17 posts shown.
northerntiger said:The Republican Party is easily the most damaging force in this country. I’m not exaggerating—it’s just the reality we’re living. Just look at this latest example involving unemployment numbers and the Department of Labor . How is this kind of behavior even possible? Why didn't we see these kinds of political games back when the Democrats were in power through the coalition?
It's because instead of having a real professional in charge, they put in a political appointee like Jarallah.
...In a nation full of overqualified workers trying to make ends meet, you can easily wrap your head around the drama surrounding why the Department of Labor suddenly decided to pull back on releasing those key figures in their monthly report on the state of unemployment for January 2010.
Then again, maybe there's another angle. Maybe the head of the Department of Labor, Ankica paun Jarallah, was just trying to cover her own tracks. Back in late 2010, she failed to predict the actual numbers, despite telling the press earlier that "the situation is such that we expect 300,000 unemployed people to show up at the Agency by January or February." Even though she's supposedly a "math whiz," she missed the mark by about ten percent. She was already playing it safe a year ago when she claimed unemployment wouldn't hit alarming levels.
Maybe Ankica paun Jarallah was just doing what she does best as a manager of (dis)information: helping out the Republican Party. It's a pattern that goes back to the 2007 elections, when Ivo Sanders hired her as the Agency director just two months before the vote. She stepped in as acting director six months prior, and suddenly, unemployment dropped by 20,000.
She basically became "Employee of the Month" during her first month on the job by triggering a massive wave of statistical employment: right before the election, we found out 3,340 people had ended up at the unemployment office—that's 1.4% more than in August 2007—but they added a note saying unemployment was actually down by 32,826, or 11.8%, compared to September of the previous year. This gave Sanders the perfect setup for those flashy campaign ads where he looked like a hero to Americans working blue-collar jobs.
Her predecessor, the Republican Zrinka Blažević, was kicked out before her term ended during a closed-door Government meeting while she was actually on vacation, all under the guise of "poor business results." Sanja Crnković Pozaić was pushed out for the exact same reason three years earlier. During the Democratic Party's administration, she was diligent about reporting the disastrous employment numbers. When she was replaced, the rumor mill suggested the real reason was the removal of her relative, the big-shot Republican head of the local Employment Service, ognjen Crnković.
According to the Agency's own stats, he was running the one branch out of 22 that consistently had the worst results. Once the local Republican branch started struggling, Crnković Pozaić was ousted, and Crnković was immediately appointed as the acting head of the very branch he had just been removed from. Interestingly enough, Crnković even changed the locks on his office to keep his successor out!
Unlike the Republican Party, the coalition shouldn't have needed a political hack in a role like this. You need a PROFESSIONAL for this job. But in a mafia-style system, they always need "one of their own." It’s incredibly destructive, and honestly, it’s pretty much the only thing the Republican Party knows how to do.
That’s why they aren't all the same. The coalition wasn't nearly as damaging. It wasn't perfect, far from it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the Republican Party.
In all fairness, they actually did this during the Račan administration too—they would just change how they calculated unemployment to effectively wipe tens of thousands of people off the books right when joblessness was spiking. They stopped providing projections based on the old methodology, so during that time, the unemployment trends were basically meaningless. I don't know the exact specifics of what went down, but if we've hit the same unemployment levels we saw back in 2003 solely because of these accounting tricks, we might find ourselves looking at 1999 levels by tomorrow, even if the data doesn't show it yet.
That big claim about creating 150,000 jobs is really just a cheap knockoff of those Liberal promises from the 2000 election about 200,000 jobs. After failing to deliver, they just pivoted to saying they created more "in total" rather than net new positions.
The whole thing is a mess, but it seems these thieves in power are the absolute worst part of it.
If you can actually snag a house for around $75,000 and pull in $10,000 in annual profit (not just revenue, mind you), then go for it. That’s a pretty solid return on investment.
Andrew Booth29 said:Look, even Sweden deals with its fair share of tax evasion and a sizable gray market... I actually stumbled upon this study on the subject:
http://www.nek.uu.se/Pdf/wp2006_12.pdf
It’s no secret that the government here is even more aggressive when it comes to collecting taxes—if you can even call it that. But honestly? It doesn't seem to bother people much. Most folks clearly just view themselves as the beneficiaries of the whole system.
You hit the nail on the head there. It’s already become part of the local mindset (you see similar thinking all over the North America), and people won't let go of that attitude—even when 99% of those who think they're getting a deal aren't actually seeing any benefit at all.
Andrew Booth29 said:Tax evasion isn't exactly a shocker here—it’s almost expected, given how aggressively redistributive the system is in America. You've got those earning higher incomes getting hit significantly harder just to fund various transfers for people at the lower end of the spectrum.
The real issue, though, is that our tax brackets start biting way too early. In the States, you don't really feel that squeeze until you're making much more substantial money. I’d go as far as to say this setup practically invites a brain drain; once you hit those top marginal rates, even a decent engineer's salary starts looking pretty thin after the government takes its cut.
It isn't "predictable" because the state is redistributive; it's happening because the system itself is broken. You can see this empirically just by looking at the current situation across Europe. Honestly, the institutions 😁 aren't functioning properly, which really benefits the very people who earn the most and find ways to dodge their taxes (and it’s quite a coincidence that it’s the same crowd sitting in the tax administration 😁).
Andrew Booth29 said:Tax evasion isn't exactly a shocker here—it’s almost expected, given how aggressively redistributive the system is in America. You've got those earning higher incomes getting hit significantly harder just to fund various transfers for people at the lower end of the spectrum.
The real issue, though, is that our tax brackets start biting way too early. In the States, you don't really feel that squeeze until you're making much more substantial money. I’d go as far as to say this setup practically invites a brain drain; once you hit those top marginal rates, even a decent engineer's salary starts looking pretty thin after the government takes its cut.
This doesn't have to do with evasion either, but it's true that the latest tax changes made things even worse. Our tax brackets are way too crowded at the lower income levels, and then suddenly—at a level that's still quite low—you hit this massive bracket that swallows everyone from the middle class to entry-level professionals in major cities. At the end of the day, the tax evasion problem in America is deeply political.
Ashley Ramirez4 said:@northernmarlin2, which group are you even putting computers in—that 5% bracket or the 27% one? I mean, they could honestly fit into either category at the same time. 🙄
btw, I think the lowest allowed rate in the EU is 8%, and it can't go any lower than that.
Look, I wasn't trying to present some deep, academic analysis here—mostly because I don't exactly have access to all the internal data on how sales tax is actually collected. That’s exactly why I suggested that sales tax needs to be reformed "in that direction." To me, the ultimate goal being illustrated by those examples above seems pretty straightforward.
brightlynx11 said:Next time, before you swallow the garbage being spewed by local news outlets (or just lazy hacks rewriting foreign reports), maybe try reading the full report yourself.
http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/Issues...x-oct-2010.pdf
Our broader analysis comparing both effective income tax and social security rates on USD100,000 and USD300,000 of gross income emphasizes the point that other taxes and the impact of deductions clearly need to be considered. Effective rates were derived by taking total taxes over gross income prior to any deductions (which may include social security) to allow for better comparison as deductions can vary greatly across countries. While Sweden is clearly at the higher end of each scenario, it does not actually have the top rate. Using a USD100,000 basis for example, America, Canada and Greece All have higher combined effective rates ranging from approximately 45 to 52 percent. The primary difference here is social security.Whether social security is a true tax may be debated but in terms of cost, it can be material and should not be forgotten. We have, therefore, again included a review of both the employee and employer contributions for completeness. Social security components can vary significantly including by country, employer and employee type. For ease of comparison across countries, we have therefore again restricted the review to recognized core contribution requirements for employees earning gross income of USD100,000 and USD300,000. The results show France has the highest combined rate at approximately 60 percent under either scenario followed by Belgium at 48 percent.
Also, who knows if that number even applies to the Republic of America. $100k a year is roughly $103 gross annually, leaving you with $330 net per year. That’s about $111 a month. You can't draw any real conclusions about how the tax is distributed if your analysis only looks at the top 8.5% and ignores everyone else, especially since according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that top 8.5% of workers makes $2667 net or more. So yeah... 🙄
Spot on. Lately, it feels like everyone—especially the big business lobby groups around here—is constantly complaining about high taxes. I say "complaining" because they seem to label every single tax as "too high," regardless of whether that’s actually true or not. In my opinion, we're missing the forest for the trees. Our real issues are widespread tax evasion and the fact that the tax burden isn't distributed fairly across the board. Those are the topics people rarely touch, and when they finally do, they usually just turn it into a personal grievance instead of looking at the bigger picture.
Honestly, these tax statistics are pretty much useless because they don't actually tell you anything meaningful about how the system works. In our neck of the woods, some taxes are incredibly high, yet we hold European records for having almost zero tax in other areas, like property or capital gains. Ideally, the tax burden should shift away from labor and development toward non-productive goods. As for Sales Tax, I think it should be restructured roughly like this:
5% for growth sectors (books, education, machinery/equipment, child allowances, solar panels...)
19% for food and specific local products (construction services, dining, tourism...)
23% for mostly imported essentials (clothing, footwear, certain household items...)
27% for imported non-essentials that aren't even produced here in the States (cars, consumer electronics...)
This approach would encourage innovation, lower the cost of basic groceries, provide at least a small incentive to buy locally made goods, and discourage money leaking out of the country on things we don't even manufacture ourselves. We’d need to run the numbers to see how much this would hit the budget, and if it's not totally feasible, we could tweak the percentages—as long as we don't lose the core concept.
They’ve got at least 4 times more staff on the water management teams than they actually need; about 75% of them are just extra dead weight. Honestly, they’re even worse managed than a massive conglomerate in Washington, D.C.
Let’s hope that whole bastion of junk gets cleared out too!
To the honor and legacy of Dean Tipurić
In principle, you don't need to force a translation, but sometimes it’s actually pretty fun to get creative—for example, with names like Zekoslav Mrkva or Turtle...
The lack of any real zoning laws here feels a bit like looking at some unregulated outskirts of an American suburb
amateur hack said:1. Pink Floyd - Sports Airport - Vienna New Place
👍
everything seems fine so far
Arthur Edwards said:😁 mom wouldn't let you turn off the 😂 😂
"We could have done anything, we were allowed to do everything"
Arthur Edwards said:Come on, admit it, where were you watching 😁? 😉 👍
I can tell just by looking at the TV that it’s total garbage.
I honestly don't get why everyone is making such a huge deal out of Thompson. In my opinion, he's just not all that.
His musical talent is pretty lackluster, and his attitude? Total cheapskate vibes.