Quote from: o48o on Today at 11:03:35 AM

You totally ignored my every point including that freedom of press chart, that's by actual reporters without borders by the way.
And i assume that you did it only because it doesn't fit in your narrative.

But since you feel safe to go this road, let's do that and break your post apart, i try to keep it short:

Quote from: caroasi on April 18, 2025, 11:19:54 AM

I don't find human rights violations by Europe to be funny at all. People under North Korea, Stalin, and Mao also thought they owned property. No, they didn't own property. The state owns the property and allows citizens to borrow it at their "good grace".
It is difficult to say who respects property more and less especially with the bad data available, but you can see European countries have revoked property rights with their tax rates well above 15% of GDP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio

No country that taxes above 15% could consider anyone to be the owners of "their" property. And of course there is the outright criminal mindset of taxing a house. If you have to pay property tax on a house, you don't own it, you rent it. Sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news on that topic! So no even the USA doesn't properly respect property rights, but they do so dramatically more than Europe.

I am sorry if i laughed, but i find your views extraordinary delusional, and laughing to something like that is my defense mechanism.

Higher taxes are something that traditionally have been inseparable part of any prospering and transparent society, society that takes cares of their citizens, while having growing economy that has enough tools to fight against corruption.

Prospering society doesn't come as a free handout for their citizens, there's a price to pay for that and that's called taxes.
I am sorry if it's hurting your feelings though.

They are needed not only to build infra, but maintain civil rest without constant mass shootings. They are needed to upkeep regulations that protect your privacy against profit seeking companies. By the way, tech bros in USA hope that Trump would pressure EU to lower their privacy laws, and that would make their invasion of privacy our problem as well.

Bringing up North-Korea when talking about EU, in where people (by your own words) have a better voting system than USA, while FOX seems more and more like NK propaganda, and trump sending people to El Salvador without due process is kinda hilarious too.

Quote from: caroasi on April 18, 2025, 11:19:54 AM

Home schooling is more or less outlawed in Germany, making it a totally unlivable place for any family.

Homeschooling isn't illegal in all EU, but i totally understand the reasoning for that.
You want people to integrate to society, not for them to abuse their kids in peace, or form separate shadow legal systems or ghettos.
That also ensures kids to have as unbiased education as possible, with quality that most parents can't provide.
It's also removing inequality by giving everyone same opportunities. I understand if some parent's are against it, but their kids aren't parent's property.

And frankly, saying that there's something wrong in EU compared to USA is throwing stones in glass houses.

Quote from: caroasi on April 18, 2025, 11:19:54 AM

As for gun rights, its common knowledge that gun rights are respected more in the USA than any other major country. I need not provide any sources on that.

And what exactly do you need those guns for? Ah, against daily mass shootings by crazy people? People robbing your house? Or against crazy leadership you elected?

Which might have been largely prevented by taking care of their citizens by those taxes? How is that going for them?

And once again, we are able to buy guns, we don't just hand out them to crazy people and we mainly don't just adore them. We feel safe enough without them. We like not to get killed daily with mass shootings either. It's a culture thing i suppose.

Quote from: caroasi on April 18, 2025, 11:19:54 AM

Free Speech is openly disregarded in Europe and many people go to jail for sharing opinions on social media.

"3,395 people were detained and questioned for online speech alone in 2016, a rate of nine per day. Nearly half of those questioned were prosecuted. Typical was the case of Lee Joseph Dunn, who last July posted three memes suggesting that Asian men possessing knives might move into British communities, possibly after immigrating illegally. Dunn deleted the memes and apologized; he was therefore sentenced to only two months in jail instead of three. The same judge, however, gave Billy Thompson the full three months for a heated Facebook post that included emojis of an ethnic minority and a gun."
Source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/free-speech-wobbles-uk

There are laws against hateful speech in Europe. Of course hate is a human emotion, and expressing our emotions towards others is a human right. In the USA, the supreme court has ruled hate speech is a protected right.

There are dramatically more rights and freedoms in the USA specifically in part because Trump appointed judges are protecting gun rights more firmly, though they have a long way to go to properly protect weapons rights.

People who specially move for freedoms and liberties often choose places like New Hampshire, Wyoming, and to a lesser extent places like Florida for it's tax policies. In Europe there are not many options as Switzerland is no longer all that respectful of liberties as they were, especially with their brazenly anti-freedom weapon policies.

I get that concept is difficult to you. Concept of hate speech is a tricky one, especially if you haven't learned from history where demonizing minorities usually leads.

I can feely say that i hate, loath, or am disgusted by someone, but using some minorities religion, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation to justify my hate, that smears larger group of people no matter if you intended it. And we have seen that this leads to persecution and exclusion, and in worst cases to genocide. And this is based on studies by experts.

Compared to Trump's vision of free speech: https://time.com/7264811/trump-free-speech-joint-address-essay/

Also i am certain that you can provide more credible links about EU then some random american zine with zero reference links talking about non-EU country.

I find the concept that taxation has a net benefit to society, to be extraordinarily delusional. Taxation seems to have been invented by kings to siphon money from peasants. It was never invented to help anyone but the king. The spin that it is beneficial to society is the propaganda of dictatorships, not objective political science study. Taxation is taking other people's property without their permission. Theft is taking other people's property without their permission. Taxation is theft, extortion, and slavery. Without evidence to the contrary, I suppose good things don't come from immoral and unethical actions.

Clearly, you're entire political platform is built on the concept of pragmatics, not principles. I have a common libertarian mindset, which political science has absolutely not shown to be delusional at all. Libertarians are fact-based people grounded in reality who are keen to acknowledge economic studies. I'd go as far to say people who do politics actually never check to see if what they are doing is actually a net benefit, they purely assume that and use violence to achieve their goals without their proofs. Tax-based schools purely assumed them selves to be a net benefit without evidence. And now many school systems produce adults who can't even read, especially in the USA.

And of course as taxation has increased over the past generation, the wealth gap has gone back into the favor of the rich in the past generation while the middle class has shrunken. So not only does the theory not work, but the apparent trends are not working either. So, I'm going to bet against you that the data will show exactly the opposite of your theory. You seem like a facts-based person which is great. We could look at the data about how tax rates changing over time effect on the poor and middle class populations if you care to. While the poor have greatly benefited from technology improvements, I don't believe higher taxes have benefited them. And, the middle class seems to have outright suffered from higher tax rates.

I'm willing to bet low-tax countries have a thriving middle class, while high-tax countries don't. And I have yet to see the data, but I know the morals of the situation.