The State of Affairs.

If you have followed German news, you will know already that the AfD has gotten their highest results ever in the elections yesterday, making them the strongest party in Sachsen-Anhalt for the next years. This is going to make things... interesting, to say the least.

In the best case, the other parties will realise that it's getting really hairy now, get their shit together, team up and run the show at least in a mediocre-but-acceptable way. In the best case, some other politicians will also get their shit together and finally go for the Verbotsverfahren (to ban the whole party because it is, at least in large parts, confirmed right-wing-extremist and against the German constitution). In a not as good scenario, people will realise that they are enabling a shitshow here, and make better choices next time. In any case, even in the best ones, we'll have plenty of fallout.

The Worst Chancellor of All Times (at least according to surveys about how much he is appreciated, or not) is probably going to find some way to get the shit to the fan quicker, and the fan sped up. Well, well, well.

On a different but also not happy note, there's also discussion to make self-employed people here pay into the state pension. If you are a regular employee, you have to do that no matter what; the big difference being that as a regularly employed person, you are also getting a regular income in a known, fixed height, which is not the case for self-employed people. 

The idea behind this is, or so some of the reports tell us, to avoid solo entrepreneurs or other self-employed people running into monetary trouble in their pension age. At the moment, you have to care for your future yourself, so either you get rich enough just like so, or you pay into some private insurance. Or, as sadly happens quite a bit it seems, you ignore this and just, well, do nothing to prepare when you're old and cranky and maybe not able to work anymore.

So the basic idea is, if not noble, then at least understandable, and not superduperbad. The problem, though, is that the plan is to apply a fixed sum to pay monthly... and I am rather doubting that it will be a small sum. That comes on top of the obligatory health insurance, where you also pay a fixed sum in full each month. 

I am looking at this with more than a little doubt. It's already quite a stretch to go self-employed in Germany, this will add to the burden. At least it seems that it is to only apply to new startups, so I will probably not have to deal with this. (It would also be only of limited use, since the system means that you pay, and paying a certain amount per year gives you points, which in turn decide about how much you get as pension, with some more factors coming in. But the TL;DR is - if I'd start to pay in there now, I am a little late to the party, so I'd basically get very little back. Which means that that money would need to go on top of what I do as private insurance now. 

The thing is... I'm not sure that there'd be a different country where it would be significantly easier and so much nicer that moving there would be a really good decision. I have come to the conclusion that it's always easiest to see the shitty things and those going wrong in one's own country (well, except those that one is blind to, but that's another topic), and usually you're just not getting the nitty gritty from other places.

So. We will see. And hope. Because hope... well, it rarely hurts, right?