That is what I wonder. Don’t know about you guys, but I feel like a European patriot, even though this maybe does not make sense to some.
Being a true European patriot means to me: caring about all of the freedoms we have, our social democracies, is to value the open pluralist societies we developed since WW2, wanting to protect what the reactionaries want to take away from us, stop those who want to lock us all up, back in the small closed-minded nation-states we all come from, which will ultimately lick the boots of either US or China/Russia.
They are well organized, but what is the organization, the movement that fights against this ongoing attack on our shared values and mode of existence?
The post-WW2 Europe is an oasis of bliss in a world which is on fire, and we are all under attack. How can we fight against this destruction from the inside as well as from the outside ?
Fix wealth inequality. Rich people accumulate so much money that there’s hardly any left for average people. Rich people hoard assets like houses and increase their prices and the cost of living. As long as we don’t fix this, things will get worse. As long as politicians don’t fix this other parties will get more popular no matter what they offer.
Migrants are just scapegoats. They have no lobby, they are easy to blame. They are one piece in a bigger equation. They are used as a ruse to distract from bigger problems. If the housing market was functional it could handle the influx of Ukranian refugees and the way smaller number of refugees from countries like Afghanistan or regions like Africa.
If countries had funds from wealth and inheritance taxes they could fund a working administration, faster justice systems, working infrastructure and so on. It would be absolutely beautiful and I cannot say why there isn’t a bigger movement for that solution.
It’s not about taxing 100.000€ in stock, or you inheriting your mum’s cottage, but about taxing people who have been living off intergenerational wealth for decades without ever working at all.
This is the number one thing. The US collapsed because of inequality. Liberals are out.
And it can be summarised in one word: materialism.
Yes to all but for completeness you probably want to spell out this important effect of wealth inequality. The wealth consolidated at the top buys state power which then helps distribute even more wealth to the top. As long as this feedback loop is allowed to run, none of the other proposed solutions would help. For example, education is amended to teach people to support the feedback loop, not break it.
What could solving this look in practice? Actively participate in your union, unionize, vote for economic left parties that support unionization and breaking the wealth inequality loop.
And how would you fix wealth inequality, without causing capital flight.
Capital can’t flee. The money is all bound in assets. How you gonna move the houses out of Europe?
China doesn’t allow me to own 100M USD worth of assets and live abroad without paying any tax. Why do we?
You do pay taxes in the EU if you own assets in the EU.
China taxes quite a lot less than the EU I’m sure. Otherwise nobody would have built their factories there.
Edit: China taxes capital more it seems
In the European Union (EU), the share of labour taxes (including social contributions) in total tax revenues expanded in 2023 to 51.2%, while the share of capital tax revenues remained unchanged at 21.9%. This indicates that labour taxes contribute significantly more to the EU’s total tax revenue compared to capital taxes.
In China, the effective tax rate (ETR) on capital rose from 10% to 30% between 1995 and 2018, while labour taxation also saw a slow but steady rise. However, specific figures on the proportion of tax revenue from capital versus labour in China are not provided in the search results.
For more detailed and precise information, it would be beneficial to consult the latest reports from organizations such as the OECD or national tax authorities.
https://www.beursgorilla.nl/Index-Koers/150176326/CHINA-Shanghai-Composite.aspx
But as you can see, the stock market since then has been quite dull
Edit2:
In the United States, corporate income taxes accounted for 6.5% of total U.S. tax revenue in 2022. This figure represents the portion of total tax revenue derived from taxing corporate profits, which is a form of capital income.
For more detailed and precise information, it would be beneficial to consult the latest reports from organizations such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or the U.S. Treasury.
And the SP500 has been the desire of the world. The USA is 60% of a world ETF
Facotries, houses and even companies can not be easily moved. Even something like a bank needs employees, with certain skills and those have value. You usually can not just move those to another country, unless something really drastic happens.
The other part is to organize. Something like the minimum company tax is a really good starting point. Most large countries have relativly high taxes anyway. The only reason tax heavens work is, because they have a tiny population and the few hundret jobs created by the paperwork are enough to support them. They could easily be bullied into having normal taxes.
Also keep in mind the EU has 1/5 of the global economy by itself.
We pay for using that capital. We pay rent, we pay for groceries, we pay for gas. Everytime we pay something, somebody makes money. Tax them.
Why would they invest in your apartment if they have to pay taxes on it? Unless they can charge the tax to you as well.
You’re going to need the public to build your apartment. And sadly, in Singapore where this is the case, rent is ridiculously high.
I agree with you a 100% on the wealth issue. Though the number of migrants from the middle east is and will be more problematic for a small country like Austria.
Therefore you need to tackle both problems at once. I’m tired of people ignoring the fact. No country wants to become Libanon 2.0.
No country wants to become Libanon 2.0.
What does that mean?
Yeah no fuck off
100% unconditional intolerance for fascists. You can’t give them a millimeter or they’ll take the entire country.
I suggest watching Thought Slime’s recent video if you wish to know how to effectively counteract fascists.
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality. Don’t let them look reasonable by arguing as if they were, insist on pointing out they’re being assholes (which they are) and that anything they suggest is so obviously wrong it doesn’t even need to be explained why it’s wrong (which is true).
The gist is that you shouldn’t try to argue with them, they don’t care about reality.
That may be true on a face to face level. In public, like on social media, it’s essential to keep arguing. Not to convince the person you’re arguing with, but to show other people reading that theirs is not the only perspective, nor is it the majority.
While you’re right, it’s incredibly frustrating when it’s near-impossible to convince onlookers on how the fascists operate on complete bad faith and we really should just not give them any time of day at all and ban them
I’ve had great difficulties in convincing people to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, leading to the fascists further exploiting it for their own gain
Yeah you can’t argue with logic and reason of the other side does not accept this language and is always acting in bad faith. Engaging fascists civilly is always helping them gain ground. But not engaging with them becomes more difficult the more mind share they gain. How should not engaging look in practice? All of politics and media would need to stop giving them a platform at once. And again this is something we regular people don’t really have in our hands at all.
Push for more european countries to pass proportional representation to strengthen their state stability and democracy.
The countries that have some form of pr are coloured:
It’s important to recognize an individual can not move a mountain, so it’s important not to get discouraged because you do not see tangible progress nationally. All politics is a grinding trench fight to wait for an opportunity to enact laws.
With that said, the very minimum thing any citizen should do is vote. Vote in local election, vote in federal election, vote in EU election.
Next is attend your local party meeting of your preference. Just showing up and listening shows that there is interest to the politicians. You have opportunity to meet like minded people which is important for networking.
Well, I think the first step is to talk about lobbyism, and who owns the media. Maybe even try to talk about how to see the world in decades not years. 🤔 but it’s hard…
Communication is key, we can take lessons from USA. Their left wing tries to dehumanise their right wing. This backfired tremendously.
So, what we should do would be simply communicate with eachother.
The part that differentiate social democracy from Marxist Leninists is that we do not try to silence people.
You really think the American left dehumanises republican voters?
Let’s see: Democrats exclusively talk about “crossing the aisle” and bipartisanship. Bernie Sanders excessively highlights the importance of protecting low income middle Americans who work(ed) in manufacturing and other sectors that lean Republican voters, while trying to sneak in some “also no, minorities aren’t evil” rhetoric.
Old school GOP says gays are sinners, new school GOP/MAGA calls transgender folks pedophiles, liberals communist unemployed rioters, and ethnic minorities “freeloaders who should go back to their countries”.
What a load of shit saying that the American left wing is to blame for “dehumanising” the right wing. I don’t think the way to fight extreme far-right ideology that is currently, actively supporting horrible shit is to pamper them and call them angels and ignore the shit they’re doing.
And here’s some extra data to prove the point:
I will clarify, I believe MAGA supporters are idiots. They are being duped into voting to gut the social services that blue states taxes pay for to help them avoid poverty, medical bankruptcy, and the effects of climate change. Their voter habits are led first and foremost by a desire to “own the libs”, anti-LGBTQ religion and parasitic megachurches, and plain old racism. I do not believe they’re evil, but they support some really evil stuff and we’re really fucking far down the (billionaire and Russian funded/influenced) propaganda and MAGA-cult of personality rabbit hole at this point that I’m not going to just sugar coat all the nonsense they do and that they support.
I want all republicans to be able to live dignified lives and get their fair share of America’s wealth. I want our federal government to support them with free education, free healthcare, free childcare, and honestly, a basic universal income. I know that red states will never have the money to pay for these things. I don’t care. I will happily pay higher taxes for them to have these things.
But they keep voting against it. Instead, they vote in people who want to send immigrants to El Salvadorean prison camps. They commit hate crimes against my race. They ban people from Muslim countries including impacting green card holders. They don’t see any problem with the current Republican administration accidentally (or not) deporting legal immigrants or sending deportation orders to US-born US citizens.
So don’t tell me that I, or the American left-wing who is a hell of a lot nicer than this, dehumanise the right. That’s a load of shit. We’re trying to make it so the federal government will raise our taxes to help take care of them, and every other American in the bottom 99%, instead of using racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and political-belief-polarizing rhetoric to gain support with the sole purpose of (traditionally) lowering taxes for corporations and the top 1% and (now) doing a shit-ton of insider trading and cutting down voter rights.
Almost none of this is comparable to EU politics. Maybe there’s examples here and there, but especially in Western Europe, this situation does not exist in Europe, so don’t even pretend like the average MAGA supporter is the same as a SD or FN or FdI voter.
There’s a lot of people, at least online, that do not want to engage with the other.
For right wingers it’s “lazy/snobby”.
For left wingers it’s “fascist/nazi/supremacist”.
Those ad hominems derail the argumentation and worsen communication.
i’m not talking about the politicians, but the voters.
With social media it has been enlarged. Everyone goes to their own bubble and when someone shares a wrong thought, then that person gets removed from the bubble.
That’s the laziest take imaginable with how much it’s publicly known that foreign, hostile nations use bot farms (now with AI) and literal armies of trolls to foment anger and polarization online.
Aight, why do you think half the country voted for trump. What were their reasons
Hahahaha, ‘the left was mean to the right in the US and now Trump is very angry 😭, lets not do the same and directly give them power in Europe 🥰’
I for too think the problem of US is there is too many Marxist Leninist in it… Damn Marxist Leninist they ruined it 😂😂😂
The thing you should take from this, is that when you keep antagonising people, they will hate you. 😁
I have no problem with people hating me, there’s some people I hate. if you expect everyone to love you in live you’re kind of naive or have no opinion whatsoever
I agree, especially in the sense that the other is also part of our society. I think it also helps to remind people in the end we are all sharing the political system that is our democracy.
Yeah I also believe that good communication is key. Communication with everyone we might even strongly disagree with, as long as they are not actually beyond that in their beliefs and are just mislead or uninformed etc., but well-meaning. Such people need to be somehow included and heard and not pushed away into the arms of the extremists…
