731–740 of 1001 posts
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A very good summary. There's also more Nazis in America than in Germany, and more far-right hatred in general.
There aren't Nazis anywhere in any quantity you should worry about, turn off the CNN
I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…
I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for…
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The impression I got from the last time I was in Germany (some ~7 years ago), there's a going concern among at least some people that a certain ethnicity of immigrants is "taking over". This might be a pearl-clutching minority, or I may have completely misread the situation.
There seems to be a growing frustration about asylum seekers who moved to Germany and did not adopt German values, a theme you will find in every country. It's scary because the party that complains the most about it is gaining traction, and it convinces centrist parties to change their stance on immigration. It's not a pearl-clutching minority anymore, but a politically advantageous position. As an immigrant, I feel…
If you are not doing any of that is that really that surprising that people are getting fed up with it?
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The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decr…
If the German government did "austerity" they wouldn't need half my wage to spend on literal nonsense. Look at the budget over the last decades, as if there wasn't enough money...
I've never actually looked at the German budget (quasi B1 deutschkenntnisse and no training in economics, what would I get from reading them?), what I can say is that it's very easy to fall into the trap described by Chesterton's fence and call for the removal of things because you don't understand them, not because they're actually bad.
For example, someone I used to know in the UK said much the same about his taxes paying for schools, just because he personally didn't have kids.
My wife is Italian and wanted to get married in her small home town. In order for her to get married to an American in her home town required paperwork that bordered on the Kafkaesque. We had to show up at the Italian embassy in Washington DC (fortunately we live there!) with proof and witnesses that I was not already married, plus another ten pages of forms. We had multiple stages of notorization. And we had to have forms signed by other witnesses vouching for the truthfulness of our witnesses. In Italy we had to draw up a long declaration of vows in italian -- in Italy, a wedding is a contract -- and then even though I wrote the vows myself in Italian, just because I am American we had to have it translated by someone else back into English, by hand, just so I understood the vows I had myself written. We then had to contract someone to read the vows out loud in English at the ceremony so I understood my own words.
At every step on the way, the bureaucrats apologized for the bureaucracy and asked us the same question, over and over and over again: "Why don't you just get married in the US?"
Don't get me started on the *hilarious* complexity of getting a Permesso di Soggiorno (sort of an Italian Green Card) this year. I applied this past July and there are still more steps to do.
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I had my first LLC in grade school over a summer. I didn’t make a ton of money, but I did earn enough for my first real computer, which launched my interest in programming. When my wife started her current business as a consultant, she was living off her savings from teaching high school. If you think every entrepreneur has €25k of capital, you need to reevaluate what your country thinks of entrepreneurship.
As explained in the article, if you don't have 25k€ of capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a much simpler process.
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> It must put limited liability out of reach of so many people. That's the entire point. The concept that any idiot can start an LLC with no collateral (which the 25k are) is completely, absolutely, mind bogglingly bonkers to us Germans. Sounds like a scam imo.
I don't fully understand the comment you've made. Why do you believe it to be bonkers or a scam to allow no-capital limited liability firms? It effectively puts the entire country into a position where unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they have to perform labour for someone else for several years while they save up enough to start their own business. Who does the system benefit? What is it preventing? Why…
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You're misinformed. Second highest tax burden [1], in Europe and the OECD [2]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/tax-burden-on-labo... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/tax-burden-labor-europ...
Never trust a conservative think tank on taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Foundation >Payroll taxes are typically flat-rate taxes levied on wages and are in addition to the taxes on income. In most OECD countries, both the employer and the employee pay payroll taxes. These taxes usually fund specific social programs, such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, and old age insurance. Social security and…
>Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
This is wrong. Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions. The German pension system is effectively bankrolled every year with the tax money.
>If you would replace social security and pension contributions by private insurances with the same costs people wouldn't have more money available but the Germany's index position would be better.
This is also wrong. The other countries have social security (For example: Australia). Unlike Germany, they don't charge for public pension separately. The contributions are included in the income tax. So it makes perfect sense to include it in the total tax burden for Germany.
[1]-https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-germany.pdf
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A country that is incredibly rich in historical significance (both good and bad), cultural traditions, art (historical and modern), regional variety and nature. Cities are walkable, public transport is mostly decent (it's perfectly fine to live without a car if you're in the city), crime is low, poverty is low, the economy has been tanking a bit recently, but has traditionally been doing well. In terms of mentality,…
Don't forget bread. Whenever I travel to the US I'm appalled by what is considered good bread there. Not throwing shade here, it's just what it is. On the flipside, buying Avocados here in Germany is akin to a crime against humanity.