I love the Netherlands and have spent a few months trying it out as a place to live. It's among my favourite places: moderate weather, friendly people, a high level of personal freedom, very high rate of English speakers, clean and modern environment, good international restaurants, lively town centres even in smaller towns, most towns have rivers / canals which make them very pleasant to walk around. I could list many other positive things.
There are some (big) downsides though. Properties are very small and very expensive compared to other European countries, so you can't expect a high standard of living in this aspect unless you have plenty of money. Taxes are also very high. In addition to the usual income taxes, you pay a wealth tax and the threshold is very low (around 55k EUR in savings/assets) so this isn't only targeting very rich people. This makes it a pretty bad place to live if you care about investing and saving for the future.
If it wasn't for these last two points I'd almost definitely move there.
> lists all of the reasons why countries with taxes are nice to live in
> concludes by: "it would be perfect if not for taxes"
People wouldn't be as friendly and well educated if they went bankrupt when losing their jobs, getting a cancer, had to take $100k loans for uni, &c. the towns wouldn't be nice and clean if people didn't pay taxes for regular cleaning, ...
There are very very few countries with low taxes and nice quality of life for the average Joe, and the exceptions usually don't want you to move in. Try Albania or Bulgaria, you'll quickly understand why most people are mostly happy about paying taxes
I guess my complaint was more about the type of taxes rather than the concept of taxes in general. Income tax I can accept: it's the price of entry to live in the place and enjoy its benefits. Even then there's plenty of room for debate between the extremes of "ultra-low / no tax" and "very high", but let's set that aside for now.
But having a wealth tax with a very low threshold is something else entirely. It means that I'm not free to invest and grow the money that is already mine, that I already paid taxes on in the first place. It means I'll always be held back and prevented from advancing as much as I could. It means that improving your situation so that next year you're doing a little better than this year, is something that the system actively pushes you away from.
There are also practical problems with taxing wealth. Income tax is "easy": by definition you have the money to pay for it because it's charged on money that you've received. With a wealth tax, you might not have the money. For example, if you own an investment apartment or some other illiquid asset you can't just sell a piece of it every year to pay the tax. You'll either have to find the money out of income (assuming you have enough) or ruin your investment strategy by selling the whole thing when you didn't plan to.
It also distorts the risk/reward tradeoff: many investments might not make sense at all if you're suddenly paying 2% a year of the value.
If my math is correct, and it almost certainly isn't, if you had 100kEUR in savings, you would be taxed on "fictitious" returns on 42k. The fictitious rate of return they use is 1.44%, which brings your fictitious returns to 600EUR. You then owe income taxes on that return, which is 200EUR.
So your wealth tax on 100k is 0.2% or so...
Again, my math might have missed a zero somewhere.
> There are also practical problems with taxing wealth. [...] With a wealth tax, you might not have the money. For example, if you own an investment apartment or some other illiquid asset you can't just sell a piece of it every year to pay the tax.
This is a strawman trotted out against wealth taxes.
Stated another way: no, people shouldn't be able to put their wealth into an arbitrary form to make it untaxable.
After that, it's standard planning. Owe an unexpected amount of tax on a high performing asset you don't want to liquidate? Take a loan with it/gains as collateral. (The same as people do now!)
The bigger issue is valuation of illiquid assets. I.e. how to properly tax someone benefiting from opaque trusts or with shares of non-public assets (which they might be inclined to hide the profitability of).
"Take a loan with it" - that's not a practical solution if the asset is property. Getting a mortgage approved is far from straightforward, can take months, is by no means guaranteed to be accepted, and can be extremely expensive if done frequently (e.g. yearly) due to one-off costs and lock-in periods.
I'm not sure what country you live in, but in the US at least, mortgages (and their property-collateral loan relatives) are incredibly easy to get, relatively cheap, and come in a (perhaps overly so) incredible range of flavors.
Folks spend so much time talking about second+ order effects of immigration, but it's the economy that's primarily important.
I don't know too many nativists / nationalists who agree with the statement 'I am fine with my country being poorer and worse off economically in exchange for getting rid of immigrants.'
Their political champions bill is as though removing immigrant labor will somehow make the economy better.
Because, yes, when has a smaller, more expensive domestic labor pool ever helped a country's economic competitiveness? /s
Sure, but the parts you still enjoy wouldn't even exist otherwise. Even the crumbling western european healthcare system is miles ahead of the american one for the average citizen.
It's always been a ponzi scheme, even 20 years ago when you enjoyed it and thought everything was perfect.
> low skilled migrants that are not incentivized to work.
Including all the FIRE people and tech migrants who come to take freebies while not chipping in
>Taxes are also very high. In addition to the usual income taxes, you pay a wealth tax and the threshold is very low (around 55k EUR in savings/assets) so this isn't only targeting very rich people. This makes it a pretty bad place to live if you care about investing and saving for the future.
This was a deal breaker for me as someone on the FIRE path. It's neighbor, Belgium, is much better in this respect.
FIRE people are funny, I wouldn't retire in belgium even if I was paid for it personally. Do you just order by tax rate and move wherever the number is the smallest ? I never heard of anyone moving to Belgium for anything other than family or cross border workers
Because Belgium didn't have capital gains tax it was actually common to (fake) retire to Belgium for wealthy individuals. There's supposed to be a capital gains tax from 2026 though.
Quality of life for integrated citizens or for FIRE leeches ? The truth from quality of life polls can be far from the truth of migrants on the ground. If you're leaving CA for Belgium to save money and enjoy a nice "quality of life" you're in for a treat lol. People aren't interchangeable units of meat that can be integrated and fully acclimated to new cultures/nations.
I could understand Amsterdam/Berlin for the vibe and the fact that everyone speaks english. Portugal/Spain/Greece/Italy for the weather, the nordic countries for nature and the overall lifestyle... but Belgium, really ? no offence but it's like Luxembourg, if it wasn't for tax reasons nobody would ever willingly move there
The new limit before being taxed is around 60K (€59.357), any amount on top of that is taxed (1.44%), so it is not like you are getting robbed blind. It is only fair that those that have a lot of money contribute so that others can participate in society with equal opportunity. Also, not all assets are taxed.
It's actually more like 2.2% for shares (5.88% assumed return taxed at 36% = 2.2%.
If you have an ultra-low risk investment strategy focused on value preservation and inflation beating (where your expected returns are in the low single digits e.g. 2 - 3%), that does start to look like being robbed blind.
> It is only fair that those that have a lot of money contribute
Really? 60k is "a lot of money"? Yes, it's a lot in the sense that many people have far less than that, but it's not "a lot" in the scheme of things when we're talking about saving and investing.
With 60k you'll be lucky even to get the down-payment on a mortgage for a small apartment, which you'll then be paying off every month for the next several decades. Should we be taxing people on their wealth before they've even had the chance to own their first home? I would argue that such a person can't legitimately be called wealthy.
Getting a mortgage in the Netherlands doesn't require a down-payment. And yes, we should be taxing wealth. Again, the taxation only applies on any amount above 60K, so if you have 61K you pay 1.44% over €1000 (approx. €14).
I don't follow why it makes a difference? If someone wants to invest to improve their future quality of life, why would it matter how long they will live in a place for?
I was asking because, in country A, if you don't have a lot of money for retirement, you might soon be out on the street, or otherwise soon dead; but in country B, things might be more affordable, and have more social safety net, support, and sharing.
As a US Expat who just purchased a home in Amsterdam it's a hell of a lot better than paying $1.5 mil for a shack in Sunnyvale. We bought the apartment we were living in from our landlord (funny enough because they're going to start charging him extra tax for N+2 rental properties). It's worth it.
For one, they ruled that the wealth tax is against the EU human rights agenda. So they're scrambling to come up with a solution. Even with this tax, the projected weight isn't terrible. For reference my wife and I are CoastFIRE here with ~2mil USD in NW and the tax is marginal compared to our returns.
>"I love the Netherlands and have spent a few months trying it out as a place to live. It's among my favourite places: moderate weather, friendly people, a high level of personal freedom, very high rate of English speakers, clean and modern environment, good international restaurants, lively town centres even in smaller towns, most towns have rivers / canals which make them very pleasant to walk around. I could list many other positive things."<
Yes, and about half the Netherlands is below sea level, something I cannot abide.
Ah, yes. Of course, in the wake of the fall of the United States, everywhere else on earth will immediately flourish. Just my 2 cents, but before you leave, you might want to talk to some immigrants about what brought them to the United States in the first place.
I assume you mean people who have immigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. in the past year? It'd be interesting to hear their thoughts, for sure. I don't think the data is available yet, but I expect those numbers are sharply down, so it might not be easy to find anyone to talk to.
100%. I mean people that immigrated to the US from anywhere though. I was joking with a store clerk and mentioned Germany as a potential escape vector. The lady in line behind me says in a German accent, "You don't want to live in Germany."
As if immigrants fleeing Nazis in WWII 90 years ago or folk from less wealthy regions of the world today are a barometer for the state of the Netherlands?
The Netherlands is already doing well today, and don't have the grim outlooks of the current US. It's not perfect and the fall of the US would have enormous impacts, of course, but this seems like a total non sequitur.
> some immigrants about what brought them to the United States in the first place.
What brought them to the US is that if they have a kid, now their kid is a citizen. Green card etc waived - you wouldn't deport a family would you? Now they nominally have zero income so they qualify for full on super duper welfare - food, house, medical care. Of course find a job, too - but has to be under the table because no green card. Meaning no taxes either. So free food, free house no rent, free medicine, no taxes. Medical care legally requires accomodations for foreign languages - don't need to speak English either.
I mean, if Japan said, "if you have a kid here, live here on our dime, eat on our dime, free medical care, no taxes" yea I would take that deal!! Can't blame em
Irony of the whole thing? This actually kinda solves the population crisis. Forces people to have a kid. Actually an interesting finding but poorly explored since the powers that be like to bury their head in the sand and pretend 50 million people haven't exploited this.
Other point is well, why did this even happen? Well, the landlords are quite happy to see the feds paying for rent, they'll collect that check, as with the food suppliers and the medical care practitioners - a very nice niche. And the small businesses are more than happy to pay someone under the table untaxed, lower overhead. So the people coming in illegally, they benefit, the people collecting the taxes paying for them, they benefit, everybody else, welp, there goes your tax money
You missed the part where those workers power large sectors of the US economy.
You think produce gets picked, meat processed, and/or construction completed without immigrant labor?
If the plan is to clamp down on illegal immigration, then immigration reform to loosen the legal pathways for low wage labor needs to be passed at the same time.
> That you'd give up so easily when your voice, presence, and vote, matters most.
There have been concerted efforts over the last couple decades (arguably much longer) to erode these things; gerrymandering, voter roll purges, eliminating/restricting polling locations and absentee voting, corporations and wealthy individuals have basically unlimited spend on electioneering and lobbying giving them a disproportionate voice, a worsening state of effectively dysfunctional/maligned politicians, corporate censorship, so on and so forth. In my state, a majority passed two state constitutional amendments and the establishment (gerrymandered) politicians didn't like that, spending the past couple of years rules lawyering, delaying, etc. to try to subvert the will of the people. Hell, they ignored multiple state supreme court orders on top of voter’s wishes.
Anyways, my point being that wanting to leave a country with increasing social, economic, and political troubles isn’t entitlement, anymore than you were entitled for immigrating to the US.
Personally, I agree that I’d rather stay and fight, not that I really can afford to do otherwise, yet I understand people frustrated about the notable decline we have seen in our lifetimes and worried about the knife’s edge we find ourselves upon regarding tyranny and authoritarianism.
And one thinks these things haven't been happening in other countries where one wishes to move?
What the GP is probably trying to say is that what the US is going through at present has been the default state for most of the developing world. And these things have been eroding in many of the western democracies for the past decade. Those that have been able to preserve it may not be more attractive in culture, geography or economic terms.
Hence the entitlement part where I think the people in the US took for granted what they have/had. We always realize the true value of something when we don't have it.
The Netherlands is not a part of the developing world, so I'm not sure why GP would be making that point. The article is not a lit moving from the US to Venezuela.
I don't assume that another country would LOVE to have me, I'd assume that I'd have to be an exemplary citizen to make it clear that I'm not another "ugly American".
The reason why I personally have been rolling the idea of leaving the country around in my head is because I'm gay and Hispanic (though born here), and I am NERVOUS about the direction this country is going. I do feel guilty about the idea of jumping ship, but it seems like it might be legitimately dangerous for people like me in the near future.
I probably won't leave, all my family and friends are here and it hurts to think about uprooting myself and leaving them, but it's NOT unreasonable. It's scary to be in an outgroup right now.
Sounds a bit like a Stockholm syndrome argument to be honest. There is nothing wrong with moving somewhere else because it aligns with your ideals and needs.
So how can an immigrant to the US not understand that someone might want to leave the country they're currently in because of the situation in that country?
As with such arguments, they never apply to the one presenting them. Immigrants are bad, but not me. Taxes are good, but not mine. Nazis are bad, but not my grandpa.
The evidence broadly shows that the people who vote for this will not change their mind. Not when their farming business is likely going to fail due to tariffs (~78% of farmers voted for this), not when their North Carolina saw mill that has been in the family for forty years is forced to close (Mackey’s Ferry Sawmill), not when their ACA subsidies and SNAP benefits are pulled. One's presence and voice is immaterial. One can both vote and donate to campaigns from abroad; there is literally nothing one can do on US soil you cannot do from abroad while not exposing yourself and potentially family to a slowly failing and degrading governance system, that by all observations and evidence, hates its citizens with policy.
As I often ask when problem scoping, "What is your time horizon?" Will things change in 3, 5, 7, 10 years? ~2M voters 55+ die every year in the US, ~5k per day (mental models are rigid, progress occurs one funeral at a time as Planck said). Young voters were very excited for this admin, and now that vibes have met reality, they are not so excited, with a roughly 50 point swing in favorability in polling. I expect a swing back, considering recent elections over the last few weeks, but it will take quite some time.
So, from a first principles perspective, if you can live somewhere safer, better, or other idea of more favorable while losing nothing, why not? You can always move back if the US gets its shit together, and if it doesn't, you have made a home and life for yourself somewhere more favorable. Leaving is not giving up, it is merely having a better life experience while sacrificing nothing except US in person work opportunities and proximity to friends and loved ones (if applicable) for the time horizon in question. Some may feel entitled to functional governance systems, and they should (imho) vote with their feet and wallets. It is a rational evaluation in a volatile environment.
And if another country is offering you a residency visa or path to citizenship, they clearly want you. You might not be aware, but the developed world is going through a working age population crunch due to structural demographics; skilled workers are in demand, as well as those with either investment, pension, or social security income.
The farmers and the sawmill operators are easily explained. I also listen to Bloomberg, lol. Those people are rich and most of their wealth is now diversified away from their businesses, and while they would rather keep those businesses alive because it's part of their family identity, they care more about reducing their taxes on their overall net worth.
Please explain the ACA subsidies and SNAP benefit cuts to rural republican voters who will still vote for this then. Are these people going to change their vote? Again, likely not. Their mental model and their identity is rigid (along with a bit of in group and tribalism) and they will very likely vote this way to the very end. You can live a better life by leaving while waiting for these voters to age out, because you cannot change their mind or their vote. If you stay, you will be exposed to governance outcomes from their votes.
You can think of it as the grey rock method in a political and expat context. You don't engage, doing so would be of no value; you just ignore and leave. Life is short, optimize accordingly.
They are obviously not voting for a better life for themselves. They are voting for a worse life for their perceived enemies. A huge number of voters would rather suffer if it means people they don't like will suffer even more.
It’s perfectly clear now that half the voters in the US are enthusiastic about fascism and white supremacy. Frankly, it makes me physically ill. Pockets of the country are great, but the nation as a whole is going to become another Russia in my lifetime and it breaks my heart. Why subject myself to this torture? The time to change our fate was 2016 and 2024 and we failed miserably.
Australian here, grew up in the great south-west, and then I lived in the USA for 15 years, decided it was bunk, switched to Europe and have now been in middle-Europe (Austria) for 18 years, with a year in the UK and a year in Japan, for context.
My quality of life has increased dramatically with every move. Europe as a place to live is just so much better than Aus->USA ever was .. better health care, better food, better people and culture.
Only thing that falters is the weather - but I tell you, there is nothing more joyous than Vienna in spring time.
Anyway, I've run the gamut on western civilization. I won't go back to the USA or Australia, no sir - and even if, only as a tourist, never to reside again. Ask me anything.
What's the reason you rank Australia below the US? As a San Franciscan, I recently visited Sydney and Melbourne for the first time and thought they were incredible. Food-wise, I don't think I had a single bad meal in Melbourne, and I wasn't even trying particularly hard to find the good stuff. I think I'd love the opportunity to live there someday.
Europe is wonderful, but to quote Joni Mitchell, "it's too old and cold and settled in its ways here." (Not to mention the looming spectre of war...)
From my personal point of view, and based on my personal history as a victim of Australia's heinously racist White Stolen Generation (and who was eventually returned to my birth mother because of her strong will), Australia is a totalitarian-authoritarian fascist hell hole that got away with genocide, and will bend over backwards to function as a lackey for the US' military-industrial complex. There's not a single racist war that Australians won't follow the USA into fighting. See also: Pine Gap.
My personal reason for leaving Australia is that I don't want to participate in a racist society. Read its constitution, its an utter embarrassment.
Tourists don't often get through this bubble, seeing only the shiny bits, but for those WSG's of us who grew up in the countryside, also with Aboriginal friends and family members, the dark underbelly of Australian society rubs us a bit raw - or at least it does in my case. Casual racism in Australia is like none other in the world, and I find it detestable, personally, so I have no desire to participate in its economy. I left as soon as I could, to follow my own American dream - which reality quickly revealed was little more than a Disney fantasy.
Europe has its own problems - sure, the Ukraine war is a catastrophe of uniquely European origins - but I'd much rather live in a country that isn't involving itself in the worlds wars at the moment. Austria has been an absolutely great place to raise kids with a cosmopolitan, international attitude that will stand the test of time - of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but in my personal case, its just been a better place to live, period. Only issue I have is the weather can be hard for someone who grew up on the beaches and in the outback, but the spring and summer always makes up for it.
The thing that truly disturbed me about life in the US was its nationalist groupthink, which seeks to justify the atrocities the American people enact on those cultures its ruling classes have deemed inferior. Same is the case with Australia. I guess I freely admit, that as a foreign ex-pat living in a non-native bubble, its a lot easier to avoid the groupthink by just moving to Europe - where of course it also exists in spades - but I'd rather live the life of a refugee or interlocutor than participate in the Wests' heinously racist wars.
My kids have been raised multi-lingual, speak German/English very fluently, and are also learning Russian and Ukrainian in school to prepare themselves for a future where Austria is, once again, a safe place for citizens of both countries to co-mingle, as they once did. That is a forward-focused quality of life issue that simply doesn't exist in either the USA or Australia: the kids in this part of the world actually want to learn each others languages. Just like it was the norm in Aboriginal cultures, incidentally. (You were considered defective if you only spoke one language...)
That’s really insightful, thank you for writing that up. You’re right, this was not something I encountered at all while visiting Australia. And I recognize many of these same detestable elements in US culture: something I want to get as far away from as possible.
At the same time, I have to note that Sydney and Melbourne, at least, are some of the most international cities in the world, with around 40% of the population born abroad. In Europe, very few cities are as diverse as this (though I recall Vienna may be an exception). Even if Australia is overall a hell hole built on genocide, that aspect feels remarkable to me. Maybe a positive sign for future generations?
And it’s not like Europe is a stranger to white supremacy, right? There may be no genocide against Aboriginals in the history books, but ask your average European what they think about African immigrants or the Romani…
How many Aborigines did you meet? How many did you work with?
There is undoubtedly racism in Europe. The issue for me is that my motherland got away with it - others didn't - and it continues to fight fundamentally racist wars whenever tasked with it by its imperial masters.
>America is pretty great if you're in the upper 20% or so, and otherwise it's losing ground fast.
The bottom 80% is also going to find it hard to move to another rich country. Countries in general want highly paid professionals, not a 50th percentile desk jockey.
Even poor people carry phones that have the internet, news, weather, and a million useful apps. Food is available to everyone, nearly every church has a food pantry. Even cheap houses are climate controlled. Even the homeless have shelters in most places.
For garden variety household emergencies, GoFundMe is democratized charity. It seems it often comes to the rescue for people suffering terrible luck.
Healthcare is expensive, but ACA makes it more available than before. Even early retirees get it.
Cars are expensive, too, but the get great mileage, better performance, and last longer than what we used to have.
Having grown up in the 6s and 70s, I can say with confidence that even less fortunate people have better lives than almost everybody 50 years ago. ( At least as far as material things go. )
The people who are unhappy are often comparing themselves to other people as portrayed by media and social media. That’s a sure way to feel you aren’t doing very well.
Perhaps, but the places where it’s arguably nicer (than US) to be bottom 50% are that way because of side-effects of America being how America has always been. Without things like US NATO membership, someone in, let’s say Europe, might eventually find themselves made forcibly familiar with what actual fascism is, by being “welcomed” into Soviet Union 2.0, now without the communist trappings. If you think Soviet bread lines are better than SNAP benefits, I don’t think you’ve read enough history.
I live in Germany and I'm not afraid of Russia. If they had more manpower they would have overrun Ukraine by now. They do not. I'm not saying it would be an easy fight, but Russia stands no chance. Not even with Belarus on their side or some other satellite states.
That's foolish. If Russia wins in Ukraine, they would have the two strongest armies in Europe. European states simply don't have enough ordinances and gear to survive a long war.
The idea that Russia would “have the two strongest armies in Europe” if it won in Ukraine doesn’t make sense. A defeated country’s army doesn’t magically become part of the victor’s forces. Ukrainian soldiers wouldn’t serve Russia, many would withdraw, go underground, or continue resisting.
Even in a hypothetical total Russian victory, Moscow wouldn’t “gain” a second army. It would inherit a hostile, traumatized population and an ungovernable territory, not a usable military force. And in any case, Europe’s combined militaries (and economies) are still far larger than Russia’s, so the claim simply doesn’t hold up.
Did you link the wrong article? This one says they are only working on maybe making that happen, and the article is only a month old, so they haven't conscripted any yet?
So true; Russian MO is to use ~18-60 year old males from occupied territories as cannon fodder. Europeans should be flooding Ukraine with weapons (and other kinds of support) and thanking their luck that somebody else is willing to risk their lives and use them against the onslaught that would otherwise be directed at the EU countries.
You honestly believe that a combined Germany-Poland-Baltic army, maybe with Italy's help and absolutely no USA involvement and manufacturing is today a viable threat to ruzzians? And that such an army is somehow more capable than today Ukrainian army in an all-out land battle with combined forces, permanently fighting for a decade now?
Of course such coalition has a big number of ultra expensive and effective weapons like planes, ships and tanks. That number of weapons will last for 3 months or so. Then what? Ruzzia is not a Taliban or Hamas, you can't just bomb them with impunity. Even half a century old soviet SAMs are valid threat to anything in the air, let alone newer ones. Plus Ruzzia is not alone, they have whole Axis manufacturing power potentially behind them - Iran, China, NK etc.
I would be very concerned about Ruzzia, if I were you. Just a thought experiment, what would Germany do when Ruzzian force will appear on the Poland-Lithuanian border, annexing all Baltic states?
That's an example. What would you do if the next government pulls Hungary or early Putin on you and starts banning opposition media with courts saying it's fine refusing to hear the case?
Germany can slide, but it’s much harder than in Hungary or early Putin’s Russia. The Basic Law has built-in guardrails: core rights can’t be abolished, the Constitutional Court can block illiberal laws instantly, power is decentralized across the Länder, and changing the constitution requires supermajorities no extremist party can reach.
The domestic intelligence service can monitor or restrict anti-democratic parties, and Germany’s civil society, courts, and media are structurally hard to capture. An AfD-led government would hit legal and institutional tripwires long before it could rewrite the system.
When they come for Europe, they will come with nukes. It's clear they only need to protect St Petersburg and Moscow with SMD. The rest they are happy to let burn. Can England and France threaten Russia with retaliation? Trump has made it clear that Europe (maybe minus the UK, just maybe) is in the Russian sphere of influence, and we can't really count on the English to not Neville Chamberlain their way out of this.
When you say 'everything is better' are you just talking about higher compensation > *? Cause I can think a number of 'quality of life' things that europe does better.
Money can buy quality of life, and people earning 100-150k in USA per person in household do confirm this. And this purchasing ability is not linear, because of the fixed costs for many good and services. Previously many countries with low salaries had corresponding low cost of life (and cost of quality of life), but today the costs are rising faster than salaries everywhere across the globe, so the biggest winners are people who earn more in absolute values, hence rich Americans.
It actually can't, not generally at least for US labor.
One of the most important measures of quality is work-life balance. Basically, your life kinda sucks if you work all the time, and then you also get fat and sick and die young(er).
People in the US work a lot, and often the more wealthy, but not most wealthy, work A TON. In programming, it's not atypical to have "superstar" staff engineers putting in easily 60-70 hours a week. Of course, not including the commute.
But then there's the time off. Oh, where to begin. We're at a point where 10 days of PTO accrued a year is considered decent. It's work work work, and you can put in 20 years of service... and get, like, an extra couple days. Maybe.
None of this scales down. For example, I'm supposed to be working 40 hours a week. I'm not of course, the baseline is 45 because 9-5 is actually 9-6. And I haven't left at 6 in at least a year, so even that is underestimating it. But suppose I do work 40 hours a week.
Would I take a 50% pay cut to work 20 hours? Fuck. Yes. Yes. In a heart beat. But I can't, I'd actually be taking an 80% pay cut if I do that, so I couldn't live. And it's like this for literally ALL jobs. I can't just "move up", because the work-life balance doesn't get better, it actually just gets worse! And at no point can I take a "step down" and work less, because then I'm flipping burgers.
Guns and (relatively) freedom of speech (yes I'm aware it comes with asterisk) are the two big ones. If I left the USA it would probably be to a place with weak governance on these points in practice rather than on paper. Only Yemen, Iraq, Somaliland, parts of Pakistan, parts of Rojava and maybe KRG (Kurdistan), Idlib, and Palestine are only places I know of with looser (to me better) gun laws than America and out of all those I'd only really consider Somaliland & KRG & Rojava as places where a westerner could probably settle without getting their head cut off. Freedom of speech, IDK where, hard to find anyplace with looser speech restriction than America.
However if you are willing to go with de facto rather than de jure, plenty of places in Africa and Latam can be freer on these points, especially if you have a little coin.
Financially though, places like Dubai blow away the absolutely dystopic USA controls like FATCA and world taxation/filing, KYC, AML and other madness USA uses to keep an iron grip on traditional finance channels.
For me it was a factor to some degree. I am not a firearm collector. For me it was knowing that I was moving from a state that hates firearms and wants to justify law enforcement budgets by punishing anyone that defends themselves to a state that not only has very few restrictions on firearms and ammo but also actively and legally supports people defending themselves and their neighbors. That was just one of many factors however. No state income tax was also a big plus for me personally.
It seems so weird to even know which states "hate firearms" and which ones support them, let alone care. It's not something that would even appear on my radar if I had to move across the country to some new town. I'm worried about things like good schools, access to amenities, commute times, access to fresh air and nature, stuff like that. How gun-friendly the place is? It wouldn't even make my top 20 or even cross my mind. Do Americans really factor this into their decision when they move somewhere?
I take it as a given that being in America in general means you could be shot randomly, with a uniform, but low probability distribution. It doesn't really matter what the state's gun laws are. So outside of notoriously "unsafe" areas, it doesn't play into my mind at all.
Who would tell you they have them if you are in a country where it is illegal? For instance the fgc-9[] commonly seized in parts of Europe was invented by a German in Germany (ethnic Kurd though).
No one knew who he was until he was arrested and for the most part until he was dead. His european friends would be saying the same thing as you, "don't know anyone with guns..."
Lots of guns in Europe by people who aren't supposed to have them. Either because they are criminals thus don't care about gun laws, or if they are 'good' people then they should know not to pull out a gun unless their other option is to be dead -- at which point 'fuck the law' and better to be in a jail cell than dead.
At least in Germany they are legal in general, only highly regulated.
Most guns are owned by relatively few people. Nobody from the common crowd here thinks about owning fire arms, virtually nobody does. Maybe that's a cultural gap hard to imagine from an US perspective.
The question remains, against what and who are you even defending? Maybe it's different in Europe because it's densely populated, but people generally don't consider fire arms being a net plus to the security of themselves and that of their family.
It also just doesn't seem useful to move to a state with loose fire arms laws - it's much better to move to a state/city/neighborhood with low crime rate instead.
I've repeated it several times in this thread, but it absolutely helped those in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gain hours to days, and a couple women who had their lives spared because the Nazi or Nazi-allied officers decided at least a couple of jews (see woman on right here for example[]) were humans with bravery rather than just more carbon for the incinerator.
Although I'll grant you, that took place in Poland, but it happened largely due to the German government.
Yes the last option, like a fire extinguisher or seat belt. It doesn't become useful until the very last moment, but you'd give the world to have only have learned how to use one when days were better, and also to not be trying to buy one at at time where everyone's house is already on fire.
In your example, virtually everybody died, even with fire arms.
So I still wonder against what / who you are really defending.
Needing a seat belt is much more likely than needing a fire arms, at least in Europe. Focusing on fire arms means focusing on the wrog things. It's about a feeling of security, not actual security.
To use your wording: You'd give the world to have focussed on something else instead of buying a fire arm.
You could live in Norway. Guns are very popular there for hunting, biathalon, target shooting, etc. you can even have silencers which are banned in USA.
Not a bad choice. I'd probably pick Greenland out of the European (Denmark I think?) jurisdiction territory. You can buy bolt action rifles like a hammer at hardware store. They are looser than the USA on that point, though I didn't initially include them because they are stricter on most everything else. But open carrying a rifle probably isn't frowned upon in Greenland, so it might not matter that you can't carry a handgun.
Sure but bearing arms is a lot more restrictive in Switzerland. I'm not claiming you can't have guns in other countries, hell you can have a gun even in places like Japan in a limited capacity with the right permits.
Where I live in Arizona you can 3d print a handgun, load it, stick it down your pants, and walk around with it around town all day doing basically whatever (as long as you don't go to a school, jail, or courthouse basically). All with zero background checks, licenses/permits, or even needing to carry an ID. Can I do that in Switzerland? I doubt they would let you do that even with a long rifle, unless you are going to/from some sort of approved activity.
The only euro-controlled place I know where you can basically do that is Greenland, as long as it is a bolt action rifle. Greenland is actually looser than USA in that regard, you can buy a bolt rifle like a hammer from a hardware store in Greenland with zero checks or license (IIRC, even as a foreigner) whereas in USA you could only do that if you bought it privately or made it yourself.
If I'm not allowed to have guns, then I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it. I wouldn't feel safe anywhere violence is used for malum prohibitum 'crimes.' In fact I don't feel safe basically anywhere a government exists because they all do this; this is part the reason why I live in a rural area with basically no government services, no police, no public utilities or anything like that with involvement by the state beyond the bare minimum possible in the USA.
Your proposition also relies on the place itself not changing, and my and my offsprings atrophying their practice of skills of self defense and therefore not needing them when moving elsewhere. But sure if you had a magic wand and could trade 'no guns' for anyone for world peace, I'd take it.
Are there any examples of someone in the US successfully defending themselves from “government violence” using a gun? I mean, examples where it ultimately worked out for that person?
Yes, American Revolution. More recently, Battle of Athens[0]. Also see the Bundys who are still (as far as I know, to this day) ranching on the land they had an armed standoff over the BLM with in Nevada [1].
Ok, I guess you’d be the first in ~100 years. Crazier things have happened. But the much more likely outcome of meeting government violence with lethal violence of your own is that you are now dead. That’s a scenario that plays out all too often in this country; no need to reach into the distant past for examples.
Kudos for engaging civilly and earnestly on this even though the majority here seem to disagree with you. It’s rare that I encounter someone coherently articulating a belief system so wildly divergent from my own.
Oh wow! I wonder what must have happened to you that you feel so threatened. I only have positive experiences with government and police interactions. In multiple situations they made me feel safer and protected. I would however not feel safe around a gun, regardless of who owns it. Too much can go wrong.
>> I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me
And how your gun can prevent this now? If you are allowed to carry a gun police will act like you have one lane shoot you. While in other case they will just beat you with stick.
i myself am a maximalist about this and i don't feel safe unless i carry some strains of ebola with me. it would be nice if you could support my ebola open-carry efforts (dm me for details).
(coming from a country where having guns at home or seeing a civilian with a gun is very very strange and an huge emergency so maybe my question is stupid)
IF the government decides to use violence against you do you really have a chance with a gun? or 10?
I'm not claiming you'd be safe even with a gun. I'm not claiming there is any real government you are safe living under given a long timespan (maybe longer than even your own lifespan, but still these skills are passed down in families so breaking the chain during 'safe' times is still harmful).
To your specific question, probably not, but the better question is whether you have more of a chance with or without a gun? If you look at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for example, having a gun bought those people hours to days, which is better than nothing. Of course if you look at places like Chechnya, it bought them outright years that they were able to obtain independence from the brutality of Russia (even if not from their own brutality) as a result of militia activity in the first Chechen war.
(don't know why you were downvoted for an honest-sounding response)
If I understand correctly, the reasoning is a kind of long-term best-practice thinking?
And that best-practice is a high enough priority that it would prevent you from moving someplace that was otherwise better than a place that would let you have guns?
Is it only reasoning, or it there also a psychological component, like you'd also feel unsafe without guns, maybe due to past or current threatening situation (e.g., physical danger, or economic)?
My reasoning is that if firearms are banned then the underlying threat is that violence will be used against me for obtaining them. I consider myself unsafe if 'legitimate' violence will be used against me despite the fact I have deprived no one of their life, liberty, or property.
Thanks, I have a better idea where you're coming from.
If I understand correctly, you have both practical (near-term or long-term) and also philosophical objections, to the power imbalance between citizen and state, when citizens can't have guns. And it's a high priority.
FWIW, I sympathize with vigilance. Though my own priorities around guns are different. I live in a fairly safe city, with good police. Where I live, the prevalence of citizen guns seems to create more problems than it solves. The problems I have don't seem to be solvable with guns. I might feel differently, if I lived in a less-safe place or in different circumstances.
Simply owning or encountering a seat belt also 'increases' your risk of dying in a car crash. This is the kind of nonsense causation-correlation mix-up statistics you are operating on.
It's not, because most gun death are actually from the person owning the gun or people close to them.
It's much more likely that you shoot yourself or your kid shoots you or your husband/brother/other-troubled-man has a bad day and shoots you than a criminal shooting you.
The relationship between gun deaths and guns is not correlative, it's causative. Because, surprise! Guns cause gun death.
Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
On a related note, less automobiles = less automobile deaths.
Show the evidence you have that it is causative rather than correlative.
>Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
It does not assert what you've claimed. It found correlative association. They did not conclude that the gun was causative of the homicide.
Even thinking this through for a second, it makes sense someone expecting to be murdered by a family member or intimate partner might be more likely to keep a gun, as it might be useful in frustrating that effort.
> someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it
This is a statement so far removed from reality that it makes anything else you say immediately suspect.
You appear to view "government" as an entity whose primary purpose is to bring violence against anyone who cannot resist that violence with lethal force. There is no possible justification for that as a blanket definition.
If you are omitting, perhaps, the fact that you are a wanted and dangerous person, who has, for instance, committed a string of murders, and that is why the government would "use violence against you", then that would seem to make anything you say quite inapplicable to anyone else's situation.
My guess is sense of security. Although that just works if you ignore the fact that now everyone has more access to guns, including criminals! And they typically get to shoot first..
When was the last time that guns protected someone in the US from an ICE raid? Basically never. Now imagine ICE five years in the future as a much more ingrained police state when they actively start hunting citizens.
It bought quite a few people some extra hours or days during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And a couple women their lives, since one of the officers that saw them fight decided a few of the Jews were people with courage rather than just more trash for the incinerators and actually went out their way to send a couple of the brave fighters to the work camps instead of the gas chambers. (See woman on right here[], for example)
Switzerland is one of the best countries to be if you are rich, because it's safe and nobody will target you for driving a Porsche (probably the most common car brand in canton Zug), or similar.
So I'd be interested what he means too.
What is for sure better in the US: There is way more space.
It's a small country, relatively speaking. Rather dull cities, again relatively speaking. Rural land is hard to come by and expensive. Not a lot of sunshine hours either. Not English speaking, not an immigrant culture, and quite an insular society so if you're not born there it kinda sucks. The cities punch way above their weight, but in total the tech job market is still tiny compared to the US.
If you like being outdoors, Switzerland has one landscape, pretty much.
It's heaven for rich people, but a very specific kind of heaven.
...do you really need examples? In America, *if* you have money, everything is better than anywhere else. Maybe Dubai can compare but there are some strong trade offs.
America has the best healthcare. Not the best value, but the best healthcare. It has low taxes, lots of world class cultural institutions, and varied beautiful geography. It is the Rome of our age. Corrupt, amoral, and exploitative? Sure, but with money you can overlook that.
I have a chronic disease making over 500K dollars and I can tell you the US healthcare (from primary care to specialists) ability to help me stay on track or identify health issues has been null. If it wasn't because I second guess every recommendation, go and pay out of pocket tests (even though I gotta pay 4K+ in insurance premiums) I would have been dead by now. No, the US does not have the best healthcare not even close.
Scenario 1: You fall head first from a 10th floor. US healthcare has higher chance of saving your life.
Scenario 2: You are an average person that hopes to get preventive medical care. You will die in the U.S of the most basic medical condition.
It's likely that you'd have issues in pretty much any country in the world with your conditions. For example many european single-payer systems have tons of exceptions. Covering only basic tests/procedures/drugs (premium available out-of-pocket only), queues (jumping queue is possible by paying out-of-pocket) and incompetent doctors (longer queues at the good ones). And you pay a huge insurance for this, so there's not that much money left to pay out-of-pocket for most people.
And go where? Seriously I don’t know of another country that isn’t on the same authoritarian track, if not further along. If anyone has done a serious study and come up with a country that still has strong judicial independence, due process, lack of censorship and respect for private property, Id love to know
I split my time between a Midwest state and Spain. My children and family are safer when in Spain, imho. Ymmv, n=1. It is more humane to the human, and the health insurance for a family of four is ~$2k/year. There is no perfect, just good enough. I do not worry about gun violence there, I do not worry about them going without healthcare, I do not worry about their human rights being impaired, I don't worry about them as pedestrians getting harmed by careless drivers driving unnecessarily large personal vehicles on urban infrastructure hostile in pedestrians (Houston is actively removing a roundabout because their drivers are too incompetent to use it, for example). This is my success criteria, yours may be different.
> Seriously I don’t know of another country that isn’t on the same authoritarian track,
New Zealand? Canada? Japan? France? I mean you really aren't trying there.
> if not further along.
The only places further along are China, Russia, Georgia, Venezuela, and Hungary. Even Slovakia or Poland or Germany aren't as bad (though still troubling). It's really hard to be more authoritarian than the US is now still. The Feds claiming they'll keep going at Comey yet again really seals the deal there .
Not saying it's worth it for you, but there are lots of places.
The Comey case is interesting. I can certainly see it as "the US is trying to be authoritarian" (or at least the current administration is).
But the courts ruled in Comey's favor. There is no reason to think that, if the feds try again, the courts won't rule for Comey again. That's still "rule of law", no matter how hard the current administration is trying to make it otherwise.
Now, sure, in an ideal world the case should never have been filed. In a just world, he would not have been put through that. And in an even-somewhat-ideal world, the case would not be re-filed. Absolutely. But for all that, the situation in the US is not (yet) as dire as you are painting it.
The administration can just keep coming at him as long as they're in power, and that is itself effectively a punishment. If each case takes just 90 days to play out, they can bring four or so of those per year, on the taxpayer dime (while themselves getting paid, by us, to do it, in fact!) and waste tons of Comey's money and time, while also stressing him out.
The safeguard against this is supposed to be that Congress would eventually put a stop to it, or that the people wouldn't vote someone in who'd abuse the power of the executive branch to extrajudicially punish opponents. Neither of those safeguards have worked. Courts can tell them to stop but they have to keep telling them with each case, after everyone goes through all the motions (so to speak).
Well, the first case got squished pretty quickly (at the first motion, I believe), and it got squished in a way that damaged the ability of one of Trump's people to do her job.
And there's a statute of limitations here. It has already elapsed, in fact, though the administration is trying to argue that they way they're doing it allows for an exception. If that doesn't fly, then it's just over.
Also, with the sole exception of Hungary, no place in Europe is remotely on the same authoritarian track as the US. And the democratic systems and institutions are much more robust, too. More consensus, less first-pass-the-post bullshit.
I wouldn't say every American should try to be an expat. I think we'd be better off as a society if everyone traveled abroad more. I know most can't afford that, but I'd be totally down for a state funded 'study abroad' program for bright students. Other places have ideas we can learn from (and vice versa)
The average American thinks the U.S is the best country in the world. I say that as an American. To your point if people saw how the rest of the world lives and how happy many of those 7.88 Billion people are they would start being more vocal about our endless cycle of work until you are 85 to be able to pay your property taxes.
For pete's sake, it's not legal in many states to even cover slavery, the indian genocide, or japanese internment in a way that actually holds the US responsible
In contrast, every time I travel extensively outside the US, I wonder what the fuck we’re even doing with our unfathomable wealth. Crumbling infrastructure, horrendous healthcare, mass homelessness and human misery, all while our oligarchs sit atop their piles of gold and tell us to work harder.
Pretty much everywhere in Europe has better public transit than the US. It's actually embarrassing.
Putting up a GoFundMe for healthcare expenses seems like a uniquely American phenomenon.
And there's simply no equivalent of something like skid row or the tenderloin in any major European city. We let our neediest simply... fall through the cracks. Then step over them on the way to work.
I looked that up. It sounds like you have to start an entrepreneurial business there (in which you invest at least 5k). I have no interest in starting my own business, so that is probably not an option.
Is housing really unaffordable in US? How many years average Joe needs to work to buy a 1bd apartment in the big city, let's say 500sq ft? Price in annual net salary is much lower in USA than in big EU cities.
Please, please, please go to anywhere EXCEPT the Netherlands. We beg you.
We have a gigantic and near unsolvable housing problem. We have thousands of refugees/immigrants with residence permits waiting for housing already (currently stuck in hotels and bungalow parks just to give them a roof over their heads), and we don't even have enough affordable houses for our own.
On behalf of everyone in the Netherlands waiting to start a family in their own affordable house, thank you.
The Netherlands pretty much has the most strict carbon regulations in Europe. So while houses could be build, they can't be build because of those.
And while those are in place our small country is literally flooded with asylum seekers and our government doesn't seem to care about that (~1000 each week for several years now and those are just the official numbers, https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/publicaties/2025/01/...).
If they get a permit to stay (and most of them do) they get priority access to the already small housing market. So a lot of people who want to start a family in their own house are stuck at the basement or the attic at the house of their parents (either figurative or literally).
If someone thinks I am making things up or exaggerating: I was lucky enough to buy the house of my parents before this nightmare started. I bought it for approximately $150k, which is near the actual market price at the time. Somewhere in the next 1-2 years it will probably be valued at least 4 times more (if it isn't already).
The rule applies to all immigrants: leave your rubbish at home. Don't carry it with you to your new host country. In this case, don't turn Europe into America.
Went for dinner with a Parisian friend of mine. He spent a good amount of it complaining that Paris is unrecognizable from his youth. Too many Americans, everywhere!
As someone who knows a lot of New Yorkers and Texans, it's definitely curious that people would refer to themselves as from a city versus from the country itself.
You can expect 25%-50% the salary, with a cost-of-living similar to the SF Bay Area throughout the entire country. Relatively little jobs, a lot of legacy tech stacks, and these days a lot of stuff is outsourced to American SaaS platforms. High taxes, but they cover next to nothing for the average person.
Go to Eastern Europe, Switzerland, Scandinavia, maybe Italy or Greece.
I sometimes wonder whether the political attitudes of some immigrants and their descendants are shaped by negative experiences or family histories from their countries of origin. This might help explain why people with backgrounds in places like South Africa, the Levant, or Eastern Europe often express strong libertarian views or criticize institutions such as the European Union, progressive politics, or European bureaucratic culture.
Many people don’t realize how much European countries have advanced. Poland and Romania, for example, have been among the major beneficiaries of EU integration. At the same time, American tech companies enjoyed relatively easy access to the European market for years, operating with limited regulation, while countries like Russia and China restricted foreign platforms early on and invested heavily in developing their own cloud and digital infrastructures.
I like to think their economy would be on par with France and Germany if it wasn't for the Russian occupation. But with the present growth, they'll get there soon enough!
It was high ranked last year, is it still high ranked now?
With the €100k fees for certain visas, with all the news about ICE, with the requirement to have public social media profiles to get in combined with the other news about people getting deported for having politically unacceptable opinions?
Comparison is hard, because states themselves are the size (land and population) as other countries. People that would be counted "immigrants" elsewhere are not.
E.g. Switzerland has an unusually high immigrant population, but also an unusually high emmigrant population.
The U.S. has 52m immigrants and 4.8m emmigrants. [1] Nowhere else is nearly that ratio. Next closest would be Canada.
The US is a top immigrant country because it isn't bombing itself, and there is still the perception that one can go from nothing to something - but that barn door is closing, for sure.
> [...] we have three options for these kinds of words: “cooperate,” “co-operate,” and “coöperate.” Back when the magazine was just getting started, someone decided that the first misread and the second was ridiculous, and adopted the diaeresis as the most elegant solution with the broadest application.
There are almost 200 countries on Earth, yet for these types, you could probably count the number of "acceptable" destinations for emigration on one hand. It's like Hasan Piker threatening to leave the US (the country he professed to hate "so f***king much" before electrocuting his dog/prop for daring to move), with his preferred destination being Japan--not his native Turkey, not some avowed communist country like Cuba, Venezuela, or NK, but Japan.
I'm growing tired of the bad analogies. This isn't some sinking ship in the ocean. It's a democratically elected republic. To re-abuse your analogy, every soul onboard is not dead weight, it is potent buoyancy.
Back in 1930s Germany, there were other boats afloat to escape to.
Here in 2025, you live in a globalized world. The rats are soon to be out of ships to flee to. There's no free society in the Sol system that survives rampant and unchecked authoritarianism in the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third (though increasingly of the first two). By all means, I'm happy for Europe to wake up and prove me wrong, but looking at their tepid reaction to being invaded by Russia three years ago I'm not holding my breath.
> Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third.
The UK may be something close to a military vassal, what with its "independent" nuclear deterrant relying on US missiles, but the French deterrant is not and France is not.
Economically, we're all interdependent right now: China depends on the US and Europe, Europe depends on the US and China, the US depends on China and nad Europe. Current US policy is pushing everyone everywhere to disconnect from the US, ironically without even doing the one thing tariffs are supposed to be a tool for which is protrcting strategic domestic industry.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the EU away from Russian energy much faster than it would otherwise have done from decarbonisation efforts. Given who the world's factory is, I'd expect a lot of our PV and wind turbine components to come from China, and even if they don't directly for the Chinese supply to substantially impact the price.
> the triad of the US, China, and Russia. Europe is a military vassal of the first, an economic vassal of the second, and an energy vassal of the third.
What an hyperbole.
There are also other places in the world besides Europe, the US and China.
The billionaires seem to have settled on New Zealand as the right combo of “stable-enough liberal democracy that they probably won’t seize my treasure hoard” and “hard enough to reach that climate and political-instability refugee waves cannot get there”.
If you think Europe is a military vassal of the US, I'd suggest a read of the latest US National Security Doctrine.
China, agree.
Russia? Not so much, now the war is 1385 days in - and the US is currently dilly-dally-ing on their stance(s).
Silly argument. Empires rise and fall. USA isn’t the end of history. If USA sinks it won’t be great for the rest of the world but no not everything else will fall.
So, “people who committed three violent crimes” are the protected class you’re worried might come to harm? You’re right, this government risks seriously harming the triple felon community.
> President Donald Trump on Thursday accused several Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior,” calling for them to “be arrested and put on trial” for behavior that, he said, could be “punishable by death.”
I suspect this is largely driven by a subset of liberals who have equated words they don't like with violence. So when someone like Kirk commits a misgendering or some other verbal assault against their beliefs, this is essentially the same as exacting physical violence. Which by that logic can be responded to with actual physical violence.
It's very twisted, and fortunately not all liberals have this perspective. Some are actually liberal in their beliefs.
> On the other hand, a liberal did kill Charlie Kirk in cold blood because the killer had a trans girlfriend and was mad about Kirk‘a opinions. So, maybe some people should be afraid of violence.
My friend, this is a clownshoes-ass take. First, the motives of this dude are still unknown. His entire family are Trump-supporters. Dude grew up shooting guns and being a good ol' boy (hence the reason he, y'know, had access to, and knowledge of how to shoot and kill someone from such a distance at the age of 22). Second, literally on the same day Kirk was killed, there was a school shooting by a literal Neo-Nazi. And a couple months prior to Kirk's killing, a Trump-voting, anti-abortion nutcase literally assassinated the leader of the Minnesota State House and her husband, shot and nearly killed a member of the State Senate and his wife, and had a list of 70 other, all democratic politicians, he'd apparently intended to assassinate. And here you are still focused on the one time you could shoehorn some cherry-pickin' ass example of an alleged "leftist" being violent into this conversation. For 30 years, right-wing extremist political violence has been far more common and far more deadly than their left-wing extremist counterparts. https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versu...
The irony here is, you're simultaneously claiming it's ridiculous to suggest Trump wants to "round-up" liberals, while using the same bullshit guilt-by-extremely-stretched-association rhetoric about Kirk's assassination to paint "liberals" as violent that he's currently using to justify treating his critics as "terrorists". Read through this bad-boy, and with a straight face tell anyone Trump's not interested in "rounding up" his dissidents https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun... Would he be successful in trying this? Probably not. But I sure as hell don't feel one bit certain that people like you would move a muscle to stop it, being so easily convinced of such contemptible nonsense.
The difference honestly is that mainstream liberals — otherwise normal people from all walks of life were, publicly and unabashedly giddy with delight about the Kirk shooting, whereas I haven’t seen any normal people glorify the right-wing psychopaths who committed the heinous acts you spoke of, besides probably some cowardly anon 4chan trolls.
What worries me is how much the political “team” you seem to identify with considers it justifiable to kill. Be honest, how many people in your personal bubble expressed annoyance that the Trump shooter missed?
The party system has devolved from theory and ideas into absolute tribal barbarism, but I can’t believe it’s the Democrats, who I used to count myself among, and saw as the peaceful and mature ones, leading that charge. There’s a rot in the Democratic Party, and it’s in the morality department.
Ohhhh please. Donald Trump, the most influential and significant member of the Republican Party (and tons of other v important folks downstream from him) were giddy with joy when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was nearly killed by a lunatic with a hammer. They joked about this repeatedly. Charlie Kirk, himself, also joked about this incident, and even suggested “some amazing patriot” bail the attacker out of prison. This is categorically different from random YouTube dipshits saying unkind things about a reprehensible bigot being killed.
You could also trivially compare the responses from Democratic politicians to, e.g., Trump’s assassination attempt, the Charlie Cook killing to Republican politicians’ responses to the Minnesota political assassin, the shooting of Gabby Gifford, and the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. There is a shocking contrast that is well evident to anyone not stewing their brains in RW propaganda.
Trump literally pardoned every Jan 6th participant, including those who assaulted police officers. I struggle to think of a more obvious example of demonstrating support for political violence.
You also apparently missed the countless conservative influencers calling for outright civil war after Kirk’s killing. I cannot fathom how you’ve drawn this conclusion. Certainly not from observing reality.
If things aren't close they don't need to be counted.
It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes.
We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally.
This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting.
(barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)
I do understand that, in principle. But having a mathematical reason to let some 'difficult' votes go uncounted gives ammunition to those who would put political pressure on vote counting for their advantage, while also making people in general feel disenfranchised. (We have a huge problem with turnout in the US in general, and the message you're presenting only adds fuel to that!) This is why I wrote "sometimes not even counted then", because we do have a kind of apathy towards these small and easily disenfranchisable groups, and once you open it a crack, it becomes easier for some partisan to drive a wedge into it (see Bush v Gore 2000).
Also, it's a mistake to think that the only result of voting is to produce the winner of the election. The margin matters also. A politician winning by a large margin (or even a majority) can claim a 'mandate'; one who only wins by a plurality will have more spirited opposition.
We've seen this in the most recent US election; imagine if small percentage of those who didn't vote in the solid blue states because their vote didn't matter (a refrain I've heard from many people) actually voted, and Trump swept the swing states but lost the popular vote. The entire political landscape would be different, and we might even have momentum in the coming years to abolish the Electoral College.
So if we are fans of liberal democracy, we should be doing everything in our power to structure the system to make people feel as though their voice and vote matters.
Below the teaser blurb ending "The Netherlands offers one way out," and the byline, where you'd expect the article to start, is the text "Your window is closing."
Fortunately, if you scroll further, the ominous warning turns out to only be for the paywall.
Very weird story. I can't figure out why these people want to leave, so I'm just inserting random Trump policy here, but all of the Netherlands doesn't allow illegal immigrants to stay indefinitely, allows people to pay for citizenship, and in the case of the Irish passport, they're being offered a visa based on who their parents were.
Is it tariffs? Taxes are higher there. Is it the social services, health care, foreign invasions? Half of these people were Republicans until five minutes ago, and physically participated in our most unjustifiable wars. The Netherlands I assume is like the rest of Europe and is fanatically anti-Palestinian (they love any excuse to pretend the Nazis were somebody else) and anti-Russian to the point of demanding invasion. They're upset because Trump is marginally not aggressive enough for them, and is not financing foreign interventions more. They think that the US taxpayer might only pay for 75% of it, rather than 90%.
It seems to me that, and it shouldn't be surprising considering the outlet, that it's just a bunch of wealthy people who are embarrassed to be ruled by a wrestling valet game show host. The reason why we got the clown is because these people are so awful. It's nothing but an improvement for the US to dump them on Europe. As their old asses get sick, Europe can take care of them for free while they still have their millions (from getting in early on the property market and getting jobs back when there were still pensions) invested in Vanguard funds.
> The Netherlands I assume is like the rest of Europe and is fanatically anti-Palestinian
The Netherlands is one of five countries to withdraw from the Eurovision over Israel being allowed to participate in 2026 (the others are Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Iceland), fwiw.
> and anti-Russian to the point of demanding invasion
... Eh? Russia is currently invading Europe. You may be a bit confused about that one.
