FirmwareBurner

Man, that must feel like the rug pull of the century for French taxpayers, given that despite these tax breaks, French companies like Airbus and ST are incorporated in the Netherlands and paying(more like, NOT) taxes there instead of France.

I'd be pissed too, and I'd want my money back.

Unless of course the purpose of those tax breaks was actually to keep some jobs in France and not see more of them move to cost efficient places like eastern Europe or north Africa.

The thing is people don't care about how many rich people there are out there, as long as they can get a good life out of their labor (good job, good house, etc) but since capitalism has optimized these out of the reach for most people nowadays, then they start to blame rich people for everything, with the definition of the word 'rich' here being very fluid, ending up to mean just about everyone who has more than they do, and not just your Bezos, Musk and Saudi kings, so any taxes on the "rich" ends up only on the hard working middle class again.

No, I wasn't talking about "Umvolkung", it was a genuine question.

Isn't that "I'll low-key call you a Nazi because you asked a question about a thing that vaguely resembles what Nazis talked about" nonsense again?"

Sugarcoated way of saying "most of them died". I wonder what their opinion would be if the dead could speak.

>What followed was some of the most successful economic growth and society advancement in human history

So every 50-100 years or so, we need to kill a lot of people in a world war, so that whoever remains alive in the rubble, gets to see massive economic prosperity because of the labor shortage that follows? Basically, the same thing Mussolini and Hitler were advocating for in their speeches.

Not sure I'd sign up for that. You can keep your "economic growth", I'd rather live mediocre but not die in a war for the elites.

And how will Ukraine achieve this hypothetical growth when all of they're youths moved to Europe? Most Europeans didn't have this luxury of moving to a safe country during and after WW2 but they were forced to fight for their country and then stay and rebuild it. Most Ukrainians are not forced to stay or even if they are, they can smuggle/bribe their way out with money, skills, connection or sheer determination, and can just pack their bags and go shopping for the best country that fits their desires via the asylum system. There was no asylum system of this generosity for Europeans in WW2.

My point was that accountable democracy requires direct vote from the people and not via second hand, not that Germany or Italy aren't countries. And if EU wishes to be a country it needs that level of direct accountability which is impossible.

Otherwise if you force it it's gonna be another Yugoslavia or USSR where most people are pissed because they're not being ruled by someone of their own culture that they can directly vote for.

These forced multi-culti nation states under one roof abominations don't work. It's been known since the Tower of Babel yet the elite ruling class think this time it will be different because it worked in the US, a country younger than most universities in Europe.

For one, having the leader be actually elected by the people and not second hand appointed by corruptible politicians.

And that would never work because then voters would just choose a candidate on the criteria of being of the same nationality as them, rather than on policies, which highlights the EU's biggest fault: the massive cultural divide, and people don't like being ruled by someone who isn't of their own culture because then they can't empathize with them, which is 100% valid point, as what would a German royal like Ursula who grew up in UK boarding schools with private security, understand about the life that someone in Greece, Romania or Bulgaria have when she makes deals and policies that negativity affect the least fortunate, like on energy?

And for two, a mandatory common language. Because over 70% of Airbus Jobs at Toulouse HQ are in French. Same for other companies and countries. So in theory you have job mobility, but in practice it's highly limited if you don't speak the local language.

>there has been talk of a European Army.

Since when do talks equal anything in reality? What can I do with talks? Can I spend them? If politicians' talks were cookies I'd have died of diabetes 500x by now.

There will be no EU army since, just like my previous point, not only do citizens of France won't want to be controlled by a German general, and vice versa, but also all EU countries have their own different geopolitical interests, often in conflict with other members.

So we'll just have mutual defense agreements whose practical enforcement will always be questionable when shit actually hits the fan, because it's easy for politicians to write mutual defense cheques, but when they have to ask their citizens to go die in another country especially a country they don't have cultural ties or fondness towards, those cheques become very hard to cash.

Meanwhile my Casio calculator watch: "bonjour"

What kind of "action" did they see, pushing pencils? Because all soldiers who I saw coming out from action on the front line, meaning killing and seeing your friends get killed under firearms, drones and artillery shells, all had various forms of PTSD. There's no way sane normal people don't get affected witnessing that and can just bounce back to be "well functioning people" as you claim. So maybe they lied to you about their action.

> Combat when you're on the side of good rather than evil doesn't have the psychological toil people think it does.

Then why are so many men deserting and dodging the draft to leave the country, if fighting so chill? Some often almost die trying to cross the border to my country. That pretty much tells me everything.

Can't agree on this when I see what China managed to do starting way worse than Europe and with no marshal plan to help. You can't keep endlessly blaming the distant past. How far in the past does the blaming go?

If political talks were cookies I would have died of diabetes 500 times by now. Show me actions, not political posturing and virtue signaling to gain applause from the unwashed masses. Because the EU has been talking about digital sovereignty for 10+++ years now and nothing close to what the US has came out of it. Only more talks and more bureaucracy.

But let's say they will actually do it, how are they gonna tariff US tech when it's being sold from Europe by EU companies? When my EU state buys AWS and Office 365, they don't buy from Amazon and Microsoft Seattle so you can tariff them, they buy from Microsoft Dublin and Amazon Luxembourg, both EU companies.

That's why EU's tariffs on US tech are actually the fines they issue regularly on big tech companies. You make laws with a barrier so impossibly high (like having to eliminate "hate speech" in maximum 10 minutes since it was posted) that only your local companies can clear because they're small or absent in things like social media, and then the fines start rolling like off a money printer.

This argument can be used to justify whatever actions you want. You know that, right?

For example, I'm gonna take your house and when you ask why, it's because "life isn't fair".

However, various forms of fairness to balance out past wrong doings can always be achieved if desired, but it usually requires force or democratically if over 50% of people can unite on it.

Compared to who/what/when? The US? China? Not a chance. Economically, the EU is as weak now as it ever was.

About 2 decades ago, EU had the same GDP as the US, or even slightly more. Now it's at half of the US and stagnating or even shrinking due to a series of issues it has no solution to, since a lot of it's economy hasn't recovered much post-2008 crash. The EU knows the economic deck is not staked in its favor so it has to bend over to the US now. 2 decades ago the EU would have been able to fend of such actions from a hostile US administration and even more so fron China. But it can't today because it's twice as weak and the US and China are much stronger.

And it's actually very easy to understand why we're here in this situation. If you look at the government budgets in most EU countries today, about a third everywhere is going to welfare and retirement spending with retirement spending dwarfing absolutely everything else in the country by far, with some pensions being higher than some full time wages, which is absurd IMHO. Now, caring for the people and the elderly is noble and all, but you can't win any competition against nations that take that third of GDP that you spend on retirees and they spend it on on economic and military development instead. You just can't win like this, straight up, the math doesn't math. Eventually over the long run, they'll economically or militarily conquer you. So you'll have to choose between spending on providing a cushy lifestyle for retirees, or ensuring a prosperous future for your country.

EU fell asleep at the wheel for over two decades and woke up today that it needs to start the fire again, but it has no money to do so because it's in a economic downturn, an energy crisis, a demographic crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, political extremism crisis left and right, and war next door needing to fight all these fires at once. Very bad timing for EU, and China, Putin and Trump know this and are taking full advantage of "buying the dip" now in Europe the same way European powers were "buying the dip" in their (former) colonies in Africa and across the world. All, and I really mean ALL countries, engage in economic imperialism every chance they get, and Europe somehow forgot its own lesson thinking they are somehow untouchable.

Maybe greedy corporate profiteering is the real culprit here squeezing people and not people using the AC or driving to work?

Then why do current generations have to pay for the profits that the previous generations have banked?

>but companies like Shell only ever saw a small fraction of that retail price, and there is absolutely no way you could claw back that difference

YES, nothing we can do about the corporate overlords who screwed us, let's instead claw it back from the current generation of people instead of from Shell shareholders, that's will go down well politically for sure and not cause extremist rise to power. How is this not a luxury belief?

>I do understand the feeling of getting things denied that you took for granted, but I have little sympathy for selfishness.

It's not selfishness to afford necessities for a decent life especially when more and more of your paycheck goes towards taxes and necessities.

I'm talking about the present not making up streamen since that goes nowhere as anyone can make up anything.

Chudjak said he's not doing anything what the protestors want.

Why haven't shareholders of energy companies also made sacrifices to save the environment? How come only the consumers have to?

Do you understand why people are pissed off with the switch?

With government agencies and some large enterprise? NO, it doesn't need anything more than being European, though I fully expect each EU government will then want its own in-house AI in order to launder some taxpayer money to the right consultancies with ties to political parties.

With consumers on the open free market? YES it needs a lot more than just being European, since without any tariffs or regulations, consumers will always vote with their wallet for the best product and best value for money they can get, no matter where it comes from, no matter the geopolitics. Period. See Chinese made TikTok.

And if you look in the CONSUMER tech product market, it's been captured by US SW & HW, and Chinese HW with some Japanese presence. Other than Spotify, EU products are notoriously absent form the consumer tech industry since they couldn't out-innovate the US and they couldn't cost-cut China, so they got squeezed out.

Not really. With the launch of Athlon 64, AMD basically replaced all their 32bit CPUs lineups with that new arch, and not kept them along much longer as a lower tier part. By 2005 I expect 90% of new PCs sold were already 64 bit ready.

So when you tell me "brand new 32 bit Celeron" it is understood as "just came onto the market".

Am I right or wrong with this understanding?

>My point is this stuff is still in play in a lot of places.

I spent ~15 years in embedded and can't concur on the "still in play in a lot of places" part, but I'm not denying some users can't still exists out there, however I'm sure we can probably count them on very few fingers since Intel's 32 bit Embedded chips never had much traction to begin with.

Mate, 20 year old system means a Pentium 4 Prescott and Athlon 64, both of which had 64 bit support. And in another year after we already had dual core 64 bit CPUs.

So if you're stuck on 32 bit CPUs then your system is even older than 20 years.

Nah mate, something doesn't add up. I can't buy this. Even the cheapest Atoms had 64bit support much earlier than that and Atoms were lower tier silicone than Celeron so you can't tell me Intel had brand new 32 bit only Celerons in 2019.

My Google-fu found the last 32-bit only chips intel shipped were the Intel Quark embedded SoCs EoL in 2015. So what you're saying doesn't pass the smell test.

For example in Canada they de-banked the truckers, in Germany they de-pensioned a retiree who was planning to bring back the Kaiser.

So yeah, it happens, you're just ignorant from your bubble.

Bruh.

> Italy where they are in power

Melloni only pretended to be anti establishment to win elections, but isn't. She campaigned on deporting illegals, and then gave them residency and right to work lol. Tell me a bigger rug pull. Trump is the same, he campaigned on a lot of things(Epstein list anyone?), but not actually executed on them or only did it only as a show (DOGE).