In the ongoing debate surrounding pension reform, SPD politician Karl Lauterbach has advocated for a fundamental systemic change, proposing that pension payouts should be based on fixed contribution years. Lauterbach told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (noz) that, echoing economist Jens Südekum, “paying out a pension after a certain number of contribution years would have been significantly fairer.” According to the politician, the current payout system disadvantages low-income earners severely, as poorer individuals with lower life expectancy would ultimately be subsidizing the longer retirement periods of wealthier contributors.
Lauterbach also projected a sharp increase in financial losses for those planning early retirement. Currently, there is a 3.6 percent reduction for every year of early retirement, but he predicted this would rise to five percent in the future. He calculated that someone aiming to retire at age 65, instead of the standard age of 67, would thus have to forgo 10 percent of their pension.
Furthermore, Lauterbach issued a warning against using the elimination of the “Pension with 63” benefit as a compensatory measure for the introduction of a stock-based pension system, particularly for already disadvantaged groups. He stressed that these contribution increases should not be balanced by cost-cutting measures targeting already underprivileged people. He argued that this would be the case if the “Pension with 63” were abolished simply to finance the new stock pension.
