news
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
view the rest of the comments
How much does pay actually matter in Germany? A while back I tried to understand the German income tax system and probably failed since it's really quite complicated. But my takeaway from plugging in some numbers was that for families, after tax, incentives, child credit, benefits the gross income barely matters and you end up with more or less the same net income.
More gross should always mean more net, unless income is below full time minimum wage. Academics in finance or engineering don't become rich from income, but tend to have a relatively care-free life. Minimum wage means constant struggle to pay bills and survive.
I'm not very familiar with the benefits for families. If you're comparing two identical families, one with a lower income, and one with a higher income, the benfits and tax breaks should be mostly the same. Unless we're talking about the very lower end, with one family having no income or below full time minimum wage - when benefits are the largest part of the income, the wage will be less important. Depending on what numbers you put in, it's not unlikely that around 40% of a raise of gross income goes to social insurances and tax. It does depend on the exact tax class of each income earner and the tax bracket.
The tax system is a straight forward progressive tax. BUT net income is generally calculated after the deductions of social insurances, which are all calculated as % of income. Social insurances are usually more than the effective income tax, unless income is very high.
Between minimum wage (full time ~22k€ per year) and about 70k€ the tax rate and insurance cost goes up a lot, which reduces the difference in net income considerably. Below minimum wage (not in full time or whatever), benefits make up the difference in part. Above 70k, you reach the highest marginal tax rate (42%), and the social insurance costs are capped.
https://xcancel.com/sozi_simon/status/1937278850917904435#m
Not sure what I'm supposed to do with that, seems like people on that thread are implying that people without a job should just starve or something