2016 flashbacks 😵💫
I visited Georgia (USA) in 2016. My plane arived in Atlanta during the evening. The plan was to get into bed asap, and sleep out the jeglag. Sadly, around 5 AM, I was already wide awake. So nothing to do... then just to get out of bed, take a shower and start walking. I roamed the city in the morning, had a coffee in an establishment that was open 24/7. Somewhere midday, I was getting tired again and walked back to my hotel.
Before reaching it, I found a little micro brewery along the way. So I decided to go in and have a beer before I would go and lay down a bit. I seated myself at the bar, and was enjoying my beer while a bunch of people next to me started to ask questions about my foreign accent. I really didn't need to say a whole lot. The conversation, triggered by curiosity from their side, grew organically. There were 2 women and a guy, and one of the women was a teacher. They asked me what the biggest issues were in Belgium. According to them, in Georgia, one of the biggest issues was sending your kids to school. Apperently, according to them, the schools were unaffordable by a lot of parents and the quality was severly lacking. And going to higher education, was only for the most fortunate. I told them, that I just finished a university degree in evening classes while working full time. They replied that I'm probably deep in debt now or really rich. Which was certainly not the case, so I explained that the subscription for money for 2015 was around 750 dollar US. Which baffled them. All of them agreed that this would be way better for society when more people had access to education, but they didn't understand how Belgium aranged all this. So I answered their question by saying: "Where I live, there is such a thing as taxes and...".
Before I could finish my sentence, one of the women told me: "That's socialism!" and all 3 of them walked away and left me too my beer. I already gave a round, so I guess expecting something back after being branded a socialist for suggesting taxation to solve a societal problem was out of the question. I was also amazed about the cartoonish stereotype that had just unfolded in front of me...
But I guess in 2023... these things still excist:
[media=https://youtu.be/heTptVj_QU4]
... If you take the time to look up the full segment, the Senator goes on by saying that he doesn't really have the time now to figure out how the tax-cuts affected society. But one thing is for sure... the ills that they are talking about, have not been solved, and the issues only grew over time. But since taxation is taboo... I guess the only thing we can do about the societal issue is to complain about it and point fingers at the poor, because it's all their personal responsibility. Another thing that needs to be blamed are government institutions that were created to mitigate the problem that is being discussed. But of course, the same people that internalized the idea that the government can't do anything good, are also the people that internalized the idea that taxation is evil. On one side they systematically handicap government institutions by depriving them of funds, and on the other side they complain that the institutions they undermine by depriving them of resources are not able to mitigate the problems that these institutions should be mitigating. 🤷♂️
Before reaching it, I found a little micro brewery along the way. So I decided to go in and have a beer before I would go and lay down a bit. I seated myself at the bar, and was enjoying my beer while a bunch of people next to me started to ask questions about my foreign accent. I really didn't need to say a whole lot. The conversation, triggered by curiosity from their side, grew organically. There were 2 women and a guy, and one of the women was a teacher. They asked me what the biggest issues were in Belgium. According to them, in Georgia, one of the biggest issues was sending your kids to school. Apperently, according to them, the schools were unaffordable by a lot of parents and the quality was severly lacking. And going to higher education, was only for the most fortunate. I told them, that I just finished a university degree in evening classes while working full time. They replied that I'm probably deep in debt now or really rich. Which was certainly not the case, so I explained that the subscription for money for 2015 was around 750 dollar US. Which baffled them. All of them agreed that this would be way better for society when more people had access to education, but they didn't understand how Belgium aranged all this. So I answered their question by saying: "Where I live, there is such a thing as taxes and...".
Before I could finish my sentence, one of the women told me: "That's socialism!" and all 3 of them walked away and left me too my beer. I already gave a round, so I guess expecting something back after being branded a socialist for suggesting taxation to solve a societal problem was out of the question. I was also amazed about the cartoonish stereotype that had just unfolded in front of me...
But I guess in 2023... these things still excist:
[media=https://youtu.be/heTptVj_QU4]
... If you take the time to look up the full segment, the Senator goes on by saying that he doesn't really have the time now to figure out how the tax-cuts affected society. But one thing is for sure... the ills that they are talking about, have not been solved, and the issues only grew over time. But since taxation is taboo... I guess the only thing we can do about the societal issue is to complain about it and point fingers at the poor, because it's all their personal responsibility. Another thing that needs to be blamed are government institutions that were created to mitigate the problem that is being discussed. But of course, the same people that internalized the idea that the government can't do anything good, are also the people that internalized the idea that taxation is evil. On one side they systematically handicap government institutions by depriving them of funds, and on the other side they complain that the institutions they undermine by depriving them of resources are not able to mitigate the problems that these institutions should be mitigating. 🤷♂️
