Me as a German hopes your German friends explaining a lot more off camera because Volker Pispers is full of complex and intelligent sarkasm! And I found several translation mistakes in the subtitles. Sarkasm is extremely hard to translate in every language. 😊
In German and Austrian satire, you stick the finger in the wound and hold up the mirror to the people. A good way to get problems in people's minds. It had to be uncomfortable. Cool channel btw
Well, unfortunately it doesnt work. The problem is the same as everywhere.... education. Theoretically we are well educated in Germany, but just theoretically. Majority of the people prefer to know who will be the next choice of the bachelor or something like that. But nobody cares about economics, politics and other important topic. But as soon as a problem apears, everybody is an expert without any background knowledge. The best base for nationalism, racism, or other stupit shit like that.....
@@vanpayne6299 I think an even bigger problem is, that there are more people that are interested in the things you mentioned , than we might think, but they actually don't try to make it better. From what I see, there are people knowing but not doing and that is a fundamental problem we are facing in many sectors. Like for example, I'll use myself for that point, I know perfectly well that I buy and use products and also do things that damage the environment in other parts of the world dramatically , therefore I know perfectly well, how I should act -> I should reduce the use of that products, but even today I don't do that, because it is hard work which might be not worth doing, when nobody else will do the same. "I can't change anything on my own anyway" - I know that this perspective is wrong, but deep within it kills the necessary motivation which enables change. Then there is this imaginary person who knows perfectly well in which direction politics should change, but also thinks it won't work, because every other party works against this ideas. This person won't rise to the top until there would be enough of other people supporting that. So this person just won't try, because the requirements are not met and the requirements for that to happen are not met, because there are no other people trying to do the same. And not just that, these parties which are working against this person's ideas, convinced most people that the current way is also the only one, so that there gladly ( in their eyes ) are not enough people trying exactly that. A perfect vicious circle in my opinion. I might be wrong, I am open to discuss that, this is the interpretation from what I see.
@@otisgorischek1915 like your point of view and your reflection bro. And you are right, a single individual of us can't change anything. Unfortunately I don't see any chance to change the mindset of the majority, so we have to deal with it. I would be arrogant to complain, I am part of the system and that with success. The question is, for how long? But fact is, exactly the people who doesn't care about the reality, they will suffer the first. And I am lucky, I will not be part of them. But the point is, people wake up. Live and enjoy your lives, but do it in a sustainable way. Think clearly about what you need and what not. Think about other people and not only about yourself. Only when all can live, we have the chance to live in peace.
@@vanpayne6299 einfach akzeptieren das wir alle verschieden sind dennoch gleich gut. Arschlöcher gibt es überall. Der Franzose wird kein Deutsche, und der Deutsche kein Belgier.... und das ist auch ok so. Leider gibt es nur noch schwarz oder weiß. Jeder meint seine Meinung ist die beste. Frei nach dem Motto" willst du nicht meiner Meinung sein, so schlag ich dir die Fresse ein".
You were asking about Hartz IV: Hartz IV has made the former social security system worse. It lowered the amount of money that unemployed people receive and forced them into badly paid and unworthy jobs. This in turn put pressure onto the employed workers, because they became more willing to put up with shit in order to keep their jobs due to being afraid of falling into the Hartz IV system. Hartz IV was good for one thing only: Setting workers up against each other.
It actually depends. For people that had at one time worked for their living Harzt4 was worse. For people that never worked, for any reason it was an improvement on several levels. But yeah, the main goal was trying to bully people into low paying jobs.
Es ist sehr beeindruckend zu sehen, wie junge Amerikaner deutsche Geschichte mittels politischer Satire kennenlernen. Grüße aus Berlin It is very impressive to see how young Americans learn about German history through political satire. Greetings from Berlin Postscript: You and I live in a country where satire is allowed to be spoken. But there are many more countries where we would risk our lives for it. Satire is a privilege.
what should not be a privilige is the stupidity at display in our countries. Volker stopped doing satire because he said he ran out of gags. he tried for over 20 year+ to convince people and show them the idiocracy of their ways, nothing changed.
@@michaelluck5577did he really say that ever? His statement on his website only says that he is distancing himself from any conspiracy theorists and just enjoys not being in the public eye anymore. I have only seen boomers under his old uploads claim that he "gave up" because "no one was listening for 20 years". I think that's bullshit.
You got that part about exports wrong. Pispers implied that Merkel thinks if every country just needs to export more than it imports, and everything would be fine. But this of courrse cannot work, because on a global level imports and exports can only be the same.
It's actually telling that the absurdity is not obvious to everyone. The only way every country could export more than import is to just dump its products in the ocean...
Exactly. The sums of exports equals the sums of imports. To explain it even more simply... If a country exports more than it imports, then at least one other country needs to import more than it exports, to make those numbers equal. So everybody exporting more than importing can't work.
Wouldnt it work if everyone exports their overshoot produce (since regional differences make difference in produce) while importing everything basic itself ? It wouldnt work in todays market but conceptually ?
@@Raaschid for specific products, yes. But this is about the balance of overall exports and imports financially. The idea of free trade as some severe issues but the general idea is not wrong. Let's say Spain is better in producing wine and England is better in producing clothing, due to their climate condition and so on. It is most advantageous for both if they have an overproduction of the stuff they can do better for trading. BUT if there is an imbalance between both partners it results in the drain of the weaker one. That's how the Brittish aggression towards China started. China was the big "Export Champion" of its time because silk and porcelain was highly demanded in Europe. But the only thing China wanted was our Silver. When Brittish treasury was dangerously emptied and China didn't agree to a more balanced partnership Brittain started to flood China with Opium to get back the silver from the addicted people. This resulted in the opioid wars that China lost. That's how they became British colony... So, massive over exports have quite some destructive potential. That's why there are rules against it within the EU. Rules that are constantly violated by Germany without any real retaliation. That strategy is not fair and logically not applicable for every country simultaneously.
Před 2 lety+144
The guy who breached the Berlin Wall with his car (it was actually an armoured vehicle he stole before) and got shot while climbing over the wall was my biology teacher back in high school! He sometimes told us about his escape from the GDR and he also showed us some of the scars where he got hit by the AK bullets. Insane that you know of this story! :D
Wenn er dann an der Mauer bei seinem Fluchtversuch erschossen wurde, wie konnte er dann wieder auferstehen und als Biologielehrer weiterleben und euch seine Schusswunden zeigen??? Ich dachte die Auferstehung ist nur ein religiöses Märchen der Kirche. Bin da jetzt aber reichlich verwirrt. 😕 😕
you mean: who broke the wall? weil ich immer keine nachrichten schaue. noch nie davon gehört. sagen sie mir einen namen oder wie es in den news getitelt wurde? so i can do my own research. omg i am so happy he survived this. and what a hero, take such a risk for a bit more freedom. thx for sharing your story.
How do you do it…is there a button? I only once was invited to do that and it was so much more work with the timing than I had anticipated! But when you look at this bs then it is worth it to do a better job
Oh god, yes. Not even 2 minutes in, these subs are ABYSMAL!! Did you get around to translating better subtitles? Could you perhaps also do this for Johann Koenig's "Die Jesus-Tagebuecher"? One of my favorite bits of all time and I wanted to show it around to some of the folks on CZcams who seemed interested in German comedy. 😅
I loved to see your reaction! As a American, it is a very brave task to react to Pispers...and for the most Germans it is too...it takes a lot of sense for sarkasm! Good job!💪🏼👍🏼👍🏼
bei allem Respekt, der Volker Pispers steht dazu was er zu Sagen hat, es ist kein Sarkasmus. Am Ende ist das Wort Sarkasmus nix anderes als Märchen oder Fantasie um den Menschen die für sich nicht selber Denken können dieses abzunehmen. ;-)
The Iron Curtain didn't split just Germany into two. It stretched from the Baltic Sea right through Europe down to the Black Sea and basicly cut of the whole eastern block (meaning all states, that were under Soviet control). The Berlin Wall ended up being the symbol for the cold war and the seperation between east and west, that's why it poppes up in peoples mind, when asked about the iron curtain.
@KS Germania Well I would say Napoleon. 😉 OFFICIALLY Stalin din't conquer anything and gave Nazi-Germany just a big kick in the butt. After that, coincidentally all "liberated" eastern countries just decided communism is the best thing ever. 🤔
Hartz 4 biggest problem is the stigmatization that comes with it. People are ashamed if they need it. Because it usually isn't enough to come over the month. They have to get their groceries at the Tafel (an honorary organization, distributing food donations from supermarkets) And because they have no money for nothing, the are mostly excluded from social life. No cinema, no restaurant, even a visit to the swim hall is too expensive. By the way, the stigma comes from the mentioned media, where it is shown how lazy and bad those Hartz 4 people are. Wich is usually totally scripted, but people believed it. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole can of worms still untouched.
One of the things I know is that if you get Hartz4 and you want to start in a real job you can only earn 400€. If you earn more you don't get Hartz4. Meaning going step by step into real work isn't possible and it's more effective to do nothing.
@@alexander3097 That is not quite correct. You can be an "Aufstocker". Actually, a lot of people are. As long as you earn less than what the Hartz 4 calculation would be, you will get paid the difference (as long as you apply). Plus some more, as the first 100€ you earn are disregarded completely in the calculation and from each additional Euro you earn, 20% are disregarded in the calculation. Until what you earn surpasses what your Hartz IV would be, then you are no longer eligible. Roundabout it comes out that if you get Hartz IV and work at the same time, you'll have between 150 - 200 Euro more per month than if you only got Hartz IV without working as well. But that going step by step into real work is not possible (or at least very unlikely) is still correct. The reasons are a bit more complex though. One issue is if you earn exactly or very close to the amount of the Hartz IV. Then those 150-200 Euro I mentionen previously is suddenly gone, because you stop being eligible when your income surpasses the Hartz IV level, but this time without this disregarding certain parts of it in the calculation. Another issue, is, of course, employers not wanting to pay more taxes. A "geringfügig Beschäftigter" (petty labour) costs a lot less in taxes than someone who is "properly" employed. They know the state will feed those folks, so they don't have to. They are the real ones who exploit the system, not the so called "lazy" people who are unemployed!
This is the next interesting concept... they somehow made us believe that the poor are a problem, not poverty. Thus driving nearly everyone who owns money against the Hartz4 guys and makes them ashamed.
As a swiss totally understanding german, there is so much missing context/words in the subtitles for volker. Someone should really do a proper subtitle text for this. It's way more sarcastic or ironic than the auto-texts. James, if you would have really seen all that volker said in this context, you would have just trully been blown away :)
forget the irony...I think in this speech especially it's much more important to simply get the message across and it aches my heart that the subtitles do that so poorly. The part about banks, inflation, debts and interest absolutely blew my mind the first time I watched this. How a 36min video could lift all the confusion I had with the financial system and explain the whole scam behind it in such an understandable way is simply astonishing. In all my years in school I found this topic to be unnecessarily complex and confusing...I didn't get the whole "why" behind it and it just needed to be put into words once to understand it all. -"It's unnecessarily complex and confusing *BECAUSE* it lives from the fact that 90% of the population mustn't understand it" It's not only that the 1% live off of fucking over the 99%, they also want the 99% to smile while they serve. And the most fucked up part (which Volker doesn't go into) is that the 2-10% (politicians, bank managers, advertisers, CEOs, media figures, [...]) are the middle men/grunt workers who actually pull this scam off, just to catch a drop of the 1%s ballsweat which is equates to several times more money than the 90% ever dream of making while still being only a fraction of what the 1% make off of them. THIS is the source of by far most of the misery on the planet
@@AgeofJP The subitles lack something. There is the video of Pispers about the "history of the US" with all the major conflicts till 04 (when the video was recorded) with amazing subtitles and all puns included and when not translatable, explained. That is whats missing I think. As a German, I understand it, if not for my prior knowledge, I wouldnt.
@@Braamsery1992 yes that video was the first I watched from him and that one easily has the best subs...and I'm glad that I understand everything anyway perfectly since I'm German aswell (Grüße). I don't need better subtitles for me, I want them for anyone else watching this who doesn't understand German
Great reaction, but I must say those subtitles make me lose braincells. On 10:39 for example, Volker says „dick und doof“ which the subs translated literally. In Germany, „dick und doof“ is what the comedians laurel and hardy are known as
One reason for West Germany being about twice the size of East Germany is that the West was made up from the parts of Germany that were occupied by England, France and the US after WWII - and the East was "only" the Soviet controlled zone. I guess the whole "border between east and west Germany" - the 'Deathstrip' with it's automatic guns and mines and troopers with attack dogs - could make for a whole video all by itself. I bet there's material about this here on youtube as well...
@@croncorcen Possible. I always understood "Selbstschussanlage" (roughly "Self-shooting-device") to be a sort of gun (a barrel fixed to something) with a remote trigger. Just googled it and you're right, those things were closer to what I would consider a "mine" and indeed the official name "SM 70" stands for "Splittermine" (fragment - mine). Learned something. Thanks for pointing that out.
It warms my heart that Pispers is finally getting the attention he deserves. I still hope someday those xenophobic, racist, nationalist people will discover that they and their fears have been used. That the distribution of wealth is the real issue of our time. The civil rights activists in the GDR showed the way of how a peaceful but inevitable change in government policy can be done, why can’t we?
@@KurtFrederiksen You're talking complete nonsense. Like, you're making all of this up. Plenty of wealthy and powerful people are labeled xenophobic, racist, nationalist etc, just look at how people talked about Donald Trump. Do you think we want the *homeless* to share their wealth? Are you completely insane? The educated middle class has "little to lose and much to gain" while the homeless are the opposite? Do you know what any of those words mean? First you say that the homeless man wants to take your home and then you say that only the middle class wants to redistribute wealth. This whole comment is so incredibly incoherent it boggles my mind.
@@KurtFrederiksen The economic middle class? You mean those who are still in the 50% with little to no own savings and are being pitted against each other by political propaganda and lobbying so they are afraid of other cultures and things that look different. Mainly because they think that their wealth is being stolen by those who are new. But that is already a complete fallacy, their wealth is being stolen by those who have been their alongside them all along. The 10% of people that were heartless enough to only look after their own and protecting their decadence while feeding all kinds of conspiracy and lies to those doing the work. So being xenophobic, racist and/or nationalist is just buying into the fear mongering fed by the disparity. They deflect the anger and disheartened by playing with your feelings, telling people they are good 'money' slaves and behave in the correct ways of old while they take the value of their labour and refuse to share any of it. Even telling you to do more for less if they had their way. Because in truth the economy is a dystopian joke that functions as if commenting "first" on something and then kicking everybody else away with force there after gives someone a legitimate argument to claim ownership of that thing. It is not because there is some new dude in town that needs help adjusting and a place to stay that you don't get a home. It is because there is some family living in a house where you easily could house 10 families. And that is not the only place they have ownership of. So turn your anger and dishearted hatred towards those that really cause your misery instead of making it some joke by blindly blaming everything and everyone you aren't used to yet. Hate those that make and keep you homeless, not those having a home by merit of just getting by and being afraid of their own. Hate those that don't distribute the wealth of this planet equally. Those that think they deserve more than another. Or else you are just a blind person lead by fear and hatred, angry at the crowd your lords want you to be angry at.
Pegida and AFD are all controlled in the same way as all parties, very many demonstrations, either from the left or right camp, but the MSM moves everything to the right that is not Antifa-left or who also addresses completely non-political issues, which then as a conspiracy theory etc referred to as. Besides, there is certainly enough to criticize. Whether unlimited flooding under pretense, the expenses for it, etc. BEFORE the flooding, the federal government advertised in 16 countries to come to us, including George Soros through his NGOs. But that alone is a topic where you could text endlessly, as well as many other things, as well as the worldwide lie about the bad climate or viruses and.... what's in the injections? Anyone who knows that knows what NEVER will do. Oh yes, of all things Pegida and the AfD (and Merkels Antifa) is VERY pro-Israel and devoted to religion. The evil right-wing 'Nazi' Geert Wilders, who also appeared on Pegida, is married to a Jewess and a regular guest in Israel, is allowed to give speeches there, so he's not the only so-called anti-Semite (according to the media's speech) who has already been in Israel were. That unites everyone, also in the USA. No matter which party and who also knows what religion many high-ranking politicians have, including Trump, Merkel, Kohl, Johnson, Putin, Medvedev, Obama (no kidding), etc. Once you understand what's going on with parties and elections, what your vote is used for in elections, you'll never go to the ballot box again. No matter what politicians promise or which new parties pull out of a hat. And it doesn't matter whether right, left, pseudo-democratic. In reality there are only dictatorships worldwide and politicians NEVER serve the people, but others. Elections are also not based on the votes cast, so that is made to fit. Trump was chosen DECADES ago, for example, as the future president. All USA Presidents are related to each other. Trump also with Clintons and are even friends. You have to see behind the scenes. Not on the surface. The EU and Euro was an intermediate step to the NWO (New World Order). But first the old must be destroyed (along with the economy and currency) in order to then install the 'new' 'without any alternative' (as Merkel would say). Together with a non-cash world currency, world religion, world government, complete control and surveillance, right down to the body, into the brain, population reduction by billions of people and the 'rest' crammed into a few huge mega-cities. Many years ago I read on the net, with Sputnik and the MSM magazine: Der Spiegel, that a huge mega city is being built in China, for 100 million people, one wrote, the other for up to 130 million people. The goal is total world communism and NOBODY should own anything anymore (keyword: expropriation). As Klaus Schwab of the WEF and the WEF itself... announced: 'You will have nothing more, but be happy' Nichts ist, wie es scheint.
@@KurtFrederiksen I think what helge means is: those people think foreigners are taking stuff away and that‘s why they‘re poor. In reality though, it‘s the rich who „take away“ from them by owning or inheriting wealth in huge quantities. The foreigners come there, because in their home country it‘s even worse. But there would be enough food and space for everyone, if distributed more equally.
@@SolistFrankHerrmann The utopian idea of no ownership but plenty for everyone isn't bad. Except it won't work that way in reality. People in power, as power is prone to, will try to do anything to conserve their power. A redistribution of wealth is a great option, but then it must be done fairly. For now, claimed private ownership of societal priorities and using them to create a profit for only a select group has spun so out of control that 10% of most wealthy individuals in many countries possess so much without any care for the society they live in.
I dont think that a non german speaker can understand Pispers just with subtitles. His satire is so smart and sharp that most native speakers dont "understand" him.
Da ich der englischen Sprache nicht allzu mächtig bin, kann ich nur sagen, das war den Leuten hierzulande schon zu hoch zu der Zeit, aber ich bin guter Dinge, dass sich das ändert. Siehe Kapitalismus im Endstadium. Wie bei euch, und auch uns mittlerweile. Endlich mal 'nen Ami, der sich Fragen stellt! Nice.
Stimmt. Weltarmut nimmt immer mehr ab, Welt Hunger nimmt immer mehr ab, Bildung nimmt immer mehr zu, Entwicklungsländer fangen langsam an, zu industrialisieren, alles wunderbar. Jetzt noch der Endspurt, um die letzten Kommunisten loszuwerden, und dann ist der Weg frei für eine glänzende Zukunft. Und alles Dank Kapitalismus.
Der beste Geschichtsunterricht 👏😅 Ist schon bemerkenswert wie der Pispers in den Staaten gerade steil geht👍 wenn man sieht wie viele Reaction-Videos Pispers allein bei den US-Tubern hat😁 Zum einen gut dass die deutschen auch mal von der guten, ehrlichen und witzigen Seite gezeigt werden. Zum andern leider auch wie sehr die Bevölkerung von der Politik belogen und betrogen wird.
Ja Toll aber bei dem Islam hat der gute ins Klo gegriffen , er vergleicht ja auch die hier Arbeitenden Japaner in Duesseldorf mit Muslime Ziegen Hirten und heute merkt man mehr denn je das diese Menschen in diesem Land nicht Sozialisiert werden können von denn Clans gar nicht zu sprechen
"Kapitalismus ist so böse!" Geschrieben mit dem iPhone. Das fand ich auf Twitter immer extrem erheiternd. 😉Sicher ist der Kapitalismus an einigen Stellen verbesserungswürdig, aber unter dem Strich hat er dazu geführt, dass es gemessen an der Gesamtbevölkerung, noch nie so viel Wohlstand auf diesem Planeten herrschte, wie heute. Der voranschreitende Zerfall allen voran in der westlichen Welt, so wie wir es derzeit erleben, basiert eher darauf, dass wir bereits stark in planwirtschaftliche Strukturen übergegangen sind. Statt auf Konkurrenz zu setzen, legt die Politik die Gewinner z.B. in der Medizin, der Mobilität, auf dem Energiesektor vorher fest. Was wir erleben, sind sozialistische Zersetzungerscheinungen, basierend auf neomarxistischen Fantasien der politischen Führer. Energieknappheit, sich leerende Lebensmittelregale, schwindender Wohlstand. Wir ziehen die Zweite und Dritte Welt dabei noch mit uns hinunter. Das haben die 100.000.000 Menschen, die durch unsere Corona-Restriktionen in Hungersnot geraten sind, von denen viele Millionen tatsächlich verhungern, deutlich aufgezeigt. Auch, wenn der Kapitalismus so seine Makel hat, wir haben nichts besseres. Wohin uns der Sozialismus führt, werden wir spätestens im Winter erleben, wenn die Menschen in ihren Wohnungen erfrieren oder nichts mehr zu essen haben.
Hartz 4 is a very emotional topic and takes a lot of time to explain. And even if you can explain it, to get the whole system, is extremely complicated.
Gotta agree to that Does it support lazy people? Yes But does it help people getting on theyr feet? Totally So I can see the reason why it is such sensetive topic
In reality its not that complicated. Hartz4 was the instrument to get the lost min wage sector back in germany. I was against it when presentend, but in the last years, i understand that it was not possible to go with out it. After 16 years of Chancelor Helmut Kohl and the CDU,it was a nesesary Reform. And to be honest it was the first Reform in ages. It did led to a peak in politcal interest, because the lefts (me included) felt betrayed. It was like blasphemy the Social Worker Party with the help of the greens, just cut down the social marketsystem by a lot. Thats when people invented the Slogan, "WER HAT UNS VERRATEN, DIE SOZIALDEMOKRATEN!". After Merkel and the CDU got elected, we were back in our thinking that if we just do it exactly like Kohl (Merkel was Kohls pupil, after the fall of Berlin wall) so nothing changed, no big reforms were done, after 16 years people are fed up with Merkel, but instead of embrace the change, we wenn with the corrupt guy who represented Merkel the most. So this goverment is now forced to make reforms worth of 32 years. But all they have to do, will hurt the middle class the most, so for the people will be the consequence to vote for cdu again and if we are unlucky afd. Back to hartz4, only uses: cheap labor and PR. In every socialsystem there will be people who abuse the System. So the Media, as we just learned owned by rich people, didn't need long to find some of these abusers, in germany called " Sozialschmarotzer". So they did the same they do in america. They have Shows like Dr.Phil with the most stupid cases. And all the germans be like:" Look,Look. They live from my taxes, this filthy lazy bums." But at that time there only was around 300000 people who really abused the System, and when you tell a german:" wait not all the people who get hartz4 are abusing the System. The majority are not in it of their on will." But the social preassure got so overhelmingly bad for the "Hartzer" that many of them accepted jobs way under their abilitys and normal income. Better to work at Mcdonalds for 6€ an hour (yes there Was no min wage at that time) than to get Hartz4. So instead of questioning the rich, why they dont pay more taxes, the people in germany focused on the poor, who live on the german taxes. Many things are better in Germany than in the US, but you should never forget capatalism is, and always will be, capatalism. In germany we just started later than you in the US, thats so only difference. Empathy and solidarity, are bot traits you dont want in capatalism. And we doing a good job in eliminating them.
@@j_si.8187 Yeah that's right... I'm a child of the lower middle class, but when my father got sick and couldn't get any jobs because he was in his 50s too, Hartz 4 just got invented. I didn't live in luxury back then, but it was still tough because I was in my teenage years where everyone else went out for parties, got nice clothing, probably new gaming consoles, mobile phones or PCs to work with the internet. And I was the one who got bullied around in school because my family lost all their savings due to insolvency and Hartz 4. I ran around with stuff my brother once wore and owned. And when those TV shows started, it became worse for me. Those bullies whose families still had good jobs, went from just rude comments, over spitting at and punching me, to cutting off the tires of my parents car. *sigh*
@@TheVirdra i am sorry. I was 22 years old. And the kind of guy who didn't know the way through life. Single Parent household, no father figure. Just lost. So i went 23 months to Bundeswehr, because of asthma i could not serve any longer. And after 1 year of Alg 1 went straight to hartz 4. 2005 i worked a 1Euro Job for 1,5 years. The whole thing was disgusting and for the most people it is till today. But no one would ever Listen to me, when i say first fight the corruption and lobby and then let us try to fix the other issues.
I love that you and others are celebrating Pispers so much, love the content! Gotta say the subtitles from this video are not on par with the older videos about terrorism and the Gulf War, still you did a great job explaining the trickier scenes :) EDIT: I have to correct myself, the subtitles are abysmal :D
It's a very hard topic. At the end stand the question, what can we do to change the system. The senselessly rich people have created a self-sustaining system that only serves them. And they continue to expand it every day for their own power and profit. It seems unassailable. What is the solution? There were also millionaires in the GDR. The difference is, they payed 90% tax on their income. In the early 1990s, profit-sharing was a big topic in Germany. But nothing came of it. The constant distribution from the bottom up, from the common man to the rich, is the problem. The two previous ideas would solve this problem. But Volker Pispers is right. You don't get majorities in politics for that. We elect the politicians who tell us what we want to hear. We've been conditioned to function the way the rich need to function. And that's, what we do. Our mistake. Let's reduce consumption. Let's stop buying things we don't need or can't use because we don't have the time. Yes, that increases the pressure on the system. When things don't work like they used to, only then will something change. Nevertheless, I believe that we live under much better conditions in Germany than you do in the USA. The USA is the Land of the slaves. (This text was created with the support of Google translate. If I wrote something wrong, please send them a postcard.)
Hi, I´m from Germany and I can tell you Volker Pispers is unique. Sadly for all non native german speakers the translation is not always the best especially because you need to know a lot about german politics that´s why the audience are laughing sometimes because the connection he makes with some politicians bad decisions and some other issues. Volker Pispers is a very intelligent person, he knows a lot about society and politics.
The thing to me most depressing about this are the parallels that you can draw across most cultures nowadays, many boxes ticked by Pispers commentary are the same in my country and many others that function in this capitalistic way. The fearmongering towards people that are 'getting by', those falling just in the between and those on the lowest end of the capitalist spectrum. And that spectrum isn't about money, it is about 'capital'. Either physical or fantastical capital, ownership of stuff and idea's determines your worth in a capitalist society. Not what you do with it or what you contribute to a society, just solely claiming 'mine' with either or both force and fear as deterrents.
10:35 lol at that translation.. the joke got totally lost.. it should be more like "back in the day thick and stupid used to be two seperate ppl " (the german names for Laurel and Hardy in german are Dick & Doof= "thick" (as in big, fat) and "stupid")
a couple years ago, i was sitting in the audience in a live show with volker. At some point he smached all people in his unbeleaveible kind and it was silence. And erveryboy was thinking and was shamed. This was one of the sickest moments in my live and i will never forget it.
I work in a company that produces for the company that delivers my brothers company. And they deliver to my other brothers company. And they deliver to us. Its a cricle full of workers do the paperwork for nothing real - except growing.. growing for taxes.. more workers more paper..but in the end nobody needs this
I ( 54 years old) was one of these citizen of the GDR . In my opinion , it was a good and safe life . We had our jobs , nobody was unemployed , our kids were in the Kindergarden. I didn't miss a thing here in my life. I don't need 2 TV, 2 cars and a lot of other stuff, that's not important to me. I had a house, my family , my kids, that's all.At the same time as the wall came down, I was unemployed , had no money. I only had 20 D-Mark per week to live.for my family It was a tough time for us. This doesn't happened in the GDR. Sometimes I wish they would built the wall again , so my Kids and Grandkids will live in peace again. It breaks my heart, when I see so many kids here live in poverty, have not enough to eat.Its not all golden here. Check out the criminal statistics in GDR. There was nothing to fear, nearly no murder in the whole country. And now ? This all came with the reunion of east and west.
Hey James, I have to say I stumbled across your account randomly and absolutely love it! One improvement for political reactions or anything in this regard: maybe your cutter can edit small pictures in when people are mentioned (e.g. Reiner Calmund) so that more people get the joke :) Kuss geht raus! Love your vibes my man!
The fall of the iron curtain was just 30 years ago. It's amazing how fast people forget (or never learned about it). Lol I love how he presents 'simple' solutions.
Volker Pispers stopped doing cabaret 7 years ago... (2015 first as a longer pause, but 2021 the decision to stop) It's interesting what he said when he quit cabaret. He said when he started cabaret he wasn't sure if our politicians didn't realize it or if they were just stupid. But now he knows they're doing it on purpose and with intentions By the way, he found his preference for black humor in England between the late 70s and early 80s :)
14:52 - not only through Berlin, but also through the German country ... well, that was not always and everywhere a literal "wall" like in Berlin, but certainly a well armed and monitored fence with "death strip" especially in rural areas. Some of the forests are still prohibited from strolling.
The best is still John Stewart. Trevor is too tame for my liking. Oliver is something else with his long detailed videos. And Colbert or Maher are for stupid people, I feel like.
I am a refugee child from the GDR and.....my mom and I fled back in 1957, there was still guarded barbed wire fence ....and self-shooting facilities...and mines ....
Here are some positive aspects about Hartz 4: - The government pays for your rent and medical insurance plus you receive about 445€ every month - They try to help you get back on track or seek medical help - It is not time limited - You are allowed to reject bad job offers - If you do not comply at all (e.g. not show up to meetings) they can legally cut back a maximum of 30% - Everyone can get it -> no one needs to be homeless
actually right now you cant be sanctioned for an entire year until June 2023. A really important move considering the current economic situation and the war with Russia. There should be done more to support ordinary citizens, but its a necessary first step.
5:20 James Bray explaining Raccardo´s economic theory right here. 8:38 You´re right. The Problem is, that entire nations were blamed for islamic terrorism by the west, and now people blame the religion or the ethnicity instead of the few hatefull people who are really responsible, because they don´t understand the real political and socioeconomical reasons. Blaming "The Arabs" is just easier than blaming a few leaders, the socioeconomic conditions, imperialism, etc. And then there´s this myth about muslims being somehow culturally not compatibel with europeans. I think, this has something to do with a lot of framing and propaganda. You see, the Nazis for example, they were trying to sell the germans the lie about the "slawic subhumans", and their strategy was, to bomb soviet villages, and then make pictures of them afterwards and say stuff like "see? The slaws can´t even manage to build up and maintain their villages, everything here is in ruins, they are to stupid for agriculture or any higher form of economics, they´re only good as our slaves". And something similar happens today. US, NATO and Russia have bombed Syria and Irak, two formerly prosperous nations, into pieces, and now, people point to those countries and say "See? Those lazy southerners aren´t capable of working hard and building up an economy, their "work culture" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is different, we can´t let them in as refugees, they will destroy our economies as well.
A colleague of my father back in 2003 or so told him that in Iraq people got their last salary as pension with the salary somewhere between 2000 and 5000 Euro. That's how strong they were economically. No wonder they got bombed. That would've been a lifestyle impossible to explain to USA citizens.
Keep in mind the last reaction video Bray did about Pisper. The USA are not and have not structured their foreign politics by how many Arabs they could kill, with racism as the measuring stick. They structured their foreign policies around the idea of greatest benefit for themselves. THe fact that it hit a lot of Arabs was coincidental. Had there been other people living in the middleeast, it would have hit them instead. (see the saddam hussein skit where Hussein didn't change, he just "turned around".) And no, that incompatibility is not a "myth". it is an oversimplification and an overexxageration, but at its core it is a pretty unavoidable result of us having separation of state in the west, and the middleeast having a history and established culture of theocracy, while lacking the realizations and philosophies of the enlightenment (or an equivalent thereof).
@@Alexander_Kale I never claimed, that the US has based their foreign policy on racism, of course they don´t. But racist cliches are often either the justification for their interventions or the reaction to them. The second part of your comment is absolute nonsense. These countries don´t have a "culture of theocracy", what a fucking bullshit. Since you obviously don´t know much about recent middle eastern history, let me explain it to you. Turkey was the first "modern" nation in the middle east, it became a modern nation after the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Said Atatürk declared Secularization and the separation of church and state to be one of the leading principles of his ideology, the turkish constitution under Atatürk (which largely remains until this day) forbids religious partys and declares that religious figures shall not interfere in turkish politics (this is one of the six principles of Atatürk, called Laicism). Islam is still the dominant religion in Turkey and has some political influence especially among conservatives, but Atatürk made a modern state out of turkey, one that basically combines some ideas of european enlightenment (Republicanism, nationalism) with turkish tradition. Next, Egypt. Nasser was a socialist (well, kinda), thus of course he was in favor of the separation of church and state. His ideology was based on anti-imperialism, arab nationalism, traditionalism, socialist planned economy, militarism and secularism. Religion only played a role, when it came to the conflicts with israel, but the fact, that egypt managed to fend of attacks by both britain and france and allied with the soviets afterwards is I think prove enough, that egypt became a modern state in the 50s and 60s as well, and just like turkey adopted some elements of european enlightenment, and combined them with arab nationalism, socialism and some traditionalism. Syria and Iraq were both led by the baath-party during most of the 20th century, also a self-proclaimed socialist party (their motto is Unity, freedom and (arabic) socialism). In fact, they were a kind of anti-movement to the panislamic movement of the early 20th century. Thus, the baath party was, much like Nasser, an anti-imperialist, arab-nationalist, socialist and secularist party. They especially stressed, that everyone is an Arab, who speaks an arabic language and feels like an Arab, including christians, Alawites and others. The similarity with Nasser and the idea of panarabic nationalism was also the reason, why syria and egypt united for a brief period, but that just as a side not. Lebanon is not at all theocratic, they have a huge christian minority, and Kurdistan is pretty leftist anyway, they´re also not overly religious. So yeah, to conclude, those countries had their period of arab enlightenment (which btw wasn´t a copy of european enlightenment, it was never supposed to be, arab leaders included much of their own thoughts and the local characteristic in this independent, arab version of enlightenment, but the basic ideas are often the same) after their independence, and are secular states, most of them were even pretty modern states with a lot of potential (Egypt still is), that is of course, until the US and other imperialists showed up (of course in times of war and chaos, many people turn back to religion, so if Iraq and Syria are nowadays a bit more religious than 30 years ago, this is because of the US, not because of a "history of theocracy or some bullshit). Their culture is thus not at all incompatible with ours, there might be some differences, but by no means are arabs religious fanatics who grew up in theocracies. This might be the case for nations like Saudi-Arabia, Quatar, the Emirates or Oman, but those aren´t the nations, that the US attacked, and those aren´t the nations, where the refugees come from. This incompatibility is a myth, nothing more Edit: Lybia, with Gaddafis green book is btw another good example for a secular arabic nation
@@teutonicterror0365 Oh, how I love it when someone tells me what I "obviously don't know" to my face. Still waiting for the day when that claim is actually true, though... To start with, why you would mention Turkey in this context is beyond me. Yes, Ataturk tried to not only estabish secularism, he tried to outright abolish religious importantce in the populace. But said populace resisted that change. His First successor already had to loosen the restrictions, and of course their current dictator for life has now made a major push for reinstating religion as an important fact of life. You may have heard about the whole Hagia Sophia hubub... Asides from that, Saddam Hussein never invaded Turkey, The USA never invaded Turkey, the Video never mentions Turkey, or, to throw your own words back at you: that isn't the nation "where the refugees come from", so what does this have to do with the tpic at hand? Meanwhile, All Western nations who accepted large numbers of refugees or immigrants from the middle east (and Turkey) HAVE had problems with them, and continue to have problems with them to this day. Germany faces outright ghettoisation in its major cities. There are large regions in Berlin where you need a damn translator nowadays, and the police routinely employs some. You don't see Christians rioting and setting cities on fire when some asshole burns a bible, and yet that is exactly what happened in Sweden when someone burned the Quran. All over the western world you now have a new subset of murders, so called Honour-killings, religiously motivated murders, often committed by a father or son against a daughter or sister respectively. Those simply DID NOT EXIST before. Also meanwhile, the entire middle east has the Sharia as part of their judicial system, with all that implies, and repeated studies, done by all kinds of people, organisations and individuals continue to show that the majority of Muslims WANT Sharia law. It doesn't matter who does the damn study, the result is always the same. devout Muslims do not WANT sekular states, they WANT a theocracy. "Myth" my ass.
@@Alexander_Kale Yes, I know. Erdogan is a fucking conservative, of course he´s basing his power to a large extent on religion, that´s what conservatives do (in the west as well btw, just look at evangelicals and republicans in the US or the PiS in Poland), since the 80s, those have gained ground, and turkey is kind of a mixed bag. Conservatives and Secularists often fight over power and both sides are kinda extreme, for example, the secularists invested a lot of energy in upholding a complete ban of head scarfs on turkish universtities. There are a lot of pretty fundamentalist muslims in turkey, there are a lot of secularists, there are a lot of moderate muslims. But again, this isn´t that different from many western nations, turkey is not even close to being a theocracy, not closer than poland or spain for example. I mentioned turkey, because it was my understanding, that we´re talking about the middle east as a whole, and since turks are by far the biggest group of migrants from the middle east, I thought it would be kinda important to talk about them. Western nations who accept refugees don´t have a problem with refugees, they have problems with racism (both structural and individual), poverty, drugs, failing education systems, bad immigration and integration policies (like for example the fact, that refugees usually have to wait 15 months before they can apply for a full work permit and get less than HartzIV before that), bad housing policies and shit like that. Refugees aren´t the problem, they´re just another indicator for already existing problems. For exmple, refugees aren´t more likely to become criminal, because they´re refugees, they´re more likely to become criminal, because they´re poor, often psychologically traumatised, live in poor, criminal districts with lot´s of fast drug money to be made, and because an overproportionally high percentage of them are young men. Ghettoisation isn´t the fault of refugees either, it´s the fault of cities and governments, who place them in social housing where it´s cheapest (aka the districts where poverty and crime are already high), and again, many refugees face poverty and end up staying in these districts, because they can´t afford to move. An example: I live in a huge (and I mean huge) Plattenbau-district in east germany. After 1990, like in many other parts of east germany, a lot of people moved away, and only the poor stayed. Crime was rampant, almost 50% of the houses were empty because everyone had left, it was shitty (back then I luckily lived somewhere else). In the 2000s, the average rent was (and still is) way, way cheaper than everywhere else in the city. People slowly began moving in again, and the population began growing, but most of the people who came, where relatively poor compared to the rest (average wage here is still 250€ lower than in the rest of the city), and so many refugees and migrants were among them. Luckily my city did a relatively good job at preventing the spread of crime and they also did a good job at reforming the district into a pretty and still fucking cheap place in the last 10 years, but right now, basically two big groups live here: The old people, who stayed after 1990, and younger migrants, who moved in here in the 2000s and 2010s, because it was the only district they could afford /where the city placed them. In 20 years, the old people will have died, and the people with migration background will be left. It could very well become a Ghetto. If the city would´ve done a better job at placing it´s refugees, if housing woul´ve been affordable in other areas too, if refugees would be allowed to search for work immideatly instead of having to wait between 3 and 15 months or at least if they´d get better social security for the time being, if our schools wouldn´t suffer under extreme teacher shortage, ghettoisation would´ve never happened, or at least not in such extreme dimensions. Blaming ghettoisation on immigration itself is a bit like sending construction workers to work without helmets and then blaming them for the sharp spike in head traumas. They didn´t just riot, because that asshole burned the Quran, they rioted, because it was a fucking fascist, who wanted to make a "tour" through sweden, burning a quran in every city he´d visit, and all of that during the holy month of ramadan. Sometimes this fucker would rap the Quran in fucking Bacon (you know, pork), and he openly said, that the world would be better and that he would´ve reached his goal, if all muslims were dead. I do not support it, but it´s absolutely understandable, that 200 people (yes, just 200, so taking this incident as an example for incompatible refugees is stupid anyways, when only 200 out of the 900.000 muslims in sweden actually did something) went a bit crazy. Even I as an atheist would hate the police and the state for protecting such an asshole and allowing him to speak. Honour killings are by no means something religious you moron, there is not a single time, honour killings are mentioned in the sharia, under sharia law, honour killings fall under normal murder and are banned. Of course under normal secular law, they´re banned in all countries as well. Honour killings are not religious killings, they have their origin in archaic, rural tribe culture and thus were common in very excluded, "non-civilized areas". In the 19th century for example, such honour killings were a pretty normal occurence in (orthodox) balkan countries as well. In the middle east, they´re more common in rural areas as well, around the Vansee, in Afghanistan or north africa, everywhere, where people still live in relatively secluded tribes and do not often come into contact with civilisation. And no, they´re not "all over the western world", according to "Ehrenmord.de", there were only 9 such murders in germany in 2022, in two cases, the murderer wasn´t even from a middle eastern country (serbia and india). And those did exist "before" (whenever "before" is), accoring to the same site, there were roughly 40 such murders between 1980 and 2000. So yeah, this phenomenon is by no means new. Germans btw do kill because of similar concepts (mysoginistic thinking, jealousy and a feeling of lost "honour") as well, in 2018 (according to Tagesspiegel) 122 women were murdered by their partners or ex-partners in germany, wether you call that honour killing or not, the psychological reasons are the same and not something specific to muslims. Women getting murdered by their brothers or fathers isn´t something new either. Sheesh, wow. Western laws are all based on judeo-christian culture, how can you blame a muslim country for having parts of or even the entire sharia as foundation for their laws, while our chancellor still has to say the words "so wahr mir Gott helfe" (so help me god) at his/her inauguration? For example, it is usually forbidden to open your shop at sundays in germany, because that was "the day, when god restet". Most people are in favor of this, would you frame this as "most people are in favour of bible laws"? The 10 commandments are to a large extent the foundation for many western laws, the national holidays in most european countries are christian holidays, etc. I think it is fair to say, that under such circumstances, most europeans are in favour of laws based on judeo-christianism. How can we thus blame muslims for being in favor of sharia-based laws? Which btw doesn´t fucking mean, that they´re in favour of theocracies. If this would be the case, said theocracies would exist en masse, but they only do in iran and sadly in Afghanistan again. And before you say shit like "ok, but sharia and western laws still contradict each other and thus migrants are still a problem", no. Bullshit. There are multiple interpretations by multiple islamic and non-religious scholars of the sharia, and many of them come to the conclusion, that sharia doesn´t have to contradict western laws. It all depends on the interpretation. You can of course interpret the sharia in a way, that makes it incompatible with western laws, you can do the same with the bible, with the communist manifesto, with the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster or the fucking party programm of the APPD. But usually, this isn´t the case. Also, I think you´re underestimating the similarities between islam and christianity, bro, both are essentially based on the same stories, just sometimes interpreted a bit differently. So yeah, I think, you´re falling a bit to BILD-Propaganda-language and see dangers, where there are none, and I think you´re heavily overexaggerating in some cases
Hello my dear. Nice you mentioned Pispers, he is indeed one of the best satiric guys in Germany. We all love him. Greetings from Germany and keep it real. Shalom
All i want to comment is said in the comments below ... At this show we all can see how honest this man is . He shit in front of the doors of the states but much more in the front of the doores of ourselfs . He is a real good teacher of the truth and i might to see the understanding in your face ... All the best for you and go on
Germany exports significantly more than they import (in value). The point is, not all can do that, because for every value exported more than imported by one country, there are others that need to import more than they export. As such a particularly extreme economy cannot be "the example for the whole world".
In 'value' here being a key signifier of why this is such a weird way to put things. I yet have to find a good comprehensive list of volume of goods exported by a scientific denominator, most of them are in value. And as we know, value/money is a fantasy, could be worthless come tomorrow morning. Economy many times feels as a sort of wizard of oz curtain and scary head, big spooky and scary while in reality it are just some people franticly trying to keep you from looking in the control room whilst they panic to every change that might make you do so.
@@bramboeshoe905 Money isn't a fantasy. It represents a value at that given moment. It may fluctuate, but at the same moment you can at least try to compare value by how much it costs. And fluctuation is significantly due to 2 factors, the change in value in certain goods due to supply, demand, and market fuckery and the "printing" of more of the same currency causing the overall economy it represents in value to no longer exactly match the amount of currency available. That being said, I do wonder how or if certain things get measured in. If I buy a Windows license in Europe, I don't import it, but much of the money will still go to developers, managers & owners of Microsoft, mostly in the US. Even physical goods are perhaps imported from one country, but include parts and more critically design, PR, development, etc. from other countries again. Not to even start with the financial market, Visa/Mastercard/Paypal profits, etc. Or just anything coming from companies owning companies, or joint ventures, especially if the countries between them vary. How do you measure a licensing agreement as an import? What happens, if a part of the company gets spun of, and that new legal entity is formally in a different country now. Are its assets exported without moving in that moment, or were they already when the original company first invested in another country? Or crime, piracy, hacking & smuggeling of course. Or nationalisation of foreign owned industry or theft of their intellectual property. What about foreign aid, or UN funds, or IWF funds, or EU funds? Is Germany offsetting its exports by paying more than they get in money from the EU? Are they doing so in order to continue exporting more into the rest of the EU? Is that effectively just an ellaborate tax funded support for export oriented businesses? What about people emigrating? Do you value their know how or remaining work force, or just what physical goods they take with them? What about people working abroad but sending money/items back to their family at home? What about people temporarily traveling to a different country with their company? What about tourism? When another (US IT) company gets fined billions by the EU for privacy or antitrust, is that effectively a reverse import? What about movies, games, dlc, microtransactions, app store fees, subscriptions? What about data center computing power? Is that import and export, if only data moves across the border? What about the value of data for advertising or research? If a company gets the DNA of a new disease from a different country, and later due to that is able to manufacture a vaccine for great profit, what part of this is import & export?
@@autarchprinceps Ok, fantasy might be to great. Imaginative may be a better word. But worth/value is a collective but ultimately still subjective concept, I get why we have to use it in a pragmatic sense. But it is still bound to the opinion of the people. If you value something in practicality, you can use money as a representation of your imagined value. As in paying said money, which represents your value/worth in a subjective way also, makes you agree to said opinion. Of course, things are never completely as simple as this. That is why a societal system that determines values arbitrarily based upon value will have issue's distributing said value when ownership of things is the defining key to determining the value of something. Ownership is quite a weird concept, in practicality and in theory. It is mostly based on the idea of "first" and the ability to physically or reasonably legitimize that claim. And then it can, within capitalism, be exploited to make those who do not own things end up working the things instead. So the concept of value/worth should be ingrained into power that is linked to the benefits of society, privatization of societal values while centralizing authority will inevitably lead to disparity. As we see in the disparity displayed in the numbers of who owns what. Get a generalized number and everyone should have a nice and filled up bank account, but in reality 10% of the people end up holding more than 50% of all the value.
After watching this years Mark Twain Prize, I have to say that as much as germany could use Volker Pispers in this time, the US could definetly use Jon Stewart right now. They are both greatly missed.
Nice. Yeah Jon Stewart would be a good example of an American Kabarettist, even though Daily show was a Comedy Show. However the bitter sarcasm is far more comprehensible to George Carlin - the one Murica really could need rn.
It is a radical oversimplifation tainted by Pisper's personal Bias. Saying that he is not a fan of capitalism would be somewhat of an understatement...
Hartz IV basically smashed two previous systems of support of welfare together, but with lots of "demands" and very strict control, so its imo a bad thing. if you have to work but cant get a decent paying job your caught between a rock and a hard place as the saying goes. and its a burocratic nightmare of forms you have to fill out.
It is probably even worse for those who actually have a job but that job does not pay a "living wage" so they have to rely on the system regardless to top up their salary so they can for example afford rent. It becomes literally like working 2 jobs at once since the Hartz system demands so much bureaucracy and is so... "übergriffig" like checking your bank balance so you don't have too much income. It is already bad and actually quite a lot of work if you are unemployed (was on Hartz for 3,5 years on one point in my life but am back to working a regular job now) especially when they want to push you into programms. But actually working (a probably not so nice) Job and then still having to justify your income and stuff even when you are working so you can pay rent must be a effing nightmare. Also the aforementioned practice is actually something some companies exploit (or at least have exploited when I was in the System but that was before minimum wage though i can imagine this still going on) as in paying very low wages and then expecting the Jobcenter to top it up for what the employees actually need to get by. Basically subsidizing themselves with tax payer money by exploiting their low cost employees. Not sure if this still largely a thing tho but it was rampant when I was on Hartz and a reason why I didn't take any more Job offers from them after landing such a Job (working nightshift re packing car parts in a warehouse) for a short time (I quit after a month and got chewed out like crazy by the Jobcenter for that).
No its not very strict, just say you want to go to collage but your collage is full and you need to wait 3-4 years till you get a spot. Then you tell them you do some small 400€ Jobs in the time between. I grew up with some drug dealers and all of them had or still getting Hartz 4, in 10 years they just had to visit them 15-20 times and feed them lies. Also the Paperwork is done in 5 minutes.
@@EvilGNU Jobcenter dont exploid you now its the tempory job agency (Zeitarbeit) that exploids you. Best thing you can do on Hartz4 is to do retraining (Umschulung) at a trainings plant (Umschulungswerk) since this training plants know alot employers and do most of the work for you. After 18-36 month your retraining is done and you have already a job lined up. But you need to know that in the first place, since in the past many people abused this system and the people from the jobcenter cherry pick the people for that if you dont put pressure on them to get into a retraining. Ask them to put you into a 2 weeks trial course and be extra nice to the trainers for this 2 weeks and then you qualify for the retraining.
„Praktica“ was a brand name for photo cameras made in the GDR. It was translated here as „internships“. 😅 An intership is a „Praktikum“ in German and the plural of that word is „Praktika“, so almost identical with the camera brand. But Volker was really talking about the camera.
One man escaped the DDR with a self build submarine... With later was pattended... He just invented this thing witch is used from the military, scientists or normal divers 👌 There are many ways... In Germany you say "Not macht erfinderisch" it means 'Necessity is the mother of invention' (sad but true :/ )
@@MetalheadAndNerd "correct" is a bit strong, let's rather call it "appropiate". ("correct" seems to suggest that it is the only way to do it rather than a choice the translator has to make depending on the circumstances)
Hartz 4 is the biggest crap you could do. There used to be extended unemployment money if you were unemployed for a long time because you couldn't find a new job, but you can and are willing to work. There was also social assistance for people who couldn't work, e.g. for health reasons or simply didn't want to. At that time, with Hartz 4, you simply merged both and if you end up in Hartz 4, you are also treated as equals / seen as the people who have no desire to go to work at all. But the reason here was just to save jobs again in order to save money for administration by simply eliminating an entire department. The bad thing about Hartz 4 is that if you are willing to work but have bad luck finding a job, you can still get the same threats and punishments as people who just don't feel like working or have never worked in their lives
Yes also you do not really get support in finding a new job. There is a shit ton of bureaucracy you have to go through and the "assistance" you get is token assistance at best. But you are bullied to take part in programs that are an utter waste of time but take you off the unemployment statistics for their duration. They also don't make any qualified Job offers and offer (from my experience) unskilled temp jobs at best. Especially if you are struggling with mental health issues, like I did after losing my familiy in an accident (lost my normal job over this and it took a long time for me to recover physically and mentally) this is detrimental and just furthers crisis. After 3,5 Years on Hartz IV/ALGII I finally managed to get retrained into a new Job and got back to working, first part (75%) and now fulltime. I managed this IN SPITE OF and not thanks to the System which was 100% a hindrance in getting back on track. While at first I was mostly down from the trauma i lived through, in the later years the burden shifted and became more and more about the struggle against the system which was holding me back/swamping me with bureaucracy and unwanted programs (trust me I know how to Operate a Windows based OS at the beginner level and I have typed text in Word before) while always keeping up the threat of sanction. My conclusion is that they always seem to pressure you: Get a Job, Get a Job but given that they are mostly working with vulnerable people I now see this as a diliberate lie only to exert control through pressure. Everything I've done to get back on my feet I managed myself and literally the only thing that helped me was the Money as in not having to starve/go homeless. But that is guaranteed by law anyways and has been before the Hartz IV reforms were implemented, only in a different way ( as in there has always been unemployment security/benefits). But honestly I can understand (and witnessed during my time in the system) some people being fed up with this and actually going to live on the streets because they can't take the pressure anymore. The System is inhumane, those who want to cheat will cheat anyways, everyone else is just collectively punished for them, the Jobcenters themselves usually neither have the training nor budget to really help people out anyways so there is no support happening (with the exception of maybe being lucky to meet that one super motivated person there, but I never had this luck). Had the system been supportive instead of being punitive in nature, I probably would have gotten back on track way earlier, at least a year if not more.
@@EvilGNU I remember getting a letter for an appointment that I HAD to make, driving 1 hour to the jobcenter only for the desk clerk to take a look at my ID Card they had already copied, said they just wanted to check, and telling me to leave. I felt like they were just testing if I would show up. This was after people told me how much better the jobcenter had become and how dehumanizing it was before.
The wall was built because the higher education system at the time was paid for privately in West Germany and paid by taxes in East Germany. The jobs however generated a lot better income in West Germany. So people studied in East Germany as a burden to taxpayers without giving back after finishing their education, because they often elected to then work and pay taxes in West Germany (and of course, their ideas and hard work didn't do anything for East Germany). So the wall was more or less inevitable.
@james bray : you basically showed all the emotions of a proper Volker Pispers show in your videos. 1. Stage: Funny, haha, Pispers is so funny 2. Stage: shock, laughter starts to die.. OMG, this is not comedy, this is political comedy. And political comedy only works if there is truth behind it 3. Stage: the inside hits you... I am so fucked. This is where people stop laughing, because they realize how they are manipulated. Noone is laughing any more. 4. Stage: Desperation... you go home and start to violently puke
"EAST Germany built the wall?" Having seen your other videos, I consider you as a smart, thoughtful man, who is genuinely interested in Germany. It's just that comments like yours about the wall just now reinforce the common stereotype of the "ignorant American".
@@Bansen808 Yes, but a good education system should at least teach some basics. Like not confusing Washington with Lincoln from German perspective, but also not confusing West Germany with East Germany from an American perspective. Considering the USA's status as an immigration country, it's abysmal how underdeveloped their geography and history lessons are.
I genuinely didn’t know LMAO! I don’t feel bad about not knowing either because guess what? I learned something new! I’ve already acknowledged that the education system in America is HORSE SH#T and to be honest, if you’d ask most Americans here that very same question about “who built the wall in East Germany”, well lets just say you’d be grossly disappointed with their answers too🤣 The only real way to correct ignorance is to educate yourself whenever possible.
@Dan Al did you know WHY the wall was build in the first place? i dont think so. You were told it was all because evil east wants to get rid of evil west but thats not half the truth. so dont judge other people when they dont know a thing, more important is, that you are willing to learn something new.
@@dansattah I don't know the american education system (but I heard nothing good about it to be honest), but you can't expect that americans know about this. Many germans don't know anything about the DDR/GDR or the wall. In the USA the wall is there to prevent people from getting in I guess, it would only be a logical assumption that it would be similar in other countries. How much school knowledge did you learn and forget again because you were not interested in it at the time or because you never needed it in your everyday life?
Die Anstalt, which is a satire format broadcasted nearly monthly (with exceptions during summer and christmas), describes more complex topics in small comedic segments with varying comedy guests and is something people liking Pipers might be interested in, too. I really like how they explained the retirement system in Germany. But most other topics are brilliant as well :)
The fine detail with exports is that "every country only needs to export more than they import". It's in the details, good sir! And tgere, too, the problem starts...
Volker Pispers always was my favorite "political Comedian" beside Hagen Rether and Urban Priol. Not sure If there are vids with english subs of Rether and Priol here on YT but they both are definitely worth a reaction.
Quick explanation to your theory at 5:00 : If all of the 3 people focus on exporting stuff they lack the things they export themselves. E.g. the person who is good at cooking knows that he can earn a lot of money with his very good food, but since he takes the best ingredients to cook the meals he exports to be able to maximize his profit per portion the things he got left to eat for himself are some mouldy beans or stuff. And since he works to get more and more money he doesn't even have time to prepare something to eat for himself so in the end he will get at least frustrated or even sick because of the whole export thing.
Believe me when I tell you that Volker Pispers imp is the best german sarcastic Comedian we've ever had and he has not perfomed live since 2010ish. He speaks in a very clear but rude language, which is good because thus his message most of the time is easy to read. Some people are offended by that and dislike him for being like that. However more important, he is always speaking just facts. His knowledge about politics, economics and globalization has an incredible range and depth. He manages to clearify some complex patterns of modern society and what they actually aim for. I love him for explaining those things on an eye level ! As mentioned by others, unfortunately the translation of the video was particularly pretty poor, making it nearly impossible to receive the hidden critics he was actually pointing at. Anyway, that's not your fault! Do love your videos and reactions 💙, especially the german realted stuff 😉! Have to keep it up ✌
As far as I understood the thematic of Hartz IV is that it is needed to keep the wealth of some % of people low so that the minimum income tax level stays low, which means more % of the people fall into the threshold of currently around 9000€ a year. (As soon as you earn more you need to pay taxes). So the System is supposed to increase overall tax income, by taxing more people and paying a little fee to the Hartz IV recievers to keep the minimum low.
Think this way: One Dude printed a coin a long time ago. It was the first coin ever. Then he lend it to his neighbour, said "You don't have to trade anymore, you can pay with it! Don't go and lift your wood all these miles to get a bread, just pay with the coin! It is small and not heavy. But next year, i want two coins back!" -But, There was never a second coin! Only a debt ^^ And that worked!!! So he printed other coins, lend them, and then he ruled the society....
It's a nice analogy. But money works even simpler than that. The reason money works is because at some point some government issued those coins and told everyone they had to pay taxes, and they had to pay taxes using those coins, and those coins only. So suddenly everyone needed those coins to pay taxes. There wasn't any debt needed for this to work. And for a very long time it was even forbidden to lend someone more than you owned by threat of the death penalty. Creating money from thin air is a pretty recent invention, barely a few hundred years old ...
@@Orschd true. To be fair, that's probably a good thing. States being incompetent with their money can lead into massive issues. Individuals being incompetent with it can be even worse. See subprime crisis, various pyramid schemes people fall for, etc.
HartzIV is unfair as hell. If a guy never works he gets HartzIV. If I get unemployed, and I worked for 24 years now and paid all these 24 years for the public unemployment insurance, i get 1 year unenployment benefit and then I get HartzIV. It does not matter, how long you worked and paid for the insurance - after only one year unemployment you get the same money as the guy who never worked. And if I bought a house in my working years I must sell it and live from this money before getting HartzIV. If I have a private pension insurance - because the public pension insurance ist very low - I must take the money out of it to live, because I am not getting HartzIV if I have any assets over 5000€. And yes, a car over this value counts as well.
Did someone translate the Latin that briefly appeared on screen while James went out? lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, corsetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna Is what I read and put into Google translate, but it only translated the beginning and end ssomehow, and was about suffering.
Hartz 4 was a reform of unemployment benefits. In Germany, Europe's largest low-wage sector was created in the early 2000s. Unemployment rose sharply at that time. But since the Germans didn't want to work for 5-7 EUR an hour (there was no minimum wage back then), they were forced to do so with Hartz 4. If you don't find a job for a year, your unemployment benefit will be reduced to Hartz 4, at that time it was around EUR 350 a month, with which you then have to pay for electricity, internet, food and the like. Only rent was paid. And if you still refuse to take jobs for 5 euros or sometimes only 1 EUR an hour, then you can still cut that until you eventually have nothing left to live on. And so people in Germany were then forced into these extremely badly paid jobs. The result: We still have 3 million people in the country who are currently unemployed. But we have 10 million Hartz 4 recipients because 7 million people in this country earn so little from their work that they have to supplement their wages with Hartz 4 in order to be able to survive at all. That means 7 million people in Germany cannot live from their work By the way, today Hartz 4 is called "citizen's allowance". Since you now get almost 550 EUR, but otherwise it's the same crap Hartz 4 didn't make people lazy. The lowest-wage sector does it because people rightly wonder why they go to work if you end up having to apply for welfare anyway. So Hartz4 is nothing more than a disgusting, neoliberal forced labor measure
Oh and I forgot... if you are interested in you should look up what is happening to the gold reserves of the GDR or "DDR" (that belonged to the people of the GDR) after the Iron Curtain goes down.
the money you get from Hartz4 is extremely low. you are basically forced to either go and work full-time or worry about not having enough food at the end of the month.
Harz 4 is the lowest level of social assistance. There used to be unemployment benefits, unemployment assistance and social assistance in the third year. Today there is one year unemployment benefit and then this is replaced by Harz4 of the city or community.
The point about exporting isnt about separate goods, that would fall under comparative advantage and is a legitimate (if very simplistic and old school) way of looking at trade relations. Its more about an overall export surplus, which of course, is impossible to have in all countries. Hence it being a punchline of sorts.
Volker Pispers talks about an "orvellian" politic! (Look at George Orvell: 1984 or at Aldus Huxley: A Brave New World...) Volker Pispers is right in every word he says, thts sad but true.
"Diesen rollender Schwätzer wollt ich immer schon mal Ernst nehmen." He is referring to Wolfgang Schäuble, Schäuble was a5tacked 1990 and from then sat in a wheel chair. He is also the member of the German Bundestag for over 49 years by now, making him the l9ngest member as of you. So the term "rollender Schwätzer" could be translated to "rolling babnler", referring to the wheel chair and the not so high opinion of Volker Pispers about him.
Me as a German hopes your German friends explaining a lot more off camera because Volker Pispers is full of complex and intelligent sarkasm! And I found several translation mistakes in the subtitles. Sarkasm is extremely hard to translate in every language. 😊
Das hab ich auch gedacht, er zieht sich ja nicht Mario Barth rein, sondern gleich einen Top Level Sarkasteur (wenn es das Wort gibt) ;)
@@watchyahead2 ... und diese automatische Übersetzung ist tatsächlich ziemlich nutzlos...
@@watchyahead2 got ya!
@@emmaorlich7427 are you stalking me? 😝
@@watchyahead2 Wie dat dann?!
Volker Pispers is definitely a legend
In German and Austrian satire, you stick the finger in the wound and hold up the mirror to the people.
A good way to get problems in people's minds. It had to be uncomfortable. Cool channel btw
Leider nützt es nichts.
Well, unfortunately it doesnt work. The problem is the same as everywhere.... education. Theoretically we are well educated in Germany, but just theoretically. Majority of the people prefer to know who will be the next choice of the bachelor or something like that. But nobody cares about economics, politics and other important topic. But as soon as a problem apears, everybody is an expert without any background knowledge. The best base for nationalism, racism, or other stupit shit like that.....
@@vanpayne6299 I think an even bigger problem is, that there are more people that are interested in the things you mentioned , than we might think, but they actually don't try to make it better. From what I see, there are people knowing but not doing and that is a fundamental problem we are facing in many sectors. Like for example, I'll use myself for that point, I know perfectly well that I buy and use products and also do things that damage the environment in other parts of the world dramatically , therefore I know perfectly well, how I should act -> I should reduce the use of that products, but even today I don't do that, because it is hard work which might be not worth doing, when nobody else will do the same. "I can't change anything on my own anyway" - I know that this perspective is wrong, but deep within it kills the necessary motivation which enables change. Then there is this imaginary person who knows perfectly well in which direction politics should change, but also thinks it won't work, because every other party works against this ideas. This person won't rise to the top until there would be enough of other people supporting that. So this person just won't try, because the requirements are not met and the requirements for that to happen are not met, because there are no other people trying to do the same. And not just that, these parties which are working against this person's ideas, convinced most people that the current way is also the only one, so that there gladly ( in their eyes ) are not enough people trying exactly that. A perfect vicious circle in my opinion. I might be wrong, I am open to discuss that, this is the interpretation from what I see.
@@otisgorischek1915 like your point of view and your reflection bro. And you are right, a single individual of us can't change anything. Unfortunately I don't see any chance to change the mindset of the majority, so we have to deal with it. I would be arrogant to complain, I am part of the system and that with success. The question is, for how long? But fact is, exactly the people who doesn't care about the reality, they will suffer the first. And I am lucky, I will not be part of them. But the point is, people wake up. Live and enjoy your lives, but do it in a sustainable way. Think clearly about what you need and what not. Think about other people and not only about yourself. Only when all can live, we have the chance to live in peace.
@@vanpayne6299 einfach akzeptieren das wir alle verschieden sind dennoch gleich gut. Arschlöcher gibt es überall. Der Franzose wird kein Deutsche, und der Deutsche kein Belgier.... und das ist auch ok so. Leider gibt es nur noch schwarz oder weiß. Jeder meint seine Meinung ist die beste. Frei nach dem Motto" willst du nicht meiner Meinung sein, so schlag ich dir die Fresse ein".
You were asking about Hartz IV:
Hartz IV has made the former social security system worse. It lowered the amount of money that unemployed people receive and forced them into badly paid and unworthy jobs.
This in turn put pressure onto the employed workers, because they became more willing to put up with shit in order to keep their jobs due to being afraid of falling into the Hartz IV system.
Hartz IV was good for one thing only: Setting workers up against each other.
It actually depends. For people that had at one time worked for their living Harzt4 was worse. For people that never worked, for any reason it was an improvement on several levels.
But yeah, the main goal was trying to bully people into low paying jobs.
@@hannajung7512 Just out of curiosity: What exactly improved for people who have never worked compared to the old system?
@@hannajung7512 Yes, I'd like to know as well: what changed to the better for those that had no work before?
@@johannageisel5390nothing, except youd call being trapped in eternal family tree poverty an improvement
Es ist sehr beeindruckend zu sehen, wie junge Amerikaner deutsche Geschichte mittels politischer Satire kennenlernen.
Grüße aus Berlin
It is very impressive to see how young Americans learn about German history through political satire.
Greetings from Berlin
Postscript: You and I live in a country where satire is allowed to be spoken. But there are many more countries where we would risk our lives for it. Satire is a privilege.
Do they? Most of the comments are from germans that got fed by the algorithm because they watched Pispers before.
what should not be a privilige is the stupidity at display in our countries. Volker stopped doing satire because he said he ran out of gags. he tried for over 20 year+ to convince people and show them the idiocracy of their ways, nothing changed.
@@michaelluck5577did he really say that ever? His statement on his website only says that he is distancing himself from any conspiracy theorists and just enjoys not being in the public eye anymore.
I have only seen boomers under his old uploads claim that he "gave up" because "no one was listening for 20 years". I think that's bullshit.
Ich befürchte, er hat wenig über Deutschland verstanden
You got that part about exports wrong. Pispers implied that Merkel thinks if every country just needs to export more than it imports, and everything would be fine. But this of courrse cannot work, because on a global level imports and exports can only be the same.
It's actually telling that the absurdity is not obvious to everyone. The only way every country could export more than import is to just dump its products in the ocean...
Exactly. The sums of exports equals the sums of imports.
To explain it even more simply... If a country exports more than it imports, then at least one other country needs to import more than it exports, to make those numbers equal.
So everybody exporting more than importing can't work.
Wouldnt it work if everyone exports their overshoot produce (since regional differences make difference in produce) while importing everything basic itself ? It wouldnt work in todays market but conceptually ?
Basically: 20 People, every person sells 10 cakes, every person only buys 5 cakes. Not outside buyers exist. Doesn't work!
@@Raaschid for specific products, yes. But this is about the balance of overall exports and imports financially. The idea of free trade as some severe issues but the general idea is not wrong. Let's say Spain is better in producing wine and England is better in producing clothing, due to their climate condition and so on. It is most advantageous for both if they have an overproduction of the stuff they can do better for trading. BUT if there is an imbalance between both partners it results in the drain of the weaker one. That's how the Brittish aggression towards China started. China was the big "Export Champion" of its time because silk and porcelain was highly demanded in Europe. But the only thing China wanted was our Silver. When Brittish treasury was dangerously emptied and China didn't agree to a more balanced partnership Brittain started to flood China with Opium to get back the silver from the addicted people. This resulted in the opioid wars that China lost. That's how they became British colony...
So, massive over exports have quite some destructive potential. That's why there are rules against it within the EU. Rules that are constantly violated by Germany without any real retaliation. That strategy is not fair and logically not applicable for every country simultaneously.
The guy who breached the Berlin Wall with his car (it was actually an armoured vehicle he stole before) and got shot while climbing over the wall was my biology teacher back in high school! He sometimes told us about his escape from the GDR and he also showed us some of the scars where he got hit by the AK bullets.
Insane that you know of this story! :D
He was your teacher?!? Thats insane dude!
Wenn er dann an der Mauer bei seinem Fluchtversuch erschossen wurde, wie konnte er dann wieder auferstehen und als Biologielehrer weiterleben und euch seine Schusswunden zeigen???
Ich dachte die Auferstehung ist nur ein religiöses Märchen der Kirche. Bin da jetzt aber reichlich verwirrt. 😕 😕
you mean: who broke the wall?
weil ich immer keine nachrichten schaue. noch nie davon gehört. sagen sie mir einen namen oder wie es in den news getitelt wurde? so i can do my own research. omg i am so happy he survived this. and what a hero, take such a risk for a bit more freedom. thx for sharing your story.
@@mallinaliinaja... und dann 30-40 Jahre nachher... war das immer so geplant, oder ist etwas schief gelaufen? Angelogen in jeder Fall...
The translation is absolutely rubbish. I hereby happily volunteer to properly translate the other great Pispers stuff on CZcams!
How do you do it…is there a button? I only once was invited to do that and it was so much more work with the timing than I had anticipated! But when you look at this bs then it is worth it to do a better job
That would be great 👍 Some of those subtitles are really painful to watch, and I fear that James won't get the point of the topic because of that
Agreed...
It's literally translating names for example...
It's sometimes very cringy....
There was a possibility for community translations once, but CZcams closed it some time ago, I don’t know why.
Oh god, yes. Not even 2 minutes in, these subs are ABYSMAL!! Did you get around to translating better subtitles? Could you perhaps also do this for Johann Koenig's "Die Jesus-Tagebuecher"? One of my favorite bits of all time and I wanted to show it around to some of the folks on CZcams who seemed interested in German comedy. 😅
I loved to see your reaction! As a American, it is a very brave task to react to Pispers...and for the most Germans it is too...it takes a lot of sense for sarkasm! Good job!💪🏼👍🏼👍🏼
bei allem Respekt, der Volker Pispers steht dazu was er zu Sagen hat, es ist kein Sarkasmus. Am Ende ist das Wort Sarkasmus nix anderes als Märchen oder Fantasie um den Menschen die für sich nicht selber Denken können dieses abzunehmen. ;-)
Not sure about that. If you listen to enough George Carlin you will notice a lot of what Volker said isn't alien to American comedy either.
The Iron Curtain didn't split just Germany into two. It stretched from the Baltic Sea right through Europe down to the Black Sea and basicly cut of the whole eastern block (meaning all states, that were under Soviet control). The Berlin Wall ended up being the symbol for the cold war and the seperation between east and west, that's why it poppes up in peoples mind, when asked about the iron curtain.
Also, West Berlin was an Island of the west inside the east block which made the wall very obvious inside the city
right, Stalin conquered Europe to the Berlin wall.
@KS Germania Stalin was already dead, when the wall was constructed :P
@@XxDarkManaxX right,but who conquered europe? 😀
@KS Germania Well I would say Napoleon. 😉
OFFICIALLY Stalin din't conquer anything and gave Nazi-Germany just a big kick in the butt. After that, coincidentally all "liberated" eastern countries just decided communism is the best thing ever. 🤔
Hartz 4 biggest problem is the stigmatization that comes with it. People are ashamed if they need it. Because it usually isn't enough to come over the month. They have to get their groceries at the Tafel (an honorary organization, distributing food donations from supermarkets)
And because they have no money for nothing, the are mostly excluded from social life. No cinema, no restaurant, even a visit to the swim hall is too expensive.
By the way, the stigma comes from the mentioned media, where it is shown how lazy and bad those Hartz 4 people are. Wich is usually totally scripted, but people believed it.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole can of worms still untouched.
One of the things I know is that if you get Hartz4 and you want to start in a real job you can only earn 400€. If you earn more you don't get Hartz4. Meaning going step by step into real work isn't possible and it's more effective to do nothing.
The big Irony is that Hartz 4, as bad as it may be, is something Americans can only dream of.
@@catriona_drummond Looking at it like that... it just makes my brain go into meltdown.
@@alexander3097 That is not quite correct. You can be an "Aufstocker". Actually, a lot of people are. As long as you earn less than what the Hartz 4 calculation would be, you will get paid the difference (as long as you apply). Plus some more, as the first 100€ you earn are disregarded completely in the calculation and from each additional Euro you earn, 20% are disregarded in the calculation. Until what you earn surpasses what your Hartz IV would be, then you are no longer eligible. Roundabout it comes out that if you get Hartz IV and work at the same time, you'll have between 150 - 200 Euro more per month than if you only got Hartz IV without working as well.
But that going step by step into real work is not possible (or at least very unlikely) is still correct. The reasons are a bit more complex though. One issue is if you earn exactly or very close to the amount of the Hartz IV. Then those 150-200 Euro I mentionen previously is suddenly gone, because you stop being eligible when your income surpasses the Hartz IV level, but this time without this disregarding certain parts of it in the calculation. Another issue, is, of course, employers not wanting to pay more taxes. A "geringfügig Beschäftigter" (petty labour) costs a lot less in taxes than someone who is "properly" employed. They know the state will feed those folks, so they don't have to. They are the real ones who exploit the system, not the so called "lazy" people who are unemployed!
This is the next interesting concept... they somehow made us believe that the poor are a problem, not poverty. Thus driving nearly everyone who owns money against the Hartz4 guys and makes them ashamed.
As a swiss totally understanding german, there is so much missing context/words in the subtitles for volker. Someone should really do a proper subtitle text for this. It's way more sarcastic or ironic than the auto-texts. James, if you would have really seen all that volker said in this context, you would have just trully been blown away :)
forget the irony...I think in this speech especially it's much more important to simply get the message across and it aches my heart that the subtitles do that so poorly. The part about banks, inflation, debts and interest absolutely blew my mind the first time I watched this.
How a 36min video could lift all the confusion I had with the financial system and explain the whole scam behind it in such an understandable way is simply astonishing.
In all my years in school I found this topic to be unnecessarily complex and confusing...I didn't get the whole "why" behind it and it just needed to be put into words once to understand it all.
-"It's unnecessarily complex and confusing *BECAUSE* it lives from the fact that 90% of the population mustn't understand it"
It's not only that the 1% live off of fucking over the 99%, they also want the 99% to smile while they serve.
And the most fucked up part (which Volker doesn't go into) is that the 2-10% (politicians, bank managers, advertisers, CEOs, media figures, [...]) are the middle men/grunt workers who actually pull this scam off, just to catch a drop of the 1%s ballsweat which is equates to several times more money than the 90% ever dream of making while still being only a fraction of what the 1% make off of them.
THIS is the source of by far most of the misery on the planet
@@AgeofJP The subitles lack something. There is the video of Pispers about the "history of the US" with all the major conflicts till 04 (when the video was recorded) with amazing subtitles and all puns included and when not translatable, explained.
That is whats missing I think. As a German, I understand it, if not for my prior knowledge, I wouldnt.
@@Braamsery1992 yes that video was the first I watched from him and that one easily has the best subs...and I'm glad that I understand everything anyway perfectly since I'm German aswell (Grüße). I don't need better subtitles for me, I want them for anyone else watching this who doesn't understand German
German Satire is legendary!
Great reaction, but I must say those subtitles make me lose braincells. On 10:39 for example, Volker says „dick und doof“ which the subs translated literally. In Germany, „dick und doof“ is what the comedians laurel and hardy are known as
Yeah those subs are so bad that sometimes the whole meaning gets lost.
@@kuldan5853 or with the BILD Zeitung, which was literally translated to "picture" 😅🤦♀
One reason for West Germany being about twice the size of East Germany is that the West was made up from the parts of Germany that were occupied by England, France and the US after WWII - and the East was "only" the Soviet controlled zone.
I guess the whole "border between east and west Germany" - the 'Deathstrip' with it's automatic guns and mines and troopers with attack dogs - could make for a whole video all by itself. I bet there's material about this here on youtube as well...
And big parts of "old" East Germany were given to Poland
I think you are confused about what "Selbstschussanlage"is. It's not an automatic gun, it's a more like a Claymore Mine. SM-70 for reference.
@@croncorcen Possible. I always understood "Selbstschussanlage" (roughly "Self-shooting-device") to be a sort of gun (a barrel fixed to something) with a remote trigger. Just googled it and you're right, those things were closer to what I would consider a "mine" and indeed the official name "SM 70" stands for "Splittermine" (fragment - mine). Learned something. Thanks for pointing that out.
Yes, but they had a great Movie and TVseries industry, with contend that had a blue collar point of view.
I dearly miss the DEFA and DFF.
... West Germany aka "Trizonesien".
It warms my heart that Pispers is finally getting the attention he deserves. I still hope someday those xenophobic, racist, nationalist people will discover that they and their fears have been used. That the distribution of wealth is the real issue of our time. The civil rights activists in the GDR showed the way of how a peaceful but inevitable change in government policy can be done, why can’t we?
@@KurtFrederiksen You're talking complete nonsense. Like, you're making all of this up. Plenty of wealthy and powerful people are labeled xenophobic, racist, nationalist etc, just look at how people talked about Donald Trump.
Do you think we want the *homeless* to share their wealth? Are you completely insane? The educated middle class has "little to lose and much to gain" while the homeless are the opposite? Do you know what any of those words mean?
First you say that the homeless man wants to take your home and then you say that only the middle class wants to redistribute wealth. This whole comment is so incredibly incoherent it boggles my mind.
@@KurtFrederiksen The economic middle class? You mean those who are still in the 50% with little to no own savings and are being pitted against each other by political propaganda and lobbying so they are afraid of other cultures and things that look different.
Mainly because they think that their wealth is being stolen by those who are new.
But that is already a complete fallacy, their wealth is being stolen by those who have been their alongside them all along. The 10% of people that were heartless enough to only look after their own and protecting their decadence while feeding all kinds of conspiracy and lies to those doing the work.
So being xenophobic, racist and/or nationalist is just buying into the fear mongering fed by the disparity. They deflect the anger and disheartened by playing with your feelings, telling people they are good 'money' slaves and behave in the correct ways of old while they take the value of their labour and refuse to share any of it. Even telling you to do more for less if they had their way.
Because in truth the economy is a dystopian joke that functions as if commenting "first" on something and then kicking everybody else away with force there after gives someone a legitimate argument to claim ownership of that thing.
It is not because there is some new dude in town that needs help adjusting and a place to stay that you don't get a home. It is because there is some family living in a house where you easily could house 10 families. And that is not the only place they have ownership of.
So turn your anger and dishearted hatred towards those that really cause your misery instead of making it some joke by blindly blaming everything and everyone you aren't used to yet. Hate those that make and keep you homeless, not those having a home by merit of just getting by and being afraid of their own. Hate those that don't distribute the wealth of this planet equally. Those that think they deserve more than another.
Or else you are just a blind person lead by fear and hatred, angry at the crowd your lords want you to be angry at.
Pegida and AFD are all controlled in the same way as all parties, very many demonstrations, either from the left or right camp, but the MSM moves everything to the right that is not Antifa-left or who also addresses completely non-political issues, which then as a conspiracy theory etc referred to as. Besides, there is certainly enough to criticize. Whether unlimited flooding under pretense, the expenses for it, etc. BEFORE the flooding, the federal government advertised in 16 countries to come to us, including George Soros through his NGOs.
But that alone is a topic where you could text endlessly, as well as many other things, as well as the worldwide lie about the bad climate or viruses and.... what's in the injections? Anyone who knows that knows what NEVER will do.
Oh yes, of all things Pegida and the AfD (and Merkels Antifa) is VERY pro-Israel and devoted to religion. The evil right-wing 'Nazi' Geert Wilders, who also appeared on Pegida, is married to a Jewess and a regular guest in Israel, is allowed to give speeches there, so he's not the only so-called anti-Semite (according to the media's speech) who has already been in Israel were. That unites everyone, also in the USA. No matter which party and who also knows what religion many high-ranking politicians have, including Trump, Merkel, Kohl, Johnson, Putin, Medvedev, Obama (no kidding), etc.
Once you understand what's going on with parties and elections, what your vote is used for in elections, you'll never go to the ballot box again. No matter what politicians promise or which new parties pull out of a hat. And it doesn't matter whether right, left, pseudo-democratic. In reality there are only dictatorships worldwide and politicians NEVER serve the people, but others. Elections are also not based on the votes cast, so that is made to fit. Trump was chosen DECADES ago, for example, as the future president. All USA Presidents are related to each other. Trump also with Clintons and are even friends. You have to see behind the scenes. Not on the surface.
The EU and Euro was an intermediate step to the NWO (New World Order). But first the old must be destroyed (along with the economy and currency) in order to then install the 'new' 'without any alternative' (as Merkel would say). Together with a non-cash world currency, world religion, world government, complete control and surveillance, right down to the body, into the brain, population reduction by billions of people and the 'rest' crammed into a few huge mega-cities. Many years ago I read on the net, with Sputnik and the MSM magazine: Der Spiegel, that a huge mega city is being built in China, for 100 million people, one wrote, the other for up to 130 million people.
The goal is total world communism and NOBODY should own anything anymore (keyword: expropriation). As Klaus Schwab of the WEF and the WEF itself... announced:
'You will have nothing more, but be happy'
Nichts ist, wie es scheint.
@@KurtFrederiksen I think what helge means is: those people think foreigners are taking stuff away and that‘s why they‘re poor. In reality though, it‘s the rich who „take away“ from them by owning or inheriting wealth in huge quantities. The foreigners come there, because in their home country it‘s even worse. But there would be enough food and space for everyone, if distributed more equally.
@@SolistFrankHerrmann The utopian idea of no ownership but plenty for everyone isn't bad. Except it won't work that way in reality. People in power, as power is prone to, will try to do anything to conserve their power.
A redistribution of wealth is a great option, but then it must be done fairly. For now, claimed private ownership of societal priorities and using them to create a profit for only a select group has spun so out of control that 10% of most wealthy individuals in many countries possess so much without any care for the society they live in.
'a football manager - a really fat one' 😂 nailed it. Allthough now he's thin
was looking for this comment xD
I can only recommend you to find a dubbed version of "The Anstalt" from the ZDF. It has a lot of very good and brutal pieces regarding politics etc.
I dont think that a non german speaker can understand Pispers just with subtitles. His satire is so smart and sharp that most native speakers dont "understand" him.
Da ich der englischen Sprache nicht allzu mächtig bin, kann ich nur sagen, das war den Leuten hierzulande schon zu hoch zu der Zeit, aber ich bin guter Dinge, dass sich das ändert. Siehe Kapitalismus im Endstadium. Wie bei euch, und auch uns mittlerweile. Endlich mal 'nen Ami, der sich Fragen stellt! Nice.
Stimmt. Weltarmut nimmt immer mehr ab, Welt Hunger nimmt immer mehr ab, Bildung nimmt immer mehr zu, Entwicklungsländer fangen langsam an, zu industrialisieren, alles wunderbar. Jetzt noch der Endspurt, um die letzten Kommunisten loszuwerden, und dann ist der Weg frei für eine glänzende Zukunft. Und alles Dank Kapitalismus.
@@Alexander_Kale Meine Fresse genauso.
Der beste Geschichtsunterricht 👏😅
Ist schon bemerkenswert wie der Pispers in den Staaten gerade steil geht👍 wenn man sieht wie viele Reaction-Videos Pispers allein bei den US-Tubern hat😁
Zum einen gut dass die deutschen auch mal von der guten, ehrlichen und witzigen Seite gezeigt werden.
Zum andern leider auch wie sehr die Bevölkerung von der Politik belogen und betrogen wird.
Ja Toll aber bei dem Islam hat der gute ins Klo gegriffen , er vergleicht ja auch die hier Arbeitenden Japaner in Duesseldorf mit Muslime Ziegen Hirten und heute merkt man mehr denn je das diese Menschen in diesem Land nicht Sozialisiert werden können von denn Clans gar nicht zu sprechen
"Kapitalismus ist so böse!" Geschrieben mit dem iPhone. Das fand ich auf Twitter immer extrem erheiternd. 😉Sicher ist der Kapitalismus an einigen Stellen verbesserungswürdig, aber unter dem Strich hat er dazu geführt, dass es gemessen an der Gesamtbevölkerung, noch nie so viel Wohlstand auf diesem Planeten herrschte, wie heute. Der voranschreitende Zerfall allen voran in der westlichen Welt, so wie wir es derzeit erleben, basiert eher darauf, dass wir bereits stark in planwirtschaftliche Strukturen übergegangen sind. Statt auf Konkurrenz zu setzen, legt die Politik die Gewinner z.B. in der Medizin, der Mobilität, auf dem Energiesektor vorher fest. Was wir erleben, sind sozialistische Zersetzungerscheinungen, basierend auf neomarxistischen Fantasien der politischen Führer. Energieknappheit, sich leerende Lebensmittelregale, schwindender Wohlstand. Wir ziehen die Zweite und Dritte Welt dabei noch mit uns hinunter. Das haben die 100.000.000 Menschen, die durch unsere Corona-Restriktionen in Hungersnot geraten sind, von denen viele Millionen tatsächlich verhungern, deutlich aufgezeigt. Auch, wenn der Kapitalismus so seine Makel hat, wir haben nichts besseres. Wohin uns der Sozialismus führt, werden wir spätestens im Winter erleben, wenn die Menschen in ihren Wohnungen erfrieren oder nichts mehr zu essen haben.
Hartz 4 is a very emotional topic and takes a lot of time to explain. And even if you can explain it, to get the whole system, is extremely complicated.
Gotta agree to that
Does it support lazy people? Yes
But does it help people getting on theyr feet? Totally
So I can see the reason why it is such sensetive topic
@@jonaswerner8480 Thank you, You're a great example for what I stated with my comment. ;)
In reality its not that complicated. Hartz4 was the instrument to get the lost min wage sector back in germany. I was against it when presentend, but in the last years, i understand that it was not possible to go with out it. After 16 years of Chancelor Helmut Kohl and the CDU,it was a nesesary Reform. And to be honest it was the first Reform in ages. It did led to a peak in politcal interest, because the lefts (me included) felt betrayed. It was like blasphemy the Social Worker Party with the help of the greens, just cut down the social marketsystem by a lot. Thats when people invented the Slogan, "WER HAT UNS VERRATEN, DIE SOZIALDEMOKRATEN!". After Merkel and the CDU got elected, we were back in our thinking that if we just do it exactly like Kohl (Merkel was Kohls pupil, after the fall of Berlin wall) so nothing changed, no big reforms were done, after 16 years people are fed up with Merkel, but instead of embrace the change, we wenn with the corrupt guy who represented Merkel the most. So this goverment is now forced to make reforms worth of 32 years. But all they have to do, will hurt the middle class the most, so for the people will be the consequence to vote for cdu again and if we are unlucky afd.
Back to hartz4, only uses: cheap labor and PR. In every socialsystem there will be people who abuse the System. So the Media, as we just learned owned by rich people, didn't need long to find some of these abusers, in germany called " Sozialschmarotzer". So they did the same they do in america. They have Shows like Dr.Phil with the most stupid cases.
And all the germans be like:" Look,Look. They live from my taxes, this filthy lazy bums."
But at that time there only was around 300000 people who really abused the System, and when you tell a german:" wait not all the people who get hartz4 are abusing the System. The majority are not in it of their on will." But the social preassure got so overhelmingly bad for the "Hartzer" that many of them accepted jobs way under their abilitys and normal income. Better to work at Mcdonalds for 6€ an hour (yes there Was no min wage at that time) than to get Hartz4.
So instead of questioning the rich, why they dont pay more taxes, the people in germany focused on the poor, who live on the german taxes.
Many things are better in Germany than in the US, but you should never forget capatalism is, and always will be, capatalism. In germany we just started later than you in the US, thats so only difference. Empathy and solidarity, are bot traits you dont want in capatalism. And we doing a good job in eliminating them.
@@j_si.8187 Yeah that's right... I'm a child of the lower middle class, but when my father got sick and couldn't get any jobs because he was in his 50s too, Hartz 4 just got invented. I didn't live in luxury back then, but it was still tough because I was in my teenage years where everyone else went out for parties, got nice clothing, probably new gaming consoles, mobile phones or PCs to work with the internet. And I was the one who got bullied around in school because my family lost all their savings due to insolvency and Hartz 4. I ran around with stuff my brother once wore and owned. And when those TV shows started, it became worse for me. Those bullies whose families still had good jobs, went from just rude comments, over spitting at and punching me, to cutting off the tires of my parents car. *sigh*
@@TheVirdra i am sorry. I was 22 years old. And the kind of guy who didn't know the way through life. Single Parent household, no father figure. Just lost. So i went 23 months to Bundeswehr, because of asthma i could not serve any longer. And after 1 year of Alg 1 went straight to hartz 4. 2005 i worked a 1Euro Job for 1,5 years. The whole thing was disgusting and for the most people it is till today.
But no one would ever Listen to me, when i say first fight the corruption and lobby and then let us try to fix the other issues.
"bitten off" refers to female horses in this case who "bite" the competition to score the male. ("wegbeißen")
Check out Hagen Rether.
I wish they would show him and Volker Pispers in School.
best wishes from germany!
Hahahaha „Junggge“ i love your Reactions... it‘s just amazing to see you watching and reacting to this very good german Satire 🤣😆👍🤣🤣🤣✌️👌🤣
I love that you and others are celebrating Pispers so much, love the content! Gotta say the subtitles from this video are not on par with the older videos about terrorism and the Gulf War, still you did a great job explaining the trickier scenes :)
EDIT: I have to correct myself, the subtitles are abysmal :D
It's a very hard topic. At the end stand the question, what can we do to change the system. The senselessly rich people have created a self-sustaining system that only serves them. And they continue to expand it every day for their own power and profit. It seems unassailable. What is the solution? There were also millionaires in the GDR. The difference is, they payed 90% tax on their income. In the early 1990s, profit-sharing was a big topic in Germany. But nothing came of it. The constant distribution from the bottom up, from the common man to the rich, is the problem. The two previous ideas would solve this problem. But Volker Pispers is right. You don't get majorities in politics for that. We elect the politicians who tell us what we want to hear. We've been conditioned to function the way the rich need to function. And that's, what we do. Our mistake. Let's reduce consumption. Let's stop buying things we don't need or can't use because we don't have the time. Yes, that increases the pressure on the system. When things don't work like they used to, only then will something change. Nevertheless, I believe that we live under much better conditions in Germany than you do in the USA. The USA is the Land of the slaves. (This text was created with the support of Google translate. If I wrote something wrong, please send them a postcard.)
Hi, I´m from Germany and I can tell you Volker Pispers is unique. Sadly for all non native german speakers the translation is not always the best especially because you need to know a lot about german politics that´s why the audience are laughing sometimes because the connection he makes with some politicians bad decisions and some other issues. Volker Pispers is a very intelligent person, he knows a lot about society and politics.
The sad thing is , its the truth
The thing to me most depressing about this are the parallels that you can draw across most cultures nowadays, many boxes ticked by Pispers commentary are the same in my country and many others that function in this capitalistic way.
The fearmongering towards people that are 'getting by', those falling just in the between and those on the lowest end of the capitalist spectrum. And that spectrum isn't about money, it is about 'capital'. Either physical or fantastical capital, ownership of stuff and idea's determines your worth in a capitalist society. Not what you do with it or what you contribute to a society, just solely claiming 'mine' with either or both force and fear as deterrents.
26:56 Volker Pisper's show is already so old, yet the content still applies today lol...
I like that there are Germans thst give explanations and help to understand. Thanks to them! 😊
10:35 lol at that translation.. the joke got totally lost.. it should be more like "back in the day thick and stupid used to be two seperate ppl " (the german names for Laurel and Hardy in german are Dick & Doof= "thick" (as in big, fat) and "stupid")
a couple years ago, i was sitting in the audience in a live show with volker. At some point he smached all people in his unbeleaveible kind and it was silence. And erveryboy was thinking and was shamed. This was one of the sickest moments in my live and i will never forget it.
I work in a company that produces for the company that delivers my brothers company. And they deliver to my other brothers company. And they deliver to us. Its a cricle full of workers do the paperwork for nothing real - except growing.. growing for taxes.. more workers more paper..but in the end nobody needs this
I ( 54 years old) was one of these citizen of the GDR . In my opinion , it was a good and safe life . We had our jobs , nobody was unemployed , our kids were in the Kindergarden. I didn't miss a thing here in my life. I don't need 2 TV, 2 cars and a lot of other stuff, that's not important to me. I had a house, my family , my kids, that's all.At the same time as the wall came down, I was unemployed , had no money. I only had 20 D-Mark per week to live.for my family It was a tough time for us. This doesn't happened in the GDR. Sometimes I wish they would built the wall again , so my Kids and Grandkids will live in peace again. It breaks my heart, when I see so many kids here live in poverty, have not enough to eat.Its not all golden here. Check out the criminal statistics in GDR. There was nothing to fear, nearly no murder in the whole country. And now ? This all came with the reunion of east and west.
I know all of Pispers shows. I'm just watching this, because I love James' laughter. It's contagious. =)
Hey James, I have to say I stumbled across your account randomly and absolutely love it! One improvement for political reactions or anything in this regard: maybe your cutter can edit small pictures in when people are mentioned (e.g. Reiner Calmund) so that more people get the joke :)
Kuss geht raus! Love your vibes my man!
but when there is no dept ... than people can see that money is worth exactly NOTHING
The fall of the iron curtain was just 30 years ago. It's amazing how fast people forget (or never learned about it).
Lol I love how he presents 'simple' solutions.
Volker Pispers stopped doing cabaret 7 years ago...
(2015 first as a longer pause, but 2021 the decision to stop)
It's interesting what he said when he quit cabaret.
He said when he started cabaret he wasn't sure if our politicians didn't realize it or if they were just stupid.
But now he knows they're doing it on purpose and with intentions
By the way, he found his preference for black humor in England between the late 70s and early 80s :)
14:52 - not only through Berlin, but also through the German country ... well, that was not always and everywhere a literal "wall" like in Berlin, but certainly a well armed and monitored fence with "death strip" especially in rural areas. Some of the forests are still prohibited from strolling.
I think you got some good satire in the US too. Like LastWeekTonight and TheDailyShowWithTrevorNoah
But it they are a little bit more comedic and less brutal to be honest
@@SmokeKinz Trevor Noah is pretty honest. And John Oliver is, too.
(Both are not from the US, but they work there).
The best is still John Stewart. Trevor is too tame for my liking. Oliver is something else with his long detailed videos.
And Colbert or Maher are for stupid people, I feel like.
What an interesting program! What an excellent choice! Thanks James!
I am a refugee child from the GDR and.....my mom and I fled back in 1957, there was still guarded barbed wire fence ....and self-shooting facilities...and mines ....
Here are some positive aspects about Hartz 4:
- The government pays for your rent and medical insurance plus you receive about 445€ every month
- They try to help you get back on track or seek medical help
- It is not time limited
- You are allowed to reject bad job offers
- If you do not comply at all (e.g. not show up to meetings) they can legally cut back a maximum of 30%
- Everyone can get it -> no one needs to be homeless
actually right now you cant be sanctioned for an entire year until June 2023. A really important move considering the current economic situation and the war with Russia. There should be done more to support ordinary citizens, but its a necessary first step.
We should look at what switzerland is doing
5:20 James Bray explaining Raccardo´s economic theory right here.
8:38 You´re right. The Problem is, that entire nations were blamed for islamic terrorism by the west, and now people blame the religion or the ethnicity instead of the few hatefull people who are really responsible, because they don´t understand the real political and socioeconomical reasons. Blaming "The Arabs" is just easier than blaming a few leaders, the socioeconomic conditions, imperialism, etc. And then there´s this myth about muslims being somehow culturally not compatibel with europeans. I think, this has something to do with a lot of framing and propaganda. You see, the Nazis for example, they were trying to sell the germans the lie about the "slawic subhumans", and their strategy was, to bomb soviet villages, and then make pictures of them afterwards and say stuff like "see? The slaws can´t even manage to build up and maintain their villages, everything here is in ruins, they are to stupid for agriculture or any higher form of economics, they´re only good as our slaves". And something similar happens today. US, NATO and Russia have bombed Syria and Irak, two formerly prosperous nations, into pieces, and now, people point to those countries and say "See? Those lazy southerners aren´t capable of working hard and building up an economy, their "work culture" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is different, we can´t let them in as refugees, they will destroy our economies as well.
A colleague of my father back in 2003 or so told him that in Iraq people got their last salary as pension with the salary somewhere between 2000 and 5000 Euro. That's how strong they were economically. No wonder they got bombed. That would've been a lifestyle impossible to explain to USA citizens.
Keep in mind the last reaction video Bray did about Pisper. The USA are not and have not structured their foreign politics by how many Arabs they could kill, with racism as the measuring stick. They structured their foreign policies around the idea of greatest benefit for themselves. THe fact that it hit a lot of Arabs was coincidental. Had there been other people living in the middleeast, it would have hit them instead. (see the saddam hussein skit where Hussein didn't change, he just "turned around".)
And no, that incompatibility is not a "myth". it is an oversimplification and an overexxageration, but at its core it is a pretty unavoidable result of us having separation of state in the west, and the middleeast having a history and established culture of theocracy, while lacking the realizations and philosophies of the enlightenment (or an equivalent thereof).
@@Alexander_Kale I never claimed, that the US has based their foreign policy on racism, of course they don´t. But racist cliches are often either the justification for their interventions or the reaction to them.
The second part of your comment is absolute nonsense. These countries don´t have a "culture of theocracy", what a fucking bullshit. Since you obviously don´t know much about recent middle eastern history, let me explain it to you.
Turkey was the first "modern" nation in the middle east, it became a modern nation after the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Said Atatürk declared Secularization and the separation of church and state to be one of the leading principles of his ideology, the turkish constitution under Atatürk (which largely remains until this day) forbids religious partys and declares that religious figures shall not interfere in turkish politics (this is one of the six principles of Atatürk, called Laicism). Islam is still the dominant religion in Turkey and has some political influence especially among conservatives, but Atatürk made a modern state out of turkey, one that basically combines some ideas of european enlightenment (Republicanism, nationalism) with turkish tradition.
Next, Egypt. Nasser was a socialist (well, kinda), thus of course he was in favor of the separation of church and state. His ideology was based on anti-imperialism, arab nationalism, traditionalism, socialist planned economy, militarism and secularism. Religion only played a role, when it came to the conflicts with israel, but the fact, that egypt managed to fend of attacks by both britain and france and allied with the soviets afterwards is I think prove enough, that egypt became a modern state in the 50s and 60s as well, and just like turkey adopted some elements of european enlightenment, and combined them with arab nationalism, socialism and some traditionalism.
Syria and Iraq were both led by the baath-party during most of the 20th century, also a self-proclaimed socialist party (their motto is Unity, freedom and (arabic) socialism). In fact, they were a kind of anti-movement to the panislamic movement of the early 20th century. Thus, the baath party was, much like Nasser, an anti-imperialist, arab-nationalist, socialist and secularist party. They especially stressed, that everyone is an Arab, who speaks an arabic language and feels like an Arab, including christians, Alawites and others. The similarity with Nasser and the idea of panarabic nationalism was also the reason, why syria and egypt united for a brief period, but that just as a side not.
Lebanon is not at all theocratic, they have a huge christian minority, and Kurdistan is pretty leftist anyway, they´re also not overly religious.
So yeah, to conclude, those countries had their period of arab enlightenment (which btw wasn´t a copy of european enlightenment, it was never supposed to be, arab leaders included much of their own thoughts and the local characteristic in this independent, arab version of enlightenment, but the basic ideas are often the same) after their independence, and are secular states, most of them were even pretty modern states with a lot of potential (Egypt still is), that is of course, until the US and other imperialists showed up (of course in times of war and chaos, many people turn back to religion, so if Iraq and Syria are nowadays a bit more religious than 30 years ago, this is because of the US, not because of a "history of theocracy or some bullshit). Their culture is thus not at all incompatible with ours, there might be some differences, but by no means are arabs religious fanatics who grew up in theocracies. This might be the case for nations like Saudi-Arabia, Quatar, the Emirates or Oman, but those aren´t the nations, that the US attacked, and those aren´t the nations, where the refugees come from.
This incompatibility is a myth, nothing more
Edit: Lybia, with Gaddafis green book is btw another good example for a secular arabic nation
@@teutonicterror0365 Oh, how I love it when someone tells me what I "obviously don't know" to my face. Still waiting for the day when that claim is actually true, though...
To start with, why you would mention Turkey in this context is beyond me. Yes, Ataturk tried to not only estabish secularism, he tried to outright abolish religious importantce in the populace. But said populace resisted that change. His First successor already had to loosen the restrictions, and of course their current dictator for life has now made a major push for reinstating religion as an important fact of life. You may have heard about the whole Hagia Sophia hubub...
Asides from that, Saddam Hussein never invaded Turkey, The USA never invaded Turkey, the Video never mentions Turkey, or, to throw your own words back at you: that isn't the nation "where the refugees come from", so what does this have to do with the tpic at hand?
Meanwhile, All Western nations who accepted large numbers of refugees or immigrants from the middle east (and Turkey) HAVE had problems with them, and continue to have problems with them to this day. Germany faces outright ghettoisation in its major cities. There are large regions in Berlin where you need a damn translator nowadays, and the police routinely employs some.
You don't see Christians rioting and setting cities on fire when some asshole burns a bible, and yet that is exactly what happened in Sweden when someone burned the Quran.
All over the western world you now have a new subset of murders, so called Honour-killings, religiously motivated murders, often committed by a father or son against a daughter or sister respectively. Those simply DID NOT EXIST before.
Also meanwhile, the entire middle east has the Sharia as part of their judicial system, with all that implies, and repeated studies, done by all kinds of people, organisations and individuals continue to show that the majority of Muslims WANT Sharia law. It doesn't matter who does the damn study, the result is always the same. devout Muslims do not WANT sekular states, they WANT a theocracy.
"Myth" my ass.
@@Alexander_Kale Yes, I know. Erdogan is a fucking conservative, of course he´s basing his power to a large extent on religion, that´s what conservatives do (in the west as well btw, just look at evangelicals and republicans in the US or the PiS in Poland), since the 80s, those have gained ground, and turkey is kind of a mixed bag. Conservatives and Secularists often fight over power and both sides are kinda extreme, for example, the secularists invested a lot of energy in upholding a complete ban of head scarfs on turkish universtities. There are a lot of pretty fundamentalist muslims in turkey, there are a lot of secularists, there are a lot of moderate muslims. But again, this isn´t that different from many western nations, turkey is not even close to being a theocracy, not closer than poland or spain for example.
I mentioned turkey, because it was my understanding, that we´re talking about the middle east as a whole, and since turks are by far the biggest group of migrants from the middle east, I thought it would be kinda important to talk about them.
Western nations who accept refugees don´t have a problem with refugees, they have problems with racism (both structural and individual), poverty, drugs, failing education systems, bad immigration and integration policies (like for example the fact, that refugees usually have to wait 15 months before they can apply for a full work permit and get less than HartzIV before that), bad housing policies and shit like that. Refugees aren´t the problem, they´re just another indicator for already existing problems. For exmple, refugees aren´t more likely to become criminal, because they´re refugees, they´re more likely to become criminal, because they´re poor, often psychologically traumatised, live in poor, criminal districts with lot´s of fast drug money to be made, and because an overproportionally high percentage of them are young men. Ghettoisation isn´t the fault of refugees either, it´s the fault of cities and governments, who place them in social housing where it´s cheapest (aka the districts where poverty and crime are already high), and again, many refugees face poverty and end up staying in these districts, because they can´t afford to move.
An example: I live in a huge (and I mean huge) Plattenbau-district in east germany. After 1990, like in many other parts of east germany, a lot of people moved away, and only the poor stayed. Crime was rampant, almost 50% of the houses were empty because everyone had left, it was shitty (back then I luckily lived somewhere else). In the 2000s, the average rent was (and still is) way, way cheaper than everywhere else in the city. People slowly began moving in again, and the population began growing, but most of the people who came, where relatively poor compared to the rest (average wage here is still 250€ lower than in the rest of the city), and so many refugees and migrants were among them. Luckily my city did a relatively good job at preventing the spread of crime and they also did a good job at reforming the district into a pretty and still fucking cheap place in the last 10 years, but right now, basically two big groups live here: The old people, who stayed after 1990, and younger migrants, who moved in here in the 2000s and 2010s, because it was the only district they could afford /where the city placed them. In 20 years, the old people will have died, and the people with migration background will be left. It could very well become a Ghetto. If the city would´ve done a better job at placing it´s refugees, if housing woul´ve been affordable in other areas too, if refugees would be allowed to search for work immideatly instead of having to wait between 3 and 15 months or at least if they´d get better social security for the time being, if our schools wouldn´t suffer under extreme teacher shortage, ghettoisation would´ve never happened, or at least not in such extreme dimensions.
Blaming ghettoisation on immigration itself is a bit like sending construction workers to work without helmets and then blaming them for the sharp spike in head traumas.
They didn´t just riot, because that asshole burned the Quran, they rioted, because it was a fucking fascist, who wanted to make a "tour" through sweden, burning a quran in every city he´d visit, and all of that during the holy month of ramadan. Sometimes this fucker would rap the Quran in fucking Bacon (you know, pork), and he openly said, that the world would be better and that he would´ve reached his goal, if all muslims were dead. I do not support it, but it´s absolutely understandable, that 200 people (yes, just 200, so taking this incident as an example for incompatible refugees is stupid anyways, when only 200 out of the 900.000 muslims in sweden actually did something) went a bit crazy. Even I as an atheist would hate the police and the state for protecting such an asshole and allowing him to speak.
Honour killings are by no means something religious you moron, there is not a single time, honour killings are mentioned in the sharia, under sharia law, honour killings fall under normal murder and are banned. Of course under normal secular law, they´re banned in all countries as well.
Honour killings are not religious killings, they have their origin in archaic, rural tribe culture and thus were common in very excluded, "non-civilized areas". In the 19th century for example, such honour killings were a pretty normal occurence in (orthodox) balkan countries as well. In the middle east, they´re more common in rural areas as well, around the Vansee, in Afghanistan or north africa, everywhere, where people still live in relatively secluded tribes and do not often come into contact with civilisation.
And no, they´re not "all over the western world", according to "Ehrenmord.de", there were only 9 such murders in germany in 2022, in two cases, the murderer wasn´t even from a middle eastern country (serbia and india). And those did exist "before" (whenever "before" is), accoring to the same site, there were roughly 40 such murders between 1980 and 2000. So yeah, this phenomenon is by no means new. Germans btw do kill because of similar concepts (mysoginistic thinking, jealousy and a feeling of lost "honour") as well, in 2018 (according to Tagesspiegel) 122 women were murdered by their partners or ex-partners in germany, wether you call that honour killing or not, the psychological reasons are the same and not something specific to muslims. Women getting murdered by their brothers or fathers isn´t something new either.
Sheesh, wow. Western laws are all based on judeo-christian culture, how can you blame a muslim country for having parts of or even the entire sharia as foundation for their laws, while our chancellor still has to say the words "so wahr mir Gott helfe" (so help me god) at his/her inauguration? For example, it is usually forbidden to open your shop at sundays in germany, because that was "the day, when god restet". Most people are in favor of this, would you frame this as "most people are in favour of bible laws"? The 10 commandments are to a large extent the foundation for many western laws, the national holidays in most european countries are christian holidays, etc. I think it is fair to say, that under such circumstances, most europeans are in favour of laws based on judeo-christianism. How can we thus blame muslims for being in favor of sharia-based laws? Which btw doesn´t fucking mean, that they´re in favour of theocracies. If this would be the case, said theocracies would exist en masse, but they only do in iran and sadly in Afghanistan again.
And before you say shit like "ok, but sharia and western laws still contradict each other and thus migrants are still a problem", no. Bullshit. There are multiple interpretations by multiple islamic and non-religious scholars of the sharia, and many of them come to the conclusion, that sharia doesn´t have to contradict western laws. It all depends on the interpretation. You can of course interpret the sharia in a way, that makes it incompatible with western laws, you can do the same with the bible, with the communist manifesto, with the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster or the fucking party programm of the APPD. But usually, this isn´t the case.
Also, I think you´re underestimating the similarities between islam and christianity, bro, both are essentially based on the same stories, just sometimes interpreted a bit differently.
So yeah, I think, you´re falling a bit to BILD-Propaganda-language and see dangers, where there are none, and I think you´re heavily overexaggerating in some cases
Hello my dear. Nice you mentioned Pispers, he is indeed one of the best satiric guys in Germany. We all love him. Greetings from Germany and keep it real. Shalom
All i want to comment is said in the comments below ...
At this show we all can see how honest this man is . He shit in front of the doors of the states but much more in the front of the doores of ourselfs . He is a real good teacher of the truth and i might to see the understanding in your face ...
All the best for you and go on
Germany exports significantly more than they import (in value). The point is, not all can do that, because for every value exported more than imported by one country, there are others that need to import more than they export. As such a particularly extreme economy cannot be "the example for the whole world".
In 'value' here being a key signifier of why this is such a weird way to put things. I yet have to find a good comprehensive list of volume of goods exported by a scientific denominator, most of them are in value. And as we know, value/money is a fantasy, could be worthless come tomorrow morning.
Economy many times feels as a sort of wizard of oz curtain and scary head, big spooky and scary while in reality it are just some people franticly trying to keep you from looking in the control room whilst they panic to every change that might make you do so.
@@bramboeshoe905 Money isn't a fantasy. It represents a value at that given moment. It may fluctuate, but at the same moment you can at least try to compare value by how much it costs. And fluctuation is significantly due to 2 factors, the change in value in certain goods due to supply, demand, and market fuckery and the "printing" of more of the same currency causing the overall economy it represents in value to no longer exactly match the amount of currency available.
That being said, I do wonder how or if certain things get measured in. If I buy a Windows license in Europe, I don't import it, but much of the money will still go to developers, managers & owners of Microsoft, mostly in the US. Even physical goods are perhaps imported from one country, but include parts and more critically design, PR, development, etc. from other countries again. Not to even start with the financial market, Visa/Mastercard/Paypal profits, etc.
Or just anything coming from companies owning companies, or joint ventures, especially if the countries between them vary. How do you measure a licensing agreement as an import? What happens, if a part of the company gets spun of, and that new legal entity is formally in a different country now. Are its assets exported without moving in that moment, or were they already when the original company first invested in another country?
Or crime, piracy, hacking & smuggeling of course. Or nationalisation of foreign owned industry or theft of their intellectual property.
What about foreign aid, or UN funds, or IWF funds, or EU funds? Is Germany offsetting its exports by paying more than they get in money from the EU? Are they doing so in order to continue exporting more into the rest of the EU? Is that effectively just an ellaborate tax funded support for export oriented businesses?
What about people emigrating? Do you value their know how or remaining work force, or just what physical goods they take with them? What about people working abroad but sending money/items back to their family at home? What about people temporarily traveling to a different country with their company? What about tourism?
When another (US IT) company gets fined billions by the EU for privacy or antitrust, is that effectively a reverse import?
What about movies, games, dlc, microtransactions, app store fees, subscriptions? What about data center computing power? Is that import and export, if only data moves across the border? What about the value of data for advertising or research? If a company gets the DNA of a new disease from a different country, and later due to that is able to manufacture a vaccine for great profit, what part of this is import & export?
@@autarchprinceps Ok, fantasy might be to great. Imaginative may be a better word.
But worth/value is a collective but ultimately still subjective concept, I get why we have to use it in a pragmatic sense. But it is still bound to the opinion of the people.
If you value something in practicality, you can use money as a representation of your imagined value. As in paying said money, which represents your value/worth in a subjective way also, makes you agree to said opinion.
Of course, things are never completely as simple as this.
That is why a societal system that determines values arbitrarily based upon value will have issue's distributing said value when ownership of things is the defining key to determining the value of something.
Ownership is quite a weird concept, in practicality and in theory. It is mostly based on the idea of "first" and the ability to physically or reasonably legitimize that claim. And then it can, within capitalism, be exploited to make those who do not own things end up working the things instead.
So the concept of value/worth should be ingrained into power that is linked to the benefits of society, privatization of societal values while centralizing authority will inevitably lead to disparity. As we see in the disparity displayed in the numbers of who owns what. Get a generalized number and everyone should have a nice and filled up bank account, but in reality 10% of the people end up holding more than 50% of all the value.
After watching this years Mark Twain Prize, I have to say that as much as germany could use Volker Pispers in this time, the US could definetly use Jon Stewart right now.
They are both greatly missed.
very accurate
Jon "The problem with white people" Stewart? Screw that guy.
Nice. Yeah Jon Stewart would be a good example of an American Kabarettist, even though Daily show was a Comedy Show.
However the bitter sarcasm is far more comprehensible to George Carlin - the one Murica really could need rn.
And there are millions of people who defend this interest-based system.
nice video, but would you please put the link to the original video in the description?!
you call it brutal satire, i call it truth
not a contradiction
It is a radical oversimplifation tainted by Pisper's personal Bias. Saying that he is not a fan of capitalism would be somewhat of an understatement...
Hartz IV basically smashed two previous systems of support of welfare together, but with lots of "demands" and very strict control, so its imo a bad thing. if you have to work but cant get a decent paying job your caught between a rock and a hard place as the saying goes. and its a burocratic nightmare of forms you have to fill out.
It is probably even worse for those who actually have a job but that job does not pay a "living wage" so they have to rely on the system regardless to top up their salary so they can for example afford rent.
It becomes literally like working 2 jobs at once since the Hartz system demands so much bureaucracy and is so... "übergriffig" like checking your bank balance so you don't have too much income.
It is already bad and actually quite a lot of work if you are unemployed (was on Hartz for 3,5 years on one point in my life but am back to working a regular job now) especially when they want to push you into programms. But actually working (a probably not so nice) Job and then still having to justify your income and stuff even when you are working so you can pay rent must be a effing nightmare.
Also the aforementioned practice is actually something some companies exploit (or at least have exploited when I was in the System but that was before minimum wage though i can imagine this still going on) as in paying very low wages and then expecting the Jobcenter to top it up for what the employees actually need to get by. Basically subsidizing themselves with tax payer money by exploiting their low cost employees. Not sure if this still largely a thing tho but it was rampant when I was on Hartz and a reason why I didn't take any more Job offers from them after landing such a Job (working nightshift re packing car parts in a warehouse) for a short time (I quit after a month and got chewed out like crazy by the Jobcenter for that).
No its not very strict, just say you want to go to collage but your collage is full and you need to wait 3-4 years till you get a spot.
Then you tell them you do some small 400€ Jobs in the time between.
I grew up with some drug dealers and all of them had or still getting Hartz 4, in 10 years they just had to visit them 15-20 times and feed them lies.
Also the Paperwork is done in 5 minutes.
@@EvilGNU Jobcenter dont exploid you now its the tempory job agency (Zeitarbeit) that exploids you.
Best thing you can do on Hartz4 is to do retraining (Umschulung) at a trainings plant (Umschulungswerk) since this training plants know alot employers and do most of the work for you. After 18-36 month your retraining is done and you have already a job lined up.
But you need to know that in the first place, since in the past many people abused this system and the people from the jobcenter cherry pick the people for that if you dont put pressure on them to get into a retraining.
Ask them to put you into a 2 weeks trial course and be extra nice to the trainers for this 2 weeks and then you qualify for the retraining.
props to you for making sense of these horrendously translated captions :DD
„Praktica“ was a brand name for photo cameras made in the GDR. It was translated here as „internships“. 😅 An intership is a „Praktikum“ in German and the plural of that word is „Praktika“, so almost identical with the camera brand. But Volker was really talking about the camera.
One man escaped the DDR with a self build submarine... With later was pattended... He just invented this thing witch is used from the military, scientists or normal divers 👌
There are many ways... In Germany you say "Not macht erfinderisch" it means 'Necessity is the mother of invention' (sad but true :/ )
That's some google-translate-Ueberdramatik. 'Notwendigkeit ist die Mutter der Erfindung', for simply 'need makes (one) inventive'
@@HocusPocus7474 No, it is correct to use equivalents when translating idioms.
@@MetalheadAndNerd "correct" is a bit strong, let's rather call it "appropiate".
("correct" seems to suggest that it is the only way to do it rather than a choice the translator has to make depending on the circumstances)
Uh yes, true german discussion 😂😂😘
Hartz 4 is the biggest crap you could do.
There used to be extended unemployment money if you were unemployed for a long time because you couldn't find a new job, but you can and are willing to work.
There was also social assistance for people who couldn't work, e.g. for health reasons or simply didn't want to.
At that time, with Hartz 4, you simply merged both and if you end up in Hartz 4, you are also treated as equals / seen as the people who have no desire to go to work at all.
But the reason here was just to save jobs again in order to save money for administration by simply eliminating an entire department.
The bad thing about Hartz 4 is that if you are willing to work but have bad luck finding a job, you can still get the same threats and punishments as people who just don't feel like working or have never worked in their lives
Yes also you do not really get support in finding a new job. There is a shit ton of bureaucracy you have to go through and the "assistance" you get is token assistance at best. But you are bullied to take part in programs that are an utter waste of time but take you off the unemployment statistics for their duration. They also don't make any qualified Job offers and offer (from my experience) unskilled temp jobs at best. Especially if you are struggling with mental health issues, like I did after losing my familiy in an accident (lost my normal job over this and it took a long time for me to recover physically and mentally) this is detrimental and just furthers crisis.
After 3,5 Years on Hartz IV/ALGII I finally managed to get retrained into a new Job and got back to working, first part (75%) and now fulltime.
I managed this IN SPITE OF and not thanks to the System which was 100% a hindrance in getting back on track.
While at first I was mostly down from the trauma i lived through, in the later years the burden shifted and became more and more about the struggle against the system which was holding me back/swamping me with bureaucracy and unwanted programs (trust me I know how to Operate a Windows based OS at the beginner level and I have typed text in Word before) while always keeping up the threat of sanction.
My conclusion is that they always seem to pressure you: Get a Job, Get a Job but given that they are mostly working with vulnerable people I now see this as a diliberate lie only to exert control through pressure.
Everything I've done to get back on my feet I managed myself and literally the only thing that helped me was the Money as in not having to starve/go homeless.
But that is guaranteed by law anyways and has been before the Hartz IV reforms were implemented, only in a different way ( as in there has always been unemployment security/benefits).
But honestly I can understand (and witnessed during my time in the system) some people being fed up with this and actually going to live on the streets because they can't take the pressure anymore.
The System is inhumane, those who want to cheat will cheat anyways, everyone else is just collectively punished for them, the Jobcenters themselves usually neither have the training nor budget to really help people out anyways so there is no support happening (with the exception of maybe being lucky to meet that one super motivated person there, but I never had this luck).
Had the system been supportive instead of being punitive in nature, I probably would have gotten back on track way earlier, at least a year if not more.
@@EvilGNU I remember getting a letter for an appointment that I HAD to make, driving 1 hour to the jobcenter only for the desk clerk to take a look at my ID Card they had already copied, said they just wanted to check, and telling me to leave. I felt like they were just testing if I would show up. This was after people told me how much better the jobcenter had become and how dehumanizing it was before.
The wall was built because the higher education system at the time was paid for privately in West Germany and paid by taxes in East Germany. The jobs however generated a lot better income in West Germany. So people studied in East Germany as a burden to taxpayers without giving back after finishing their education, because they often elected to then work and pay taxes in West Germany (and of course, their ideas and hard work didn't do anything for East Germany). So the wall was more or less inevitable.
Pun: Strauß is not only bouquet, but this time it was Franz Josef Strauß.
@james bray : you basically showed all the emotions of a proper Volker Pispers show in your videos.
1. Stage: Funny, haha, Pispers is so funny
2. Stage: shock, laughter starts to die.. OMG, this is not comedy, this is political comedy. And political comedy only works if there is truth behind it
3. Stage: the inside hits you... I am so fucked. This is where people stop laughing, because they realize how they are manipulated. Noone is laughing any more.
4. Stage: Desperation... you go home and start to violently puke
"EAST Germany built the wall?"
Having seen your other videos, I consider you as a smart, thoughtful man, who is genuinely interested in Germany.
It's just that comments like yours about the wall just now reinforce the common stereotype of the "ignorant American".
do you know every nook and crany of american history? its normal to not know every detail about foreign events, nothing ignorant about that
@@Bansen808 Yes, but a good education system should at least teach some basics.
Like not confusing Washington with Lincoln from German perspective, but also not confusing West Germany with East Germany from an American perspective.
Considering the USA's status as an immigration country, it's abysmal how underdeveloped their geography and history lessons are.
I genuinely didn’t know LMAO! I don’t feel bad about not knowing either because guess what? I learned something new! I’ve already acknowledged that the education system in America is HORSE SH#T and to be honest, if you’d ask most Americans here that very same question about “who built the wall in East Germany”, well lets just say you’d be grossly disappointed with their answers too🤣 The only real way to correct ignorance is to educate yourself whenever possible.
@Dan Al
did you know WHY the wall was build in the first place? i dont think so. You were told it was all because evil east wants to get rid of evil west but thats not half the truth. so dont judge other people when they dont know a thing, more important is, that you are willing to learn something new.
@@dansattah I don't know the american education system (but I heard nothing good about it to be honest), but you can't expect that americans know about this. Many germans don't know anything about the DDR/GDR or the wall. In the USA the wall is there to prevent people from getting in I guess, it would only be a logical assumption that it would be similar in other countries.
How much school knowledge did you learn and forget again because you were not interested in it at the time or because you never needed it in your everyday life?
To be honest, as german i am very proud for Volker Pispers!
Watch Jochen Malmsheimer. Next level of german Language-Skills... ^^
First Lesson: "Das Wurstbrot"
Second Lession: "Hose"
Yeah, his satire is more of the silly and overacting kind. But one might get lost because the word humor can get easily lost in translation.
Die Anstalt, which is a satire format broadcasted nearly monthly (with exceptions during summer and christmas), describes more complex topics in small comedic segments with varying comedy guests and is something people liking Pipers might be interested in, too. I really like how they explained the retirement system in Germany. But most other topics are brilliant as well :)
The fine detail with exports is that "every country only needs to export more than they import".
It's in the details, good sir!
And tgere, too, the problem starts...
Sehr gut. Vielen Dank!
Volker Pispers is so strong and intelligent. He could help us to create a better world but he left the stage since years
Volker Pispers always was my favorite "political Comedian" beside Hagen Rether and Urban Priol. Not sure If there are vids with english subs of Rether and Priol here on YT but they both are definitely worth a reaction.
Oh I love this one of Pisper. I stil quote it frome time to time. :)
Quick explanation to your theory at 5:00 :
If all of the 3 people focus on exporting stuff they lack the things they export themselves.
E.g. the person who is good at cooking knows that he can earn a lot of money with his very good food, but since he takes the best ingredients to cook the meals he exports to be able to maximize his profit per portion the things he got left to eat for himself are some mouldy beans or stuff. And since he works to get more and more money he doesn't even have time to prepare something to eat for himself so in the end he will get at least frustrated or even sick because of the whole export thing.
That is correct money theory broken down to average people’s understanding niveau.
Believe me when I tell you that Volker Pispers imp is the best german sarcastic Comedian we've ever had and he has not perfomed live since 2010ish. He speaks in a very clear but rude language, which is good because thus his message most of the time is easy to read. Some people are offended by that and dislike him for being like that. However more important, he is always speaking just facts. His knowledge about politics, economics and globalization has an incredible range and depth. He manages to clearify some complex patterns of modern society and what they actually aim for. I love him for explaining those things on an eye level !
As mentioned by others, unfortunately the translation of the video was particularly pretty poor, making it nearly impossible to receive the hidden critics he was actually pointing at.
Anyway, that's not your fault! Do love your videos and reactions 💙, especially the german realted stuff 😉! Have to keep it up ✌
This is the top of the Eisberg, go down in the rabbit hole... Greets from Germany 🇩🇪❤️
Ayy where are the Pictures, James? BTW nice vid
Man James you are popping off! Glad your grind is paying off. Much respect for you. Wishing you all the best.
As far as I understood the thematic of Hartz IV is that it is needed to keep the wealth of some % of people low so that the minimum income tax level stays low, which means more % of the people fall into the threshold of currently around 9000€ a year. (As soon as you earn more you need to pay taxes). So the System is supposed to increase overall tax income, by taxing more people and paying a little fee to the Hartz IV recievers to keep the minimum low.
Think this way: One Dude printed a coin a long time ago. It was the first coin ever. Then he lend it to his neighbour, said "You don't have to trade anymore, you can pay with it! Don't go and lift your wood all these miles to get a bread, just pay with the coin! It is small and not heavy. But next year, i want two coins back!" -But, There was never a second coin! Only a debt ^^ And that worked!!! So he printed other coins, lend them, and then he ruled the society....
It's a nice analogy. But money works even simpler than that.
The reason money works is because at some point some government issued those coins and told everyone they had to pay taxes, and they had to pay taxes using those coins, and those coins only. So suddenly everyone needed those coins to pay taxes. There wasn't any debt needed for this to work. And for a very long time it was even forbidden to lend someone more than you owned by threat of the death penalty.
Creating money from thin air is a pretty recent invention, barely a few hundred years old ...
@@brag0001 Exactly. That is what i tried to say. Because you and i, we will not be allowed to print our own money...
@@Orschd true. To be fair, that's probably a good thing. States being incompetent with their money can lead into massive issues. Individuals being incompetent with it can be even worse. See subprime crisis, various pyramid schemes people fall for, etc.
@@brag0001 Absolutely!
HartzIV is unfair as hell. If a guy never works he gets HartzIV. If I get unemployed, and I worked for 24 years now and paid all these 24 years for the public unemployment insurance, i get 1 year unenployment benefit and then I get HartzIV. It does not matter, how long you worked and paid for the insurance - after only one year unemployment you get the same money as the guy who never worked.
And if I bought a house in my working years I must sell it and live from this money before getting HartzIV. If I have a private pension insurance - because the public pension insurance ist very low - I must take the money out of it to live, because I am not getting HartzIV if I have any assets over 5000€. And yes, a car over this value counts as well.
1:58 "a football manager ... a really fat one" hahahahhahahahahha
Please dont forget the add the original link in the description or somewhere.
Did someone translate the Latin that briefly appeared on screen while James went out?
lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, corsetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna
Is what I read and put into Google translate, but it only translated the beginning and end ssomehow, and was about suffering.
"Lorem ipsum..." is just a placeholder that only loosely copies Latin, and doesn't really mean anything. It even has it's own Wikipedia page.
German here. Holy shit, Marc’s German is strong 😮
Hartz 4 was a reform of unemployment benefits.
In Germany, Europe's largest low-wage sector was created in the early 2000s. Unemployment rose sharply at that time.
But since the Germans didn't want to work for 5-7 EUR an hour (there was no minimum wage back then), they were forced to do so with Hartz 4. If you don't find a job for a year, your unemployment benefit will be reduced to Hartz 4, at that time it was around EUR 350 a month, with which you then have to pay for electricity, internet, food and the like. Only rent was paid.
And if you still refuse to take jobs for 5 euros or sometimes only 1 EUR an hour, then you can still cut that until you eventually have nothing left to live on. And so people in Germany were then forced into these extremely badly paid jobs.
The result:
We still have 3 million people in the country who are currently unemployed.
But we have 10 million Hartz 4 recipients because 7 million people in this country earn so little from their work that they have to supplement their wages with Hartz 4 in order to be able to survive at all. That means 7 million people in Germany cannot live from their work
By the way, today Hartz 4 is called "citizen's allowance". Since you now get almost 550 EUR, but otherwise it's the same crap
Hartz 4 didn't make people lazy. The lowest-wage sector does it because people rightly wonder why they go to work if you end up having to apply for welfare anyway. So Hartz4 is nothing more than a disgusting, neoliberal forced labor measure
Very good post, straight to the point, thanks for that!
the wall went straight through buildings in Berlin, no exemptions made
So genial hahaha, so gut wie alles entspricht der Wahrheit :D Das ist ja das erschreckende... beschämend aber Wahr
He is NOT brutal.... he just tells the TRUTH.....
Oh and I forgot... if you are interested in you should look up what is happening to the gold reserves of the GDR or "DDR" (that belonged to the people of the GDR) after the Iron Curtain goes down.
19:26 - Text underline should be: everyone and anyone
ShadyShae and me started the Volker Pispers reaction hype, and I'm so proud of it!
You are a big Part of making Volker famous Love and Respekt 🤘🖤✌️
You know itsy-bitsy Luxembourg ... WOW ... I'm impressed!
greetz from Luxembourg
the money you get from Hartz4 is extremely low.
you are basically forced to either go and work full-time or worry about not having enough food at the end of the month.
Right! You can export and import at the same time.
Harz 4 is the lowest level of social assistance. There used to be unemployment benefits, unemployment assistance and social assistance in the third year. Today there is one year unemployment benefit and then this is replaced by Harz4 of the city or community.
American hear this!
- greetings from Germany.
The point about exporting isnt about separate goods, that would fall under comparative advantage and is a legitimate (if very simplistic and old school) way of looking at trade relations.
Its more about an overall export surplus, which of course, is impossible to have in all countries. Hence it being a punchline of sorts.
Volker Pispers talks about an "orvellian" politic! (Look at George Orvell: 1984 or at Aldus Huxley: A Brave New World...) Volker Pispers is right in every word he says, thts sad but true.
When Pisper refers to Capitalism he really refers to human greed and the endless hunger for more of everything.
"Diesen rollender Schwätzer wollt ich immer schon mal Ernst nehmen."
He is referring to Wolfgang Schäuble, Schäuble was a5tacked 1990 and from then sat in a wheel chair. He is also the member of the German Bundestag for over 49 years by now, making him the l9ngest member as of you.
So the term "rollender Schwätzer" could be translated to "rolling babnler", referring to the wheel chair and the not so high opinion of Volker Pispers about him.
I mean, does someone have a high opinion of Schäuble after his forgotten briefcase?
@@janp5063 I never said I would have a high opinion of him. ;-)
4:05 THAT would make a good T-Shirt print