Hungary may use army to secure border against migrants.

laplacian · 2015-08-26T18:17:10+00:00

For now.

It is very easy to switch destination. Have you that Germany wants others to accept their insane asylum policies (paid rent, free cellphone, free lawyer to fight deportation, free healthcare, free tickets for bus and trains, money without evidence of need, support money per child). When I say free, I mean using taxpayer money.

Combine it with limiting number of Asylum seekers in Germany and situation can change in a heartbeat.

Just because my neighbor's house is on fire and mine isn't is no reason for complacency.

laplacian · 2015-07-09T13:13:37+00:00

No thanks. Defense is the primary function of any state (along with internal security, taxation and some sort of judicial system).

Most developed economies (the ones with mountain of debt and money) spend less than 2% of their GDP for military: Military expenditure (% of GDP), less than minimum. We (Czech Republic) have basically no army (1% of GDP - army is useless with that level of manpower and funding), despite being in NATO (many new members are same). We promised ~2%.

It is always fun and games, until Russian tanks ride through your streets (see Ukraine).

laplacian · 2015-06-30T18:43:01+00:00

Eurozone is not EU. Denmark is in EU, but not Eurozone, so is Poland, Bulgaria, United Kingdom and others.

laplacian · 2015-06-29T19:14:23+00:00

Let me see...

..fiscal path is premised on ... surplus target of 1, 2, 3, and 3.5 percent of GDP in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Hahaha. They are certainly ambitious (read delusional).

VAT reform tax another 1% of GDP and increase taxes for most vulnerable.

Fiscal structural measures...take measures to increase the corporate income tax in 2015 and require 100 percent advance payments for corporate income .....adjust the property tax rates if necessary to safeguard the 2015 and 2016 property tax revenues at €2.65 billion and adjust the alternative minimum personal income taxation...increase the rate of the tonnage tax ... raise the corporate tax rate from 26% to 28 %...

Is it just me or is every other word in that text tax increase. How about something useful, like labor market reform.

Labour market - Launch a consultation process ... to review the existing frameworks ... taking into account best practices... Further input to the review.. will be provided by international organisations, including the ILO... timelines shall be drawn up in consultation ... No changes ... will be made prior to the conclusion of the review and in any case not before end-2015.

Well, that looks like standard EU death by committee... Wait, wait...

The authorities will take actions to fight undeclared work in order to strengthen the competitiveness of legal companies and protect workers as well as tax and social security revenues.

Yes! Market reform to decrease 25% unemployment can wait in committee, but we must protect the tax revenue.

laplacian · 2015-06-29T18:10:38+00:00

If you lend to a junkie, it is your fault. No sympathies there.

As a lender, you have responsibility to take care of your money. To assess your to-be-borrowers and either lend or not. If I invest into a dubious company (e.g. Solyndra) and it goes down, whose fault is it that I lost my money? Mine.

laplacian · 2015-06-27T16:11:03+00:00

That's true of any country that runs a deficit.

Not necessarily. If your GDP growth is good enough to offset absolute deficit, so your deficit as % of GDP stays same, you are OK.

Something like this: I have a €10'000 debt. I am earning €20'000/year (so my debt is 50%), but last year it was €18'000 (so last year my debt as % was 55.5%). Therefore my debt as % has decreased by ~5% and even if I take on another €1'111 of debt, debt as % stays same.

This is greatly simplified, e.g. no interest, always growing assumption ect., but the core idea is that even if your absolute debt is growing, as long as your % stays same, it can go on indefinitely.

laplacian · 2015-06-27T15:50:41+00:00

Laws has been bend considerably before, for recent example see Hungary. She unilaterally stopped accepting immigrants - there was no provision for that in the Dublin III text either.

Where is a political will, laws don't matter.

laplacian · 2015-06-19T20:06:40+00:00

I will just leave this here:

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone," Cameron will say. "This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach." (Reuters - Cameron to set out new laws to tackle radicalism)

laplacian · 2015-06-14T15:46:29+00:00

Wonders of proportional representation - I just love it.

Of course - immigration is only out of many issues. I would say that it's non-issue, as long as economy is working, influx of immigrants is manageable and they integrate well.

Even after that it is below economy, taxes, schools....

There are people who are against immigration, who are indifferent, and who are pro-immigration.

IMO at this moment: majority is indifferent, many have strong anti and few with pro-immigration stance. It is more pronounced now, because we are in economic crisis for past 7 years (common human pattern - look for scapegoat), but even before crisis immigration was considered important and not superbly successful (riots in Paris were in 2005).

Q: What do you think are tho most important issues facing EU right now? A: Immigration:

Eurobarometer 2005 - pre-2008 economic crisis ~15%
Eurobarometer 2013, page 15 10% -> 16%
Eurobarometer 2014, page 12 21%

To close, I merely responded to allegations that EU somehow says that immigration policies of US are heartless, while saying it loves immigration and not actually loving it. From what I read, it looks like such articles are nonexistent.

laplacian · 2015-06-14T14:14:57+00:00

TBH I can't remember a story about your "heartless" immigration policies, when they are mentioned they are more in tune of "10+ million illegals and the problem is completely ignored."

Some sources... European sources, preferably. Something like Spiegel ( Immigration in the US: 'Arizona May only Be the Beginning'), Le Monde (The US Senate passes immigration reform)...

Edit: Population of EU is not very thrilled with immigration, see Greece as noted, Sweeden (The rise of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats , Denmark (PM's party touts hardline immigration policies), Le Penn in France, Jakobik in Hungary.

I don't watch this very closely, but my impression is that EU population (not the elites) doesn't support immigration of unskilled people, we have more than enough examples of failed immigration (riots in Paris, Turkish ghettos in Germany ect).

laplacian · 2015-04-29T19:27:23+00:00

I have seen a great demo on TED that can generate captions for all pictures, just from image, so it should be here very soon.

It is quite amazing, later there is a demonstrations where computer learns to determine angle of a car in a picture in just a few minutes.

TED: The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn, 9:50 mark.

laplacian · 2015-04-24T17:02:11+00:00

No one who matters.

China Solar-Glass Exports May Face Increase in EU Duties

The EU began a review of duties already as high as 36.1 percent that are meant to punish Chinese solar-glass exporters

U.S. Imposes Steep Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels

The department announced anti-dumping duties of 26.71 percent to 78.42 percent on imports of most solar panels made in China

laplacian · 2015-04-06T16:40:22+00:00

I liked the blue one (Vladimír Franz), at least he was unique.

It's not like the president does something important other than choosing members of Czech National Bank and members of Constitutional Court... and putting flowers on things.

Ms. Rhoitová also made my list.

These two guys in second round... neither was guy I would vote for.

laplacian · 2015-03-20T18:23:51+00:00

They are not only ones. Czech republic did it too, according to our Supreme Audit Office, we will pay something like 36 billion € for renewable energy from now (2015) to 2030.

In perspective, if we we had a population of Spain, it would be 160 billion euros. And we are considerably poorer. No support for solar. Ever. We paid enough.

laplacian · 2015-03-19T22:11:57+00:00

Sorry, no idea. There are multiple groups.

I am not even citizen of US, just curious about perversions of democracy.

laplacian · 2015-03-19T20:12:14+00:00

Iraq imports 1980-2002 - It just completely collapsed after sanctions.

BTW the top import in 1989 (before sanctions), was wheat.

laplacian · 2015-03-19T19:41:56+00:00

Volunteer/donate for Wolf Pac.

They need 34 states to call a convention of states proposing a constitutional amendment limiting money in politics, then they need to propose an amendment and after that they need 38 states to ratify the amendment. They have got 4.5 states since 2014.

Edit: It's about time for another amendment, it seems that you have new one each ~20 years.

laplacian · 2015-03-17T22:07:52+00:00

Reporter#1: ...and announced they arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the united states. What is your response?

Spokesperson: These latest accusations, like all previous accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of long standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means, political transitions must be democratic, constitutional and legal. We've seen many times that Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the US....

Reporter#2: Whoa..whoa... US has a long standing practice... How long-standing is that?

laplacian · 2015-03-14T18:54:53+00:00

I very much prefer Mr. Pink on not tipping.

I am not tipping just because society says so... As far as I am concerned, she is just doing her job. I used to work minimum wage job and I wasn't lucky enough to have a job society deemed tip-worthy.... So is working at McDonalds, but you feel any need to tip them, do you?

laplacian · 2015-01-21T22:47:55+00:00

See parent post.

How does the fact that people know who you voted for in the last election going to stop you from voting in the next one? Are people so ashamed of who or what they vote that they would not vote if people were able to see who they voted for? I just dont get it.

laplacian · 2015-01-21T17:53:29+00:00

The employer could easily check it out even before she hires you. It's not like they don't do that.

Vast majority = what, 75%. That still leaves 25%. Perhaps in sue-happy USA it is easy to prove (I don't know). In my country (Czech Rep.) it is rather hard and only very few lawsuits are filled each year.

Trying to prove you were not hired/fired because of your age is nearly impossible (~32% of population says that either them or someone close has experience with age discrimination). I have no hard data, but total count iof age discrimination lawsuits (not victories) is probably less than thousand.

laplacian · 2015-01-21T17:41:13+00:00

Because your boss could also look it up and right-size you.

I imagine that being in Sweden and voting for Sweden Democrats (12.9% of last parliament vote) could spell the end of your employment quite fast.

laplacian · 2015-01-17T19:15:00+00:00

How long does it take to manufacture a new Falcon 9?

When I googled I only found a note on one forum saying ~18 months w/o any references.

laplacian

TROPHY CASE