Funny events in anti-woke world
- Thread starter Agema
- Start date
You're right, US Federal income tax maxes out at 37%, my mistake. Though that kicks in only when someone earns over half a million a year, whereas the UK highest rate affects earnings >£150k. So even if someone does earn over half a million, and lives in Oregon & Portland City... they would still pay more in the UK than in the US, because >300k more of their money is subject to the highest band.
And the US has no personal allowance. So the poorest pay more in the US, and the richest pay less, than in the UK. No, that's not more progressive.
I genuinely don't know where you're getting it from that abortion is "already against the law" in the UK. It simply is not. We broadly have much easier access to it than in the US.
I'm not really interested in you offering a justification for why the US spends more. Because you and I don't share the same feelings about that reason.
Ditto, I'm not interested in your analysis for why the difference is as it is. The fact is that if the UK Conservatives would never suggest anything even approaching the US Republican position, and the US Republican position is viewed here as extremist ridiculousness, even by Conservatives.
Eh, I count 5. And come to think of it, you haven't actually put forward any policies they share at all.
This one baffled me as an Irish person. Like when I was younger if someone was looking at an unexpected pregnancy you would euphemistically ask if they were "going to England".
But I'm sure this will just be another instance of Tstorm saying something indisputably, provably wrong and declaring themselves the victor.
And let's not forget that due to all the loopholes countries tend to have just looking at the tax rates is kind of useless. These tax rates usually don't apply to the rich as they always find ways to reduce their taxable income.
That's why a global picture of what taxation represents for a country is much more interesting. Here is the OECD's data on tax revenue/GDP (%);
USA: 25.0 %
UK: 32.7 %
And if you look at EU countries, with the exception of Switzerland and Ireland, they all seem to be within the range of 30-45%
Is abortion illegal there. I know your full of Catholics but I didnt know that would stop abortions being available
We're at the end of the second trimester unless its a medical emergency
It was until 2018 when we voted to repeal the 8th amendment (because, hey America you can do that y'know? You can admit your constitution got shit wrong).
We're less Catholic now (probably what happens when you keep raping people's kids and murdering/selling babies and covering it up). We were the first country in the world to legalise same sex marriage by popular vote.
At a certain age, it becomes a regular thing, I suppose. There's still so many degrees of reckless speculation of what would have happened
You should do math before making a numerical claim. I spent a couple minutes in excel. If you make $500,000 in the UK, your income tax is $197,751.80 (I converted all numbers in gbp to dollars before calculating things, for comparison sake). Effective tax rate, 39.5%. If you make $500,000 in Portland, you combined federal, state, and local income tax is $202,534.60, effective tax rate 40.5%, without even hitting the top bracket. If you're curious like me, the breaking point where the person in Portland pays more is about $300,000.
The US has a standard tax deduction, the first $12,950 of income isn't taxed, just your personal allowance, though admittedly slightly smaller, so there is technically a window in which some poor people would pay more in the US than in the UK, but the poorest pay 0 in both countries, and the median income pays more in the UK, so if you really need credit for the ~$3000 more untaxed income, we can call that one a wash.
Abortion in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Gotta go to work, I'll circle back here later.
England is certainly more permissive than Ireland, or was, but the US is far more than that. Activists here take great offense at the idea of someone having to go to the next city over to get to an abortion specific clinic.
That's because our states are the size of European countries
And it's Texas, which is the second biggest state in America. You live in that deep south and want to get an abortion... better pack your fucking bags.
I recall that in public they too made the stand against anti gay violence. I remember the clown and the advocaat holding hands in protest when a gay couple got mistreated.
However whenever their private conversations get leaked....yeah they're opinion on same sex marriage seems rather Republican. However that they are forced to pretend otherwise in public is a good sign. It shows that they too are aware that open hostility to same sex marriage won't get them anywhere.
I guess with American republicans you have to factor in the evangelical nationalism, which even to European christians is completely fucking bonkers. I mean, we do have the SGP party which is pro-life and also doesn't seem to allow women in positions of power, but even they seem like pussycats compared to the American side.
Never heard of them, so looked them up. Bizarre to see the Netherlands have an actual religious party, and not in the milquetoast "it matters only when not inconvenient" christian democrat way, but bonafide theocrats. Then again, you got some hardcore pilaarbijters over there.
We don't have one of those. But to offset, our nationalist parties come in different flavours.
We have actual Nationalist parties? I thought we had a neo Fascistic separatist party and a moderately right wing separatist one. I refuse to call parties which want to tear apart the country "Nationalist" :/
I suppose if Flemisch Nationalism is disqualified, we still have one that counts. Démocratie Nationale on the Wallonian side are Belgicist. Waving the Belgian flag is like half their entire reason for existence, the other half the usual cocktail of traditional European far right stuff.
Also, formerly Front Nationale until Marine le Pen sued them because she didn't want her party to be associated with them, which is hilarious imo.
Here's the thing, I'm not bringing up the Bacchae because I have a personal phobia of being dismembered by my mum, and I don't find a lot of the things in lovecraft particularly scary. My mind is not exactly reeling at the incomprehensible horror of a funny squid man with wings or a really big vagina.
But there is a reason why things scare us. Even in the immediate sense, if a murderer bursts through the door with a big knife you're not going to placidly shrug your shoulders and fatalistically accept death because it doesn't really matter and is all meaningless anyway. There's a pretty inbuilt and universal response at work here. If our ancestors' had encountered a lion and just gone "oh well, getting eaten is fine I guess" then they wouldn't have passed on their genes. Fear is what kept humans alive long enough for them to not have to worry about getting eaten by lions all the time. It is a reflection of an evolutionary history of fighting for survival against an environment that was hostile.
At the same time, being completely overwhelmed and paralysed by fear all the time wouldn't make us very useful either, so humans had to evolve mechanisms to manage fear, and to manage the traumatic memories created by fear. But those mechanisms aren't perfect. Things you push into your subconscious have a habit of leaking back out a bit. The purpose of horror as a genre is often to let us access the things we've pushed into our subconscious minds in an abstract form or in an environment of relative safety, and feel a kind of cathartic release from that. A murderer breaking into your house and trying to stab you would be a traumatic experience, but watching fictional characters go through that experience is safer.
And that's what I think is really interesting about Lovecraft, because it's not just a bunch of horror stories, there's an implicit theory of how horror works which a massive, massive proportion of modern horror media is based on. I'd summarize it as "horror is what happens when the outside becomes the inside".
In the Bacchae, that's quite literal. The inside is the polis, the ordered world where humans can live in safety and everything makes sense. The outside is the wilderness, it's the forests of mount Kithairon, where order breaks down and human laws have no power. The arrival of Dionysus brings the outside inside, it overturns all the rules on which humans have built their lives. But it also goes a bit deeper than that, because human nature itself contains a little bit of the outside. The Greeks thought that below the surface of the ordered rational self is a part of us that belongs to the wilderness, that longs to be free of human laws, to renounce the pain of consciousness and to return to some animalistic state of madness.
Space isn't frightening because big numbers are inherently scary. The same role can also be filled by the sea, or by a forest, or by an unfamiliar house. It's the outside. It's a place where you are not safe and where you might get eaten by space lions. But it's also a place you might be drawn to anyway, it's a place that has a mysterious and compulsive power because it represents a wilderness inside you. At the end of the day, you are reading horror because you, the reader, wants to be scared.
I think that's why Lovecraft is so enduringly influential despite being a weird old racist man with a crippling fear of vaginas, and why so much of modern horror bears his influence, because there is a genuine universality to that formula. The wilderness is scary. The wilderness inside the human mind is scarier.
I'm not surprised you've never heard of them. Just like with the community they represent - the so called 'zwarte kousen' - they kinda seem to keep to themselves, or atleast keep a very low profile.
Bevindelijk gereformeerden, right? Dunno, did some cursory reading on them, and seems like they'd get along splendidly with American evangelicals for the most part.
Then again, the same is true of fundamentalist muslims.
Aaah if we also include obscure silly Walloon parties we can probably also add the now dead "Parti Populaire" and brand new "Chez Nous".
And the Belgian FN was a scandal ridden joke, I can understand Le Pen not wanting to be associated with it.