They are welcome to come here. I wouldn’t wanna live in a country with someone like Trump either.

“Bart De Wever was not a member of the Vlaams Blok. He was critical of the party and its successor, Vlaams Belang, and has stated that he resisted offers to join the Vlaams Blok. Instead, he began his political career with the Volksunie party and later became a founding member of the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA).”

What exactly do you mean with “VB to NVA”.

If Bart de Wever was really into VB, then he would simply form a coalition with VB.

Aight. From r/Belgium2, which probably are major NVA voters. I’d gather that the main reasons would be: lower government spending (hello, Putin and Trump). Putting more people to work, by activating people that are long term sick while able to work. Activating people that are long term unemployed. Delaying retirement. Reducing taxes on working people so that the gap between working and not working becomes larger. Economic investments.

The majority of his voters are quite upset bout the capital gains tax that my vote has brought upon them. Since they view it as an extra tax on middle class. (It isn’t, just sell 10k+index capital gains per year).

Nva also wants to reduce or even abolish inheritance tax. With a median net wealth of 250k euros PER ADULT. That is quite desirable. Within an aging population. Let’s say every child gets about 350k euros in inheritance. If they are dummies and don’t gift it properly then they pay 40k euros in inheritance taxes. (60k if it comes from one single parent, so let’s say 40k).

It is mostly the middle class that votes for nva, for economic reasons, which is why they are so large.

I would like to see some dirt on them though. And any other Belgian political party. Always fun to see :)

They all probably are filling their own pockets one way or another, funny that le Pen fucked up big time for a mere 4-5 million euros of expense savings in 12 years time.

Tegenwoordig heeft bijna de helft van de populatie in Antwerpen een migratieachtergrond. De stad telt ten minste 166 verschillende nationaliteiten, wat de variatie weergeeft van de migrantengroepen in Antwerpen. De grootste groepen met een migratieachtergrond zijn afkomstig uit Marokko, Nederland, Turkije en Polen.

https://bamproject.eu/nl/steden/antwerpen#%3A~%3Atext=Tegenwoordig+heeft+bijna+de+helft%2C%2C+Nederland%2C+Turkije+en+Polen.

Achtergrond, niet gewoon eerste generatie. Trouwens, een kwart van de bevolking geboren buiten het land? Dat is bijna Zwitserland.

It’s true that we’re not actually importing people, we don’t have to. They come themselves. Through family reunification mostly. Which is amazing, as they already have to have decent income and sufficient housing in order to do so. So yeah, probably the wrong word.

Okay… maybe I’m just doing a bad job here and you can do it better than me. We both don’t vote for Bart de Wever, our most popular politician.

What are the good things about him? Why does the majority of our region vote for him?

Also, I do view a median net wealth of 250k euros wealthy. You can move to Indonesia and live like those “elites”. A house in Indonesia costs 25k euros. The cost of living is quite low, you can definitely cover it with passive income.

But, perhaps, they’ll do a revolution and guillotine you. Who knows

Then don’t buy a house, invest in the stock market. It has the same return on investment.

It’s a lot more available, you don’t pay interest to the bank. You have more job opportunities.

I’m not interested in buying a house. It just locks me down.

I’m not like my dad who worked the same job for 40 years. Times change

Job hopping every few years increases your income

I don’t have a car. Never needed it, i’ve had 4 different jobs already.

Buy stoxx 600 ETFs. lu908500753

It’s the same as having a house, but far more liquid.

Be an attractive human being and find a partner, we have an aging population. Go breed. Seriously, I am disgusted by people that can’t form long lasting relationships.

Getting a house… Better done with bank’s money, not your own money. Even when you can buy it outright, still better to get the bank to fund most of it.

Have fun living in the same spot for decades then

I’m quite aware that I’m sexist, I will raise my kid differently based on the gender.

https://archive.is/JnLx3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Belgium2/s/0xZKoi8ott

No, not sarcasm. It’s the opinion of every woman I’ve talked to ever since this case.

When me and my wife went to gynaecologist since she’s pregnant, the funny surprise was that she had to insert basically a dildo camera into her genitals in order to see the fetus.

Leave that job to women. All the gynaecologists at the hospital were women anyways, everyone will prefer a female doctor for things like this.

Yes. Stop being poor, the tools are available.

Tax paid education. Tax paid healthcare. Unemployment benefits. Sick pay. Social housing. Good economy. Train is paid by the employer. E-bike leasing paid by your taxes. Child benefits. Daycare subsidies. High minimum wage. Difficult to get fired. Notice period when fired. Can’t get fired when pregnant. Maternity leave. You can buy a social house from the government if you agree to live there for 20 years. Wages indexed to inflation. During economic crisis, the companies are pretty much forced to endure it temporarily instead of laying off workers temporarily. Buying first house is 3% tax while buying the 2nd+ house is 12% tax. During energy crisis, people got helped with energy bills. It’s well funded to teach people Dutch for free, the VDAB areas look like it’s for royalty, …

Just stop being poor

Trump inauguration date: Tesla 426 USD per stock

Today: 240 USD per stock

He did a little oopsie

Come on bruv, they even literally say it’s Israeli military

Yes, everything I am saying here is based on high social mobility, high median net wealth and high minimum wage. I like my capitalism in the hands of many.

1 FTE should always allow someone to save up a good amount of money. The minister in Flemish parlement I voted for is investing in social housing now. Relieving pressure on renters from private options. I do want both public and private options, government doesn’t need monopoly like in Singapore.

i view these things as trampolines, not as crutches.

Like at my work, newbie comes from a home where neither parent could work. Father is blind/deaf and mother takes care of him. Idk how they did it, but they own a house. I’m completely fine with that, I prefer to work than to be blind/deaf, by a lot.

But I’ve also been talking to an older guy who has no money at all, 57 years old, lives in social housing and didn’t work for more than 5 years because “his knees hurt”. Not a fan of him. His daughter starts life with the basic package because he never really tried.

But I’m very happy that his daughter has all the opportunity. She’s educated and can choose her own path. (She can’t move out until his pension or he will lose a lot of his monthly income).

We have an aging population, so it’s fine I guess. Money to raise a kid.

Like I’m a fan of immigration not for the first generation but the second generation. That’s the real investment. Even though nowadays first gen immigrants will be quite better, as education in the world has been drastically improving.

What our prime minister did first, was limit unemployment benefits to 2 years and increase the unemployment benefits in the first year. That’s good. It needs to be insurance, not an early retirement alongside your other passive incomes.

I don’t want people to hate rich people, I want them to become rich. I want them to feel good in the country they grew up with. View people as equals socially.

Personally I can’t imagine not growing as a person when working 38 hours a week. If you don’t learn anything, please change job. They are wasting your time.

But my wife has that choice. She’s working part time as cleaner while learning Dutch. Now she’s pregnant and for the time being she will just continue working part time as cleaner. It’s nearby our home so it’s very convenient. She pays basically no taxes, it’s pretty good for us financially. She has a law degree from her country of origin, so she can likely just get a career option if she so wishes. But she prefers to focus on being a mom. Her choice. We’ll get 250 euros per month for the kid. I’ll pay 50 euros fewer taxes every month. We’ll get a free stroller and car seat. Giving birth will be 300 euros. They’ll give us 1200 euros at birth.

Personally I cannot understand the desire to not grow qualifications. Learning things is fun. It’s very boring to go week in week out without learning anything.

But yes there are people that don’t care. My wife can choose what she prefers. Both are adequate options. Spending more time with our kid is valuable. Honestly I think our aging population is because people work too much. My grandmothers didn’t work, my mom worked part time. My wife’s sisters and mom don’t work.

So it’s definitely a complex thing.

I don’t think someone needs a job in order to learn things either. But it’s quite useful. I hope she gets an opportunity for a different job that also is easily manageable with a family while also learning more things.

The good thing about cleaning is that she gets a good workout out of it. 4 hours per week day, it’s social. She sees dogs etc. People are nice. (Not the old ones that can’t speak English and are more of the funny old racist generation)

Basically, a country needs to be designed in such a way that when you’re poor at age 57, it’s your own choice.

Yeah we should focus on key industries that we can gain from. A general tariff is pretty insane.

We just gained a global discount thanks to trump on our imports on products that we can utilise adequately.

Thanks for the explanation

Depends on the situation and who you are. If you think you can deduce someone’s whole personality on one thread, then you’re quite wrong

Brussels and Anderlecht aren’t in flanders buddy, other government.

Rich people in general. He doesn’t care if they are of European descent. What he wants is a stable environment for rich people to grow richer.

Which is fine, majority of Belgians are rich.

We don’t attract high risk investments. We attract stable compound interest investments. That’s what Europe does.

He doesn’t like economic crises. He wants stability.

Lemme visit Singapore in May and see how an authoritarian selfish shit hole (richest area in south east Asia) looks and feels like.

(Those rich people aren’t all Europeans, most are Chinese, Malaysian, etc)

I don’t vote on De Wever, I vote on Vooruit, which you wouldn’t expect on whatever I’m writing on this thread.

But I know that De Wever is the leader of the largest political party in flanders, and has been mayor of the most thriving Flemish city in the country.

Majority of Antwerp have immigrant background and once again they elected a mayor from his party now that he’s the PM.

So maybe, these immigrants actually like him?

We’re importing people from right wing countries, you’re aware of this I’m sure. My Turkish diaspora friend votes for Erdogan. Just like most Turks here.

I used median, your median net wealth is half ours and your average wealth is the same as ours. Just a fun fact. Well, fun for me.

And obviously we’re fucking great for bottom 20%. Minimum wage is high, we have social housing, great social mobility.

The only people I know that are poor also didn’t work for literal decades and lived off tax money.

Their kids aren’t poor though, they are educated.

We don’t punish children for their parents’ mistakes.

Your people come to our country for cheaper housing, you’re aware of this. Antwerp is filled with dutchies.

My mate is living in an apartment in Germany, he has no job. His gf is chilling on sick leave for 2 years after having worked 1 year.

If he says he doesn’t know why he’s poor, I’ll smack him on his face. Get a job

He’s realising that a minimum wage in Germany pays 400 euros less net than in Belgium. So his career choice of doing minimum wage jobs wasn’t that great when moving countries.

He didn’t want to do a real job because the difference in gross wage is taxed anyways. Yeah it’s 80% taxed in Belgium between minimum wage and 3200 euros gross. Whoopdiefreakndoo, you do the effort to improve your qualifications. The income after 3200 euros gross is taxed less.

Short sighted, if you’re poor in Belgium then you’re a moron

Okay let’s try this on an example. ArcelorMittal in Belgium producing steel and exporting it to USA. Since they put tariffs on us, it will reduce how much we will sell to USA. Lowering demand. Good for Europe as now steel will be cheaper locally. Bad though because lower demand and lower prices will hit the profit margin, causing parts of the factory to be shut down and labourers to be layed off.

What prevents ArcelorMittal from opening a factory in USA to avoid the tariffs?

In general, making these investments takes 3 to 4 years and by then trump administration will be replaced. The short term effects of the trump administration is going to be so catastrophic that the potential gains will only be visible long after trump is gone.

The shock will cause the population to elect someone that will lower tariffs. Most definitely. For better or worse of USA. Only countries like China can do such long term economic shifts because their leadership stays the same for a long period of time.

So, companies in this case will be afraid of moving to USA. Trump is fucking his country up.

I agree, no need for retaliatory tariffs.

But let’s say this would be a trade war with China, a stable government.

Different example.

The car industry in Europe Vs the surge of China’s electric vehicles.

We could have electric cars for as cheap as 8000 euros. As consumer this would be fantastic.

But the car industry is a gigantic part of our economy. Wouldn’t it be better to shift them toward competing with china’s industry?

China subsidises their electric vehicles.

What should we do? Accept the Chinese taxpayer’s funding of the cars that we consume in Europe?

Is this risky long term? We would start depending on China for car imports. We would lose a key industry in our region. With Russia we learn that we need to be independent in our key industries.

What should we do in this context you think?

What would it take for the EU to sanction Israel.

Real politics. Who would be the new gained allies and who would be the lost allies.

Since ties with USA (biggest funder of Israel) are weakening and we look for new partners, then we can sanction Israel.

All the countries with Muslims will cheer for that. That’s for sure.

That’s everyone’s reaction. Until more context. Basically 2 overly drunk fucks that met up in the city and had sex. One is a male student and the other is a female student. Asked consent, was given. But drunk people can’t give consent.

The girl was making advances on the guy by kissing him. Nobody would open the door for her, so she had no place to sleep. She slept at the stranger’s place.

They had consented sex. But legally a woman can’t give consented sex when drunk.

That the guy is drunk is of no importance legally.

So yeah, sentenced guilty. But in practice it’s just bullshit. So, no punishment.

The guy’s life is ruined. Probably will suicide.

Shit happens bruv

Idc either way. Male gynaecologists shouldn’t exist.

I’m just going to hold my hands over my ears and act like I can’t read context and agree with everyone that calls him the literal devil. Grab a pitchfork and a torch and push him to the end of a cliff.

In truth I don’t care. Don’t be drunk in public ya fucking morons.

If he was racist, then his city wouldn’t be the largest destination of immigrants in flanders.

I like Antwerp being more fancy, but yeah. I’m not poor. Do you want to be poor? Median net wealth in our country is 250 000 euros per adult. Why are you poor? Education is tax paid. Medical bankruptcy doesn’t exist here. Your income gets indexed to inflation.

Why are you poor? Making the cities more fancy is called development

I can only vote on which Belgian I want to represent me in the EU as far as I’m aware