I think a partial explanation can be that for most international tourists a visit to the USA is a major trip that gets planned well in advance. Easily half or even a full year ahead. Things only really got bad in the last few months, so we might still see many holidays that were planned before the madness fully set in. If that is the case I’d expect a continued decline in the future, where people choose another destination when deciding their next itinerary.

Das habe ich bis heute auch nicht verstanden. Früher war es wohl die pure Gier und heute hält China vermutlich die besseren Karten, auch wenn sich Europa mMn oft viel zu zaghaft verhält.

Das sehe ich ganz genauso.

Wer 1mio Vermögen hat ist zwar extrem priviligiert im Vergleich zu vielen anderen, die praktisch keines haben,es ist aber wie von dir erwähnt in manchen Gegenden schon mit einenem Eigenheim zu erreichen (auch wenn man bedenken muss, dass Ehepaare z.B. 2mio Freibetrag hätten). Würde die Grenze hier gezogen, dann wäre der Kreis der Betroffenen, die nur knapp darüber liegen, relativ hoch. Viel Aufwand (und Widerstand gegen die Einführung) für wenig mehr Einnahmen. edit: man könnte vllt sagen das in dieser Größenordnung das Vermögen in der Regel tatsächlich noch für die Basics aktiv genutzt wird

Meiner Meinung nach sollte die erste Grenze irgendwo bei 3-5mio (inflationsangepasst) gezogen werden. Ab da hat man soviel Vermögen, dass die Rendite allein als Einkommen ausreichen kann. Ich denke wenn man diese Schwelle überschreitet wäre es ok auf weiteres Vermögen eine Abgabe zu Zahlen. Wobei man eventuell trotzdem nochmal eine weitere Abstufung bei 50-100mio oder 1mrd bräuchte, da es sich hierbei nochmal um ganz andere Stratosphären handeln würde, welche auch ganz andere Gestalltungsmöglichkeiten zur Investitions- und Steuergestaltung erlauben. Womit man eventuell nocheinmal einen höheren Vermögenssteuersatz begründen könnte.

Bevor das alles passiert sollte man aber einfach mal Ausnahmen im Erbrecht für Immobilien (steuerfrei ab 300 Wohnungen) und Betriebsvermögen (ErbStG § 28a, der nach Bedarfsprüfung die steuer für Vermögen über 26mio komplett erlassen kann) abschaffen bzw anzupassen. E.g. dass bei Betrieben Anteile an den Staat gehen, die später wieder abgelöst werden können, wodurch man die Idee Familienunternehmen nicht aufzuspalten beibehalten könnte.

What is going on here?

I’m just an interested layman, but i’ll give explaining it a try. I think this is more about whether or not Intel can stay in the market for leading edge manufacturing against TSMC.

The first thing to understand is that there are two parts to Intel: the manufacturing side and chip design.

In manufacturing leading edge chips they are primarily competing with TSMC (the clear market leader) and Samsung. In the past they used to be far ahead of the competition, but they screwed up that lead and are now behind. This is a very capital intensive market as fabs cost billions to build. And each new generation gets more and more expensive.

On the design side there are multiple different markets: servers, desktop/laptops, and mobile devices. Ever since losing out on producing the chip for the first iphone intel hasn’t been a factor in the mobile market. Between servers and desktop/laptops, servers are the fastly more important and bigger market. Here they are competing with AMD, but also increasingly arm based processors, increasingly done by the large hyper scalers themselves (e.g. Amazon with their Graviton processors). Additionally with the ai boom the market has severely shifted towards gpus being vastly more important (which is dominated by nvidia).

Intel is relatively unique in that they still do both design and produce their own chips (not taking outside customers, but in recent times outsourcing some manufacturing to tsmc). Samsung also designs and produces their own arm based processors (exynos), but on a smaller scale and also has other customers. AMD used to have fabs in the past, but got rid of them (today called global foundries).

I would argue that here we need to primarily focus on the manufacturing, not design side. Even though they are also under pressure on the design side aswell and e.g. AMD is beating them in the server market.

It’s more about whether or not Intel can hold on being in the leading edge race as manufacturer or drop out (like GlobalFoundries did a while back), which would leave us with only TSMC and Samsung (potentially China’s SMIC, should they ever manage to develop their own EUV technology and catch up). No western manufacturer of leading edge chips, only asian ones that are heavily concentrated geographically and TSMC bearing a substantial geopolitical risk.

As mentioned above Intel has struggled with getting better process nodes working properly (especially in a timely manner) and costs are increasing by a lot. The issue is that now intel is severly cash strapped, as they’ve paid out massive dividends in the past when things were better and now that they’ve fallen behind earnings have disappeared (which is also why the mass layoffs).

Their competitor TSMC can spread the needed investment costs over many large customers such as apple, nvidia, amd and qualcomm. So far Intel manufactured purely for themselves and didn’t take on external customers. With massively increasing costs it becomes obvious how this becomes less feasible on your own and scale increasingly becomes important. Especially if either/both the design or manufacturing side mess up and fall behind on delivering competitive products.

Switching to manufacturing for external customers is difficult. They have to adjust their internal processes to suit what customers are used to from others. There is a potential conflict of interest as Intel might at the same time be the customers rival (an issue TSMC as pure manufacturer doesn’t have). And lastly customers need reliable schedules, if you are e.g. apple and release an iphone anually you need your manufactuerer to reliably deliver a workable node at a specific time and can’t have it delayed (or even have the uncertainty of this happening).

They originally planned for their upcoming 18A (maybe even the axed 20A?) process to have external customers, but that didn’t pan out (they will just produce some of their own products). Now they target external customers for the next generation 14A. Should they by then not have gotten their shit together enough to attract customers or be profitable Intel (the former giant of the semiconductor industry) will probably break apart and be done. At least in it’s current form.

The fabs in germany and poland have been dead in the water for a while now from the moment they fell behind schedule and eventually were put on hold. This is just them officially axing those plans.

Kann man von hinterziehen sprechen, wenn es ganz offensichtlich so vom System gewollt ist?

Bei den “besonders ergiebigen Einzelfällen” handelt es sich ja vermutlich um den Fall Thiele. Da wäre ganz legal weniger/gar keine Erbschaftssteuer angefallen, wenn sie es nicht versammelt hätten.

so they were lying, except to the youth, because to them they didn’t have a message. that’s a positive thing to me.

No, i might have been a bit unclear with my wording, but the pensioners got their huge gifts. They are the largest group of the electorate (and growing) , so there are plenty of incentives to please them, unlike children, who have no vote.

I was more thinking about a blanked ban on school grounds, not just during lessons. In any case i am not necessarily against it, but i think this brings us off topic too much. My main point was mostly just that particularly in regards to technology there might be a large gap and the younger generations would bring some perspectives that might not be properly represented.

That is just a very stupid idea. The best thing for all of us everywhere is for the most rational and well-informed people to vote. The fact that everyone gets a vote is unfortunate for all of us because that includes voters who vote against the public interest, but it is necessary for a free democracy.

Seems like you are arguing for meritocracy here, which has it’s own set of problems.

Even if you want to make the argument that some are informed enough, they are far, FAR fewer than in the adult populace. You do not want to broaden that window.

Honestly, this sounds exactly like an argument that could have been made in a debate about whether or not black people or woman should be allowed to vote.

I think you said it yourself, democray needs to endure that sometimes people just don’t vote in the same way or for the same reasons as it suits ones own views.

Nachdem es allerdings bei der Verbotsdiskussion um Verbraucherschutz und Täuschungsgefahr kann man glaube ich nicht etymologisch argumentieren. Wenn man den Leuten das zutraut, dann kann man auch erwarten, dass sie erkennen, dass sie mit einem als veggie/vegan bezeichneten Produkt kein Fleisch kaufen.

Und was ist z.b. mit Scheuermilch oder Kokosmilch? In Leberkäse ist auch kein Käse drinnen, laut Google ist in “bayrischen” Leberkäse noch nicht mal Leber drinnen.

Yes, i think we should definitely pay more consideration to how our democratic system works on a more mechanical level, and not just specific opinions. Glad to hear i am not alone in this and i imagine that other suggestions like e.g. the use of ranked choice voting would be much less controversial than this one.

Now, we both agree that the age filter is imperfect. It’s a heuristic, a rule of thumb. You rightly point this out, and you interpret this fact as if there should be absolutely no filters at all. For you, any filter would be imperfect or problematic.

I’d say the age filter is perfect. But it only filters for the one thing it measures: age.

My argument is that (here in Germany) when i go to vote there are 4 requirements asked of me:

• Citizenship (although in some more local elections i think this isn’t even a requirement as e.g. other EU residents are for example also allowed to vote). Which is a binary classifier, one either has it or does not. I’ve had it since birth

• That i am currently not stripped of my voting rights. Something that (rightfully) is done extremely rarely and on an individual basis, e.g. for high treason or bribing officials. Here in Germany it’s also always a temporary measure for a maximum of 5 years.

• There are some limitations based on residence. For example federal elections seem to require that you’ve lived at least 3 months in Germany during the past 25 years (with exceptions for some professions).

• Age, currently being over 18 in federal elections, 16 in some state and regional ones. Again a binary classifier, once you pass the threshold it becomes irrelevant.

The last aspect of course is that it is done so by ones own free will.

Now this i think is what you are going for, but i don’t think it has anything to do with the age requirement. It’s required from anyone that votes regardless of age. And in fact we already have a system in place that we deem sufficient enough to decide it, since we already have citizens where it might be in question like e.g. someone with an intelectual disability which can voice their wish to vote and sometimes receive help in doing so. Similarly if you have physical issues and are e.g. blind or can’t read you can get support to allow you to vote. Prisoners who are not able to control a lot of their circumstances are able to vote. Notably we do not care about whether or not you vote “badly”, for the wrong reasons, or for someone we disagree with.

The filter for this imo would be the same as for anyone else. A declaration that you want to vote and that you do so free of duress. This filter could imo be fulfilled by a child stating their wish to vote just the same. However as stated somewhere in another comment above i’d be fine with having an additional requirement here that the first vote would need to be either in person or that one would need to actively apply for it (and if not the automatic registration comes at a certain age), in which case we’d probably need to give children some options on where to do this, e.g. in school.

I’m reading your post and it reads just the same as what applies to many adults.

I know that I would have voted for a liar with a corrupt past, because of facebook ads of their party I assume. “oh look, they are apologizing and they regret it! they look so honest!”

I can’t even get started how many politicians have a corrupt past here in Germany and got plenty of votes.

nowadays? they just post a tiktok video that they’ll give money to all below 20 if they are elected

Here in Germany parties actively ran on the promise of raising and fixing the pension levels in an already unsustainable system. Alongside other gifts to certain voter bases. The one left out (I assume partially because they are not able to vote): The youth.

I also think you vastly overestimate the amount of influence underage voters would yield. Especially in our demographic structures and based on the fact that a significantly lower share of them would actually make use of it. They certainly wouldn’t have the power to introduce sweeping changes against the better judgement of other voting blocks. But you are right that they might influence smaller changes.

To take one of your examples i could see that for something like the smartphone ban. But would that be so bad? It might be a good thing, but i don’t think this is conclusively proven. In return it is probably something being pushed by a large majority that might not even use a smartphone on a daily basis or at the least is very far removed from the current level of technology. And it also wouldn’t all need to be negative. Take for example the stop killing games petition that is quite popular on this site. That one might suddenly gain some more supporters, which are actually affected by it.

However i’d also see a need for more studies. And i probably wouldn’t just make a major shift like that instantaneously, but rather in a gradual way and maybe lead with changes to smaller more local elections first. Which might give opportunities for such studies.

you can’t ignore the fact that even more propaganda would directly target them, taking advantage of very effective data mining based profiling. they should be able to experience more of life before advertisers starts to dictate their agenda, otherwise they’ll easily think that advertisers are speaking the truth.

Yes, this is indeed an argument that shouldn’t just be ignored. And honestly this should simply never be the case, regardless of age.

I’d break it up into two parts. Official election material and just general advertisements/media. The first one typically is already quite regulated and arguably for the benefit of all should already follow standards that are not harmful to children. The second one seems like the problematic one. However I’d argue that even children are already to some degree getting confronted with what’s going on in the world. Anecdotally i can say that even at elementary school age children seem to be (to varying degrees) at least rudimentally aware of many things. To give a recent example like when Israel bombed Iran.

We have things like cigarettes and alcohol where we impose age limits, but those are directly harmful things. Hard to argue that voting in a democracy is harmful. Sometimes there might be anti democratic parties (like the afd here in germany for example), but in those cases you’d think about banning those, not taking away the ability to vote. Maybe you or someone else could give me an example of something positive being banned based on age because the state/society can’t provide protection from something secondary.

I would also add that advertisement to a young voting base wouldn’t exclusively need to be a bad thing. Take free school lunches for example. If as a politician you run a campaign on that for example you are banking on gaining favor from a voter base that only indirectly is affected by it. The people directly benefiting from it can’t vote for you.

they have a voice. It’s not like people can only vote if they are in their last decade. turning 18, just 2 years, anyone can vote, and I would say even 30 and 40 years olds are largely affected by these issues.

They have a voice, but no vote, which is what matters for the politicians in charge. Also “just 2 years” falls flat since my argument is not about the lowering to 16, but abolishing it in general. So for the sake of argument for example an 8 year old, which would make it a full decade. In practice even longer, since elections aren’t every year and you aren’t guaranteed to have one in the year you turn 18.

And you are right that even 30 and 40 year olds are affected by these issues, but i don’t see how that would be an argument against it. If anything i’d see it as an argument that children should also have a say. We also don’t have an upper limit after which you aren’t allowed to vote anymore. And for obvious reasons it would e.g. be impossible to have a rule that says x years before you die you aren’t allowed to vote anymore, since you won’t suffer all the consequences.

Yes, but we are not filtering for maturity and capability in adults. So if this is the argument then imo it is flawed, since we’d filter for something just to stop filtering for it after a certain age.

If one wants to filter for these things then it should be applied across the board. However we are not doing so for good reasons (I can provide some if needed).

Babies and toddlers don’t know shit, plus parents have an extreme amount of coercion over their children until they’re teenagers.

Like I said we don’t make this a prequisite for adults. There are plenty of disabled or old people fully dependent on others.

Also allowing children to vote will result in more political propaganda targeted at children.

That is an interesting point definitely worth debating. Propaganda would definitely be an issue, but this is the case not just in children, but adults alike. On the other hand with children becoming a voting block it might shift the focus slightly on topics benefiting them.

They deserve to enjoy childhood without worrying about the clusterfuck.

True, although I think children pick up a lot regardless. And importantly obliviousness of issues doesn’t change how it affects them. Climate change and unfair pension systems for example will affect them regardless, this way they’d at least have a voice.

I think “teenager” is probably as low as you want to go for the foreseeable future.

I can for sure see how opinions can differ on the topic and I’d totally be ok with compromises and accepting some degree of hypocrisy. But nonetheless it’s imo worth looking at the issue from the extreme.

As far as compromises go I think another way to go about it would be to have staggered voting with lower limits in more local votes. I could see how it might be more acceptable there for some.

Edit: also regarding babies and toddlers i’d think that they would need to express a desire to vote in some form, which would probably make it so you don’t have literal 1 year olds voting (unless they are like an extreme genius, at which point they might aswell and it would only be a single vote of millions). Maybe one compromise would be to require some more active component below a certain age threshold, like having to vote in person for the first time or at least having to register somewhere (which if not done prior would happen automatically at a certain age).

Controversial opinion: I don’t see a justification for ANY voting age.

For adults we (rightfully) don’t make voting dependent on mental or physical capacity, being dependent on other people, and there also is no upper age limit.

So i wouldn’t be opposed to allowing anyone elegible for voting to do so when he/she expresses the wish to do so.

Glaub ich ihm sogar. Der Typ ist damit beschäftigt Milliardensummen in die Taschen anderer zu scheffeln, da sind solche Summen nicht Mal Rundungsfehler.

I mean in the server space Linux has already won and is doing just fine. Imo it is actually the reverse and sad that it needs this level of turmoil to get Europe to even think about software and digital infrastructure as fundamental. And even with all that’s going on they are just dipping their toes into it rather than properly comitting to a radical shift. Hell, even with all that’s going on some parts of the police here in Germany are still getting into bed with companies like Palantir.

You and all the companies training their AI models, like Meta for example

he consumed only vitamins, electrolytes, an unspecified amount of yeast (a source of all essential amino acids) and zero-calorie beverages such as tea, coffee, and sparkling water, although he occasionally added milk and/or sugar to the beverages, especially during the final weeks of the fast.

Worth mentioning imo, but you are right that most people should be fine fasting for some days if necessary. Although I would bet that almost everyone has a few days of food anyways. Unless you literally have empty shelves and buy groceries every day, most people will have a base stock of shelf stable foods like noodles, canned stuff, sugar, flour and so on.

Imo the limiting factor will be drinkable water most of the time. If something would cut off the supply immediately and for longer durations it would be a serious issue. Especially during warmer months.

Agreed. I hope this gains even more traction. Building a digital economy around support and service of free open source software with the requirement of personnel being local seems like the best way for Europe to finally become competitive.