The degree of whataboutism is astonishing, once again.

Among the cities with the highest numbers of surveillance cameras per capita, almost all are Chinese. China is a single-party dictatorship that is far ahead in building an Orwellian nightmare. (But tankies will find something on the web that shows that the West isn’t better, I’m sure.)

Yeah, but the saddest thing is that they are hiding the Chinese government’s genocide and crimes against humanity.

What is ‘fair’?

If the ‘wealthy’ consume more - and more luxury goods - they would automatically pay more taxes, and the administrative costs of consumption taxation are much lower than they are in an income tax regime.

A consumption tax would also reduce the headache of low economic growth, which limits the income tax of the state in the long term.

A consumption tax is also ‘fairer’ in that under an income tax regime, savers pay more tax than consumers. Suppose we have a consumer and a saver with the same annual earnings. In an income tax regime, the consumer (who spends the money right away) pays tax only once when income is earned. The saver, however, pays not only once when the income is earned but also later on the income on the saved earnings (interest rates, dividends). So those who save (and invest) pay more taxes than those who spend their money right away.

Taxation on income (and capital gains) are often justified with the fact that the wealthy save more than the poor, so it is only fair that they pay more taxes, many say. In addition, it is often said that more wealth goes hand in hand with more economic power and political influence. Although these arguments have some validity, they do not address the core task of taxation. And, more importantly, they ignore the fact that social and political equality must be addressed primarily by other means such as transparency in political decision making, open public discourse, direct democracy, and other instruments.

Instead of taxing income and capital gains we could, for example, apply the consumption principle to the taxation not of wealth but wealth transfer since giving assets to heirs is, in fact, some form of consumption. This would ease the various troubles associated with all forms of income taxes, and would help to create a ‘fairer’ society.

In a recent report citing German intel, it says amongst others:

Russia has evolved its tactics. Instead of deploying elite intelligence operatives, Moscow now outsources the work in what could be called a “gig economy” model. That means local criminals, extremists or vulnerable individuals are recruited online, sometimes for trivial sums, to commit sabotage. Railway signal boxes have been set ablaze. Defence contractors have been targeted. German naval vessels have been sabotaged.

This approach offers Russia perfect deniability. When a petty criminal sets fire to a railway junction, that does not usually create a diplomatic incident. There are no captured spies, and it is hard to link Moscow to the attack – until one sees the pattern across dozens of incidents …

Higher VAT hurts regular people more than the wealthy.

How does a luxury VAT on yachts and private jets and things like that hurt regular people more than the wealthy?

Across OECD countries, VAT & goods and service tax combined contribute around a third to the tax revenues (on average), that’s only slightly less than income from personal and corporate tax and capital gains tax. The rest (around 25%) comes mainly from social security contributions.

Compared to consumption taxes, income taxes impose steeper administrative and compliance costs. It would be much easier to apply in our modern world - contrary to more than 100 years ago, when nation states shifted from a primarily consumption tax-based system to an income tax-system, and when only an incredibly small number of citizens were subject to these income taxes.

Switching to a primarily consumption-based taxation would be a better choice for a variety of other reasons, too. I don’t say we should abandon income tax completely, but the shift would be a good thing imo.

[Edit typo.]

Yachts, private jets, luxury cars - there are a lot of products for which such a ‘luxury VAT’ could be an idea imo. Some European countries had that after WWII, but then abandoned it in the 1980s or so. I don’t have list of products for which it could apply, and no list is perfect, but it would be part of the solution imho.

I would welcome a complete tax overhaul in France and likely the rest of the EU and other countries, but the so-called wealth tax is insufficient. It sounds great that a tax on the mega-wealthy could raise around 20 billion euros a year from just 1,800 households, until you hear that France’s public debt amounts to 3.4 trillion euros.

What is needed is a different tax structure, many say with a lower income tax and higher consumption tax, e.g., a higher VAT on luxury goods is proposed by many. In France, for example, there was a discussion on a 33% VAT on boats beyond a certain horsepower some time ago, but it got stuck.

Such higher consumption taxes for certain luxury products would likely raise much more than the 20bn Zucman tax in France, and it woudn’t hurt the vast majority of people. But it’s easier to sell a “wealth tax” to the public and use this for political campaigning I guess.

The title is a bit misleading as the loss is attributed to write-downs at VW’s subsidiary Porsche of almost 5bn euros. These are non-cash provisions, meaning there is no outflow of liquidity.

In its report for the first nine months 2025, the company reports group sales revenue of €238.7 billion which is on a level with the previous year (which was €237.3bn), and says “growth in Europe and South America, downward trend in North America and Asia-Pacific.”

@acargitz

This is not an article but a cheap propaganda piece published via Substack written by a person who runs a YT channel called “Mad in Germany.” This person has no idea what is going on in Germany.

The piece’s statements are not true. Germany has not “normalized racism and state violence in a way that goes beyond any conflict abroad,” and, no, it is not “really the country of the 1920s.”

And, no, the fact that a German newspaper did not publish Ai Weiwei’s text is not “censorship,” it was a private magazine that refused to publish an absurdly weird article (read the text, we had a discussion on Weiwei’s article here on Lemmy a few days ago in another thread as you will remember).

And so it goes on. I don’t understand why such a post is not deleted.

What makes things worse is that such posts critical of Germany and Europe’s stance on rights violations often come from accounts praising China, Russia, and other autocracies for their politics. This is the case also here.

Dazu gehört auch, dass man Qualitätsmängel oder Gewährleistungsansprüche im Inland wahrnimmt, egal zu welchem Preis man kauft.

Welche Gewährleistungsansprüche hast Du denn, wenn Du auf Temu oder Shein giftige Produkte gekauft hast? (Nur zur Sicherheit: Eine Klage in China kannst Du Dir abschminken.)

Natürlich muss man als Konsument auch selbst schauen, was man kauft. Aber alles auf den Konsumenten abzuwälzen kann keine Lösung sein. Jeder Laden in Europa, der solche Produkte wie auf Temu, Shein &Co anbietet, muss sofort zusperren.

Wenn man auf EU Standards keinen Wert legt und niemanden anderes damit gefährdet, spricht auch nichts gegen einen Kauf im Ausland/ausserhalb der EU.

Welche Produkte sind das, bei denen man niemand anders gefährdet?

Und wer ist ‘niemand anders’? Diese giftigen Produkte schaden auch der Umwelt, also allen. Wenn Dein Nachbar sein Haus abfackelt, dann betrifft das auch Deines. Der Verkauf dieser Billigsprodukte schadet allen anderen, die bessere Qualität anbieten (zu einen höheren Preis und besseren Arbeitsbedingungen) und entsprechend haften. Und bei Kindern gibt es sowieso einen absoluten Schutz, so etwas sollte gar nicht verkauft werden dürfen, in der EU nicht und auch sonst nirgendwo. Ich muss sicher sein können, dass das Kinderspielzeug im Online-Shop genauso wenig giftig ist wie im Laden vor Ort.

Three Indian oil refiners have paused purchases of Russian crude for the coming months due to sanctions

Steel tycoon Mittal’s part-owned Indian refiner stops buying Russian oil

The four Indian refiners in the two linked reports are Reliance Industries Ltd., Mangalore Refinery, Petrochemicals Ltd., and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd., and they account for more than half of the India’s imports of Russian crude.

Three Indian oil refiners have paused purchases of Russian crude for the coming months due to sanctions

Steel tycoon Mittal’s part-owned Indian refiner stops buying Russian oil

The four Indian refiners in the two linked reports are Reliance Industries Ltd., Mangalore Refinery, Petrochemicals Ltd., and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd., and they account for more than half of the India’s imports of Russian crude.

Yeah, the title is misleading. The write-downs on Porsche alone meant 4.7 billion euros in charges. Vehicles sales, production and customer deliveries all increased in the third quarter year-on-year, though.

Likely the best move in the given situation and also backed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance (understandably less so by the central bank). They must be careful, while particularly the EU and also Canada should speed up the process to provide loans to Ukraine using Russian frozen assets. That takes a lot of financial pressure off the plate imo.

The Chinese model featured a SIM card that allowed the manufacturer to remotely install software updates that made it vulnerable, whereas the Dutch model did not.

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei recently wrote when he was commissioned by Germany’s Zeit Magazin to write about “what I wished I had known about Germany before.” After excoriating German self-censorship and conformism, he was, in fact, censored, with the newspaper spiking the commission.

You, @acargitz, posted Ai Weiwei’s comment here in this community a few days ago. Read the thread there: https://feddit.org/post/20718123 Spoiler: Ai Weiwei was not ‘censored’, he wasn’t published likely because his write-up didn’t make sense.

And this is just one deeply flawed point in your rant here. I would also suggest that you learn about Germany before scrapping the web for negative news to spread your propaganda.

The Chinese model featured a SIM card that allowed the manufacturer to remotely install software updates that made it vulnerable, whereas the Dutch model did not.

@[email protected]

Hi! Person with knowledge of doing business in China as a “western company”. You start up your company and hire Chinese engineers. After a while many of them will quit and instead work for a newly created company across the street that do the exact same thing as you do (soon to be “did”).

As someone who has also experience of doing business in China as a “Western company”: Yes, that’s exactly the way it is.

The Chinese model featured a SIM card that allowed the manufacturer to remotely install software updates that made it vulnerable, whereas the Dutch model did not.

@[email protected]

they force it on new vehicles. Fascist pieces of shit that our EU overlords are.

As the article says:

The Chinese model featured a SIM card that allowed the manufacturer to remotely install software updates that made it vulnerable, whereas the Dutch model did not.