to work - because, as Left Party leader Dietmar Bartsch says, "at the end of the money there is still a month left".

The fact that this has to be the case can be seen from where most of the over 67-year-olds are employed: hardly anyone as a newspaper editor or in another comparatively comfortable desk job.

Most clear storage shelves, deliver packages or clean offices and private homes. They do physical labor that uses old muscles and bones more than their heads. And there are more and more for whom there is no other option. Record inflation is one of the main reasons for this.

No one would seriously doubt that this development is unacceptable. The question is: What must politicians do to counteract it?

The Left Party demands a minimum pension of 1,200 euros per month so that everyone can spend a dignified old age. At first glance, this sounds difficult to finance and therefore unworldly - especially in economically difficult times for social security funds.

At second glance, however, the basic idea is correct. Because not everyone can currently acquire enough pension entitlements to make a sufficient living in old age: Anyone who has worked their whole life for the minimum wage and who – like many women who are raising children – also has to leave the world of employment for many more years, has am end too little to live on.

In order to implement this plan, Bartsch demands that in future everyone has to pay into the same pension fund, including “officials and ARD bosses”. As populist as that sounds, it would make the country fairer.