Well yeah, a stronger society for everyone is better for society as a whole.

In America people view life as a competition, trying to get ahead of the rest. With that mindset it makes sense to not want any programs to help others.

I and many of us in Europe believe more in a stronger society as a whole benefiting everyone. Those who have a good job are lucky. By helping those who don’t have work, can’t work or are sick we make society a better place for everyone to live in. It’s not a surprise we have much less violent crime, more volunteering etc.

Yes it bothers me a lot about the trans hate in particular because I am closely associated with the LGBT community and it hurts me seeing this happen to my friends. Some of my ex-friends in Holland are now rabid about all the usual tropes, like athletes, toilets etc. All things that aren’t actually true (HRT actually diminishes muscle power a lot and there are almost no trans athletes let alone successful ones, and people don’t go through a whole transition so they can walk into the women’s restroom, that whole premise is completely ridiculous). I’ve tried to educate them but the propaganda is constantly flowing in on social media.

Sometimes I wonder if these guys like being angry. Because they seem to be looking for stuff to be angry about all the time.

Yes I am but luckily I don’t live there anymore. The country has been very neoliberal, idealising America for the last 30 years, led by the VVD party. Lately the extreme-right fascists have had a much larger influence (PVV party and also FVD and JA21). They still do. In 2023 they gained more than 30% of votes. The resulting coalition screwed up very badly by constantly screwing each other over for political gain, so the government collapsed after only a year. The one that came after is the same old shit again.

Yes the problem is that many other things are also blowing over. Like all the anti-trans and anti-migrant rhetoric. This is driving the rise of extreme-right politics.

I doubt it would be in the world news. But they basically made it into a system where everyone has like a private investment package as a pension.

The government has a lot of info on it but it’s all in Dutch.

The problem is the ruling parties of the last 30 years are very neoliberal and they adore America. So it’s been nothing but cut social welfare, privatisation and now this.

Trump meets all 9 easily demonstrable.

In fact that’s one thing that he’s good for. If someone asks “what’s narcissism” you just go “like Trump”. And then they’ll totally know what it means 😆

Calling it Trump syndrome might be the one thing that deserves his name on it.

Not exactly news, it’s his standard MO. Remember the “shut up piggy”.

Totally indicative of how little he respects women.

It’s more like insurance. Some people won’t need it much, others will. It can be beneficial to those.

But the real thing you are ‘buying’ is peace of mind. That is part of the value of it.

Yeah and in Holland they’ve just killed the old reasonable pension system and replaced it with a similar 401(K) type thing 😢

Who are they talking about?

Hmm any way we could make it seem to the web server that our phones are iOS perhaps? That should always bypass it.

Oh I didn’t realize they actually sold it as a product. I thought it never left the lab, sorry.

Well it didn’t really bring it to us because they never sold it to anyone. They could have been the top dog in computing