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German government comes out against Chat Control

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#501

Post by [deleted] »

gambiting wrote: post #427
alexey-salmin wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Germany, but in France for 100k gross salary, the employer social contributions will be around 40k, the employee social contributions another 20.5k, then 15.5k income tax. In the end 140k that employer pays result in less than 64k take-home salary. The real tax rate is around 54%. So, I can't verify what OP says about Germany but I can easily believe it. You can see chatgpt calculations here (and t…

Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k" Is not your salary. This is what the employer has to pay to keep you. So even in your example your tax on your earnings is around 35%. The fact that the employer has to pay another 40k to keep you employed is......well, shocking, but I wouldn't say that's a tax rate on your earnings - for the…

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#502

Post by janderson215 »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #497
miroljub wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AfD is consistently the pro-choice and pro-personal-freedom party in Germany. They are the only party advocating for an unrestricted American-style free speech and against all kinds of government mandates that other mainstream political parties are pushing. You may disagree (or agree) with many of their other views, but as an opposition party, they are precisely the corrective Germany and Europe need to keep the powe…

They voted to ban the terms vegan sausage and vegan burger just earlier today. So much about being pro free speech. Votes by party affiliation and name to verify this can be accessed here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2025-10-...

As an American currently in Germany, the food situation is soooo much better here and they would do well to not allow incorrect or misleading labels on consumer products. I understand what you’re saying about censorship, but this is a pretty weak example, IMO. We had something similar in the US with attempts to ban the word “milk” from “almond milk” [0]. Are there other examples that are more egregious?

[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/almond-milk-can-keep...

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#503

Post by 87586754506086 »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #497
miroljub wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AfD is consistently the pro-choice and pro-personal-freedom party in Germany. They are the only party advocating for an unrestricted American-style free speech and against all kinds of government mandates that other mainstream political parties are pushing. You may disagree (or agree) with many of their other views, but as an opposition party, they are precisely the corrective Germany and Europe need to keep the powe…

They voted to ban the terms vegan sausage and vegan burger just earlier today. So much about being pro free speech. Votes by party affiliation and name to verify this can be accessed here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PV-10-2025-10-...

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#504

Post by deaux »

AdamN wrote: post #354
angry_octet wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- All your fellow citizens keep voting for said welfare state/pension system (which is undoubtedly pro-Boomer and has unsustainably low retirement ages and large benefits). - The lack of energy security is because the Red/Greens convinced everywhere except France (go Framatome!) to give up nuclear. I wonder why resource rich Russia would push such an outcome... - Europe needs to spend its savings to get nuclear going…

The nuclear energy thing is a lark. The German nuclear base was already old and minimal by the time those decisions were made (unless you're talking about Greens in the 90s - but they barely had any power). Fundamentally Fukushima happened and Merkel realized that the blast radius of full sized nuclear plants is too big for Germany and there's no expectation that Germany has better controls than Japan had. Anyway, nu…

> Merkel realized that the blast radius of full sized nuclear plants is too big for Germany and there's no expectation that Germany has better controls than Japan had.

Unfortunate that she didn't realize that Germany does have less devastating earthquakes and tsunamis than Japan has. Less as in effectively zero.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#505

Post by deaux »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #365
geremiiah wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but lol. Germany even makes you pay to be able to piss in a toilet. Even public libraries aren't free! And let's not mention the health care system, which literally has two tiers, one for the poor and one for the rich, with of course the poor-tier being barely functional, and still expensive as fuck. "Social market economy" my ass. Germany is a country led by incompetent extremely paternalistic leaders, the ma…

> Even public libraries aren't free! Because they aren't public. They are provided by a company. > And let's not mention the health care system, which literally has two tiers, one for the poor and one for the rich, with of course the poor-tier being barely functional, and still expensive as fuck This is because of inefficiency, an aging demographic and regulation, not because of capitalism. The "system for the rich"…

> This is because of inefficiency, an aging demographic and regulation, not because of capitalism.

The Korean healthcare system has a much worse aging demographic as well tons of regulations, being nothing like e.g. the US.

Yet in terms of "system for the poor" the difference with Germany could hardly be bigger.

To blame it on those is straight up wrong, in that it's an oversimplification of a complex topic to such a degree that it no longer makes sense.

This goes for nearly all of the discussion in this thread, for what it's worth. On these topics sociocultural and historical factors that aren't simply represented by "regulations" or "current tax burden" or "demographics" have an enormous impact.

It's the classic STEM, and especially CS, mistake, so it's no wonder HN is full of it on any governance-related topic. And I say this as a CS guy myself. As a group, we are predisposed to the idea that a set of rules, regulations and statistics leads to a certain set of real-world outcomes. The reality could hardly be less true.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#506

Post by alexey-salmin »

gambiting wrote: post #447
alexey-salmin wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k". Is not your salary. I don't know, maybe you should speak more to people about this. Literally everyone who I discussed it with (like dozens of people) see it in the same way: * There's the money your employer spends to pay your salary * There's the money you take home * Everything in betwee…

Well obviously, yes, but again, I don't know anyone who looks at it this way. If your salary is £100k and you know your effective tax rate is 35% then you're taking home £65k a year. I don't know how much on top of that my employer is paying in contributions, if it's another £100k on top or zero - and frankly I don't really care? The negotiated salary is £100k/pa and that's what anyone uses as a number of their compe…

No, I'm sorry but this is just pointless, arguing about some technicality like "you can't call that income". That doesn't matter, these are just words.

What matters in real life is the size of the cut the government gets from the employee-employer transaction. That cut definitely includes all the "employer contributions". The bigger it is, the less the employee gets.

And no, it's not the same as the cost of buying the desk. If would be the same if the state prohibited remote work making a desk a necessity and then forced everyone to buy desks from state-owned providers at the price set by the state. In this case -- yes, absolutely, this becomes a "desk tax" which is eating into your income.

UPD Since you insist, I'll address this part too:

> I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?

I'll go to my boss directly and say that "my income is now smaller than it should be" and ask for increase in gross. If this doesn't work out, I'll go and get an offer elsewhere. Knowing how hiring and budgeting works, this is the only sane course of action. Companies suddenly find them with money they've already budgeted but aren't spending, expect the arms race for professions with high demand.

In parallel to that I'll make sure to distribute raises to key members of my team anticipating them doing the same. I'll lose a few less valuable members of the team in the process because they'll receive offers that I won't be willing to counter.

In general, I pay more attention to what people do, not what they say. This is why I didn't reply to the question "you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?" the first time -- it's inconsequential, but we can consider it if you like.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#507

Post by czottmann »

miroljub wrote: post #472
razemio wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AfD has f'd up views on many things. I wouldn't even be surprised if they would vote for it, as soon as they are in a position of power. However in its current state, they would hurt themselfs with a chat control law. So yes, your a right. I would also not expect them to vote for it.

AfD is consistently the pro-choice and pro-personal-freedom party in Germany. They are the only party advocating for an unrestricted American-style free speech and against all kinds of government mandates that other mainstream political parties are pushing. You may disagree (or agree) with many of their other views, but as an opposition party, they are precisely the corrective Germany and Europe need to keep the powe…

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#508

Post by valkmit »

gambiting wrote: post #487
selfmodruntime wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is not your salary. It IS your salary. If the employer didn't pay it, YOU would have to pay it anyway. If you are a freelancer, you will have to pay that employers share anyway. It's the cost of social security systems, and someone has to pay it: You. With your work hours and salary.

>>It IS your salary. If the employer didn't pay it, YOU would have to pay it anyway. So if the government reduced the share that the employers pay down to zero tomorrow, would you then go to your partner/family/friends and say "hey, I just got a paycut at work" ?

When you are negotiating payment for any good and service, you care only what the end cost is to you.

It doesn't matter how you decide to slice it - "this share you pay, this share I pay" at the end of the day it will be seen through the lens of Total Cost of Ownership.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#509

Post by tvier »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #369
tvier wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not. You come to my house, you follow my rules, you come to our country you follow our values, simple I wish it was this simple, so badly, but that strategy has been tried many times before and it always ends in violence. First off, who is "our"? Is it the majority? That leaves every minority group vulnerable. Is it the most powerful (it usually is)? That leave everyone screwed. It all seems great, until you en…

>I wish it was this simple Why isn't it simple? >but that strategy has been tried many times before and it always ends in violence Then don't import people of divergent/adversarial cultures who aren't willing to integrate into your country and are only there to extract the monetary benefits of your society without conforming to the laws, customs, social contracts, cultures and obligations that society requires. If yo…

> No it doesn't, this is just an empty appeal to emotional manipulation.

I intended for that to be a direct reference to the concept of "tyranny of the majority".

> You see, since all your arguments are just empty appeals to emotional manipulation ... you're clearly arguing in bad faith

Man, I really did my best. Why'd you have to be mean?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#510

Post by tvier »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #355
Hercuros wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Expression” is a bit of an overloaded word here. Carrying a swastika is considered similar to hate speech. Just like you cannot just make death threats in the U.S., even though you are just “expressing” yourself as long as you do not carry out the threat. Not saying those are exactly the same, but there are limits to expression, and spreading hate against large swathes of people is considered like that in Europe. Es…

Threats aren't illegal because of their information content, they're effectively evidence of intent to commit violence. It's like confessing to a crime. You're being punished for the crime, not for the admission, but you admitting to it sure makes it easier to prove.

You and the parent both made good points. In Germany a swastika might be seen as more of a direct threat of specific action than other places. That makes it more sensible to classify as a threat.
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