Albania’s Goal of Making “The First Wild River National Park in Europe”
worldsensorium.com
worldsensorium.com
I'm sure many other countries have such rivers as well
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(mountain)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutjeska_National_Park
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_Bijela_Hydroelectric_Power...
BTW and fwiw, I loved being in Albania, also Macedonia. Bulgaria was cool, and Romania is crazy hilarious.
However, there was also some very nice streets with new bars and restaurants. Like a lot of people had recently been pouring cash into the place which is always a good sign.
The people who I met were always super friendly and outgoing too, some of the most friendly I’ve experienced.
1. scams as tourist (should be easy to avoid: a) know the exchange rate and the local purchasing power, i.e. think if a local paid $500 per month would buy the thing, b) don't take almost anything offered "for free" unless it's from already trusted persons)
2. theft; not robbery, theft (your stuff might get stolen when you're not around; robbery or outright violence is rare, maybe even rarer than Western Europe, but you know, poor people, expensive stuff, it's going to be tempting)
People are very welcoming.
https://landgeistdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/europe-r...
This is surprising to most americans, but the Western EU countries are the least safe when it comes to mugging, stealing, and general crime.
Maybe it is family values, or the fact that many people have immigrated to work in the richer countries, countries in the Balkans are really chill and crime free. The only danger is driving, as the drivers are probably not the best and roads can be tight.
lol! yeah balkans has many schumachers, of all ages and genders too :)
This map would also be surprising to Europeans.
This map was generated based on data from Eurostat, "who bases these number on police reports from each country." (sic, cf. https://landgeist.com/2021/10/12/robbery-rate/).
So... the obvious question, then, is how many robberies do not result in a police reports in each country, and how good each country is at reporting all robberies to Eurostat.
I suspect that this map is more of a reflection of the rate of reporting for robberies than the actual rate of robberies, which is why the map is so surprising: it's misleading and does not reflect reality.
FWIW, I cannot imagine anyone in Serbia being robbed without reporting it to police (and since you usually lose your ID document if it's your wallet or purse, you have to go to police to report it stolen/lost and get a new one issued), unless it's something like multiple gangs against each other.
What I can imagine not being reported are attempted-but-failed robberies, but that strikes me as something anyone anywhere would not report to avoid the hassle for no gain.
Being originally form Eastern Europe myself, devs earn and live like kings here, especially those freelancing for remote US companies, but socially you're mostly confined to these high-earning circles and gated communities where you're mostly insulated from the poverty, corruption and inequality surrounding you, along with a feeling that everyone from individuals to local businesses could be potentially unscrupulous ready to scam you of everything you've got, if your scam detector is not finely tuned and you don't know exactly how things work, as laws and regulations tend to be very loosely enforced.
Plus, complete lack of infrastructure, functional government and public institutions. Roads without potholes that don't ruin your car? Forget it. Public transport? Barely. Pedestrian sidewalks not full of illegally parked cars? Nope. Drivers disobeying the law and being a hazard to everyone? Check. Police doing something? Forget it. Public hospitals? Avoid if you can. People behaving like a-holes in public. Yes. Gangs of roma beggars and parking scammers? A given. General disregard for following laws and regulations? Check.
And that's in an EU country that, at least on paper, should be doing way better than Albania.
Because I haven't heard about gated communities in Slovakia and Serbia, I I'm guessing it's the same in neighboring countries.
As a French guy visiting Albania quite frequently, I can tell you that I feel safer there than in Paris. People are mostly welcoming. I always travel with Albanian speaking people there, so it might be the reason. I’m pretty confident that it’s much safer than a big American or Western European city.
Yes, assuming you haven't registered any expenses. 15% of total profit (revenue-expenses=profit).
Slovenia has a "sole proprietorship" system that's fantastic for IT professionals since it has standardized costs, which means in the end you pay 4% tax on any income up to 150k€.
But you also pay FIXED "social contributions" (aka. tax) for pension and healthcare since you, as an "s.p." are considered to have a minimal pay... no matter how much money you make. This is a little under 500€/month. This is due the first month you register your business.
This leads to a reducing effective tax rate - the more you make, the less you pay.
We also have no way of doing business if you can't afford the ~500€/month tax. As far as the government is concerned, everyone starting a small business just "magically" starts making enough money from month 1.
Watching ex-communists (who are still in power) trying to work this whole capitalism thing is hilarious sometimes.
I am not sure why you expect the state to subsidise the health insurance of people who voluntarily put themselves in the position of working for an employer(themselves) that can't afford to pay them.
Anyone starting a business has to get together starting capital for the costs of the business itself, plus the costs of necessary employees up until the company starts earning money. This is one of those costs.
Singapore has rules that make something like health insurance mandatory for locals and most foreigners here. However, if you are on the visa for highly paid foreigners, fewer rules apply. Specifically, health insurance is optional.
In general, I agree that leaving rich people out of your paternalism is perfectly compatible with a humane society. Rich folks can look out for themselves and only have themselves to blame.
(The health care for locals in Singapore largely works as a health savings account, so the system has less need to force healthy people into contributing to balance the books. Largely everyone pays for themselves, though there is a genuine insurance component to the system as well; as in a mechanism to shoulder large unpredictable risks.)
Just in general: almost no sane tax system works like this.
There are sometimes some nooks and crannies of insanity in some parts of a tax system, but seldom in something as mainstream as income tax brackets.
Reminds me a bit of when Greece required everyone to collect receipts to get the first portion of their income tax free. The idea was to indirectly force businesses to actually ring up purchases properly.
[0] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/albania/corporate/taxes-on-corp...
[1] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/bosnia-and-herzegovina/corporat...
That sounds like a really aggressive engineering plan (probably with its own low carbon packaging). I can see why that would be destructive.
But Albania, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary should be really nice places to visit. I don't know about Serbia or Bosnia/Herzegovina, I only know anything about that from media coverage during the 90's.
Just don't go there July-August since it's packed full of tourists and traffic jams are everywhere. May, June or September are the best.
Here in the US, the environment was mostly chains of stagnant beaver ponds for millennia. It was the Iroquoi Confederacy that kilt them all, broke up the dams. For money - beaver hats in Europe were all the rage. Remade the topology of a continent in a few score years.
So it works both ways.
In the scheme of nature, humans are just a blip so far.