Honestly I love taxes. I don’t love that billionaires don’t pay enough taxes and the unequal tax burden across different social groups but I love taxes and I love the idea of taxes. My dream would be a society where I work for basically pocket money and everything else - quality staple food and fresh food, education, healthcare, adequate housing, transportation, communication, childcare - is provided to me.

Never had these but I’ve heard they’re good

Cooked tomatoes are amazing. Raw tomatoes are disgusting.

Ok your comment sounds a lot like what I am experiencing, now you got me interested in reading the whole article after all.

Well I mean… A colorblind student at our university once pointed out that red green blindness causes you to see red laser pointers worse than green ones, and he had trouble seeing where it is being pointed at. Our prof got a green one the next day and has been using it ever since.

There are also several color schemes that are disability friendly so that charts (diagrams and stuff) can be better read by colorblind people.

So, the analogy doesn’t really work. Colorblind people get to dictate color schemes because that is how inclusion and a low barrier society works. Or am I missing the joke here?

Please go on

I am delighted that when I think of Radcliffe, these are the first things that come to mind. Harry Potter is second.

Emma Watson is still Hermione, but Radcliffe, that crazy twat…

For real man. And it starts so fucking early. My girl can wear a freaking glitter soaked puffy skirt with a flower shirt and something crocheted with beads over it, accompanied with rainbow nail polish to kindergarten, and the boys are wearing… Blue jeans brown shirt. Maaaybe a shark print somewhere. Man, it is so hard to get pretty clothes for little boys. I’ve met some moms who were so fed up they literally learned how to sew and started sewing because everything was so bland for their boys. Buying girl clothes is not really an option either, not only because of the bullying from other kids but also because those clothes are so tight it is crazy. If it were just the patterns… It’s also the tight leggings, tight jeggings, shirts tailored to the waist. So they sew. For now.

And most retailers really offer such incredibly boring clothes I get depression from just trying to find a tshirt for my husband. You have like 5 colors to choose from and 3 cuts per body half.

Where I live, university age kids now often dress in expensive vintage. Thank god. I’ve now seen color and fun on guys. Finally. And there is this teenager in the neighborhood who dresses up in black emo core and tights and skirts and paints his face with fake blood and all. I so often want to go to him and just tell him thank you for sticking to your style amidst the conservative neighborhood.

The funny thing is - I think I was rather made to feel inferior. There was always that notion that I might fail because German is not my actual mother tongue. I was really good in school and got super bored in elementary. So my mom went to the principal to discuss whether I could at least for math join the higher grades or even skip a grade. This is when my school realized - based on my mother’s heavy accent - that I had a migrational background and put me into a special ed after school program. It was degrading.

Right now our child is being raised bi(and a half)lingual. And while it is superficially considered great that she is being raised bilingual, we are also practically facing a lot of cynical behavior.

We were asked to speak German to her when she started kindergarten/preschool at 3 years old (which is actually not recommended to preserve the home language) so that she would have a faster time adjusting. Simultaneously, we are being told to avoid German at all cost and push her Russian much more by other groups, with the suggestion to make her learn how to write and read Russian at least a year before she starts school and not read German at all. We can’t do it right no matter what.

She has a birth date that would qualify her to register for school a year earlier (she would regularly go a year earlier if we hadn’t moved to another federal state), and it is already pretty clear they won’t let her because they “want to make sure her German is good enough for school”. She excels in both languages btw and is well above average in terms of expression and vocabulary, as we were told by her kindergarten teachers, yet still - we get the default answer that she will likely not be able to start school early because of her knowing Russian along with German.

So, no, in everyday life, I feel disadvantaged. It also highly depends on what language combo you look at. German and English? German and Spanish? Nice, wow, how amazing! German and Russian? German and Arabic? Ooof you will probably have difficulties in school, poor you. I’m not even going to start with the casual racism here.

I grew up with Russian and German and I cannot put it into words, but as a kid I was 100% certain that this helped me with math. It is almost like - I subconsciously knew I could approach something (like something I wanted to express) from two very different ways (two different languages), this translated to the way I approached a math problem.

Great questions!

Would removing the sales tax be in addition to the wealth tax?

Yes and no.

Yes, there should be a wealth tax.

No, removing the sales tax stands as a solo proposal.

I am very much for a wealth tax, but removing the sales tax should not be proposed alongside a proposition for a wealth tax. This decreases support since a wealth tax is much more controversial than “hey how about we stop taxing bread?”

As a counter proposal to reducing or eliminating the sales tax, what would you think about eliminating income tax?

(In Germany, income tax is progressive, but I think that the following also applies to countries like Russia, where everyone is taxed 13% of their income.) Eliminating income tax would be a massive tax reduction for the most wealthy. Meanwile, people on social security or low income would basically hardly have any additional money. Studies have shown that sales tax is the tax that, percentage wise, is by far the greatest burden on low/no income households.

This should be done in general. But before I continue asking questions, are all your suggestions in addition to a wealth tax, all together, or separate?

As briefly mentioned above, I am very much pro wealth tax, but you do not need a wealth tax for the suggestions to be sensible. They can stand alone, and they should, since it is easier to get a majority to agree to them one by one (or to somemof them) than to the whole package.

–

I would also like to add: free public transport, investing in public transport, invest in (free) education programs, free childcare, and strengthening union rights so that workers have more leverage.

As well as, and this will probably sound insanely evil, but I want it to sound this way, because removing the humanitarian aspect of accepting refugees and immigrants can be beneficial if you want to have right wing people on your side: let more foreigners in. You get young workers that are highly eager to work. They will send money home, sure, but they will also spend money. Get the ruble rolling. Again, they also gotta eat, gotta live, gotta get clothes. They will spend everything they earn one way or another, and this will boost the economy - since most of them work in low paying jobs and won’t put their money in the bank. Hell they will pay taxes and contribute to the pension fund and stuff! You want foreigners! You’re getting fresh meat to exploit!

I’m in my city’s Share&Care chat and you wouldn’t believe how many people keep asking for sound cancelling headphones for their babies because they want to go to some concert

Baby carriers are expensive xD

That’s moronic, not gonna lie, but I just want to say, man, being the first one in my friend group to have had a kid, it was bonkers what I was invited to, with all seriousness. Concerts, house parties, clubs,… When I pointed out I have a 3 week old baby it was “just leave it with their dad for the night!” When I told them it was a fully breastfed baby it was “oh then just bring the baby! It’ll be fun!” When I tried to point out that I am exhausted, recovering, and am using any minute that I don’t tender to the baby to sleep - as did my partner - I got “oh wow I thought they mostly sleep lol, well ok then maybe next week at that other house party at the other end of the city? It will be full of people you don’t know and it starts at 10 pm, there will be beer but you can bring some hard liquor!”

So, to heavily play devil’s advocate, maybe these are new parents that were pressured into being cool and staying the same despite having a baby… By outsiders or by themselves.

I must have phrased it poorly because that is what I meant. Don’t tax 2Mil+ houses. Unfortunately right now when people think about inheritance tax this is what comes to mind. I don’t care if you inherit a huge house tax free. I care if you inherit massive wealth. A high priced family home is not massive wealth.

German perspective, I don’t know what is applicable to the US and other countries.

First and foremost: Removing sales tax on (basic) food. Sales tax in general hits the low income population much harder than any other tax. Lowering income tax when your income is low or non existent doesn’t help as much as just to not pay an additional 7-19% on bread, milk, eggs, legumes, fruit, vegetables.

Build more affordable housing and capping rent pricing.

Increase social security and unemployment to boost the economy. Poor people don’t save up. What they get they spend. Every 1€ they get will immediately go back into the economy, hence creating economic growth, which then will create more jobs that need to be filled. The stupidest thing one can do in times of crises when people are unemployed is to save to push them into non existent jobs. If jobs and income make people richer, then you have to provide jobs to begin with. A saving instead of spending economic mindset of the public is the worst thing you can do there, and this especially regards government payouts to low/no income individuals. Or, you know, invest in people.

Inheritance tax. Raise the limit of tax free inheritance, but after that limit is reached, tax much, much more. Nobody cares if you inherit a 2M € mansion. Hell make it a 10M mansion. These aren’t the inheritances we should be worrying about, and making sure everybody knows it is not about their family’s house being taxed away from them will hopefully increase support for inheritance tax.

I haven’t had a single drink since I got pregnant.

Kid is 4 now. I am still sober. I planned on quitting and was cutting it down when TTC, only having some drinks on New Year’s. But I had so many relapses in the previous years. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to stay sober throughout pregnancy, let alone motherhood.

It was the easiest thing to not have a drink during pregnancy, and it is still rather easy now. Even in dark, theoretically tempting times, it is so easy to say no. And I am incredibly proud. It is a miracle I made it out alive, let alone happily and free from fucking alcohol.

it was started by a guy on his blog with an explicit statement at the start that it wasn’t true and his intent was to demonstrate how easy it was to create a conspiracy theory…

This reminds me of the guy who faked a study that supposedly claimed chocolate could help to lose weight, he put a lot of red flags in it, and it was still not only turned into headlines of numerous magazines, but was actually even published in a scientific journal that claims it does extensive peer review.

Unfortunately, this study is still referred to as of today. People still find claims that chocolate with high cocoa content can work as a weight-loss accelerator.

I am very intrigued

Why aren’t Normies speaking up

I’m the most bland person you’ll ever meet and I kept all my CDs and DVDs. I would never buy something only as digital/cloud format that I couldn’t burn on a disc. It gave me anxiety from the beginning. I have multiple external storages with the same copies of photos and I still print the most precious ones out. I’ll have music and memories if the internet ever breaks down, I just need a power generator.

I also absolutely don’t see physical copies of books, music, or movies, as clutter. Booklets in CDs are to die for, and I think it makes for great room decor. If I burn a CD I usually make some collage artwork as a cover to accompany the disc.