As a German, I genuinely cannot comprehend this short-sightedness and ignorance:

Our current Chancellor (Merz) publicly boasts that Germans work too few hours and calls on them to work more [0] implying this would generate more tax revenue. Yet working has arguably never been less rewarding for workers: Germany currently has the 2nd highest tax wedge among all OECD nations (≈48% for a single worker, nearly 13 percentage points above the OECD average) [2][3]. This is compounded by demand-side welfare measures for low earners such as Wohngeld (housing benefit) and pension supplements like Mütterrente ("Mothers' pension"), creating a massive redistribution from working people to non-working people.

Meanwhile, the German government has spent years failing to fully prosecute the CumEx/CumCum tax fraud scandal, a scheme through which banks and investors systematically robbed the German state of an estimated €36 billion in tax revenues [4][5]. The contrast could not be more glaring: squeeze workers harder while letting financial fraudsters off easy.

I've handed over my resignation for my FAANG job and am looking for a job in other countries as I don't see myself building a future here.

- [0] Merz urges Germans to work more CGTN (Feb 2026): https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-02-28/Merz-says-Germany-must...

- [1] EUFactCheck Merz's claim rated "Mostly False": https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-false-we-need-to-wor...

- [2] OECD Taxing Wages 2025 Germany: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

- [3] Tax Foundation Tax Burden on Labor, OECD 2024: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/tax-burden-on-labo...

- [4] CumEx-Files Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CumEx-Files

- [5] Stanford GSB CumEx and CumCum Scandals: https://casi.stanford.edu/news/germanys-cumex-and-cumcum-fin...