snehk

Two claims in my post:

1) > They're pretty much the only capital city in the developed world that's a burden and not a benefit to the country as a whole.

https://www.iwkoeln.de/presse/iw-nachrichten/matthias-dierme...

2) > Then they do things like free daycare paid for by other states in the country while those states can't offer it.

Look up "Länderfinanzausgleich" and then look up daycare programs and compare them. None of the net payers get even remotely the same even though they're the ones actually paying for it.

Both statements are objectively true.

That's no surprise. Berlin loves free things that others have paid for. They're pretty much the only capital city in the developed world that's a burden and not a benefit to the country as a whole. It's pretty embarrassing. Then they do things like free daycare paid for by other states in the country while those states can't offer it.

You're spending your own money. I'm pretty sure that if there was one member of your family that didn't have money for food or medicine, you'd spend it there instead of donating it, wouldn't you?

You can't trust those numbers, though. If you get drunk and jump into a river and drown it's counted as a heat related death.

Nope.

I wonder why Poland doesn't have these problems even though everyone uses social media including teens.

> So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced?

Ensure that the prices decrease for people with existing contracts. The hatred comes from people being told that it's better and cheaper now while the price is significantly higher than before.

If I didn't have solar panels on my roof that basically cover all my energy needs, I'd be absolutely furious seeing politicians pat themselves on the back for shutting down nuclear power plants and talking about how energy is now cheaper at some foreign exchange where I can not buy while I pay more and more every month.

> my provider only produces green energy. But in the past raising gas prices would have also raised my prices, regardless. So yes, regular consumers can profit from this.

It's one single grid. You get coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and everything else. If you buy from a provider, you get that mix.

Has this benefitted the regular/average consumer?

Nope. They pay more than they were with the "old" energy mix of more gas and nuclear.

Telling people it could be worse isn't really something to be proud of.

I personally now have solar panels on the roof and a heat pump so we only use electricity and don't rely on gas. Germany's strategy is really beneficial to households like my own. Unless you're relatively well off or on benefits, you're losing big time. The costs are constantly increasing with people telling others to just take money (you don't have) to install some solar panels on the house (you don't own) or buy an electric car (you can't afford).

People understand that this has nothing to do with the wellbeing of any teenager, right? This is only about establishing a mechanism to prevent individuals from doing things online. Why do people fall for the "protect the children"-lines again and again?

My point was that they don't get funding to pray and instead provide real medical services.

Not sure how it is in the US but in Germany there are many faith-based entities providing regular health services. Malteser would be one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malteser_Hilfsdienst_e.V.

Sure but that also means that if women in countries like Afghanistan just weren't so inherently weak, they could enjoy so many more freedoms.

Google the following:

Friedrich Merz insult – house search (2024)

"Pimmel" tweet and Andy Grote complaint (2021)

Robert Habeck "Schwachkopf" meme case (2024 / 2025)

They're all politicians. Houses were raided in all cases.

People's homes get raided and their belongings get taken away for daring to insult the ruling class or for making fun of them.

The poster explained it. The government secretly silencing voices behind closed doors is pretty evil. Or is that only when Russia does it?

But the things mentioned in the post above yours have nothing to do with telemetry. They're more like core functions to make the system work at all.

Australia hat a similar situation. They cut that number down to basically zero when they publicly announced that no one entering Australia that way would ever be able to settle in Australia in any way.

> "7 months of prison for a meme"

Quotation marks are usually used if you quote someone. Not if you make up additional things in your head that a person supposedly said.

> Yet to many Europeans the idea that free expression is under threat seems odd. Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice.

A journalist in Germany was just sentenced to seven months for posting a meme of a politician where she holds up a sign saying "I hate free speech".

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nancy-faeser-afd-...

Neither does the US (President or PM, which they don't have). ;)

No, it's not good for most people. It's only good for those who rely on welfare programs. It's not sustainable as the money has to come from somewhere. The government has never before seen tax revenue but they still cannot pay the bills and they constantly come up with new ideas to take more money from people.

Let me give you an example. Regular workers in Germany pay for health insurance - people on welfare don't. It's paid for by the government. The government raised welfare payments and promised the insurance companies that they'd cover the costs of insurance for those on welfare. The government then said "Well, we'll pay amount x" but amount x is not enough. The insurance companies now need money so they've raised the rates for every working person to make up for this.

Because the government continues to expand social welfare programs.

If others are just as capable, then there's no need to change any of the requirements, right? Why is it happening then?

And a true Scotsman would know this.

You cannot trust this article. Just check out the cases where they basically tell poor people that euthanasia is always an option. It's horrible. If they don't talk about where the program goes horribly wrong, we shouldn't listen to them when they talk about the supposed positives.

> [...] so customers who got screwed need to sue and win individually for the same issue which is favorable for the companies doing the screwing as without the precedent of common law

This is factually false.

> (some) Rental agreements, internet, telco and gym memberships are my favorite infamous examples. They're almost universally regarded as anti-consumer, with tonnes of sketchy clauses, but German lawmakers do nothing to improve that for the consumer.

Any examples here? The fact that contracts like these, if you forgot to cancel them, can only renew for one month is better than anything I've seen anywhere else. Also that you must be able to cancel anything online with the click of a button if the contract was made online. Add that to the fact that any clause is worthless if it includes something a reasonable person wouldn't expect. I don't know many countries that actually enforce this - Germany does all the time.

The whole law should have been forcing sites to not ignore DoNotTrack bworser settings. It's a prime example of the EU being utterly useless because they don't understand the underlying issue and then choose a "solution" that's as much in your face as possible but doesn't change anything about the original problem. It's the whole plastic straw thing in digital form.

"Your grandpa/dad was able to support a family on a single income, have two cars, a house and a nice vacation every year and you struggle to pay for food and a place to live? That's a lie. Look at these stats, dummy."