European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1021

On December 22 2017 13:04 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:


"You are wrong, I am right.", this is how you argue. I've picked apart the whole post while you ride on one sentence found in a much longer post by me. You don't address the message of my post, rather the tone, which is all you and the school of thought you represent are doing. Making a case against the officer is defending the Senegalese guy. There is no evidence, or rather people were too lazy to look for it because it's convenient for their stance on the subject. So, I call lies on Godwrath for making a case against the officer, using your definition of "lying". As there is nothing worse on an internet forum you can actually do to people reading it, that's a pretty hefty offense right? Enough to warrant me saying "doing everything"? Same goes for Toadesstern who rambles on forever about what the officer might have done before the incident to warrant a lay-off, implying it couldn't have been the first time him using a racial slur and thus getting fired after doing it "again".

Thanks for explaining my thoughts on why I said what though, isn't that what you people judge the most usually? See? I could do the same stupid shit you do, preventing any discussion on matters of relevance, devolving debate into bickering about semantics and supposed feelings. What's your actual stance on what has transpired, now that we have a video? Or do you choose to continue calling me a liar until I attack you personally too?

Seriously, you accuse me of lying, when I'm in a perfectly reasonable position to call out bullshit claims and then you want me to prove I am not lying, adhering to your twisted moral standards?

On December 22 2017 04:51 Toadesstern wrote:

yo, what legit impressed me the most on my vacation:



You just have a card in your wallet that you can charge, have it on 30€ or whatever, go through the gates while holding your wallet next to it, it peeps once as confirmation, you get on the train, you leave through the same kind of ticket gate at your destination and it automatically calculates what your transfercost is and subtracts that from your card.

Would probably need some changes to be doable as for example a local train from betweem Cologne<->Frankfurt does have a different prizetag than an ICE fare but man was that convenient and thus everyone paid without the need of checking tickets on the trains as you don't get into the train-area without paying. Gabe Newell really says some smart things sometimes.

You don't need to make it free, just make it less of a bother.

On the case itself: Yeah, I don't think anyone is (or should be) arguing wether or not the immigrant should be punished. Of course he should be. Wether they should have fired the employee depends on context for me. If it's just the slur you don't fire him for that and I find it HIGHLY unlikely that he was fired for that. Which means I don't really believe what SoSexy is telling us and think he was fired for some other reason. Can't judge that without more knowledge on what kind of policy he broke.

But seriously, as shitty as the slur might be you don't fire people for that. You get a verbal (!) warning if it's the first time, maybe a written one if the guy has some past to him. And if he has even more stuff that happened in the past you do fire him but certainly not on the spot for just that.
You have to do ridiculously stupid things to be fired on the spot, at least in Germany. And I had the unpleasant experience of having to fire someone just the other day.
I've had heard about people mobbing other people they work with because he had a mental illness which resulted in the person (understandably) not comming back to work. Which obviously got me really mad but even that wasn't enough to fire on the spot (it resulted in the harshest written warning I've ever read though, so probably not the best example).
So tl;dr: I find it REEEEALLY unlikely that the guy was fired for just the slur.

On December 22 2017 15:12 Acrofales wrote:

No. Really all he wants is to show that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the senagalese man. The guy riding the train illegally could have been a white guy wearing a suit and a fedora for all the relevance to toadessterns argument. The conductor didn't lose his job for getting into a fight with a senagalese man. He lost his job for getting into a fight and using racial slurs. You just like to use the fact that it was an evil brown person (tm) who was the aggressor.

Whether it's just cause for getting fired or not is something the courts to decide. Another thing for the courts to decide is what to do with the aggressive senagalese man, who was charged with assault. Presumably he'll also have to pay the fine for riding the train without a ticket.

And ppl lose their jobs for ridiculous reasons all the time. It's not interesting in the slightest.

On December 22 2017 16:30 SoSexy wrote:


-Being at work, you ask for tickets
-A guy jumps you, beats you and steal your devices
-lose your job and hear people say you 'got into a fight'

And maybe at the next elections you'll be surprised if he votes for extreme parties... I doj't 'like' that immigrants are causing this kind of troubles because many of them don't know basic rules. Immigrants are 8% of the population, yet 34% of the total inmates. 51,7% child pronography, 45% house robbery, 55% of 'street theft'. If you can't see a problem with this, try to straighten your back. Your head might come out of your ass!

On December 22 2017 18:09 VHbb wrote:
I only post to say that this kind of news (the train officer being fired) are *not* what stands out from Italian news coverage, unless you specifically look for it.
If I read the newspaper I'll read about Italian politics and economics, Catalonia situation, USA and trunp, etc etc

It's very worrying to me that political parties (like "lega nord") are trying to spread this feeling of fear, and consequently anger and rage, of/against immigrants in order to gain support.

Not living in Italy anymore it's hard for me to say how much it is working.

I mainly wanted do post to say that the view sosexy is bringing here is *not* an accurate reflection of the situation in Italy. I cannot say what fraction of the population thinks like him (I do live in a bubble of very liberal left-wing people, so my view is biased on this), though I strongly hope it's small.

How Italy turned Euroskeptic
Crisis generation prepares to vote for the first time.

Davide Ruggeri, an 18-year-old high school student in Rome, first began to notice the effects of the migration crisis in his early teens. It was a time when North Africa was in turmoil. Thousands of people were fleeing in makeshift boats to Italy’s coasts and moving up through the rail network, in search of better lives in the wealthier countries of Northern Europe. Some made it to Ruggeri’s neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Rome, where they eked out a living in squats and the black economy.

The son of a teacher and an IT technician, Ruggeri holds the view — widespread in Italy — that the country has been abandoned by the European Union and forced to deal with the crisis alone: bearing the brunt without adequate funds to deal with it, disadvantaged by EU rules that asylum seekers must claim refuge in the country they first arrive in, irrespective of whether they hoped to travel on to another EU country.

Asked whether he feels European, he hesitates.

“It’s a really good question,” Ruggeri pauses. “Yes. I feel like a European citizen because we are in the EU, and we are one of the founding members. But at this moment I don’t see good things from Europe, because of the problems with immigration. They are helping us very little. There’s an emergency, and it seems like the only thing that’s important to them is money.”

Ruggeri is a member of an Italian generation that has known only economic stagnation, and which will head to the ballot box for the first time in a general election next spring. They were born around the same time as the euro — 1999 — and are now old enough to vote. They’ve seen nothing but political and economic crises since their childhoods, and politicians apparently unable to fix them.

The experiences of this euro generation are one of the reasons behind the widespread public disillusionment with Italian politics. They also help explain why Italy has gone from being one of the most enthusiastic members of the EU to one of its most disaffected — and why the country stands a not-so-little risk of handing the reins of government over to a Euroskeptic leader.

In countries like France, the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands, polls show a notable generational difference in attitudes toward the EU. Young people tend to feel more positively toward the bloc, while older people tend to hold less favorable opinions.

In Italy, the trend is reversed. Voters aged under 45 are significantly more likely to think Italy is on the wrong track (71 percent, compared to half of voters over 45), according to a study conducted by Benenson Strategy Group in October.

The study found that if Italy were to hold a referendum on EU membership, 51 percent of voters under 45 would vote to leave, while 46 percent would vote to remain. In contrast, respondents over 45 supported staying in the bloc by 68 percent to 26 percent.

Younger voters’ unhappiness with the EU came from a sense that what’s good for the bloc comes at Italy’s expense. Strong majorities among the young said that the migrant crisis showed the EU could not be counted on to help Italy with its biggest challenges. What it showed, they concluded, is that the EU only cared about itself.

There’s one thing young Italian voters have in common with their peers in other European countries: Less likely to vote, they are rarely courted by politicians, making them less interested in politics. But even then, in Italy the problem is exacerbated by demography. With nearly half of the Italian population older than 45, the young are outnumbered.

(...)

Borre’s generation is the most educated in Italy, but it also has the EU’s highest percentage of young people not in education, training or work — almost a third, according to Eurostat. Youth unemployment is the highest after Greece and Spain. For those with jobs, conditions are highly lopsided: a young army of precarious workers that can only dream of one day being granted the iron-clad contracts, pensions and protections of their older colleagues.

It’s a generation that thinks it will be worse off than their parents. Eight in 10, according to a survey of 16- to 30-year-olds conducted by the European Commission, believe young people have been excluded from a good economic and social life by the economic crisis.

These conditions have led to a long-running brain drain that has accelerated in recent years as young people — often the most ambitious and talented — seek better prospects abroad: a loss of Italy’s most cosmopolitan voices that further reduces the group that could introduce generational change.

Almost as soon as the first euro notes and coins began changing hands in Italy in 2002, the currency became the focus of generalized economic grievance. Ordinary Italians began grumbling that prices had gone up while wages stayed the same. Politicians tapped into this early: The Northern League called for a referendum on the return of the lira as early as 2005. As prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi used international events to play up friction with Germany and appeal to Italian pride.

Fast forward to 2017, and the euro and the EU have been turned into rhetorical punching bags by politicians of all stripes — from left to right, regionalist to neo-fascist. Conveniently, they shift blame for Italy’s problems outside the country.

Overall, just 39 percent of Italians believe the country has benefited on balance from being in the EU: the lowest level in the bloc, according to a recent Kantar survey by the European Parliament.

It’s a striking turnaround for a country that was once among the most enthusiastic about integration: the birthplace of EU founding father Altiero Spinelli and of the EU’s precursor, the European Economic Community.

On December 22 2017 18:09 VHbb wrote:
I only post to say that this kind of news (the train officer being fired) are *not* what stands out from Italian news coverage, unless you specifically look for it.
If I read the newspaper I'll read about Italian politics and economics, Catalonia situation, USA and trunp, etc etc

It's very worrying to me that political parties (like "lega nord") are trying to spread this feeling of fear, and consequently anger and rage, of/against immigrants in order to gain support.

Not living in Italy anymore it's hard for me to say how much it is working.

I mainly wanted do post to say that the view sosexy is bringing here is *not* an accurate reflection of the situation in Italy. I cannot say what fraction of the population thinks like him (I do live in a bubble of very liberal left-wing people, so my view is biased on this), though I strongly hope it's small.

On December 22 2017 17:49 Big J wrote:


The question is what is the cause for this behavior. If you say or imply that these people are somehow genetically degenerates and lesser human beings like so many on the right argue, then you are violating basic freedom/equality principles and I want you to be treated the way you want these people to be treated.
If you have rational arguments for limiting migration and sensible solutions I will very well agree with you.

People aren't "bad" by birth. They turn bad by getting put expections and behaviors in their head that they can't overcome. We send a hundredthousand Coca-Cola happy-life advertisments to africa, never tell those people about the nature of propaganda and then have them give up their lives to go to this magical wonderland to find out that everything was a lie and they don't have the education or skills to even compete with those, who are already struggling with the conservative-capitalist society although they are working all day.
Maybe don't bomb their countries, don't spread freedom and equality propaganda when the reality is we live in conservative, unequal, unfree societies and then you will end with less migration. The problem with you people is you are living so deep in your own eveything-is-awesome asses, that the only explanation you accept is that some foreign power needs to be there to explain why the reality isn't that awesome for you. You need migration to explain why housing prices are rising, you need migration to explain why schools are getting worse, you need migration to explain why left-out people get violent, you need migration to explain why in any way differently-minded people should not be in power. In short: You actually need migration. Which is why conservatives won't ever do something against migration or mitigating the problems it causes anyways, how else would they stay in power?

On December 22 2017 11:46 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:


Yeah right dude, people in Germany don't get fired over shit like this. Remember the cashier lady who took like 2€ worth of deposit bills she found in the store and got fired over that? This kinda stuff is happening everywhere and everyday and it's one of the reasons we have so many far right populists rising right now. It's the left dictating the discourse over the past 50 years while not keeping "their" politicians in check who rather got in bed with industry leaders and took a dump on their so called voter basis. Get real.

On December 22 2017 15:27 IgnE wrote:


why are so many people still wearing those masks?

And maybe at the next elections you'll be surprised if he votes for extreme parties... I doj't 'like' that immigrants are causing this kind of troubles because many of them don't know basic rules. Immigrants are 8% of the population, yet 34% of the total inmates. 51,7% child pronography, 45% house robbery, 55% of 'street theft'. If you can't see a problem with this, try to straighten your back. Your head might come out of your ass!

On December 22 2017 22:54 a_flayer wrote:


So why does the left not seek to lessen immigration? If migration is so essential to the notion of keeping the right in charge, why not fight to stop it? If the perceptions of immigrants are so warped by our corporate propaganda that they become disillusioned and turn into criminals after arriving, why not tell them "no, you can't come here, everything you think to know about us is a lie" in advance? Then spend that money used on bombs for some purpose that gives people in Africa and elsewhere a better chance at making a life for themselves where they already live?

I also think allowing immigration on the grounds of humanitarian reasons is kind of a meaningless gesture. It saves just a fraction of people, as far more people are born into suffering and poverty in African countries (poverty maintained & exploited by economic domination of wealthy countries) than we could possibly take in. We're exploiting their resources, their local labor and even their citizens with the most potential. Because the ones who succeed at leaving tend to be the most undertaking kind of individuals, right? They're leaving the country because we encourage and allow them to come here. So rather than being successful & productive in their own country and improving lives there, they're leaving and attempt to be productive in a place where they are turned into criminals?

Swell plan. That, and the intellectual property oppression & warfare should assure western dominance over the world for at least another 100 years.

On December 22 2017 22:54 a_flayer wrote:


So why does the left not seek to lessen immigration? If migration is so essential to the notion of keeping the right in charge, why not fight to stop it? If the perceptions of immigrants are so warped by our corporate propaganda that they become disillusioned and turn into criminals after arriving, why not tell them "no, you can't come here, everything you think to know about us is a lie" in advance? Then spend that money used on bombs for some purpose that gives people in Africa and elsewhere a better chance at making a life for themselves where they already live?

I also think allowing immigration on the grounds of humanitarian reasons is kind of a meaningless gesture. It saves just a fraction of people, as far more people are born into suffering and poverty in African countries (poverty maintained & exploited by economic domination of wealthy countries) than we could possibly take in. We're exploiting their resources, their local labor and even their citizens with the most potential. Because the ones who succeed at leaving tend to be the most undertaking kind of individuals, right? They're leaving the country because we encourage and allow them to come here. So rather than being successful & productive in their own country and improving lives there, they're leaving and attempt to be productive in a place where they are turned into criminals?

Swell plan. That, and the intellectual property oppression & warfare should assure western dominance over the world for at least another 100 years.

On December 23 2017 02:46 Big J wrote:
The motivation you voice is wrong.

On December 23 2017 03:51 a_flayer wrote:

We're never going to get to the guillotines if you're gonna go down that road.

Different aims, different means, common ground in between.

Edit: seriously though, we're never gonna get to any great movement for change if you're the rejecting the notion of tying reducing immigration to combating climate change. Not for combating climate change itself, nor the economic disparity associated with those same underlying problems.