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No, Volt are part of the green/EFA

Ok firstly, suspending someone for weed is insane because that’s not a performance enhancing drug, if anything it’s performance degrading.

Secondly ask yourself why are they catching someone for weed but don’t catch all the obvious steroid use that literally every professional athlete does? It’s because they’ve intentionally made it possible to cheat their system and get away with steroid use, and the trainers and officials are the ones helping the athletes.

Watch the doco Icarus, the first half before it goes off the rails is all about how doping is an open secret and all athletes in all countries do it and their trainers help them

Oh it’s absolutely done at a government level by the US as well, they’re just a bit more subtle about it than Russia and China

So you mean, the Olympics?

Currently what billionaires do is never sell their assets so that they never have to pay capital gains tax (since they haven’t realised the gain), but then take out large loans using those assets as collateral and live off the loans. That allows them to enjoy the benefits of their capital gain without ever paying tax on it.

The line you quoted is saying that if you use some asset as collateral for a loan then for tax purposes that should count as realising any gains in value

Yeah I guess there would have to be some kind of bracket system like… the more people who are registered supporters of your party the higher level of campaign funding you unlock? And it starts at zero

That’s an interesting idea. I’ve found personally that every time I’ve worked for a publically traded company I’ve hated it because everything is just about increasing share price no matter what. OTOH I think investment is very useful for progress though… I’m not sure how investment would work without ownership

Ban political donations, all political parties get the same, small campaign budget and allotment of advertising space/airtime funded by the government instead

Forced retirement of politicians at whatever the national retirement age currently is

You missed a very important one, fix the main reason billionaires don’t pay any tax:

Using your unrealised gains (e.g. shares) as collatoral to take out loans should be considered realising those gains and thus subject to capital gains tax

Not true in my experience, both as employee and employer

I dunno what you’re doing wrong but I bought an apartment in Germany a couple years ago and that wasn’t my experience at all. I saw plenty of nice places big enough for a family of three for 250-300k. We had a little bit more than 50k in savings and were able to buy something much bigger than we need with a large garden (we spent 440k), but could easily have gotten something big enough with 50k savings. We’re in a medium/large city but just not right in the middle, more towards the outskirts. Still only 15 mins bike ride to the centre though!

Yep that’s generally how housing prices work in Germany, since rent is heavily controlled and fixed interest rate loans are readily available, the value of a property adjusts depending on the current “cost” of a loan

Misleading post title: altered the original to remove the word “recent”

Hello pot, meet kettle

My first thought when seeing this post was “oh like Tonies but for movies, awesome”

Portugal is soooooo much more progressive than the USA, and I’m willing to bet that having something a lot closer to actual democracy than they do is part of the reason.

I think you’re misunderstanding the effect of not having FPTP. It’s not that you get rid of FPTP and suddenly the mainstream party loses power - not at all, but rather what happens is that they see first hand how close they are to losing power by the number of people casting their primary votes elsewhere. That means they are forced to cater their policies at least a little bit toward all those people, and it ends up having a real meaningful impact on their platform. Whereas in the US, the FPTP system rewards Democrats not for following the wills of the most people, but rather for just being very slightly less right wing than the Republicans, because that way they’ll scoop up the votes of everyone to the left of them, regardless how far left.

Pretty important detail missing from the headline:

However, if ending the war would include Russia returning the territories that it has occupied and annexed throughout the conflict, only a third (34 percent) of respondents said they would support that decision.

Ah the classic “I’m going to vote no to something good for me because I wanted something even better” argument 🤦‍♂️