RunawayFixer @ RunawayFixer @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

If you try to take too many eggs out of 1 basket, the person carrying that basket is likely to try and run away. So it's easier and less disruptive to take a few eggs out of lots of different baskets.

Taxing accumulated capital without exceptions is also guaranteed to screw people over. The man in the OP is a good example: he's a modest man who many years ago bought a modest house for a modest sum of money. Due to circumstances, that house has now increased in value, making him a wealthy man on paper. But he's deriving no income from that wealth, since he can't rent it out because he lives in it himself. So now he's a modest man, who is rich on paper, who is expected to pay high taxes on his paper wealth, turning him into a poor man who is barely scraping by.

That has to be the most regressive tax I've heard of in western Europe. Absolutely excessive and I'm sorry it's happening to you.

Belgium has a home value tax as well, based on fictional rental income + a very convoluted calculation + different % surcharges per council. I find back that it's on average about 700 to 800 euros per Flemish adult person, but it has large variations. It causes a lot of grumbling, but for most people it's not considered excessive.

And this is why in most civilized countries, progressive income taxes make up the majority of the government budget. Basing taxes on non income/investment related metrics screws over the poor + lower middle class. It's a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Yep, french language class in a too large highschool class. If the class had been smaller, then the teacher would have definitely gone for more presentations by the students.

Keep up the good fight, I'm certain that many of your students appreciate what they learn from you.

Students and cheating is always going to be a thing, only the technology evolves. It's always been an interesting cat and mouse game imo, as long as you're not too personally affected (sorry).

I was a student when the internet started to spread and some students had internet at home, while most teachers were still oblivious. There was a french book report due and 4 kids had picked the same book because they had found a good summary online. 3 of the kids hand wrote a summary of the summary, 1 kid printed out the original summary and handed that in. 3 kids received a 0, the 4th got a warning to not let others copy his work :D

One USA metropolitan area has as many as many people in it as many small countries. All these excuses that you're making as to why there are no large protests because of American exceptionalism, they just sound hollow. Protesting or not comes down to people and ATM there seems to be a severe lack of high level activist pro democracy leadership.

Edit: I do appreciate your answer about it taking 2 years to prepare that march, that's new info for me. But even then, I'd expect pro democracy protest everywhere and the Washington DC metropolitan area (or other densely populated areas) shouldn't need to depend on further away regions to get large numbers to turn up.

So why was it possible to organize such a protest in 1963 but not in 2025?

Lack of democratic leadership is not a geographic problem. In your previous comment you claimed that it was because of distance that there were no large protests, but it's pretty obvious that those distances are not the reason.

The civil rights movement managed to organize a massive march on Washington in the early 1960s. It should be far easier to organize something similar or even larger with the current technology and larger population.

Trump's fascist coup d'état appears to be progressing nicely (for the fascists that is).

Hitler only needed 53 days to secure absolute power after having been appointed chancellor. Trump is now 33 days into his second presidency.

Trump and Putin their relationship isn't going to reverse. Trump is a gullible idiot and Putin is not, if they meet and negotiate face to face, then Putin is going to get what he wants. Especially because Trump has said before negotiations even started, that he wanted to give the occupied lands to Russia. Trump is such a "master negotiator" that he sells out his own side before the talks even start. This is why Putin wants to negotiate alone with the usa, without the eu countries or NATO present.

The Observer is one of the oldest news papers in the world. Generally quality journalism I think, though I'm not a regular reader. Since a few decades under the same ownership as the guardian, but apparently sold 2 months ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Observer

And articles changing after first publishing happens quite a lot. It beats putting out a separate article for every small development in an ongoing story. For example: entity A said x about B, and later there's an update wherein B denies x happened. In quality journalism it used to be done in clear updates at the bottom and/or top of the article. But now with Trump, A is claiming x and then later A realizes how dumb that was, so A claims they never said x and that they've always been saying y. Good luck reporting on that in a clear and concise manner.

Officially it's allowed after April 17th, but there's already an extensive list of approved devices.

https://www.test-aankoop.be/woning-energie/hernieuwbare-energie/nieuws/plug-and-play-zonnepaneel

There's probably a french version of that article as well, but test- achats/aankoop hasn't made it easy to switch languages :)

These plugin systems shut down automatically when there's a power outage. To make sure that they really do shut down when needed, in Belgium only plugin systems that have been approved by the network management organisation may be used. The other countries that allow these probably have similar precautions.

Many thanks for the links, was interesting.

Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can't find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won't turn up in an internet search query.

Redheads are probably less genetically diverse than the rest of the population, iirc it's mostly caused by a recessive gene. So if someone is a redhead, then the chances are high that they share other special genes with other redheads.

Africans on the other hand are more genetically diverse than people from other continents. It's possible that some African population groups require different levels of medications, but you won't be able to tell those population groups apart by the color of their skin.

Pickups have their uses in Europe as well. Where I live, it seems like most pest controllers (rat catchers, an easy to clean open trunk is probably very nice) and land surveyors prefer them over other vehicles. They all use smaller sensible size pickups from Japanese brands though.

I think I've spotted only 2 different modern USA oversized pickups in traffic. Both full black, never a speck of dirt on them, always tailgating someone. They are vastly outnumbered by the sensible pickups, but you just can't miss spotting them in traffic.

Do you have examples of this stuff happening in continental European countries? I'd love to jump down that rabbit hole.

In the past I've read descriptions of systematic bad practices in the industrialized Uk, but I can't recall reading about similar things happening in other western European countries. Nothing systematic anyhow. I'd image that the french would have had a(nother) revolution if anyone had tried that stuff with their food.

I think that if food delivery was treated how my last postal package was treated, then all food would be arriving as a soup, or maybe as a goulash.

It's a self-coup, so people are correct in calling it a coup. It's still in progress, so it's not clear how much power the white house will end up usurping, but with what they've done so far, it's imo already enough to call it a coup.

From Wikipedia: A self-coup or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

The wiki article also contains a long list of other historical self coups. Germany in 1933 is the most famous example.