Experts advocate for VAT increase - if you look at these alleged experts, you find IW director Hüther and the chief economist of Deutsche Bank. Completely neutral experts, of course. Why do these allegedly professional journalists write such nonsense? Every idiot from some employers' association or employer-affiliated institute or major bank is called an expert - but if something comes from the employees' camp, they are critics from the unions. This is how the neoliberal crap is beautifully upheld and the citizen is told where to look for his experts - regardless of whether these experts are anything but experts (I still think with horror of the mathematically completely untalented and otherwise quite incompetent financial expert Mertz) or pursue their own political agenda. That in this specific case something must be rotten with the experts should also be noticeable to the dumbest journalist: although the VAT should be increased, but of course only with accompanying measures. Look at these measures. One screams for a reduction in wage-related costs as an accompanying measure and the abolition of the solidarity surcharge - but only the latter is relevant for the consumer. And now look at what someone on social assistance or unemployment benefit II pays in solidarity surcharge - nothing. But this person still fully bears the VAT increase.
The other talks about the fact that the risk of reduced consumption must be accepted, as the advantages of reducing labor costs outweigh - because he also wants to reduce various payments. At least for both sides - at least he did not explicitly talk only from the employers' side, but presumably he simply forgot that there is also an employees' side. And here too: social assistance recipients and unemployment benefit II recipients are not relieved and get the full VAT increase.
None of the so-called experts has spoken about the fact that a VAT increase must be accompanied by an increase in social assistance and unemployment benefit II. Both accept that people who are already impoverished will be even worse off and that more people will fall below the poverty line. They act as if they were experts - but in the end they are only the henchmen of the exploiters and swindlers and want only the same thing that the employers' side has been demanding all along: to squeeze the employees even more.
VAT is the most unsocial tax we have. On the one hand, it is only relevant for consumers, and indeed for domestic consumers. On the other hand, it is based on consumption - and this can of course not fall below a certain level, because everyone has to live and has to pay for it - and thus this tax hits the hardest those who have the least. Because their consumption can hardly be reduced any further.