So you're not giving us all the capital that fled to your country because of low taxation?
But I thought you wanted to tax them? Oh but, they can't leave when you tax them, right?
Wanpieserino
joined 1 month ago
Aight, give the money to us then
Come on, Marxists, you're taking it from the proletariat in the world. Redistribute the wealth to us. You'll do that, right?
Then stop it. Learn to communicate with eachother before it's too late. Make amends. Stop this bullshit.
Let's see. Belgium has 0,26 gini income inequality. (EU 0,29). We have great hospitals. Uz Leuven and UZ Gent being world top class hospitals. When my wife will give birth, it will cost us 300 euros. Median income in the country is 3800 euros gross. Which comes to about 2600 euros net.
Schooling is tax paid. There are like no private schools here because who would want to fund that (there's one in Brussels, would cost 500k euros to have your kid schooled there till age 18, while public schools get funding from taxes). Higher eduction costs like 1 month wage to fund a bachelor's degree tuition wise.
Median net wealth per adult is 250k euros. Puts us alongside Australia, Luxembourg and Iceland.
We have unions, personally I'm with ABVV, which is the socialist variant. They help with certain stuff. Went there when I was unemployed for 3 months.
There's unemployment benefits for 2 years. Only the first year is good income. Not really necessary to be longer than 1 year imo.
Quite some sick leave. Medical bankruptcy isn't a thing here. There's a maximum invoice per household per year. Which is a pretty low sum. Depends on income level too. Can easily be as low as 500 euros per year.
Maternity leave is decent, my wife is on maternity leave starting 1 august until 1 February.
Child benefits exist. My wife will get 250 euros from that every month I think. At birth she gets 1250 euros too. And we get a free stroller and car seat. Quite good quality too.
There's an issue with the amount of daycares. Just no space. But starting age 3, the kid will just go to school. Which is properly funded.
Public transport.. there's rails everywhere. 80% of trains are for commuting in Europe. Belgium is no exception. I don't have a car, there's no need for it.
They are building bike lanes alongside the train rails for car free commutes.
It's very tax friendly to lease an e bike with your company. It uses the taxes on your end of the year bonus. Basically turns a 1500 euros net bonus into a 4500 euros bonus. Allows people to lease a premium quality e bike for commute and buy it after 3 years for 15% of original value.
There's always investment in social housing.
We've got quite a lot of immigrants. Immigrating is really easy. My wife basically went from Indonesia to Belgium with a tourist EU visum. We married and then she never had to leave. Since I have housing and a job.
Psychologist costs 11 euros per session, psychologist gets 85 euros for it.
Trans people can get sex change surgeries and hormones funded by tax money.
One of the earliest countries to allow gay marriage.
47% of EU electricity was generated with renewables in 2024.
Government funded the purchase of electric cars quite a bit until now. Same with solar panels.
Buying a house costs 3% tax if it's your only house that you will live in. Otherwise it's 12%.
There's a lot of funding to teach immigrants Dutch.
Cleaning is the stereotype job for immigrants that don't speak Dutch, since that job is funded 2/3rd with tax money. The client pays 10 euros per hour and the cleaner earns 13,64 euros per hour. + Free e bike. Can get this job without speaking Dutch, because there's just such a high demand.
We have a lot of doctors per capita.
Walkable cities like Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, .... All cities are walkable.
High social mobility. A lot can be achieved within 1 generation.
It's a pretty nice country. But my wife does call it boring as fuck 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks for the detailed report, bout USA my only information is social media which is limited. I did see a rise in bottom 50%'s wealth % during Biden's term. But the income gini is still 0,42 so I suppose that's meaningless.
About 20% of the Flemish people voted for Vlaams belang, they are in general the less educated folks.
That's why Vlaams belang has to portray themselves as "for the man". Bring back industry to Belgium, promote manual labour jobs for Belgians.
It's just a stunt, because they (together with the Marxists) are banished from being in the government. They always are in opposition. The other parties long ago agreed to that.
Vlaams belang is the 2nd largest party now, but in opposition. Luckily. The only issue is that they can always complain about anything that went wrong and promise heaven if people vote for them. Then when shove comes to push "oops, sorry guys we can't help, we wish we could, but we're in opposition". They've never actually had to prove themselves capable leaders. They get paid well though.
Aight, I agree it's better to give positive help at one group instead of trying to punish the other.
Aight, I'm a social democrat. Am I a leftist?
Liberals are socially leftist. LGBTQ stuff, women empowerment, environment stuff, pro universal healthcare, ...
Personally I view american politics as right wingers compared to west Europe, but oh well.
They still are viewed as a hundred million people on this planet that vote for the left side of their country's politicians.
It's not that easy with USA. Bernie Sanders is likely the most left wing there. AOC likely the same.
Joe Biden was less left wing, but he still helped people out during the pandemic compared to what republican's would have done.
Here in Belgium you have more choice. You can choose between anti immigration, regionalists, liberals, Christian centrists, environmentalists, social democrats and Marxists.
Broader choice. Here in Belgium the left wing is considered environmentalists, social democrats and Marxists.
While liberals, although socially left wing, are economically right wing. Basically the party for the small entrepreneurs. The other right wing party is more for the multinationals. While the anti immigration party actually is quite socialist economically, but the same old "own people first" shit. It just so happens that being a conservative in Belgium means being somewhat of a socialist economically.
Pretty funny, there's not much difference between extreme right and extreme left here. Basically just.. is the socialist a racist or not lol
Nah, fuck em