361–370 of 567 posts
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He didn't live in Germany.
He actually lived in Berlin for a few years before he died. But you're right, he spent most of his life in Prague. However, his native language was German. Certainly an interesting man. I highly recommend checking some of his work (ie. The Metamorphosis).
One of the basic principals of the EU is freedom of movement between countries. One could argue that imposing such an onerous tax on moving to another EU country breaks this principal, so maybe worth a legal challenge - for someone with a lot to loose.
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Capital gains are theoretical. You do not have that as money, but the state does want it as money. They are not what someone paid for your assets, they are what someone THINKS someone else might pay. Most smaller companies cannot be sold easily, and of course, the government is unwilling to take that as the valuation being zero (because what someone is willing to pay right now is in fact zero). And the government is…
Perhaps the simple solution is to give those small business owners the option of selling their business to the government at whatever price the government feels it is worth. Any claim of valuation is really only meaningful as a purchase offer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capital gains are theoretical. You do not have that as money, but the state does want it as money. They are not what someone paid for your assets, they are what someone THINKS someone else might pay. Most smaller companies cannot be sold easily, and of course, the government is unwilling to take that as the valuation being zero (because what someone is willing to pay right now is in fact zero). And the government is…
Perhaps the simple solution is to give those small business owners the option of selling their business to the government at whatever price the government feels it is worth. Any claim of valuation is really only meaningful as a purchase offer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the simple solution is to give those small business owners the option of selling their business to the government at whatever price the government feels it is worth. Any claim of valuation is really only meaningful as a purchase offer.
Or, and hear me out here, we cut state spending to sustainable levels so the government doesn’t have to regard us as walking dollar signs
The labor force is shrinking (especially if you look at it in terms of how many hours of labor are performed, irrespective of who does it, or when). In other words, the German government has sold the labors of Germans for about the next 15-25 years ... and Germans aren't able to actually do the work that has already been sold. Someone is about to get very badly burnt, and so there is a big fight who takes the loss. The government has the guns, doesn't want to pay, in fact they want big companies to keep delivering their goods. So those government guns will be aimed ... at workers. The only ones they can be aimed at without BIG consequences for the people with the guns.
So, now, under current taxation, the government has to more than triple any increases in taxation, which they need to just maintain current services. Once to pay for what the government needs. Once to pay back the principle of the loans they already made. Once to cover the interest on those loans (because 20 years loans on average at about 3%, let's say total interest coast over the length of the loan is about 100%). And on top of that they have to add what they need to pay extra due to labor force shrinking. In other words, elected representatives are going to find that they both have to do A LOT extra in new taxes for any initiatives and even if they raise taxes the effect of that will not nearly be what they expect.
And taxation on labor is already essentially 50%, so obviously percentage increases are going to be incredibly unpopular. Plus there's the additional difficulty that the problem is not money. It is that the very real assets behind money (ie. work, performed by a human) are becoming scarcer, while the drain on those resources (the welfare state, ie. old people) is increasing.
For the next 20 years, minimum (the time it takes to go from newborn to productive citizen), the government has to shrink the services they provide, at least in terms of labor. And since people aren't about to have another baby boom, it's going to be longer. Oh, and I would much appreciate if the German government managed to do this without putting the Nazis back in power.
And this is a worldwide phenomenon, modified by immigration and modified by a few years depending on the exact country, so you can bet your firstborn quite a few parties are going to get elected on the message "we'll just steal it from our neighbors militarily", like the Palestinians are doing. But this approach is on the cusp of becoming really, really popular worldwide. So it's not really that Trump is causing 100 wars worldwide, it's having a totally unsustainable system: either people need to be accept a lot less than they currently have, or they can go to war and make it FAR worse. Needless to say, it is a certainty they'll want to go to war.
And btw, as I pointed out, this is not a money problem. It is a problem of labor resources. It is about the amount of labor, not the division. So every system has the same problem: nothing can be solved by switching from/to capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, ... as no system is able to create labor, only redivide who labors and who gets the rewards. None of these systems increase the amount of labor and so the welfare state is doomed under every system.
TLDR: the government has to spend about 50% less per 20 years. Not in terms of money, but in terms of actual people working for government (including hospitals, schools, eldery homes, ...). 50% of government jobs have to disappear for every 20 years this lasts, and at least once.
You would think this would make the government invest a massive amount in AI and robotics, anything required, in the last years they can maintain spending without extreme pain. But, of course, nothing remotely like that is happening.
Uhm correct me if I'm wrong, but… you can sell your stake and leave at will, with zero exit tax? So really, the only thing that the exit tax prevents is the company leaving the country. And you know, every time someone brings up taxing the rich, people object that this would cause capital flight. Well, capital flight is exactly what the exit tax prevents. The capital stays in the country. And likening that to the Ber…
Yes, it is literally an option, you dunce. There is no law requiring you to keep ownership of a business. You might not like that option very well, but it is an option, which is infinitely better than the denizens of the GDR got.
Man, this post got my blood boiling with its callous stupidity.
The crazy thing is that as a business owner (GmbH/AG) you can’t even move to another EU country any more since 2022. As the owner of such a company it feels like I have become a slave of the government.
Norway also has crazy exit tax and wealth tax. I heard lots of complaints that this system makes it almost impossible to build a decent vc-driven tech startup.
However it also prevents hoarding wealth, which in turn prevents special interest groups and some forms of election manipulation. Balancing taxes for fairness and innovation is quite tricky...
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/04/01/wealth-inequali...
The developed world is increasingly facing a funding crisis brought on by this propaganda that if we tax corporations and the very wealthy then they'll leave. One of the most farcical examples of this is the decades-long race to the bottom on business taxes and incentives between Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. For the non-Americans out there, this is basically one city but it sits at the border of two…
Why are taxes so high though? Like in Sweden I'd pay literally 80% tax on extra sole trader income - 30% employer tax, 30% income tax, 20% high income tax. But there is no Swedish moon base, or ultra high speed rail, etc. - where does it all go? We have higher taxes but less infrastructure investment than a century ago.
You can probably find more detailed breakdowns if you're really interested. But overall, most expenditures are probably in the categories healthcare, transfers to lower-incomes and education, like in most other European countries, and you probably won't find anything nefarious by looking into more detailed splits.
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Why can't businesses be owned by people that: - enjoy owning and managing a business - do think that owning and managing a business should come with the same compensation as any other dayjob (hairdresser or whatever) While managing a large amount of money naturally lead people to have enough to buy luxury items, IMO, this is just a sad fact of our world, and we should fight against it.
They can and frequently such people are; but they aren't very obvious because they stop while the business is still small. If we don't harness greed into doing something productive then there isn't enough motivation in the world to power a modern industrial society. People like Bezos would just sit around running a local bakery or something instead. The way the system works is people who create unfathomable amounts o…
And we may be better off as a society? The problem with greed is that it can be very destructive and has high costs for the society and environment. Thus, how much greed is constrained is in the end kind of a social contract.