It depends on people’s reaction. I am pretty sure that there will be a few idiots buying them in car-crazy countries like Italy. I highly doubt they would sell in The Netherlands at all instead.

The new trend in many cities is to lower the speed limits, ban or limit cars in the centres, and promote bikes. Big cars will have an hard time with that plan.

Moreover, all old garages built more than 20/30 years ago are often too short for many modern cars, just imagine American monsters.

Finding a parking for a large car may be a nightmare in large cities too in general. Imagine also driving in historical centres through small roads with a big car.

They could certainly circulate in general, after all we have buses too, but I think they would be massively unpractical and we are not even considering costs, fuel, and limitations for the emissions.

Too bad this won’t happen because it would be amusing to see idiots struggle with the those huge cars on European roads

For a large portion of the market, the price of the rent is now decided by law.

That’s an admirable initiative!

On paper it is. It is not working well though.

basic necessities (rent, utilities, public transport) should have a set price.

I’m not an economist, but I really doubt that it would work. When there was a shock on the gas market, the electric companies raised the prices and that pushed down the consumption, but with fixed prices the electric companies would have needed taxpayer’s money to integrate the losses (or cut costs like jobs). A new player would struggle to enter in the market if it was unable to lower the prices and build a base of customers. On the other side, a company would not be able to offer premium services at higher costs.

It seems nice on paper, but the effects may be negative for everyone.

I don’t really see why pushing for renovations without the incentives should have the same effect as setting rents by law,

It has a similar effect. If you force the renovations, you eat the profits and people may leave the business exactly as it happened when they fixed the prices. The effect may be a shortage of affordable houses.

I don’t really think many people would be forced to sell because they can’t either renovate or pay the fees for failing to do so - but of course the law could be written to demand unreasonable renovations and impose unreasonable fees… it’s a quantitative problem, not one of principle.

The case of The Netherlands is basically like that. You own an apartment that used to be rented out for €1.200, but with the new rules the price dropped to €800. You are not forced to do anything, but doing the math your conclusion could be that it’s better to sell and invest somewhere else.

Regarding the renovations, last thing I’ve heard is that by 2030 (or maybe 2035, I don’t remember now) it will be illegal to rent places below a certain energy class (a relatively low one, but it will require at least modern windows). Those expenses will trigger the reasoning I described above. Some people will sell and there will be less affordable houses, other people will renovate and increase the rents to recover the costs so, again, less affordable houses.

Hence the need for fees/taxes to dis-incentivize not doing that.

The result of that would be a transfer of the cost to the tenant at least until a large part of the house stock is affected.

If more people need to sell buildings, prices go down and buildings become affordable for people who previously couldn’t afford them. This is not considered in your reasoning.

This is exactly the bet that the Netherlands did introducing heavy regulations on rentals. For a large portion of the market, the price of the rent is now decided by law. While the market still needs to settle (it’s a recent change and now they are touching the taxation) there are the first negative effects: more cheap houses for sale, less cheap houses for rent, the price of the houses grew anyway, and the shortage of cheap houses pushed up the rents in the upper segment of the market. Moreover, developers stopped building cheap houses because it’s less convenient now.

Basically, cheap houses for rent may be cheaper, but they are fewer so people end in the free segment of the market where they pay more. Who lost were the tenants, not the landlords.

I would really feel for that poor-poor landlord who would no longer be able to live off the rent they are paid every month

Did I ever say landlords are a bunch of rich bastards? This is twice you put words into my mouth.

Mind your tone if you don’t want to be misunderstood.

would you be so kind as to enlighten me with your wisdom?

Sure. Real world example:

• Apartment rented for €700/month.
• Tax on the rent around 30%.
• Property tax €1.500.
• Expenses from the building about €1.500/year.
• Fees for the agency 5%/year.

Total: €2.880/year. To that, subtract the fees for the agency and occasional maintenance that can range from €100 to a few thousands per year. Yes, it’s possible to go negative.

A minimal renovation to improve the energy class (like changing the windows) is in the €10-15.000 range that means that no landlord will find it economically reasonable. A lack of renovation of rented properties means that who lives in them (including poor working class) will have higher energy bills and lower quality overall. When an apartment becomes too old to be rented out, it is sold and typically stops to be rented out limiting the number of affordable homes for the low income class.

So, before complaining because a tax cut may help “poor-poor landlords”, remember that without them there will be no renovations (so 0 taxes instead of a positive discounted amount) and low income families will not see improvements in their places very easily.

I’m afraid you know little about the real estate business, and are blinded by the assumption that landlords are all just rich bastards.

Your PS is correct if you, like Elon Musk, are able to live borrowing money using your wealth as a collateral. For most of wealthy people that’s impossible.

I get it: you would bind the tax discount to individual wealth.

What if I’d tell you that a minimal renovation would eat the earnings from a rented house for 5-10 years and be therefore completely anti economic for the landlord?

You can tax as usual and have some renovations, or tax less and have more renovations.

I suggested the Catholics because they just did it, but that idea seems to appreciated by autocrats and fascists worldwide from China to the US. Here in the EU we are hypocrites: we do it “for the children” to make it palatable to the general public that will never dare to oppose to that excuse. “If you are against this, you are with the pedos” is a frequently used argument.

Obviously porn will not disappear from Internet, and there is no regulation that can achieve that, but the goal is not porn. The goal is to make it harder for a child to access scientific information about his sexuality while growing up, or for an adult to access historical information about what fascism really meant. Things like that are the real targets.

Because ignorance is a fertile ground to cultivate idiot voters.

I guess UK, but it may come to the EU soon since the Catholics are trying to do the same, the right-wing parties hope for the censorship of “adult” topics spanning from gender issues to history, and the left is sitting on their thumbs.

I would not hold my breath considering that GH was already supposed to die in 2018 and we are still predicting its imminent end in 2025.

Wrong assumption 👋

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I haven’t read it anywhere. It’s just how it is. why do you think this is not the case?

So you are saying that you have first hand information to state that “the EU consists of several different communities, with different cultures and different thinking”. Who are you? A sociologist who studied the EU for the past two decades?

I’m asking because it’s completely in contrast with my first hand experience. I lived and worked in a few countries besides my original one and I found that the actual differences are more limited to what people eat for breakfast, what stereotypes they have for other countries, and the quality of the services one gets.

Basically what the ECR and the Patriots say

well their dose is not healthy

So where do you stand? With Farage cherry picking what you like of the Union?

as I see this would either need voluntary high cooperation of most countries, which would be a good thing (but not in the sense of imposing my country’s laws on your country because your country hosts servers of interest)

The cornerstone of the EU is the free market that means having a company from Spain able to do business in Germany. To achieve that, it is essential to have common rules and common standards just like it’s essential to eliminate barriers. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. The UK tried, and now they are out.

or a united states of europe that would basically replace each country’s political system with a top-down system as the other user said, where there are no local elections for the ruling party anymore, or much less meaningful

Maybe you didn’t notice, but the European elections are already much more important than the local elections since the internal political economy is largely controlled by the EU. Your government can (for now) play around civil rights, manage pocket money, but cannot go out of the European boundaries that are becoming tighter and tighter every year.

10 days is way too little time for appeal, especially when there’s a high volume of requests (a single country could overload their capacity)

You are attacking a law that removes national barriers because your slightly-fascist country may abuse of that. Fix the fascism instead.

if a country bans encryption

It won’t happen, but even if it does, you run your own.

Damn, you got me! Now I have to rethink my whole plan to undermine Spotify’s revenues one comment a time!

I never said it wasn’t a successful service. I’m only genuinely surprised that so many people pay for what I personally consider marginal improvements. Also thanks for being the usual internet jerk ready to snap at any comment he doesn’t like: now I have an idea of who may pay for that subscription.

What bubble?

Same with pi-hole.

You guys are paying for Spotify?