[constantcrying]

>Volkswagen payed 4.5 billion in dividends in 2024

German industry also provides millions of high paying jobs to German citizens. In the last decades a career in any of these companies meant guaranteed financial stability to each of the employees.

The "downside" of having good paying, high quality, stable jobs is the existence of billionaires. The narcissistic complaint that billionaires should not exist, when their existence is just the direct consequence of having a functioning economy is so absurd. What matters is whether these companies are good for the population, which they are.

By the way, guess where a significant part of that 4.5 billion went? And not just as taxes.

[hulitu]

> German industry also provides millions of high paying jobs to German citizens

provided. Until some time ago. The layoffs have started since some time.

[constantcrying]

Completely false. The jobs have not changed at all, the companies have no actual ability to do so. Especially not Volkswagen.

Americans hear "layoffs" and think it means people getting fired and walked out of buildings 30 minutes later. The reality of layoffs at Volkswagen is that people in their late 50s and 60s were asked whether they wanted to retire early. Staff were offered up to hundreds of thousands of Euros to voluntarily leave.

[croes]

> The "downside" of having good paying, high quality, stable jobs is the existence of billionaires.

This correlation doesn’t exist. Billionaires also exist where people have low paid, low quality jobs.

Often the billionaires are also shareholders of those companies.

So while they paid billions in dividends they also said the job guarantees are gone because 5 billions are missing.

It weren’t the workers who botched the development of new series but neither the management nor the shareholders feel the consequences.

And it isn’t only VW. Also BMW and Mercedes.

Right wing parties often complain about social security payments as unearned income, what are dividends and why do the shareholders pay less taxes on that income as the workers who actually build the products?

Billionaires are a symptom of a skewed economy where one side gets more and more of the wealth while the middle class is told it’s because of the lower class, unemployed and refugees