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TLM3101 posted:Fun fact for those who might be interested in the future? Local politics is kind of like posting on the forums, except you do it in the local newspaper and you can't straight up call someone a motherfucker, you have to be subtle with the insults. And you may have to pester the mods to let you post. yeah being in a real-life political campaign is much more affirming than posting on the internet. most people are pretty reasonable in person and it's generally nice to be able to have real conversations with random people about their completely obscure concerns gladhanding is fun, it turns out, and you can have a surprising amount of influence locally if you know and care about something which nobody else knows or cares about. big scary monsters posted:I was allowed to vote in Norway for the first time in the local elections and every party had like 50 candidates listed on their cards. And space to write in more. I don't really understand the local election system and have not looked it up, but that seems like too many to me. each party proposes a list of candidates, but you don't have to vote for the whole list. you can remove or add candidates from other lists (or people from no list at all). traditionally, every party fills out their roster as though they were going to win 100% of the local votes, with replacements for when the primary candidates can't make it. you don't need to be a political party to set up a list either - fairly often, you'll get local single-issue lists such as the old "byluftlisten" in bergen which was about reducing the level of air pollution in central bergen. they got in with one or two representatives for four years and successfully helped reduce the level of air pollution in central bergen, after which they disappeared. i think that they got their representatives partially through "slengere", individual votes from people who voted for other main lists. the local issues being fronted varies quite a lot, but in general you can assume that the labour party represents the unions and part of the local property owners, the conservatives represent business and the rest of the landowners, SV likes welfare and bicycles whereas rødt likes welfare and hates cruise ships and MdG likes bicycles and hates cruise ships. the liberals like selling alcohol and weed, the christian democrats like kindergartens and don't like alcohol, and the progress party likes alcohol but hates weed. Sp typically represents agriculture, food production businesses and rural property owners. for specific local issues we could perhaps help you here or in skanditråden in SAL, depending on where you live.
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Sep 7, 2023 20:08
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Thanks for the explanation! I went with the first bunch of candidates from Rødt and MdG. SV looked generally OK too. I do like bicycles and welfare and am not so big on cruise ships so it sounds like it worked out. I was a bit taken by surprise because there just happened to be a polling booth when I was out shopping so I didn't do much reading ahead of time except the party's short statements. What is up with NKP, they had some weird stuff in their statement. Is this like the obscure British communist parties that are five old tankies who meet in the back room of a pub once a month to complain about capitalism and the woke agenda?
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Sep 7, 2023 20:59
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big scary monsters posted:Thanks for the explanation! I went with the first bunch of candidates from Rødt and MdG. SV looked generally OK too. I do like bicycles and welfare and am not so big on cruise ships so it sounds like it worked out. I was a bit taken by surprise because there just happened to be a polling booth when I was out shopping so I didn't do much reading ahead of time except the party's short statements. NKP is the OG tankie party. they were formed when the labour party abandoned the moscow theses in the twenties under pressure from LO (the trade union confederation). they gained an enormous amount of cred during the war which they partially pissed away with infighting (their two most prominent guys from the war, peder furubotn and asbjørn sunde, came close to actual violence at one point) which resulted in furubotn being purged for factionalism (among other things he'd gone to ground immediately when the germans invaded, contrary to moscow's line; that meant that in western norway, NKP was active as a resistance network from 1940). that story is actually very interesting and has gotten more attention lately. on top of this, the labour party set about systematically targetting them in a campaign not entirely unlike mccarthyism, so they were subject to enormous amounts of hostile propaganda, sabotage and surveillance. then came hungary 1956, and it basically killed any hope NKP had of regaining mass appeal; SF (the ancestor to SV) emerged from the left wing of the Labour party on a platform of NATO opposition and nuclear disarmament and took most of their niche for a while, but NKP retains a pretty valuable portfolio of properties from its heyday and has some very loyal "party families" and have been able to remain a functioning organisation throughout most of the country. i suspect that they may be due for a slight revival in terms of attention with the gap left by Rødt and SV as those parties are getting a bit squishier on foreign policy (Rødt is in the process of a kind of soft-purge of its more conspiratorial elements and those people post a lot), but i would be shocked if they got even a handful elected officials out of this election.
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Sep 7, 2023 21:37
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I have been politically active but it was terribly boring. I was trying to be a careerist and treating it as a social club. That was a mistake on my part. I dont have the patience for careerism and the people i met are not people i could ever see myself wanting to hang out with voluntarily. Lickspittles, pigheaded narcissist, people who drone on endlessly and a man who was later convicted of sexual abuse of minors. I learned that i really did`nt care much either way about most issues. I never again want to debate how much municipal funds should be spent on renovating park benches or where to build the new court house. Important stuff, no doubt. But i just stopped caring completely after a while. There is such a dearth of interest at the local level that if you just show up to meetings consistently and dont completely embarass yourself it wont be long until you are elected to the local board and not longer after that you`ll find yourself high enough on the candidate list that its not unrealistic that you could get elected. I suppose it migth be different if you have clear goals that you want to pursue and a ideology you deeply identify with.
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Sep 7, 2023 21:44
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Just saw Thorbjørn Risager play in Bronshøj for like 40 people in Kulturhuset Pilegården. Tom Waits covers! Chatted after, nice guy!
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Sep 7, 2023 21:52
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Baudolino posted:I have been politically active but it was terribly boring. I was trying to be a careerist and treating it as a social club. That was a mistake on my part. yeah you should care about something. i find that housing policy and urban development are good things to care about in terms of local politics, because so many issues converge on those fields and it honestly just seems to me to be kind of interesting.
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Sep 7, 2023 21:58
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the history of the norwegian left is wild btw and i highly recommend reading up on it a little. there are many colourful figures who have well-written biographies; i can personally recommend a mix of paasche-aasen's (house poet for the labour party), peder furubotn (bukharin's protege and later eternal exile of the communist movement), georg johannesen's (tankie of tankies, also a stupendously talented poet, literature guy and wit who helped found SF) and some not-too-hostile book about the marxist-leninist tendency (there are a lot of books, but most of them are tediously hostile and make no real effort to understand what those people were thinking). the marxist-leninists are mostly still alive, but most have gone "into hiding" as it were. probably the best books about norwegian marxism-leninism are actually novels from some of the authors associated with the movement. dag solstad's novel gymnaslærer pedersens beretning has a bit of nineties' ironic distance, and obrestad's sauda! streik! is from the "heat of the battle". the four parties - NKP, Rødt, SV, Ap - represent different tendencies of the left, with pro-soviet revisionist communism represented by NKP, maoism by Rødt (Rødt descends from the marxist-leninist movement in case that wasn't clear), eurocommunism by SV and mainline social-democracy by Ap. it's all very educational, and you can see many of the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches play out over the course of the history of the norwegian left.
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Sep 7, 2023 22:10
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big scary monsters posted:Also I know it's a local election so their powers are somewhat limited, but every party's statement was "we are going to make schools better and improve healthcare for retired people". I don't have kids and am decades from retirement so there didn't really seem to be much in it for me regardless of won. You're gonna be old someday. And on that day it would be nice to know that the staff knows how measure your dosage of medicine and that you're retirement home is somewhat livable.
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Sep 8, 2023 06:04
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Alhazred posted:You're gonna be old someday. And on that day it would be nice to know that the staff knows how measure your dosage of medicine and that you're retirement home is somewhat livable. You think our generation will have any semblance of livable retirement homes? Lol, LMAO even.
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Sep 8, 2023 08:44
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Mordekai posted:You think our generation will have any semblance of livable retirement homes? Lol, LMAO even. Åldringshemmer ligger där, bakom bastun.
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Sep 8, 2023 08:59
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Mordekai posted:You think our generation will have any semblance of livable retirement homes? Lol, LMAO even. I'll honestly be happy if I'm able to retire at all.
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Sep 8, 2023 10:50
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Mordekai posted:You think our generation will have any semblance of livable retirement homes? Lol, LMAO even. Part of the reason I got involved in local politics to begin with is to fight as hard as I can so that we might be able to save a retirement for ourselves and maybe even our kids. Yeah, I know I'm an idiot. I'm still going to give it a try.
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Sep 8, 2023 11:02
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TLM3101 posted:Part of the reason I got involved in local politics to begin with is to fight as hard as I can so that we might be able to save a retirement for ourselves and maybe even our kids. I've considered getting into politics myself but I know for sure that I'd burn myself out immediately. I just can't pace myself or moderate my workload when engaging with stuff I find important.
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Sep 8, 2023 11:30
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Alhazred posted:You're gonna be old someday. And on that day it would be nice to know that the staff knows how measure your dosage of medicine and that you're retirement home is somewhat livable. I'm in favour of good schools and old people being looked after, but I also wouldn't mind someone taking a look at all this increased cost of living and stagnant wages.
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Sep 8, 2023 14:55
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Speaking of no welfare in the future, the property tax agency in Denmark is rolling out a campaign to assure everyone that the new better tax system will not mean an increase in taxation of the poor house owners. As a house owner myself, it makes my quite angry that we are not taxed a lot harder, because this whole real estate thing is literally free money.
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Sep 8, 2023 15:40
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Mordekai posted:You think our generation will have any semblance of livable retirement homes? Lol, LMAO even. if we’re lucky, euthanasia has been legalised by then. i’ll make sure to put “just give me the goodnight sweet prince-pill when i forget which year it is” in my will
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Sep 8, 2023 19:21
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BonHair posted:Speaking of no welfare in the future, the property tax agency in Denmark is rolling out a campaign to assure everyone that the new better tax system will not mean an increase in taxation of the poor house owners. As a house owner myself, it makes my quite angry that we are not taxed a lot harder, because this whole real estate thing is literally free money. I think some of the anxiety is because the new rules are going to hit people living on old decommissioned farms, who aren't necessarily any wealthier than your average urban home owner. Rural land used for agriculture is really cheap in taxes, and a lot of inactive farms have been considered "landbrugsejendomme". They're being recategorized as "ejerboliger", which carries a much higher tax. This would be fine, but because taxes on farms used industrially and all associated farmland remains really cheap, this is likely to cause people to sell off even more land to farmers. It's going to concentrate land ownership even more than it already is. Anyway, I'm sure that agency feels the need for some positive press. There was a story recently that their shiny new IT system for calculating property tax was so incompetently built, that the government was sealing records about it for "national security" reasons. We're the best at IT.
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Sep 8, 2023 20:14
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I'm pretty sure the farming stuff is marginal compared to the huge voter base of homeowners. It's 100% a political choice that the freeze on property taxes from like 2001 needed to be lifted, but in a way that most property owners would not feel. Basically, it's deciding that two decades of inflation should just not be applied to property value, in the sense that the total tax revenue should effectively be in calculated in 2001 kroner but collected in 2023 kroner. Or, put simply, the tax rate is being lowered so the total revenue in the system is the same as it would have been in the old, with the freeze. And yeah, knowing people inside the agency, the system, and especially the data is crap because no one actually thought the entire thing through. But again, that's hardly the point, and you can always get a real person to look at your case if you feel it's seriously off. Also yes, I'm angry about property taxes, but that's because I'm a sensible adult with kids and a house and an office job. It's practically a requirement!
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Sep 8, 2023 20:28
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ebike rebates were fiscally unjustifiable but EV rebates ooh boy make that register ring babyyyyy
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Sep 8, 2023 20:58
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I feel like Fogh applied "starve the beast" successfully, freezing taxes was an excellent way to gently caress things up. The governments of the last 20 years have been making it easy for people to distrust the idea of public spending too. The current one is claiming we're so poor we have to get rid of public holidays, and everyone has to work more, and maybe we can have a social worker come hose down grandma once every two weeks (but we'd really prefer if the family could handle this). But we do have billions to throw into failed IT projects and Israeli rocket systems, and we're definitely buying tanks and planes for Ukraine. I think even if we raised taxes, it wouldn't help, the shitheads in S and V would just find more friends to give money to, while they continue to cut public services. BonHair posted:But again, that's hardly the point, and you can always get a real person to look at your case if you feel it's seriously off. I thought one of the things people were complaining about is that when you get your new assessment, you can only get a correction if you can show you're paying at least 5% too much, and if you don't complain within a 4 week deadline, that lower bound goes up to 20%. So if the new system often produces garbage data, people are going to need to rush to correct the assesssment. Esran fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Sep 8, 2023 21:11
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Esran posted:I think even if we raised taxes, it wouldn't help, the shitheads in S and V would just find more friends to give money to
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Sep 8, 2023 21:20
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evil_bunnY posted:ebike rebates were fiscally unjustifiable but EV rebates ooh boy make that register ring babyyyyy We don't want anyone below middle class to get to enjoy any perks now do we?
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Sep 8, 2023 21:29
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evil_bunnY posted:ebike rebates were fiscally unjustifiable but EV rebates ooh boy make that register ring babyyyyy Oh man I'm still angry about the Norwegian government basically giving Elon Musk personally billions of kroner. They could have given everyone in the country a free bus pass for the next ten years and probably come out ahead financially, but I guess public transport isn't as miljøvennlig as more cars on the road?
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Sep 8, 2023 23:27
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big scary monsters posted:Oh man I'm still angry about the Norwegian government basically giving Elon Musk personally billions of kroner. They could have given everyone in the country a free bus pass for the next ten years and probably come out ahead financially, but I guess public transport isn't as miljøvennlig as more cars on the road? I’m on like day three of being irascible about the subtle as a brick to the face bread and circuses that are the tax cuts for gas, diesel and snus*. I sympathize a thousand percent. *just tobacco snus
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Sep 8, 2023 23:44
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the EV subsidies did what they were supposed to (increase the density of EVs to the point where EV infrastructure investments became reasonable) and are mostly going away. i tend to agree that keeping up the investments in personal automobiles in general is not great, but some concessions do have to be made for the state of transportation in a lot of the country there's not going to be a feasible public transit system in finnmark in our lifetimes, e.g.
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Sep 9, 2023 00:39
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I mean that's fair and it's not just rural public transport that sucks - a lot of Norwegians are going to need cars for the foreseeable future. I live 10km from the city centre and it's such a pain to get around by bus that I usually just drive. It's so frustrating because for the majority of people who live in or near a city public transport could be feasible for like 90% of journeys with a little more investment. For some that's never going to be realistic, but I'm doubtful that even with the subsidies the average Kárášjohka resident was buying a half million kroner Tesla that doesn't work properly in the cold rather than a ten year old Toyota diesel that their uncle could fix with parts from their shed.
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Sep 9, 2023 01:14
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Esran posted:I think even if we raised taxes, it wouldn't help, the shitheads in S and V would just find more friends to give money to, while they continue to cut public services. Our current government started handing out tax money to their pals as soon as they stepped into office so gently caress right off with that poo poo.
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Sep 9, 2023 05:43
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Esran posted:I feel like Fogh applied "starve the beast" successfully, freezing taxes was an excellent way to gently caress things up. I think raising taxes on rich fuckers should be a goal in itself, so there's more correlation between work done and money received. I literally got 300.000 kroner paid out by restructuring my house loan after a year of buying, without my expenses going up. That should be fixed. The thing about property taxes is that it's notoriously difficult to determine value, that's why there's the 5%/20% limit. Basically, the estimations are not gonna be that accurate anyway because they're gonna be based on "comparable houses", and there's a lot of really hard to quantify stuff that goes into house values. The bad data is mostly from lokalplaner, area plans basically. Turns out some of them are literally from the 70s, drawn in marker on printed maps and most importantly (as I understand it), using different ways to describe how much house is allowed on a lot, which means a great deal to the land value. But there's also stuff in the model that's weird, for example, old houses get a negative modifier because on average they're poo poo, but if you're in a murermestervilla in Gentofte, that's probably worth more than some 90s concrete. But I totally agree that just raising taxes isn't the solution, this is just such an obvious bad choice made out of the bad kind of voter appeasement.
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Sep 9, 2023 06:48
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BonHair posted:I think raising taxes on rich fuckers should be a goal in itself, so there's more correlation between work done and money received. "but then you'll scare them all away and they'll just move their money to other countries, buu huu." Jack Trades fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 06:51
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Jack Trades posted:"but then you'll scare them all away and they'll just move their money to other countries, buu huu. What, like all current rich fucks? I want to smear feces in Daniel Eks face forever when he gets media time to complain about Swedish taxes. gently caress off you hide your billions in Malta like all the other assholes who want the free healthcare and welfare but can't bear to part with even a fraction of their unimaginable wealth.
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Sep 9, 2023 07:06
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Jack Trades posted:Our current government started handing out tax money to their pals as soon as they stepped into office so gently caress right off with that poo poo. I wasn't trying to say that only S and V do this. They're just the two largest parties in Denmark, and one of them is going to be leading any likely government coalition. They're both committed to destroying public services. The point is that raising taxes doesn't do anything, when the parties in power are just going to keep cutting no matter how much of a surplus the state has. Denmark has had a very large budget surplus in the last few years, and it doesn't matter. The government is still adamant that we have no money for education or health care. BonHair posted:I think raising taxes on rich fuckers should be a goal in itself, so there's more correlation between work done and money received. I agree with this though. Esran fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 08:06
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big scary monsters posted:I mean that's fair and it's not just rural public transport that sucks - a lot of Norwegians are going to need cars for the foreseeable future. I live 10km from the city centre and it's such a pain to get around by bus that I usually just drive. It's so frustrating because for the majority of people who live in or near a city public transport could be feasible for like 90% of journeys with a little more investment. yeah but enough prebens and victorias were buying EVs (teslas or leafs or what have you - it was not, after all, a tesla-specific subsidy) that the charging stations etc were built and it became more practical to use EVs throughout the country. now when sylvi listhaug or whomever starts whining about range nobody really takes it very seriously except as a cultural signifier
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Sep 9, 2023 10:14
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Jack Trades posted:"but then you'll scare them all away and they'll just move their money to other countries, buu huu." V. Illych L. posted:yeah but enough prebens and victorias were buying EVs (teslas or leafs or what have you - it was not, after all, a tesla-specific subsidy) that the charging stations etc were built and it became more practical to use EVs throughout the country. now when sylvi listhaug or whomever starts whining about range nobody really takes it very seriously except as a cultural signifier
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Sep 9, 2023 11:40
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evil_bunnY posted:good, fewer psychos around to corrupt govs is a net positive i don't disagree, but see my previous post: V. Illych L. posted:the EV subsidies did what they were supposed to (increase the density of EVs to the point where EV infrastructure investments became reasonable) and are mostly going away. i tend to agree that keeping up the investments in personal automobiles in general is not great, but some concessions do have to be made for the state of transportation in a lot of the country
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Sep 9, 2023 12:31
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Reminder that Mærsk pays 0.27% in taxes. "bUt WhErE iS tHe MoNeY gOiNg To CoMe FrOm?!"
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Sep 9, 2023 12:54
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SplitSoul posted:Reminder that Mærsk pays 0.27% in taxes. Mærsk is a case where it would be exceptionally easy to move the tax base, since the actual business is very much not in Denmark. Like, my friend sails for them, and step one is flying to Hamburg because Denmark is too small for the big ships. And, yknow, it's super international by nature. Not saying it's good, it's just a harder nut than loving houses which by definition are not being moved out of the country. Also, in hearing some very good* things about how much influence Novo Nordisk has on policy. *actually scary bad.
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Sep 9, 2023 17:06
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All right. That's it. Campaigning is done. Now it's all up to the voters. I doubt we'll get in, but we made a good fist of it and together with the rest of the center-left to us right out on the wing, managed to get Høire to run away from and talk about *any* other issue than the one they'd wanted to talk about, so I'm drat pleased. I'm going to kick back and relax until 9 pm Monday when the early vote results come in. And if y'all haven't yet.... Vote. It actually does matter. It's not sufficient, sure. But it does matter.
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Sep 9, 2023 17:36
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BonHair posted:Mærsk is a case where it would be exceptionally easy to move the tax base, since the actual business is very much not in Denmark. If they refuse to play ball they shall face the full might of the Danish Navy.
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Sep 10, 2023 01:55
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SplitSoul posted:If they refuse to play ball they shall face the full might of the Danish Navy. Pretty sure it would take them like 3 years or less to set up a private navy that could beat the Danish navy. I'm less sure that would require them to do anything other than wait for the Danish ships to sink from lack of maintenance combined with actual use.
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Sep 10, 2023 06:36
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Im pretty sure i could beat the danish navy
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Sep 10, 2023 10:03
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