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German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

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Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#211

Post by greenavocado »

mikestew wrote: post #188
greenavocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it). If you can't pay it al…

I'm sure this was meant as a "oh, it's not so bad in the U. S." type post. But I read it, and am reminded of what a suck-ass system the U. S. has. Sure, almost everything said is true. But let's reiterate: 1. One might pay up to $15K out-of-pocket for childbirth. 2. If you can't pay it, you have to go out-of-band to seek a non-standard procedure of taking care of the debt. The system is not otherwise built to handle…

Yes, the situation is bad.

Anyway, comparing earning 175k USD to 162.37k EUR:

Germany, married with 2 children, Stay At Home Mom Scenario, Tax Category 3, Berlin Region:

Solidarity + Salary Tax is EUR 40.428,00 Pension Insurance: 8.314,20 € Unemployment Insurance: 1.162,20 € Care Insurance: 900,45 €

Total: 50.805 € = $54,706 before health insurance

Virginia, USA, same scenario as above, incl. 2 child tax credit of $4000, four state exemptions: FICA + Federal + State Tax - Child Care Credit: $44,162-$4,000 = $40,162 before health insurance

Germany costs $14,544 a year more for a family with two kids before health insurance. To be fair though, the differences are lesser for most Germans, as almost no common jobs pay over 120k EUR gross.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#212

Post by burnerthrow008 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #166
greenavocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it). If you can't pay it al…

> INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. In Germany all of that is being covered by the government insurance scheme. The only thing you have to pay is stuff like a private room for postnatal recovery time [1]. Oh and you get a very long time paid post birth to recover and bond with your child. No such nonsense as giving birth and having to work the next day like it's common in th…

> In Germany all of that is being covered by the government insurance scheme.

Ok, but you agree, don't you, that $3000 is quite different from "parents have to pay five digits worth of money just for the birth of a child"? That is off by an order of magnitude.

> No such nonsense as giving birth and having to work the next day like it's common in the US.

I think you should stop consuming so much media from Russia Today :) Or maybe re-consider the trustworthiness of wherever you read that.

The fact is that, at the federal level, Americans may take 12 weeks (unpaid) time off work after giving birth under the FMLA, and it is prohibited to retaliate against an employee for taking that time.

Additionally, the majority of Americans live in states which mandate paid time off after giving birth, (usually 8 to 12 weeks) plus additional unpaid time. California, to use the most populous state as an example, mandates 8 weeks of paid time, plus 28 weeks unpaid. New York, on the opposite side of the country, goes even farther by mandating 12 weeks paid time.

Part of the reason you may be confused is that this is not always explicitly named as "maternity time". It is often called as "disability leave", and nearly all disability statutes include recovery from pregnancy as a disability.

Unless you are maybe trying to argue that Europeans are legally prohibited to work the day after giving birth, you are way off base here.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#213

Post by burnerthrow008 »

Ringz wrote: post #140
greenavocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it). If you can't pay it al…

> INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. Free of charge in Germany > If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything abo…

> In Germany, insurance covers everything over 0€. [...] If expenses for illnesses exceed a certain amount in a year (about 3000€), it can be deducted from taxes

But how can you have anything to deduct if insurance covers everything over $0?

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#214

Post by Scharkenberg »

dkekenflxlf wrote: post #138
greenavocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything above it). If you can't pay it al…

500-1000 USD per month for a WHOLE family is fucking cheap!? In Germany, i'm paying more than 1150€ per month as single (and im not privately insured but publicly)

1150? That's literally impossible. The current maximum is about 1050. See "2024 Höchstbeitrag GKV inkl. Pflegeversicherung (ohne Kinder)".

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#215

Post by Beijinger »

Scharkenberg wrote: post #210
Beijinger wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a decent education system that's largely free and accessible for everyone" I give your Universities a 2-3 (On a scale 1 Top, 5 fail). High schools are getting worse and worse due to the immigrants. So you would want to send your kid to a school without many immigrants, mainly due to language barriers. "a decent healthcare system" Again, I give you a 2-3. More and more people are sucking services, fewer people pay in…

Can you cite your sources? This literally sounds like regurgitated shit from far-right politicians rather than thought-out analysis based on real statistics. In fact I would go so far as to suspect astroturfing.

Yes sure. For German articles please use google translate.

1. a) 0 Universities among the top 10: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universiti... (In most other rankings, German universities rank much worse)

b) sinking high school performance: https://www.oecd.org/publication/pisa-2022-results/country-n... The collapse coincides with the arrival of refugees under Merkel....

c) Many immigrants in school. Hint: You can't teach math or chemistry if the majority of the kids don't speak German https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/integration-an-manchen-schule...

2. a) Currently don't find a better article. Biggest problem compared to China. Germany has the same tracks for bullet trains, local trains and freight trains. Often the bullet trains run a 120 or 160 km/h https://www.businessinsider.de/tech/warum-es-ultraschnelle-z...

b) Switzerland complaining that German late trains destroying their time tables: https://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/schweizer-experte-droht-d...

3.)

a) Waiting for several months (around 6, based on own experience) to see a specialist: https://www.sr.de/sr/sr3/themen/panorama/saarland_warten_auf...

b) Retirement, as percentage of former income, EU comparison: https://www.merkur.de/leben/geld/deutschland-rente-vergleich...

Forgot the last point:

4. Examples https://www.bw24.de/baden-wuerttemberg/neid-debatte-vermiete... https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/fluechtlinge-dubiose-geschaef...

And personal experience from friends of mine who are landlords.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#216

Post by discopicante »

meroes wrote: post #171
ArmandGrillet wrote: post #37

Finally. Germany combines some of the worst aspects of the US (credit ranking, complicated abortion process, private healthcare if you want decent treatments) with the worst aspects of Europe (low digitalization, high taxation, recursive federalism: within the country and within the EU). A country like the Netherlands has its own issues (mainly housing) but doesn't have the myriad of pain points you can find in Germa…

400€ for medical, dental, and optical combined you mean. And less for students. And you conveniently leave out their 4 week minimum vacation time/year. (my sis and her BIL just moved from there, and help people move there). Digitalization is really behind yes, and homeownership is even more expensive than the US. But rent is almost half the US and groceries are cheaper. And instead of subsidizing full sized pickup tr…

Now compare median income of Germany vs US. Economic opportunity is fading away in Germany. Also, pretty much all cars - especially Audis, VWs, etc are (20-30%) more expensive in Germany vs US.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#217

Post by autoexec »

Nextgrid wrote: post #196
261582335426158 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point to add is that (at least) 2 points must be true for this positive side of market to show: 1) There should be "forces" counterbalancing the move toward monopolies 2) It should be okay for the service to fail/die and/or it should degrade gracefully. For example book publishing is a wonderful field that can gain from free market dynamics while prison management is a terrible field for free market dynamics.…

The same factor that makes private prisons problematic also makes taxation problematic - in both cases you've got a captive market that can't opt out thus no pressure to provide a good, efficient service. In a hypothetical world where inmates could choose whether to remain in prison and which one to be in, private prisons would be competing for service quality. Actually we've got that, they're just called "hotels". I…

> The same factor that makes private prisons problematic also makes taxation problematic - in both cases you've got a captive market that can't opt out thus no pressure to provide a good, efficient service.

What you should have are companies that offer their best prices/services to the government out of fear that they'll be passed over and those highly valuable contracts will be awarded to their competitors who do better. Governments are incentivized to select the best companies to award those contracts to because they risk being voted out if people are unhappy with the level of service they're getting for their tax dollars.

Prisoners can't kick politicians out of office when they're unhappy about the state of the prisons so that's a huge issue with prisons in general, but private prisons have another issue which is profit. Whatever it costs to keep dangerous people locked up, private prisons need all of that money plus they must extract a bunch of extra money from the public just to stuff their pockets with. If private prisons want to keep prices low to the public but also want to keep filling their pockets with money they need to provide substandard care to the people they are responsible for. A non-private prison needs only what it costs to do the job and nothing more.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#218

Post by pjmlp »

hocuspocus wrote: post #180
pjmlp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I was actually living there, 2003 - 2004, it was only the painful interview process as if applying for a job, but I didn't had to provide anything else.

Debt collection records were definitely a thing 20 years ago. But it sounds like you were dealing with an individual landlord, that's kinda rare. They might be more willing to use common sense and not ask useless documents from someone who just arrived in the country. On the other hand, big property management companies will typically not bother with an application that doesn't tick all the boxes.

Being at CERN helped, it wasn't individuals, but it took about three months, and several attempts.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#219

Post by xen0 »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
f6v wrote: post #6

I don’t know how it’s in other countries, but Schufa is a monopolist and feels like simply paying a tax. You have no choice. Interestingly, I didn’t need a credit check to rent in Belgium and Denmark.

I only know something like Schufa here in Germany, never needed something like that in Portugal, UK, France, Switzerland.

In the UK at least, credit reports largely happen behind the scenes, and potential landlords etc cannot perform a full credit search. With your permission they can perform a 'soft' search (have you declared bankruptcy or do you have any County Court Judgements) and they may not charge you for doing this.

Further, as of GDPR, you are entitled to all information from the agencies for free. Prior, you could obtain it for a small fee (£2 by post if my memory serves me correctly).

As far as I'm concerned, SCHUFA is basically a scam I am compelled to fall for whenever I want to rent somewhere.

Re: German credit agency earns millions through unlawful customer manipulation

#220

Post by Ringz »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #213
Ringz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> INOVA in Northern Virginia charges $3000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth. They have a code which rolls up many services into that code. There are additional in-hospital expenses such as the newborn hearing test which aggregate to about $400. Free of charge in Germany > If you have insurance your maximum cost out of pocket for the calendar year is between 5 and 15 thousand dollars (insurance covers everything abo…

> In Germany, insurance covers everything over 0€. [...] If expenses for illnesses exceed a certain amount in a year (about 3000€), it can be deducted from taxes But how can you have anything to deduct if insurance covers everything over $0?

You can go to a private doctor even if you are not in a „private insurance“ and pay him by yourself (Selbstzahler). He can prescribe meds which are not covered by the public insurance. So you have to pay them by yourself. That’s just one example.
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