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Innadiar posted:kiiiikiiiiiikikkiikkkkkkkkikiiiiih How does kitty feel about Germany's Black Zero, though? 
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May 26, 2023 12:47
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Kassad posted:Yes, it's very similar to how the French rail and electricity companies are split up now, infrastructure and maintenance under a different company than actual operations. as far as i can tell. again, the point is to promote a regulated market over a government monopoly, which is seen as undesirable for various reasons. this way, there's not a lot to gain for a country in keeping its monopoly provider, since the vertical integration part is not permitted anyway and state ownership is generally quite restricted in what it can do. this way, it's fairly easy for the government to just do a series of contract tenders and maintain a core of civil servants whose competence is just administering contract bids and controlling the contractors etc. this is what i argue led to the spectacular failure of follobanen, where a major and important contractor was in bad shape in a way which manifested in a large number of different medium-intensity warning signs which were not properly metabolised by the relatively siloed-off regulatory agencies.
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May 26, 2023 13:48
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Rappaport posted:How does kitty feel about Germany's Black Zero, though? Who, Wolfgang Schäuble? The current one is a yellow zero.
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May 26, 2023 13:53
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Antigravitas posted:Who, Wolfgang Schäuble? The current one is a yellow zero. I was just making fun of someone posting an alpha-numeric string without seeming purpose. But the German love with the so-called Black Zero isn't exactly a joke, I suppose.
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May 26, 2023 13:59
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It's definitely not a joke. It is a deliberate attack on the ability of the state to govern and react to crises.
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May 26, 2023 15:03
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Second Greek elections yesterday, participation rate dropped by about 10%, expected for an election in vacation season with relatively low stakes (New Democracy's May performance basically assured they'd get a majority in parliament this time). Things of note: -New Democracy, PASOK and KKE all received similar vote shares to May, all under half a percent point difference. -SYRIZA went down another couple percent points, from ~20% to ~17.8%. -Three separate far-right/fascist parties individually received between ~3.7% and ~4.7% of the vote which is the biggest change relative to before. Notable that the biggest one of them, Spartiates, seems to have functioned as a proxy for Golden Dawn's Ilias Kasidiaris. And important to remember that even as parties get persecuted and movements fizzle out their base of popular support is still people who do not disappear with their institutions and continue to exist afterwards, you cannot defeat the far-right by simply putting legal obstacles against them. -Zoe Konstantopoulou's party barely makes it in, Varoufakis does not. Konstantopoulou was president of the Hellenic Parliament during SYRIZA's first few months of government and was among the splitters when Tsipras bent the knee to the EU and IMF. She has a kind of charisma to her but she has also exhibited authoritarian behaviour as president of parliament and as party leader so I'm not happy that her party is the left-of-SYRIZA opposition in parliament (aside from KKE, who are stalinists). -Noteworthy that in spite of the 40 seat bonus for the first party being back in this election, because 8 parties made it in parliament and a lower share of the vote fell short of the 3% cutoff for parliamentary entry, ND's share of MPs only went up from 146 to 158. It's still considered a very comfortable majority, but there were legitimate fears that a large enough supermajority would let New Democracy push through constitutional reforms that would gut public education and who knows what else.
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Jun 26, 2023 11:54
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NYT Don't Hold Water for Fascists Challenge (impossible) https://twitter.com/BDStanley/status/1673454504262475777
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Jun 27, 2023 00:17
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I saw that one on Twitter today as well. How can NYT editors be possibly this dense.
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Jun 27, 2023 22:46
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Pope Hilarius II posted:I saw that one on Twitter today as well. How can NYT editors be possibly this dense. Uuuuh because Hitler was a socialist, it's right there in his party name.
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Jul 2, 2023 15:28
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Is there any thread on the forums that has been discussing or finding information about the anger and unrest in France over the murder of that 17 year old kid by cops? It seems... more intense than the pension protests. https://twitter.com/PopularFront_/status/1675261067591663619?s=20 https://twitter.com/PopularFront_/status/1675357189429424129?s=20 There's more to it than just this im sure but I'm eager for some more familiar people to explain what has been going on the last four days. It has absolutely not surfaced at all in US news (for obvious reasons) and I wonder also how many headlines its driving in Europe.
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Jul 2, 2023 15:51
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DeliciousPatriotism posted:Is there any thread on the forums that has been discussing or finding information about the anger and unrest in France over the murder of that 17 year old kid by cops? It seems... more intense than the pension protests. Fivemarks posted:things seem to be going COMPLETELY NORMAL in France. The police unions went full "gently caress the laws, we will start shooting people" so escalation was to be expected. SlowBloke fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jul 2, 2023 |
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Jul 2, 2023 17:44
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DeliciousPatriotism posted:There's more to it than just this im sure but I'm eager for some more familiar people to explain what has been going on the last four days. It has absolutely not surfaced at all in US news (for obvious reasons) and I wonder also how many headlines its driving in Europe. What are those obvious reasons?
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Jul 2, 2023 21:39
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Doctor Malaver posted:What are those obvious reasons? nobody covers international news unless it's a missing 777
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Jul 2, 2023 21:58
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I actually got a new york times push alert when it all kicked off, although none since. My ability to gift articles isn't working right now, but here's their timeline: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-protests-police-shooting-timeline.html
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Jul 3, 2023 02:20
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What's the story on the Italians setting a 10 second limit for sexual harassment
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Jul 19, 2023 22:23
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:What's the story on the Italians setting a 10 second limit for sexual harassment That's about as long as the average Italian man can last, to us ensuring that they can get away scot free
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Jul 20, 2023 06:33
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:What's the story on the Italians setting a 10 second limit for sexual harassment https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66174352 A 17 year old girl was walking up stairs at school when a 66-year old janitor ripped her trousers down and fondled her arse. A judge declared that anything less than 10 seconds does not constitute a crime, because it's so brief, and the janitor walked free. Everyone else in Italy was, understandably, outraged. According to the Italian thread here in D&D this ruling is extraordinarily likely to be overturned by a higher court, but much like how rogue judges in the US can made insane rulings that make headlines, the saner court prevailing probably won't make the same reach of headline.
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Jul 20, 2023 09:43
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I recall a similar story in Italy regarding tight jeans and sexual assault.
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Jul 20, 2023 10:33
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Tesseraction posted:According to the Italian thread here in D&D this ruling is extraordinarily likely to be overturned by a higher court, but much like how rogue judges in the US can made insane rulings that make headlines, the saner court prevailing probably won't make the same reach of headline. Additionally, due to our insanely broken court system taking sometimes decades to exhaust all degrees of appeal, that overturning could well come in years, plural, an indefinite amount of
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Jul 20, 2023 16:47
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The old Italian torpedo
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Jul 21, 2023 13:13
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I've been reading this piece about Europe's tech industry woes and I've become increasingly concerned about Europe's endlessly grim seeming economic prospects, we don't really seem to lead on much these days and Europe's relative performance compared to America and China has been falling off sharply in the last couple of decades. If we can't make much headway in massive growth sectors like high technology, where does that leave us for the future? The Americans seem set to remain an economic colossus, but if Europe is falling off and becoming less and less relevant how can we maintain our quality of life? Like this image below shows just how large a gap exists between relative income in America compared to major European economies. 
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Aug 12, 2023 18:01
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quote:Europe's relative performance compared to America and China has been falling off sharply in the last couple of decades OTOH Europe's and America's relative economic performances are something that should be watched, and lessons should be learned.
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Aug 12, 2023 18:28
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khwarezm posted:I've been reading this piece about Europe's tech industry woes and I've become increasingly concerned about Europe's endlessly grim seeming economic prospects, we don't really seem to lead on much these days and Europe's relative performance compared to America and China has been falling off sharply in the last couple of decades. If we can't make much headway in massive growth sectors like high technology, where does that leave us for the future? The Americans seem set to remain an economic colossus, but if Europe is falling off and becoming less and less relevant how can we maintain our quality of life? Well climate change will take care of our competitors.
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Aug 12, 2023 18:45
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His Divine Shadow posted:Well climate change will take care of our competitors. I don't see how Europe or North America for that matter will be immune to the effects of climate change. Jon Pod Van Damm fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Aug 12, 2023 |
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Aug 12, 2023 19:09
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If we pretend hard enough, it will only be the people we have spent 4 centuries screwing over that will be affected, while our superior infrastructure will protect us and withstand the fury of mother gaea through sheer sense of grit and determination in spite of decades of neoliberal neglect
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Aug 12, 2023 19:15
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Jon Pod Van Damm posted:https://i.imgur.com/zoe867v.mp4 Yes it will take care of us too.
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Aug 12, 2023 19:47
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khwarezm posted:I've been reading this piece about Europe's tech industry woes and I've become increasingly concerned about Europe's endlessly grim seeming economic prospects, we don't really seem to lead on much these days and Europe's relative performance compared to America and China has been falling off sharply in the last couple of decades. If we can't make much headway in massive growth sectors like high technology, where does that leave us for the future? The Americans seem set to remain an economic colossus, but if Europe is falling off and becoming less and less relevant how can we maintain our quality of life? Something about this image seems wrong. I know Munich, because people in the Germany-thread keep talking about it and because it and its insanely high rents keep showing up in German media. How exactly is this "relative"-income calculated that Munich is put so far above the other German cities if your average income in Munich basically only gets you a closet nowadays? Is your living space not part of someone's "quality of life"? This unexplained outlier makes me doubt all the other data, too.
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Aug 12, 2023 20:13
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with how much inflation fluctuates beyond core inflation (inflation minus energy and food costs), you'll probably want to see which period and consumer price indices are included in the metric
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Aug 12, 2023 20:20
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Libluini posted:Something about this image seems wrong. I know Munich, because people in the Germany-thread keep talking about it and because it and its insanely high rents keep showing up in German media. How exactly is this "relative"-income calculated that Munich is put so far above the other German cities if your average income in Munich basically only gets you a closet nowadays? Is your living space not part of someone's "quality of life"? I think it is just GDP per capita. So Munich blips as ultra-rich because people who live there earn enough to pay those ludicrous rents. While the people who live cheaper outside and commute into the city are in one of those barely above average income blips, presumably. e: lol it uses some sort of dumb parity, yeah. Those all underestimate rent costs, and outside of rents Munich isn't actually that terrible. The bigger problem with that graph is that the gap seems to be primarily defined by the size of the richest city. Munich and Seattle are relatively small, while London and Paris are relatively big. Leading to Germany and US having low geographic inequality by this measure despite having massive inequalities by reasonable measures. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 12, 2023 |
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Aug 12, 2023 20:23
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NGL it's pretty embarrassing that we (the UK), France, Italy and Spain are below loving Alabama even with our outlier regions factored in. To say nothing of being below Mississippi, the worst united state, without.
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Aug 12, 2023 20:33
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Tesseraction posted:NGL it's pretty embarrassing that we (the UK), France, Italy and Spain are below loving Alabama even with our outlier regions factored in. To say nothing of being below Mississippi, the worst united state, without. Maybe their "purchasing power compensation" assumes you spend 90% of your income on gasoline.
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Aug 12, 2023 20:42
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We should be comparing Gross National Happiness anyway thank you.
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Aug 12, 2023 21:01
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mobby_6kl posted:We should be comparing Gross National Happiness anyway thank you. https://twitter.com/AndreasSteno/status/1687373215314669568
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Aug 12, 2023 21:04
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The GDP comparison is flawed because the more privatised a country is the more it gets boosted, particularly with regards to healthcare, but I wouldn't say the US healthcare system is anything to envy. But all that said the US is still a good bit wealthier & has been growing richer faster. e: This is also a part of why Britain ranks relatively highly despite being on the lower end of western European incomes. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 12, 2023 |
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Aug 12, 2023 21:09
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Libluini posted:Something about this image seems wrong. I know Munich, because people in the Germany-thread keep talking about it and because it and its insanely high rents keep showing up in German media. How exactly is this "relative"-income calculated that Munich is put so far above the other German cities if your average income in Munich basically only gets you a closet nowadays? Is your living space not part of someone's "quality of life"? One of the more well-known distortions is hours worked per capita. As in most US-states have a higher nominal GDP per capita than EU counterparts, but as a result of vastly more hours worked per capita.
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Aug 12, 2023 21:20
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Libluini posted:Something about this image seems wrong. I know Munich, because people in the Germany-thread keep talking about it and because it and its insanely high rents keep showing up in German media. How exactly is this "relative"-income calculated that Munich is put so far above the other German cities if your average income in Munich basically only gets you a closet nowadays? Is your living space not part of someone's "quality of life"? I'm not sure about these particular statistics but I do know that e.g. inflation statistics often don't take into account rent or mortgage or things of that nature, which is obviously a massive distortion. It seems like a combination of "hard to compare since there are so many factors" and "let's not include rents here because otherwise normal people would realise they're getting poorer all the time"
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Aug 12, 2023 22:53
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The healthcare system in the US contributes more to GDP than, say, Germany's does. Meanwhile, poverty in the US is much more crass and acute and health outcomes are worse. GDP is a measure of how much money is sloshing around. That measure does not actually tell you how the people are doing, it tells you how the money is doing. Money is doing, by all accounts, really well in the USA.
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Aug 12, 2023 23:54
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Antigravitas posted:The healthcare system in the US contributes more to GDP than, say, Germany's does. Meanwhile, poverty in the US is much more crass and acute and health outcomes are worse. When you say this, do you have any statistics on it? I believe that Homelessness per capita in the US is significantly better than it is in some major European countries like France, the UK and Germany for example.
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Aug 13, 2023 00:48
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Antigravitas posted:
GDP also includes all the activity necessary to make large parts of the US livable, and the constant rebuilding after natural disasters. Combine that with the US blowing 18% of GDP on healthcare, or about 2x the EU average, as well as 3% of GDP on defense, 10-15% of US GDP per capita is worthless in a comparison vs the EU.
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Aug 13, 2023 05:13
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khwarezm posted:When you say this, do you have any statistics on it? I believe that Homelessness per capita in the US is significantly better than it is in some major European countries like France, the UK and Germany for example. US: 582,000 / 0,18% Germany: 260,000 / 0,31% = 1,8x US homeless population per capita France: 330,000 / 0,49% = 2,8x US homeless population per capita UK: 271,000 / 0,40% = 2,3x US homeless population per capita Obviously there is always the question of how interested the people reporting are in reporting correctly, or what definitions are used, but the US seems to have a major leg up compared to major European countries. Taking a look at some other European countries, you get: Denmark: 6,400 / 0,11% = 0,6x US homeless population per capita Sweden: 33,000 / 0,32% = 1,8x US homeless population per capita Poland: 33,400 / 0,09% = 0,5x US homeless population per capita The Denmark/Sweden numbers kinda makes me think it's some methodological difference, but I suppose it is also possible that we've found even further proof of the superiority of Danish civil society. That said, the US also has a huge incarcerated population, which could be cutting down on their homeless numbers. If you add that population to the homeless population, as a sort of "Definitely not ideal living situation" number, you get: US: 0,71% Germany: 0,38% France: 0,59% UK: 0,52% Denmark: 0,18% Sweden: 0,39% Poland: 0,30% Which evens things out a bit. France still really isn't in a position to really brag though, even if it's better than the US. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 05:27
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