The latest figures show that there is a huge deficit in the German pension fund. To address this issue, politicians are proposing that robots should also contribute to the pension fund. The demographic shift has been causing a deficit in the pension fund for years, and it is only getting worse. As the number of retirees increases each year, while the number of contributors decreases, less money is being deposited into the pension fund. The CDU believes that companies that use fully automated robots to produce goods are partially responsible for the financial deficit. The CDU Social Policy spokesman, Dennis Radtke, suggests that robots should also contribute to the pension fund. He believes that the social market economy needs an update to ensure social security in the future.
Thomas Straubhaar, an economist at the University of Hamburg, agrees with Radtke. He believes that the pension fund is at risk of bankruptcy due to rising expenses. At the same time, companies can produce goods more easily and with fewer human workers by using machines. However, this creates payment gaps in social systems such as the pension fund. Therefore, some politicians and top economists are calling for robots and machines to be used to finance the pension system. Straubhaar suggests that if a factory uses robots or machines, they should pay the same amount of taxes as human workers.
Radtke also believes that large tech companies like Google or Meta should contribute their fair share to stabilize social systems with their billions in profits. He argues that social security cannot be financed solely through wage labor when billions are being earned through algorithms or high-frequency trading. Radtke’s ideas are not new, as Bill Gates and Frank Appel, the CEO of Deutsche Post, have also advocated for social contributions from robots and machines in the past.
