It's not about Amazon or Temu. Here in the Netherlands, we actually did protect our market and two Dutch online stores are more popular than Amazon.
There is just a huge shift to online shopping due to convenience and cost. There is just less demand for physical stores.
Some of the online shops do open physical showrooms. Relatively small stores (think Apple store) where people can see some of the more expensive stuff before buying.
But huge malls and department stores will only be a thing for the largest cities and for outlets, to attract people who like to physically shop.
The smaller malls and department stores just aren't needed anymore and will forever disappear from our landscapes.
If protestors burn just 0.1% of Tesla cars on the road every year, then that means insurance companies will need to charge an additional $200-$500 per year to insure a Tesla compared to a similar car of any other brand.
If they burn 1%, then it's more like $2000 per year in extra insurance costs.
But these people just want to be safe and raise their kids without worrying that some neo-nazis are going to harm them or their kids for having the wrong race or creed.
They aren't necessarily affluent, though not poor either. Just middle-class progressive people that need to have both parents working to afford a house, car, groceries.
Yes, I am sorry you got f-d by the medical costs. I really wish it were different.
I'm European, and I get miserable reading about the USA.
It's also quite telling that I see so many American expats here nowadays. It used to be quite rare, usually if you met an American living here they would be either working for an American company, or have a relationship with a local.
Now, I'm just meeting a lot of super talented and smart Americans who took a major paycut just to not live in the US anymore.
I like your thinking. Personally, I prefer easier schemes that are difficult to avoid.
Schemes like yours, while good on paper, are often circumvented through shell companies and foreign residency.
I prefer a scheme where we just tax all real estate at a quite high rate, somewhere in the 1-5% range. Let's say that a simple apartment would then result in €5K tax. A family home €10K.
Every citizen gets to subtract up to €5K of property tax from their income tax. So a family might pay €20K income tax, but can subtract €10K.
End result is a progressive property tax, which actually decreases tax on normal people.
People with expensive homes, foreign owners of homes and people who own multiple homes would be paying significantly more tax without the possibility to subtract it
The US still holds about $100B in oil money it stole from Iraq.
But it actually stole way more, perhaps more than a trillion, which Iraq had to pay to private US contractors. The American taxpayers and soldiers got fleeced in that war, too.
Also the post-WW2 world order heavily favours their economy.
Their allies buy their debt, and their weapons. They give access to theiir markets to US companies, and support US wars around the world. They invest in the US economy in an unbalanced way that favours the US economy.
And he is exploiting the tools the establishment has built over the decades. Including huge transfers of power from Congress to the POTUS, a rigid two party system, voter suppression and gerrymandering.
That war cost a million Iraqi lives (calculated by excess deaths).
And not to forget all the others killed by the sanctions in the 90s and the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, where the USA actually allied with Saddam and egged him on to start it.
I don't know why the Brexiteers are pumping this narrative again.
No, I don't for one minute believe that Macron would jeopardize European security just for fishing rights. There is no way that Poland, Germany and the Netherlands would accept that.
I do believe that the politicians are working on a slightly grander deal that will restore trade between the UK and EU. Such a deal could be defended on both sides against critics as "a necessary compromise to secure Europe".
And Labour will benefit from the economic growth, which they hope will let them keep a majority next elections.
Sorry to disagree.
It's not about Amazon or Temu. Here in the Netherlands, we actually did protect our market and two Dutch online stores are more popular than Amazon.
There is just a huge shift to online shopping due to convenience and cost. There is just less demand for physical stores.
Some of the online shops do open physical showrooms. Relatively small stores (think Apple store) where people can see some of the more expensive stuff before buying.
But huge malls and department stores will only be a thing for the largest cities and for outlets, to attract people who like to physically shop.
The smaller malls and department stores just aren't needed anymore and will forever disappear from our landscapes.