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Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

politico.eu

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Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#191

Post by candiodari »

jacquesm wrote: post #126
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of these fines they have to compensate and pay damages to everyone involved though, they've reserved €1.3 billion for that. The issue affected 30.000 parents, 70.000 children; there were 8000 divorces. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire has a lot of information, but it's in Dutch; the English version of this article isn't as fleshed out.

Quite a lot of the damage is irreparable through monetary compensation. Children placed in institutions or with adoptive families because their parents ended up being destitute for instance. Suicides.

You can compensate lost years. A lot year costs the victim that year in

1) support costs for themselves (if they can't go back to the parents, this is of course a lot more than it would have been had there never been an intervention)

2) (if applicable) education costs (including the need to go for more expensive education due to age. For example, going for secondary education when already 20 years old costs a lot more than doing it at 15)

3) lost pay. This is years that they cannot work and earn, and counterintuitively this is the pay of the LAST years they're working

Of course CPS really prefers offloading all the usually massive costs of their "help" onto the children.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#192

Post by candiodari »

yunohn wrote: post #22
chekibreki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you’re not mixing up the Netherlands with Ireland?

No, I’m not. Most of these companies also have incorporated in Ireland alongside the Netherlands to exploit this loophole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich > Ireland has the BEPS tools to enable US IP-heavy multinationals to reroute global profits into Ireland, tax-free. The Netherlands then enables these Irish profits to get to a classical tax haven (e.g. the Cayman Islands or Jersey) without incurring…

> corruption has enabled these companies to construct confusing and elaborate ways of avoiding their fair share of taxes.

But these are the actions OF THE STATE, not of said companies. Oh and if you think rerouting profits through Ireland is scandalous you should check out Royal Dutch Shell and their tax deal. And it's not just the Netherlands that does that, presidential Total does the same. And BP. But please don't think this is limited to oil companies, they're just the biggest fish in the pond. Their profits and payouts make Google look like a children's bank account, and WHO they go to is very telling.

https://www.reuters.com/article/global-oil-tax-havens-idUSKB...

States themselves, the people that make up the state, want to avoid taxes even more than multinationals do. You want this to stop? Your enemies are Royal Families, presidential Families (in France), dynasties in supreme courts of countries in the EU, political parties, ... these sorts of people. When it comes to payouts, by the way, these state companies make FANGs look like children's bank accounts.

And I would like to point out one major difference: these multinational billionnaires have at least done something for us, however ambivalent we may feel about their ethics. Dutch Royals have NEVER dug up any oil or so much as initiated a single green initiative at Shell. They have abused their power to get shares of these companies, and that's the sum total of their contribution. There is no ambivalence about ethics here: the people benefitting from these state cash cow companies have never contributed anything at all to these companies, nor do they intend to.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#193

Post by rocqua »

einpoklum wrote: post #179
rocqua wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame people who did not weigh this problem heavy enough in their decisions. I also personally blame people who voted VVD and CDA in general, but that is a wider and more personal judgement.

Well, I lean Anarchist and am not a Dutch citizen, but while living in the Netherlands for a couple of years as a post-doc, I was also disheartened to see the Dutch right-wing that dominant in national politics. Do you believe that, say, a GroenLinks-led coalition would have handled this much better?

I could imagine GroenLinks also not being up to the task of getting the bureaucracy to 'do the right thing'. But they would be honest about their own failure and keep trying, perhaps taking drastic measures.

Their honesty about their failure might mean they lose power too soon for a culture shift in the bureaucracy to actually occur.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#194

Post by jmopp »

yunohn wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes. Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc

What makes it worse is that the top bracket for income tax kicks in around €68k per annum, and is 49.5%

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#195

Post by hypertele-Xii »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #77
Kaotique wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…

You will never get bureaucracy out of Europe anymore, it is a done deal. Worse, surveillance will be extremely expanded with the AI act and police forces will be consolidated. Of course that won't help against criminal cases like this at all. It is truly the old continent by now. Taxes must be so high because the system will leech all that money, such schemes will be just a side note.

Good. Bureaucracy is what protects us from hypercapitalists raping our planet's environment for personal gain. European standards are stricter and produce cleaner everything from food to appliances to cars. Our lives are generally better in every way and for less money sunk, even accounting for supposedly higher taxes.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#196

Post by raxxorraxor »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #195
raxxorraxor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will never get bureaucracy out of Europe anymore, it is a done deal. Worse, surveillance will be extremely expanded with the AI act and police forces will be consolidated. Of course that won't help against criminal cases like this at all. It is truly the old continent by now. Taxes must be so high because the system will leech all that money, such schemes will be just a side note.

Good. Bureaucracy is what protects us from hypercapitalists raping our planet's environment for personal gain. European standards are stricter and produce cleaner everything from food to appliances to cars. Our lives are generally better in every way and for less money sunk, even accounting for supposedly higher taxes.

That is an illusion about the current situation, European politicians have the closest relations to industry and are far easier lobbied than decentral governments and bureaucracy can act as a defense of established actors. Privacy laws are build with contacts from Google and Facebook. Once the relation is established you will never get rid of this anymore.

Exchange some popular issue for access to user data, the same that happened with telephone providers. Just be realistic about it.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#197

Post by puffoflogic »

When are we going to bite the bullet and require governmental licensing for algorithms? I know HN hates the idea because we're all too busy using algorithms to ruin people's lives for profit, but it needs to happen and it will happen sooner or later.
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