***Official Political Discussion Thread***

That’s different than the farmers I know, sure they work hard, yeah it sucks but they are sitting on a half billion in land and 5 mil in machines. Liquidate it all and move to wherever you want if it’s that bad.

They won’t get their drought paychecks though for doing nothing. Don’t let them do that while hero act. Half the time they are getting a check for having wetlands on their property.

I mean yea now everything is worth a lot. But you need a decent sized plot to make farming economical and worthwhile.
 
Our taxes are high for the military and police. You have a strong *** social safety net :lol:
It’s always interesting to see what the response is to my country’s tax rates :lol:

Taxes aren’t anywhere near as important in politics here as in the US but of course we share that similar group of temporarily non-millionaires arguing for lower tax rates for the rich.

The main tax complaint here is that the government is ‘extremely wasteful with taxpayer money’, or our tax euros are going to ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘the tax filings are too complicated’, …


A key difference is that over here, it is largely understood that ‘trickle down economics’ is utter nonsense. With some outliers of course, such as the far right “Vlaams Belang” party. They just parrot a lot of Trump on one hand (immigration, gov corruption, woke whatever, …) and more progressive views regarding social security, healthcare, … on the other hand.
Sprinkled with some loud dogwhistling of course.
 
I mean yea now everything is worth a lot. But you need a decent sized plot to make farming economical and worthwhile.
Our farming industry has grown into a solid average income of around €82k/year, but farming is extremely highly subsidized here.
We take billions from the EU commision that all goes to farmers as direct income. There’s numerous other subsidies they can apply for as well. The past 2 decades, farming was a struggling job with annually declining numbers of farmers.

Technically I’m somewhat of a farmer myself, the proud owner of a tiny €11k piece of farmland. The only issue is the farmer I leased it to used an obscure legal loophole to legally bind me to an infinite contract where the farmer gets to lease it for 40 kilograms of potatoes a year. Dude literally pays me with potatoes grown on my land :lol:

The loophole allowed him to tell the judge anything as the terms of the lease agreement. If he wanted to be even more of a ****, he could’ve set the payment to 1 potato a year or €0.01.

Nothing I can do to challenge the lease agreement. The duration is set to “infinite” due to the loophole so I have to either wait until he drops dead, voluntarily quits the lease, or a new law allows me to retroactively sue him.
The way I found out about the change in the first place was a court letter describing the ruling and new terms of the lease. All that was handled without my presence or input, not that my presence would’ve affected the power of the loophole.
 
Yeah, my uncle was a farmer until about 10 years ago - he unfortunately had a heart attack and died in a field at 61.

He had a decent sized farm but worked hard for decades to make it viable - but latterly he actually made more money to have empty fields and EU subsidies. Pretty crazy how much farming is subsidized.

His wife still lives on the farm but just rents out the land to others - on a smaller scale they can make it work apparently.
 


Bring back serfdom to own the illegals.


Yeah, **** THAT!! In her fantasyland, she better allow for medical exemptions because ANYONE who has severe gastrointestinal issues is NOT going anywhere near that field without a bathroom nearby (a severe Crohn's patient here and not seeing a bathroom ANYWHERE close is terrifying 😬
 
I work with a German dude, he pays like 50% income tax there.

Here it’s like 33% even he says where tf is it going? :lol:

They don’t have crack heads at large scrapping entire job sites and ripping out the plumbing in Germany. They have better public education. He gets asked everyday by Americans if he’s heard of Hitler. :lol:

Local taxes don’t really bother me.
 
I work with a German dude, he pays like 50% income tax there.

Here it’s like 33% even he says where tf is it going? :lol:

They don’t have crack heads at large scrapping entire job sites and ripping out the plumbing in Germany. They have better public education. He gets asked everyday by Americans if he’s heard of Hitler. :lol:

Local taxes don’t really bother me.

50% isn't correct. Many countries have bands with near 50% at the top. I pay 45% but only on the top portion of my income.

This is the German bands - so the top is 45 - but only on more than 277k - the other parts you pay less on.

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Obviously that benefits those on lower incomes - but a lot of people in the US have a problem with that because it's socialism.
 
Germany has much higher taxes on the middle class.

regardless of how good the social safety net is, I think this would be a tough sell to most Americans.
 
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Germany has much higher taxes on the middle class.

regardless of how good the social safety net is, I think this would be a tough sell to most Americans.
It’s not far off in California where 100k income comes out to 30.03% total tax rate after the 42.6% marginal rate kicks in.
 
What are everyone’s expectations of the debate?

My thoughts follows.


1. Like every Trump debate he will be graded on a curve and never on substance. He will make things up and lie throughout.

2. Kamala has to focus on her policies and how they will improve the lives of every day folks. If it looks like the moderators lose control of Trump she needs to go off script and start every response with, “If he’s talking he’s lying” and then go into her response.

3. Kamala will be more prepared than Joe but she needs to focus on creating soundbites and going after Trump. She should look at Ossoff and Gillum and how they focused on sound bites that people remember.
 
What are everyone’s expectations of the debate?

My thoughts follows.


1. Like every Trump debate he will be graded on a curve and never on substance. He will make things up and lie throughout.

2. Kamala has to focus on her policies and how they will improve the lives of every day folks. If it looks like the moderators lose control of Trump she needs to go off script and start every response with, “If he’s talking he’s lying” and then go into her response.

3. Kamala will be more prepared than Joe but she needs to focus on creating soundbites and going after Trump. She should look at Ossoff and Gillum and how they focused on sound bites that people remember.

She can’t be in attack mode like she probably should be because she’ll be painted as an angry black lady. I just know it.
 
She can’t be in attack mode like she probably should be because she’ll be painted as an angry black lady. I just know it.

I'm fine if she attacks him on certain things, especially if it's on items he is obviously flat out lying about. Best call them out because the moderators won't do ****! It will get under his skin and he will inevitably "slip up". And by slip up, I mean, he is bound to udder a few particularly choice words, that ARE NOT to be said to someone in public on air, that could come out. And if that happens.... HE'S DONE!!

One can only hope!!
 
She can’t be in attack mode like she probably should be because she’ll be painted as an angry black lady. I just know it.
I agree that she definitely has to walk a fine line but if you don’t go on the attack in whatever way that looks like against this guy you will be overrun and look weak. I have yet to see a debate that Trump has actually won on actual policies but him going on the attack always scores him points.
 
What are everyone’s expectations of the debate?

My thoughts follows.


1. Like every Trump debate he will be graded on a curve and never on substance. He will make things up and lie throughout.

2. Kamala has to focus on her policies and how they will improve the lives of every day folks. If it looks like the moderators lose control of Trump she needs to go off script and start every response with, “If he’s talking he’s lying” and then go into her response.

3. Kamala will be more prepared than Joe but she needs to focus on creating soundbites and going after Trump. She should look at Ossoff and Gillum and how they focused on sound bites that people remember.
My take is when it comes to responding to actual questions from the moderators she should stay on script as much as possible. I don’t think she’s always the best at freestyling policy questions.
However when it comes to responding to Trump, she needs to sarcastically demean him before getting into any substance.

“Bless your heart, Donald”
“Awww Donald, just because you say it doesn’t mean it’s true”

Real shady Auntie type comments. You can’t let him get you frustrated or get dragged into trying to reply to every one of his lies.
 
I agree that she definitely has to walk a fine line but if you don’t go on the attack in whatever way that looks like against this guy you will be overrun and look weak. I have yet to see a debate that Trump has actually won on actual policies but him going on the attack always scores him points.

I agree she needs to fit perfect jabs and call outs on certain things to hopefully draw out an uncontrolled response by him.

I do like how her team has flipped the script on the muted mics yesterday by saying that he’s trying to muzzle her since she’s a DA.
 
My take is when it comes to responding to actual questions from the moderators she should stay on script as much as possible. I don’t think she’s always the best at freestyling policy questions.

Agreed. Her skill set is what it has always been professionally

Great in senate hearings and similar settings where she is prepared in advance and controls the forum

And pretty good as a convincing speaker of prepared text but not so good being questioned or off the cuff
 
Agreed. Her skill set is what it has always been professionally

Great in senate hearings and similar settings where she is prepared in advance and controls the forum

And pretty good as a convincing speaker of prepared text but not so good being questioned or off the cuff

I mean I know people who didn’t like her in the 2020 primaries as being too aggressive and too much on attack mode.
 
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