I love it when US companies meet Dutch labor laws.
- 3 Weeks paid vacation (we get 5 by law)
- Health insurance (you know the drill)
- 3 weeks parental leave (we get 1 year for 80% pay, first 6 months full pay, then 5 years protection against dismissal)
- 5 days paid care leave for when your kid is sick (we get 12)
So their benefits which makes them think make them attactive are all below basic EU law that even store clerks get
- 4 weeks paid holiday
- 4 months unpaid parental leave, 14 weeks paid for the mother
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_labour_law is the best overview I can find.
In IT 26-28 days are common.
Like, there are insurances and government assistance programs that businesses use to pay for things like parental leave.
US businesses get no such help. So what is often attributed to US business greed is actually political greed, while businesses are just casualties.
The reason, I believe, is that there are random checks by the health service to ensure people on sick leave are actually sick. But if you only take a day off due to a headache, by the time it gets registered and checked you could have already got better - so your claim is hard to verify.*
A dishonest employer could easily defraud the system by claiming a lot of individual, unverifiable "sick days" and getting the state to pay for a nice chunk of his payroll expenses.
By contrast, an employer gets alerted sooner of an absence and is in a much better position to guess whether an employee claiming fake sicknesses. In case of suspicion they're legally allowed (at a small fee) to have a physician check on their employee from day 1.
* now that I think about it, with everybody having a camera phone nowadays, this might eventually be solved - a video call might not be enough for a diagnosis, but it can probably tell "yep you're sick" with a reasonable degree of confidence?
>Like, there are insurances and government assistance programs that businesses use to pay for things like parental leave.
>US businesses get no such help. So what is often attributed to US business greed is actually political greed, while businesses are just casualties.
It really depends what are we talking about. In case of paid holiday leave (for example in Poland) everyone in normal employment gets at least 2 uninterrupted weeks by law. However even in my very first job many years ago I got 4 weeks total paid leave. All the pay gets paid by the employer.
However, there are things like maternity leave that can take a year. It is unreasonable to expect an employer (perhaps a small business) to pay an employee for a year of maternity leave. So during this time one is entitled to 80% of their pay, but it is paid not by the employer, but the national insurance. The actual amount taken by people varies. It can be split between parents, voluntary given up etc.
Then there is sick leave. If I remember correctly the usual thing was for the employer to pay for few initial days, the rest was paid for by the local equivalent of national insurance.
That is just crazy.... I would hate to be a chidless person in your country, I can not image the extra amount of work that get places on people that do not have children...
As someone that will never have a child I like the fact that the US does not force this kind of parental leave on employers, I know that will be very unpopular hot take
Companies are not charities created to employ people.
So sure if only 1 person is off on leave most likely another person could be hired
But 5 years of protected leave..... What percentage of the work force is going to be out on that? Also since it is very hard to terminate someone in the EU, what happens to the employees that are "filling" the positions of those people out on 5 years of leave? can they be terminate or do you have to keep them employed even after the original employee returns?
If you can be terminated would you take a job knowing the second the parent returns you will be terminated
Parental leave should be measured in weeks, not years. If you want to be a stay at home parent for years, leave the work force and then return...,.
The actual leave time is typically around a year. Which is roughly where you can give children over without them crying. But yeah the workload of that parent will have to be picked up by additional staff
Also in the system I work under, all employees pay a government tax that is used to pay for the parental leave. That is, the money isn't coming out of the companies pocket, but coming out of a national bucket designated for the purpose. The company pays nothing when the employee is taking this time.
And long parental leaves are just normal and common in some countries. A medium to large company has no issues dealing with them. It’s part of the management work to deal with that.
Moreover it’s better for a company that their employees don’t leave.
And employees aren't charities required to do things unpaid because there isn't the budget.
It works both ways
I have no kids, don't plan on having any but it's kind of crazy how 'hail corporate' some cultures are. We're humans after all. Let people spend some time with their newborns instead of forcing them to make more money for somebody 3 weeks after giving birth.
And employees are not charities for their employers! If you can't afford the staff needed for a given task, perhaps you should pivot to something else.
How is paying employees to sit at home not working anything other than charity/
I live a very frugle life, my expenses are low, I have no kids, I dont take expensive vacations, drive a fancy car, etc...
So should that mean I do not get time off, or high raises, etc simply because my "needs" are not the same as a co-worker?
Why should a co-workers personal life choices (i.e the choice to have 1 or more children) be a factor in the terms of their employment?
I think employment policies should be agnostic to the personal life choices and situations of employee's infact the employer should not even know if you have kids or not, let alone provide you with "extra" because you do
Sounds like you would support a policy of income based on your personal expenses. Should the programmer with 5 kids make more than the programmer with no kids simply because the programmer with kids has more expenses?
The programmer with 5 kids does make more than the one with no kids because he pays fewer income taxes. So the answer to your question is yes: it's how it already works.
First time in Europe? That's pretty much a given here, more kids = bigger tax break = more netto pay.
They are not sitting at home doing nothing, they are raising children. Helping them to do that is companies' share of investment into the workforce of tomorrow. Your utilitarian "fair" worldview doesn't account for the fact that having kids is insanely profitable to the economy. In modern economies, every kid is worth at least a million bucks over lifetime.
If you choose not to have kids and not contribute in this way, then who's going to foot the $1M or $2M bill for you?
Its the workforce who votes for those laws. The workforce in Europe are not propagandized fools to the extent that they vote against their interests.
slavery ended thousands years ago
And is for things like this that libertarians shouldn't make laws
Housing has increased so much in cost that I wouldn't be surprised that just having housing back to 1980s price levels would give most families enough breathing room with just unpaid leave.
It'd be far more desirable to return to situations where most of the budget is spent on luxury and only a little is spent on any kind of milestone, but that's a campaign most politicians aren't winning votes with.
Ironically politicians "stepping in" is the biggest reason cost of living is going up. Regulations preventing new housing, limiting new housing, etc. Monetary policies and massive debt fueled spending spree's causing massive inflation, draconian lock downs disrupting supply chains, irresponsible "climate" policies preventing farmers from growing food affordably, the 100's of other ways "politicians stepping in " to "solve" a problem in the process making everyone worse off
Neither bad regulations nor the free market are going to solve a lack of foresight. Worse, those regulations are largely devised by politicians in power voted by a majority of homeowners and a few ultra rich lobbyists. You might as well make a "always has been" meme out of it.
Same goes for every other of your points. If free market capitalism would solve it, it already would have.
For example you decry the " inefficient space usage " of modern housing, and suburbs, however many people clearly prefer to have single family structures on plots of land over living in densely populated area's
I am one of those people, I would never choose to voluntary live in a dense city like NYC or even LA
I can think of nothing more nightmarish then living in a multistory apartment building. I lived in a 3 story building once, and got out of there as fast as I possibly could. Today I live in a typical suburban neighborhood, with homes on 1/2 to 3/4 acre lots and about 40-100 foot separation between home even that is far too tightly packed for me, and would prefer even greater separation.
Governments attempt to control sprawl and force more density is in part what is driving the massive increase in cost for Single Family homes.
So it is not a correct statement to proclaim the free market is not solving problems, it is that people that guide the market reject your proposed problems and the solutions you desire for the problems, in that rejection the only way to do it is to impose government regulations by force.
The closest I can think of is Tokyo, where the zoning laws are basically set by the national government. In the USA, the local landed gentry can easily block any new development/increase in density, which is a big part of the reason we have so much sprawl*. In Japan, all you can do is shake your fist and write an angry letter to your congressman while developers throw up a 4 story apartment complex next door.
The result is that you can get a job as a janitor in the heart of downtown, and comfortably afford an apartment nearby. A tiny apartment within 10 minutes, or a larger and more spacious one 20-30 minutes away, or a house if you're willing to put up with a 90 minute commute.
* Yes, I know that a lot of the sprawl comes from people wanting houses, but a lot of people just want a place to live close to their job, where they can change out their sink or repaint their walls without asking some rich prick for permission
but look at any city with a growing population.
vienna for example is growing rapidly in the last two decades, after a slow decline of its population for almost a century, and it's interesting how the city addresses that growth with sufficiently dense housing. a whole new suburb is being built on a green field (literally) for 25,000 people and 20,000 jobs (not a bedroom community where everyone is commuting into the city), and that addresses only a fraction of the growth so elsewhere the city must be growing in density too.
why is that? bad neighbors?
maybe the problem is our culture of selfishness and lack of tolerance and respect? (and by that i mean your neighbors that are causing you trouble, not asking you to tolerate that trouble)
i have lived in multi story buildings all my life in different countries. and never had issues with neighbors. i hardly ever see them. really, the only difference between an apartment and a single family house to me was access to a garden. and in a single family house i have to deal with neighbors too. so i really don't understand what your problem is there.
people have preferences. sure. my preference is to live close to shopping and culture, and my friends, and access to public transport without needing a car to go anywhere.
if i wanted to get away from neighbors i would move to the countryside where the next neighbor is a mile away. but that is no longer a city. suburban life to me is the worst of both worlds. (and i have lived that too, so i speak from experience on both)
the reason the free market does not solve problems is that the free market is not fair. in a free market the strong have an advantage at the expense of the weak.
slums are caused by a free market. to eliminate poverty, intervention is necessary. if an intervention fails then that's because maybe it is the wrong kind of intervention. and with that we are at the problem of figuring out how to make life better for everyone, which is a question of education, the will to make things better for others, and again respect and tolerance and giving everyone a voice, aka democracy.
Of course, the kinds of apartment buildings allowed in the US aren't that good either, since few cities allow single-stair buildings like Europe does.
Sprawl is a government invention, as is suburbia. Residential zoning isn't a natural concept and didn't exist before post-WW2.
but how about universal basic income instead?
BUT as society gets more and more wealthy, I'll bet that living on the fringes of it will be more and more viable
We're already at a point where you can work minimum wage for an hour (take home ~$7) and buy a few days' worth of subsistence-quality food if you have access to a kitchen. You can pare down your other living expenses too, and suddenly you have a reasonably comfortable lifestyle that only costs a few hundred bucks a month.
Right now we stigmatize "van dwellers" and couch surfers, but maybe that'll change in the future
But this video explains it well, people would still work, just not for a living.
Rising tides and boats comes to mind.
I do not plain on retiring, and if I did I do not expect government social security (I am in the US) will be there to fund it so I do have a private retirement account that currently the US Monetary policy and government regulations/spending is doing its level best to destroy
Personal I am supporter of the Henry George Single Tax model to fund society instead of income based taxation
Progressive taxation is our most effective tool for ensuring that a few people don't end up owning everything. For those of us who end up wealthier than the rest it's the price you pay for society providing you with a healthy, educated workforce, currency, roads etc.
In fact history shows that government is generally pretty poor at providing any of those things
To me the obvious flaw in this type of society has always been that it provides no guard against the concentration of wealth and by proxy power. It works with a theoretical amorphous blob of people who have no ties to location and an infinite supply of land and resources. In reality the populace would quickly become slaves, with the only interest of the organisations in control of their food, shelter, and transport being the extraction of ever larger sums of money.
I'm honestly not sure how someone could look at the state of the corporate world and say "I wish these guys controlled more of my life". We've already seen this type of rent seeking become prominent in digital media and it hasn't improved anything for the populace.
The profit motive is functional enough for things that aren't necessities but we know exactly what happens when a profit driven entity has a near or local monopoly on something necessary for life. Look to the early railroads and company towns as an example.
> In fact history shows that government is generally pretty poor at providing any of those things
That's a bold claim without any proof. I'd argue the opposite. The vast majority of the population is now both numerate and literate and most countries have a usable road and rail network that's accessible to everyone. Beyond that government programs have been responsible for the eradication of multiple diseases.
And who does history shows as being better at it?
Don't invent stuff to make an argument. Wage slavery is what happens in the 'free market'. The very invention of wage slavery was to make conditions of slavery happen after slavery was abolished so that former slaveowners wouldnt go bankrupt. It was implemented in post civil war US, then it was copied by Brazilian slaveowners when slavery was abolished in Brazil.
How could income based taxation be theft unless we're considering all profit theft? Either it's immoral for someone with power over you to demand part of the value you produce or it isn't.
These are choices I make in a free(ish) market. Companies offer their goods, I choose to buy or not
Similar with labor, I go to the market offer my knowledge and labor for a Wage, if I set my price to high companies will refuse to hire me, if I set my price to low I am missing out on profit.
Income Taxation is in no way voluntary exchange like that, the government with the full authority to initiate violence injects itself with a demand that for every hour of labor I sell I must provide the government with a 10-40% cut of not only my profit from the sell but the gross transaction price. They do so under the threat of violence (aka imprisonment) if I refuse their order.
The fact is that the government, like a common thief, says to a person: Your money, or your life...The government does not, indeed, waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
Take a weekend off and calculate how much 'fees' you would have to pay for 'private defense services', infrastructure, judiciary, police and all the other things if they were made private.
> The fact is that the government, like a common thief, says to a person: Your money, or your life
What religious delirium.
> But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
The dastarty act of providing military, police, firefighting, law, justice, social services - all the things that make you live in a modern society instead of living in the former late feudal society where you wouldn't even have the social rank in order to be able to talk against your feudal lord in public like this.
There is no magical, divine, extraterrestrial or supernatural force that provides this modern society that you live in, and all the rights and freedoms that you have in that society. We, the people, have managed to make that happen through the mechanisms we invented. And one of those mechanisms is the state that is owned by its people.
This assumes alot of things, like that I reject all forms of taxation which I dont just income based. You know this because you already replied to a comment where I layout my preferred public finance model which you also ignored in that comment in favor of a semantic logical fallacy debate. so i question if you actually want to have an honest conversation
Also it assumes that the cost to private those services would be the exact same under a more private / direct model then our current system (for which my point of view would the the US model). I find that highly suspect and the few times were we have direct attempts at it has proven the current US model has inherent fraud, corruption, and waste that often raises the cost of providing these services by 2x or more.
>What religious delirium.
That is a bit of projection there. Like an adherent to a theocratic religion proclaiming Atheism is a religion. If anything Statism is more akin to a religion than being anti-state or libertarian.
Individualism is about the rejection of a "higher power", in your case this higher power is "the state" having replaced a god or gods
>ll the things that make you live in a modern society instead of living in the former late feudal society
False dilemma fallacy, as if the only option is a extreme over bearing high taxation state or feudalism...
> force that provides this modern society that you live in
Modern society was build by voluntary exchange of free individuals, not government.
> all the rights and freedoms that you have
neither rights nor freedom is provided by government, the entire US model of government is build on the fact that freedoms and rights need to be protected FROM government, the US Constitution is document to ensure government does not infringe upon the people as our founder knew that a government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.
Government is to be subservient to the people, not a master of them. At all times the people need to be suspect of government power, and keep very tight control upon it.
If non-income based taxation worked, societies would be using it. Every single form of taxation was tried throughout history. This is the one that works.
> That is a bit of projection there.
No. The ones who BELIEVE that things will 'just' be 'okay' if they just leave things to 'the market' are repeating the Christianity's format of faith. That there is a 'good god' that will just make everything 'okay'. That's why it is faith.
> Individualism is about the rejection of a "higher power", in your case this higher power is "the state" having replaced a god or gods
Organized, well equipped and trained authoritarian forces do not give zit about the rejection of their authority by the individual people. The moment you lose the guarantor of your freedom and rights - the democratically owned and controlled society - is the moment you are a subject of the strongest armed bunch nearby.
> Modern society was build by voluntary exchange of free individuals, not government.
The modern society was built by literally the organized French Revolutionaries deposing the aristocracy, making everyone equal and creating a social and legal system that ensured that. There hasn't been any 'voluntary exchange' of power on the side of armed, organized minority tyrants.
Neither the society was formed in American Wild West, where if you were upset with your local environment, you could just kill some more Indians and steal their land and prop yourself up on the stolen land in the most libertarian fashion.
Such philosophy is great while there is free land to take. The moment the free land runs out, things change. Just like how it happened at the end of 19th century in the US.
> the entire US model of government is build on the fact that freedoms and rights need to be protected FROM government
Yes. And that's why the US is in knee-deep sh*t. Becaue large slaveowners who had gigantic amount of land, wanted to protect their land from redistribution like how it was done to the deposed English nobility. Hence you got 'checks and balances' to prevent the democratic majority from asserting their will, with an openly declared intention by the architect of your constitution, John Adams, that the 'opulent' (rich) must be protected from the 'tyranny of the majority' (the people).
And as a result, you are killing your people when they cant pay for healthcare, 42 million working families are suffering hunger, you are still paying the $4 trillion Iraqi war debt that you accrued for the privilege of murdering 1 million Iraqis, and your infrastructure is failing.
But hey - the rich are far richer. So that is 'okay'.
They do, very successfully and most of the government services you and others have aurgued with me about income tax providing are not infact provided for by income taxes in the US. Roads, Schools, Police, Fire, etc almost none of that is funded by Income Taxes, it is funded by Property Taxes, Sales Taxes,and excise taxes.
In the US income Taxation is used for 4 main things. Social programs, National Defense, Science (Nasa, etc) and Administration / regulation
>the democratically owned and controlled society
Ahh the religion of democracy. also known as 2 wolves and a lamb voting for what they will have for dinner. This idea that democracy "provides" rights is laughable for anyone that understands anything about history which clearly you do not
>you are still paying the $4 trillion Iraqi war debt that you accrued for the privilege of murdering 1 million Iraqis, and your infrastructure is failing.
It si very ironic that you defend income based taxation, most likely because your socialist mind believes that is the way to "eat the rich" never realizing that income based taxation is the fuel for the engine of the war machine, and absent income based taxation the government would not have the ability to use the war machine in that manner. You are defending the very tool they use to murder people but you are soo blinded by your jealousy of the rich you believe would get ahead under a non-income based system you fail to understand that the rich WANT an income based system of taxation, that income based taxation is regressive (not progressive like proponents of the so called progressive income tax claim), and that a single tax system could be used to create universal income, and would actually help reduce income inequality
Smash the State, Eat the Rich[1]. The freed market, without all the distortions and giveaways by the state such as price and wage controls, licensing and safety requirements, limited liability, costly regulation, capitalization requirements, quantitative easing, financial regulation, zoning requirements, protectionist trade policy, intellectual property laws, and various other barriers to entry all promote centralization and cartelization, is truly an equalizing force
US police is not an example of anything. They are literally fining people to fill their quotas to support the budget, leave aside their murderous practices. American schools neither are - the quality of American education has gone downhill since state-subsidized education was done for. Your roads are literally disintegrating, brigdges are falling down as people drive on it.
No. Those schemes just do not work. They never worked in history for any society, and they don't seem like working in the US.
> Ahh the religion of democracy. also known as 2 wolves and a lamb voting for what they will have for dinner.
That's your endemic American problem thanks to your two party system due to FPTP and your anti-government indoctrination. Government and democracy pretty much work well anywhere else in the world.
> the rich WANT an income based system of taxation
The rich don't want any taxation. The rich want the late 19th century environment in which they could just buy and own anything. The only way that they were reined in was after T. Roosevelt brought all those pesky antitrust regulations and FDR piled up the taxes and social programs. Otherwise it was a Dickensian world.
> is truly an equalizing force
The free market handed over ENTIRE US to ~12 robber barons to own when it was as free as possible in the late 1800s.
Randian 'free cities' and environments ended up in hellholes.
https://www.gawker.com/ayn-rands-capitalist-paradise-is-now-...
The decline of central state allowed local feudal lords to rise and own everything and everyone toward the end of Roman empire.
Chinese history is full of examples repeating the same, the 'free' market giving way to warlords who stomped down people like you when they had the chance.
We have been there, done that. And yet here you are, still PREACHING the same thing from a country that KILLS its people if they cant pay for healthcare.
That's why it is called a belief, a religion. For there isn't anything other than your faith backing it.
If I don't support these things, or wish to take away their funding due to my displeasure with the service received I could do that if they were private. I cannot do that when every year the government puts a gun to my head and tells me to pay them 30% of my gross.
You've fallen into the classic socialist false dichotomy. Either you support taxes or you will be a serf.
The truth is taxes are the payment you're giving your lord (the government). You don't even own your own property. Try not paying your property tax (maybe it's too expensive?) and they take it away. Try not paying your taxes and they will start to take everything you own. This is the definition of theft. Coercing someone to part with their property through threats of violence.
All taxes are evil. A good compromise is the ability to take 5 extra minutes on my 1040 to put percentages where I want my money to go. I dont care if this overcomplicates the situation. We take in trillions in taxes a year and yet the only people who seem to benefit are the Nancy Pelosis. Somehow despite being a public servant is worth more than many top-tier entertainers. If I could put most of my money into school, hospitals, firefighters, and EMTs I would. Why would I fund police who drive around in veritable APCs treating every honest hard working American as a potential "insurgent" in their own land? Why are my tax dollars being shipped overseas to Ukraine when there's uncountable suffering here? Because we don't control it, our money is stolen, and the ill gotten gains are used to do whatever the kings and queens in congress decide. We are serfs, they've just managed to hide it.
Ask yourself do you feel good about where your taxes go?
>What religious delirium.
Like all socialists, you are the delirious one. It's just socialist indoctrination has better tasting koolaid with less assumption of responsibility.
Yeah, you could just 'take away its funding' and just do away with the military in a private environment. Which brings us to...
> Like all socialists, you are the delirious one
...the delirium of thinking that you would be able to keep your freedom and agency at the moment which you lose that socially-funded, democratically controlled military after you take its funding away in a private market environment. Which will make you immediately a subject of the richest man who did not take away the funding of the military outfit he supports.
> All taxes are evil.
The people from the country that kills its people when they cant pay for healthcare is telling us that all taxes are evil, even as their very infrastructure collapses.
THAT is delirium. Nothing else.
Only in the ultra far right US. Where everything works so perfectly because of that belief.
https://www.businessinsider.com/asce-gives-us-infrastructure...
Most of the other replies to this point are not really that helpful. The actual economic point is that since income taxes apply to /everyone/, they do not make you in particular less rich, because your relative amount of money is maintained. In fact, they're one of the main things making the currency valuable by providing demand for it, so you could say they're what make you rich.
VATs are more effective taxes at collecting revenue though, which is why most European countries use them, but only land value taxes avoid deadweight loss. Thanks Henry George.
There are better solutions (teaching individuals to be more financially responsible and kicking overly rich capitalists to the curb, for one) but that's preaching to the choir.
It's called society.
as for schools, to the extent I support their funding (which is more limited than I suspect you do) it is generally ethically justified because I too attended schools paid for by taxation, so in that manner I paying off a debt vs paying for others. Granted it is a debt I did not consent to, and had no option to opt out of but still there is that ethical foundation
None of that exist for what we are talking about here
and I absolutely reject the idea of a "social contract"
As is quite common in the US, my fire services (as well as part of education costs--the state also contributes) are paid for out of my quarterly property taxes and my town budget is right up on the website to look at. So it's not really obfuscated. And I don't really want to get 20 different bills from my town rather than a quarterly property tax (and water) bill.
That would have to be mandatory service though (remember, firemen can perform inspections, fine people etc. - they're not there just for fighting fires), at which point it's just simpler to pay for that through taxes.
(Which isn’t to say we should make them work less, but we should get them smaller trucks like other countries have.)
The problem is that then some people opt out. If enough people do that, it's no longer financially viable to have a fire service.
> I absolutely reject the idea of a "social contract"
Which is fine, but then don't live in the society. As a society, we have decided what is important for the benefit of the society; fire departments, law enforcement, schools, roads, etc. We then attempt to gather money from everyone in that society to pay for those things, because that's the only way it's realistic. Not everyone in the society agrees to all the details, but (in theory) the majority of people agree to them.
It's not all that different than living in an apartment with a few other people. If most of the people agree that everyone has to split the electricity bill, but one person says they don't want to... then it's reasonable to have that person leave, and replace them with someone that is ok with the rules set by the group.
Aside from the fact that since most homes are covered by a mortgage and mortgage companies would require that as a condition of a loan, no where did I really say to make it optional. I simply said I wanted an itmized bill for the service
I am required to have water service turned on as part of occupancy, I can not turn off the water service to home even if I wanted to live completely on bottled water, it would be against local ordinances. I am required to pay that bill monthly, if I turn it off I would get fined by the city, and at some point they would take my home
I am also required to mow my grass, and other such things, I fail to see why fire services would be any different.
>It's not all that different than living in an apartment with a few other people.
You are correct on that front, I despise apartment living and I also despise HOA which is why I took great care to avoid both in my life.
If star link or a competitor proves to be very successful and gets to be cost effective then Rural living may even be in the cards for me, one the only reasons I moved to where I did was because of the availability of high speed fiber optic service.
The very definition of a sociopath.
Which the vast majority of America doesn’t do either.
I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of people paying taxes for school have actually enjoyed the benefit of free schooling. It can be helpful to think of things that way... (another example: people complaining about kids being loud in planes, restaurants, etc - remember that you were that kid once too).
A company (an employer) rents the time and skills of employees for a particular task. It's not a pool of work that employees must struggle to achieve regardless of circumstances - it's the employer's responsibility to hire enough staff.
For example, my paternity leave (20 days or 40 half days) would not impact my colleagues. Some of them can opt into overtime, but the same labor laws also define how overtime works - as an employer, you can't order someone to work extra hours unless described in their contract (and limited to the maximum specified by law, with mandatory regular breaks). Overtime is also paid at 150% or 200% of your regular pay, depending on the day of the week and hour of the day (e.g., weekends and nights obviously cost more than daytime rates). Very few jobs are even allowed to work on Sundays.
Its like renting yourself out. You don't feel owned, and nobody feels they own you. Its great.
As a person without kids I do sometimes wish childfree people got benefits in ways that have more _immediate_ applications for us as well. But that doesn't mean parents shouldn't keep getting generous leave allowances to care for their children.
There are countless things the State spends money on that I resent having to pay taxes for, but childhood and parenting benefits _definitely_ isn't among them. Go nuts.
maybe I should have added that the parental leave only applies to the mother. Fathers can just take a month off.
And since women can choose to go back to work after 1 year or even 2 years (at reduced pay until then) the kids can already go to the nursery although it's not free until they're 2.5 years old. Then kindergarten is free
That's unfortunate. Where I live parental leave is split between both parents (I think it is 480 days total), I think that works better.
> I can not image the extra amount of work that get places on people that do not have children...
What you're forgetting is the amount of work required to raise children. That's an externality that is only covered through a social contract, where everyone contributes to a next generation. Why should parents put in the extra work to raise children that, god forbid, would ever do something you benefit from?
What you want is someone else doing the work so that you can just reap the benefits. You're a freeloader, plain and simple (other, less favorable words come to mind).
Unless, of course, you will never in your life use the services or inventions of anyone younger than you. But, somehow, I doubt that - am I right? You just expect those cohorts to just appear out od thin air to your benefit.
- have high income so pay a large % into taxes
- not a citizen so don’t enjoy some of the benefits of military protection
- wasn’t raised here so didn’t use any of the earlier year services
- likely won’t retire here so won’t use those either
Most of my tax dollars goes to fund others in the country. But as a society there is no good way to account for all that. To try to do so the tax calculation will be crazy. So I’ll grumble about the taxes I pay, but end of the day I also don’t really have a better solution.
Instead, it's African countries and then ones with more practicing religious people who do.
Plus, as noted elsewhere, you are getting benefits from the taxes you're paying now, only just on some of it.
Eg if I make a million a year, I might pay 500k in taxes. Someone making 50k a year might pay 10k. I don’t get an extra 450k a year worth of benefit from my taxes. This is intended and is ok. But I think we should also acknowledge that this happens.
Can you explain what you mean by this part?
I don't know which country you're living in, but surely the money you paid into a pension scheme - be it public or private - doesn't just disappear because you moved to another country?
Spain is famously full of UK pensioners receiving and spending their pounds there. Heck, my father worked for a few years in Belgium in his youth, without even being a citizen, and that still entitled him to a (minuscule) Belgian pension later on, in addition to his more substantial one from his subsequent decades of work in a different country.
A good standard of living was possible with a single income 50 years ago (just). It's barely possible today with two average incomes in much of the US.
You'd only want to not work if your job couldn't effectively contribute to the household (you're already rich or your spouse is a super high earner) or else you can't pay for the childcare work you're no longer doing (you're poor). Both of you working is a sign of being middle class.
Why do you assume I would think it is someone else's duty to provide anything to me? This seems to be a bit of projection.
Tbh, it’s just a cost of doing business in the Netherlands.
Being in a union pays off in labor court: Unions usually offer sending their legal staff instead of a lawyer that you‘d need to personally retain. This substantially reduces the costs of a court case for the employee.
See https://www.klugo.de/ratgeber/arbeitsgericht-kosten
(1) or shared, on partial wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...
For work related cases, if you are in a union, they will foot the bill in most cases.
Stay away from courts! If your case goes before a judge, you're in casino country. Unless you're on the hook for some criminal offence, tell your lawyer to negotiate a settlement. Once a civil case comes before a judge, that usually means that there's a legal issue to be decided that nobody agrees on, which means that you can't predict how the cookie might crumble.
There’s so many fun things. Mandatory rest periods, on-call on weekends in some countries requiring additional work, having to actually pay people, needing to provide them with the equipment to be on-call (phone and subscription) and on it goes.
This is the first time I've heard of any US company requiring an employee to keep a camera on themselves 9 hours per day. Obviously, that's not some standard US company practice.
I wouldn't be surprised if these same practices would fail in a US court.
Last employer did this without the status led turned on. They also recorded, keystrokes, push notifications attached to volume changes and media players, used sslstrip/mitm on web traffic, among other things.
Sadly, wouldn't be surprised if the same has carried over to remote.
One big difference is the variability of the outcome in the U.S. You might get a result where such a firing is upheld, or you might get several million $ in punitive damages. Most companies don't care to roll the dice.
I wish Europeans were a bit more business savy and corporate, and not see businesses as just bad things that are part of life, but of course when I’m in US I see the other extreme where businesses want to extract all value from me all the time, and it gets tiring.
This is not a proxy war between the US and Russia. Ukraine nor Russia started this conflict at the behest or instigation of the US. The US (and NATO, the entire western world really) are supportive of Ukraine but it's important to note that Ukraine is not a puppet of the US and that Putin started this conflict.
Swap the US and Russia and replace "Ukraine" with "North Vietnam" and you have a historical conflict which everyone agrees was a proxy war. How is this different?
And obviously, all actual fighting and dying is done by Ukrainians. They are the ones being tortured and oppressed on occupied territories too. If Russia won, all Ukrainians would be oppressed by Russia.
I don't know how people buy such uninformed BS. First, a lot of ex-USSR states are already NATO members. So, no game.
Further, USSR was a political construct. Their whole expansionism was based on that. Russia on the other hand is a nation state. They are not capable of annexing any region where there is no Russian-speaking + Russia-aligned population. Putin knows that very well.
As put by people who probably know better [1]:
One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power.
Then you are forgetting about Georgia where Russia fought a war in 2008 resulting in Russia creating South Ossetia on Georgian land. Exactly the thing they now tried to do with Luhansk and Donetsk.
Then there is Kazakhstan where Russia did a military intervention to support the government in 2022, this year! Although, Kazakhstan seems to want to sever the ties to Russia now.
I have a feeling that you don't know anything about this topic and just read a single article and now feel informed while in reality you were hit by Russian propaganda. The author of the article you posted thinks that NATO made Russia invade Ukraine by expanding to far East, explicitly following Russian talking points.
You seem to forget Ukraine in this equation entirely, you know, the country that is the victim of Russian aggression including murder of civilians, rape, and theft.
They are constantly begging for help to fight the invaders. Is it remotely possible that's why the US is helping for this reason and to stop Russian aggression?
Any "hurt" Russia receives is entirely self inflicted. This is a war of their choice.
Personally I value my "work". That is not to say I value my efforts for my employer which makes this hard to explain.
I do not find value is laying around, vacationing, sports, or any other traditional "leisure" activity. I like to work
So even when I am not "working" for pay for my employer, I am still working. I am going a personal coding project, or working on my home, or working on my car, or working in some other way.
I work... weather it is for pay, for my own personal pleasure.
I am willing to bet, that if you met many of these people in the 40's and 50;'s (where I am today) they would have the same statements.
I too sometimes regret I am not closer with family, or have more "friends" but at the same time I do not have the desire to change that reality at all...
It is complex psychological problem for me I have always since my teens been a "loner", I do not have the mental stamina to be around people for long periods of time. Once of the reasons I would attracted to computer programming, even when working in a "team" you work alone for large periods of time.
To be clear I am not really a introvert or rather I am both an introvert and an extrovert when the situation requires it, I can carry a conversion, I can be "the life the room" but I find it mentally draining and exhausting to the point where if I am at a conference for example, I need a few days completely alone after to decompress.
So sure I sometimes regret that was not born with the mental gift of being able form these close continual bonds with people... but at the same time I dont have the desire to change that element of myself... if that makes any sense at all.
That's not working, that's having hobbies (and it's a good thing)
The Russia is an actual threat for EU countries. Which is why the biggest hawks in that conflict are EU countries.
...
There can be no bigger enemy than the country that blew up European pipelines to sink European industry.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/european-...
Also, Greece is not staying as away as you may think. First EU country to send military supplies to Ukraine. Supplies were complete junk btw, so you can even call it a lose-lose gesture. Worse, the only external country who has a PM stupid enough to say in an interview "we are at war with Russia" [1].
[1] https://www.tovima.gr/2022/09/22/international/mitsotakis-de...
It definitely is not Germany's war. Various openly-published American think tank papers openly call for German industry's destruction and outline plans for it. One example went viral recently.
> if we had any kind of deal to stop the war tomorrow, they would be more than happy and eager to start discussing (energy) business again.
Yep, after the US literally went ahead and blew up the pipes when things looked like settling down, many German establishment figures seem to have changed their minds. But it may be too late. Even if repairs start tomorrow and both pipelines open, its unlikely that they will complete before the winter is over. And that will likely castrate German industry.
> Also, Greece is not staying as away as you may think. First EU country to send military supplies to Ukraine. Supplies were complete junk
Lol, Spain did the same - first it sent a few thousand rifles that were practically remnant of the Spanish Civil War or early WW2. Then it offered to send Leopard tanks IF Germany gave permission - therefore throwing the ball on Germany's court. Of course Germany couldn't allow it, so the tanks were not sent. Then in the 3rd run, when pressured to send artillery shells, they just sent some 150mm shells which may or may not be usable in the equipment that the US gave Ukraine.
Greece is FAR ahead of Spain: Currently Europe is STILL buying Russian oil. But it is now 'Greek' oil. As long as you have at most 49% Russian-sourced oil, your oil is not Russian oil. So you can sell as much as you want. Greece had been doing crazy business. It may end up as the country that comes ahead of all others in the crisis.
As a very ironic note, Latvia is also selling Russian oil. Shiploads of it. But its 'Latvian oil' since its only 49% Russian.
It looks like business does not follow rhetoric.
And yes, Italy is rather pro-Russia.
And you are wrong in other way too - Germany does everything possible to not deliver arms to Ukraine. They are tempted by that Russian money and did not get off the imperial against east thinking entirely.
> And yes, Italy is rather pro-Russia.
Its not "rather". Entire south Europe wants to avoid this US proxy war.
> They are tempted by that Russian money and did not get off the imperial against east thinking entirely.
Yeah, instead they should drop whatever thinking they have, become an Angloamerican colony, and get into an actual war with Russia on their behalf. Sure makes sense.
Seeing how well that worked for the US, no thanks.
The only reason European GDP is going down is because of 10-year-long trade war that was started circa 2005 by the US. It started with tariffs back then, moved onto trying to push NAFTA-like 'trade deals' via TTIP etc, and when all failed, they just blew the pipeline.
Judging from what was done to Japan with 'Plaza Accords', there is no guilt or responsibility of the targeted country and their people in this. Japanese were and still are the most sacrificing, hardworking workers. And yet, after accepting the terms that the US forced on them with those accords, Japanese economy is still in ruins.
Of course, that's an old picture of the country; ~10 years ago when everyone though of Tokyo as a place where kids hung out on the street in cool fashion all day, that's because those kids were unemployed because they weren't willing to become salarymen. And there has been real reform towards productivity since then.
Also, Japan’s Phillips Curve looks like Japan.
It is frozen at the exact size and breadth that US wanted to freeze it. Its a literal economic colony.
> But this is mostly because "sacrificing and hardworking" was a dumb thing to set up the country to be
It worked until 1991.
I very much recommedn reading about the Plaza Accords.
Up until recently, it was a given. In the case of Japan, there is some kind of feudal behavior of 'loyalty' that comes from the Zaibatsu culture. Which in itself descended from postwar Yakuza.
> We can't even stop Saudi Arabia from raising gas prices whenever they want to annoy us.
You used to. Until Russia & China built up enough defense industry and also started helping any country against US coups and color revolutions by providing intelligence.
I’ve already seen it happen, after legal claims using “lines of code” to assert ownership of the code base.
I've been let go earlier this year in spite of good performance reviews because they thought I'd probably do fine, but weren't 100% sure and they didn't want to take the financial risk of being "stuck" with me.
Coming from the ‘land of the free’ that’s basically anything.
They make 50% less. And they don't have to pay $1000 per head for private insurance, more for other insurance, $3000/month for being able to be a roommate in a 30 m2 apartment. Also they have disability, reasonable retirement, paid vacations and everything that are pretty much nonexistent for American employees.
We don’t even make that much by US coastal standards.
My retired grandparents have total monthly expenses of $3k but make $12k/mo from their pensions plus around a million in retirement accounts. Their entire careers they barely made more than the median household income and had kids.
The advantage of making a lot of money in expensive cities is you get an amazing deal when you pay “world rates” for things. But living in cheap medium size cities gives you an absolutely fucktonne of purchasing power. Our total monthly expenses including rent, utilities, internet, food, insurances, gas is less than $2.5k and we live in a nice well appointed flat.
If you are a professor, you are not one of the 'most of us'. For most, things are really that bad.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/americas-dirty-little-secret...
There are millions of working families where both parents and even children work and yet they still suffer hunger.
I know that you Americans use the word 'middle class' in place of 'working class'. No, a professor would not be 'working class'. Its lower upper class at the least. Both in Europe and the US.
Even for the public university case, the Europeans have benefits that you likely don't calculate. From getting state-subsidies per child to rent control to many different things. You shouldnt calculate the difference just over pension, medical and housing.
"Yeah, if you disregard all the poor people that struggle to stay alive, us rich people are generally much richer".
I think your exact statement is probably true. Because most European countries tries to distribute wealth in such a way that everyone gets to live, with food, healthcare, education and housing. And naturally that means that the 50% wealthiest in Europe are less wealthy than the 50% wealthiest in the US.
But the 50% poorest in Europe are much wealthier than the 50% poorest in the US.
For a software engineer, I’m not sure if the Netherlands makes sense. For everyone else, I’m almost certain it does.
https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1466794872648650752
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_pr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD_Better_Life_Index#2020
I think a more interesting point is that people in the UK and Japan specifically are poorer than you'd think they are. And they don't have working clothes dryers either.