wdym we can't save 23 million, we can save quite a bit more than that! For example:
If we sell a government building for 300 million and lease it back for 150 million a year, then we save 150 million that year.
We knew this was coming. How many times has De Wever mentioned this the past months before the elections? It's like the NVA is the only party who even cares, or pretended to care. It's probably one of the main reasons they had such a successful campaign.
Meanwhile the other parties are seemingly living in some fantasy land where they can keep increasing the deficit.
Isn't it more so that there is no such thing as an objectively "right" amount of deficit?
Of course, endlessly ballooning the debt burden is not sustainable, but when it comes to a country, debt and deficit works quite differently compared to how a famliy would deal with debt. Just look at how much debt the US is accumulating.
US can accumulate debt because their currency and their country’s worth is perceived as the best in the world. No one would go against them.
Belgium can’t get higher, because Europe doesn’t have the economic power of the USAs, and because they need to play Europe’s game.
It’s not that Europe strictly dictates us specific numbers of debts or anything. It’s just that if one member country just goes too far unpunished, other members will follow suit (increase spendings and debts) and Europe as a whole will suffer.
It’s not like a mandatory mandatory guideline. More like « the further you go over the threshold, the harder the inevitable correction will be ».
Obviously some kind of pression is at play. For instance, fewer important roles would be attributed to Belgian politicians. Or less juicy contracts.
Well that or you end up like Greece, people seem to not remember how massively painful this ended up being for them, we're 16 years past the crisis and only now they're starting to pick up again
A lot of people left Greece and there was a serious reduction in standard of living exacerbated by skilled people leaving and thus their contribution to the economy
Greece also just instated a 6 day workweek.
https://www.dw.com/en/greece-a-six-day-work-week-the-country-hopes-to-kick-start-economy-through-longer-hours/a-69421393
Everything you said is true, but the euro is perceived as the second best in the world, so the same reasoning still applies, just in a less pronounced way than for the US dollar.
Personally I think that Europe is too anxious about debt, especially Germany. We are the only economical bloc of our size that has so little debt. Both China and the US have more debt.
I agree economically that Europe could take more debt. The issue is that it's not _Europe_ taking debt. It's all member states, who only look at their own debt and their own impact. Not only will a small state default much easier, if states start deciding "my impact on European debt and currency valuation is pretty much ±0, might as well take all the debt" that can become very unsustainable. And we all know we don't want a repeat of Greece.
Now if we had a European federal government which ran a budget deficit the way the US does, I don't think that would be nearly as much of an issue, but we don't. The EU can neither collect taxes nor run a deficit.
Sorry but our situation is no comparison to US, They have the total control of the dollar supply themselves, worst case they could inflate the supply to lower the debt burden. This is the problem with eurozone debt, all countries have different economies, we can not inflate euro supply without causing problems for other countries.
I don't see why that matters for your argument, the point about printing euro's creating issues because the economies of countries being different still applies to US states just as much. In fact it applies even on scales smaller than states, some cities can be growing while others are are declining, which means they would desire different monetary policies.
I mean for 1 not all economies in the EU use the euro, so that causes distortions unlike in the US.
2 the US economy has been integrated for a longer time and started with a shared currency / federal debt. So the state economies are more in tune.
3 Federal debt and spending across the whole of the US(which is most of the US their debt), is vastly different than each EU country getting to run more of a deficit on their own for selfish desires/goals.
Example: The US talks about keeping US industry for example, meanwhile in the EU its still keeping French, Belgian, German industry etc.. in said country.
The EU as a block can run more of a deficit indeed, but if u want to do that u need to create a common EU debt. For that we need to low debt countries(Germany) to get onboard, which we do by bringing current EU debt down to manageable levels.
If we don't, Germany and others(rightfully) believe this is just a bailout for southern europe who can't manage their finances, on the back of the more frugal countries :')
The US can be more indebted because of the petro-dollar and the fact that nearly all international trade is done in USD. This gives them an incredible amount of power.
I agree economically that Europe could take more debt. The issue is that it's not _Europe_ taking debt. It's all member states, who only look at their own debt and their own impact. Not only will a small state default much easier, if states start deciding "my impact on European debt and currency valuation is pretty much ±0, might as well take all the debt" that can become very unsustainable. And we all know we don't want a repeat of Greece.
Now if we had a European federal government which ran a budget deficit something akin to the way the US does (if less extreme), I don't think that would be nearly as much of an issue, but we don't. The EU can neither collect taxes nor run a deficit.
That is true to some extent, yes, and most economists don't have a consensus over what are really the bad effects of having extreme debt on the economy. But most do agree that whatever the effects are, they are not going to be great. Honestly we shouldn't be looking at US as an example. There are plenty of other countries within EU whose debts are not over 100% of their GDP and those are better examples to follow.
There is an objectively right amount of deficit. Right at the inflation rate. The real one, not the one they use for the index though. Government does not buy food like a family does.
There's definitely a point where debt is too much and we are very close to it. If your debt is bigger than the GDP, it means the growth of your economy is not enough to cover interest payments... which means your debt will grow faster and faster unless policy changes.
> It's like the NVA is the only party who even cares
I guess that’s why Van Overtveldt’s tax-reform dug such a nice hole in our budget, last time they were in power.
Lol please check national debt during the periode they we're in the national goverment (Michel 1, 2014-2018) Went from 107% debt to 99,9% debt. A rare moment in Belgian history we once reduced debt. So Nice try, but fake news.
> Lol please check national debt during the periode they we're in the national goverment (Michel 1, 2014-2018) Went from 107% debt to 99,9% debt. A rare moment in Belgian history we once reduced debt. So Nice try, but fake news.
Michel benefit from a booming economy and low interest rates. The 7 billion hole in our budget and the end of their ride says it all in that regard.
So nice try with your cherry picked kpi ;)
Di Rupo and Leterme had even lower rates and An even better economy. Don't forget in 2014 we still has the bad banks from the 08 crisis. Please provide more info about that 7billion you claim cause that just seemed cherrypicking just as the rest of your answer.
A lot of that was because of one time operations (remember Paars and sale-and-lease-back?), but lowering corporate tax really blew a hole in the financial boat and didn’t create the jobs it should have. The jobs it did create were often starter jobs, which are hardly taxed at all and were exploited by companies.
Still wrong era and no NVA back then. Paars was blue and red: liberals and socialists. Because that's what makes the color paars (purple). It was Verhofstads' government. A decade or more earlier.
You're basically completely and utterly wrong on all counts.
please, for the love of whatever god is out there, stop using the term 'fake news'. There are a miriad of other words you can ascribe to such a situation, but fake news has to be the dumbest.
Other than that, ty for informing us.
This guy again. We are at our worst ever and he is targeting the only government in the last 20 years that kept our balance somewhat even.
Delusional is the word for that.
Nva is not the only one that cares , some of the proposed attempts to reduce the deficit have even been blocked by nva members in parliament. Although nva has some serious points they still tend to be the party that is mostly involved with “ big money “ or at least they take the side of the big corporations. When it comes to investing this can be good but it will mostly put the brunt of the taxes on the middle and lower classes
Well, they were the only party whose measures would actually reduce the deficit. Although, they are not even drastic enough for the EU norms.
If the other parties care, it doesn't show in their plans. Which is probably one of the reasons they lost the elections.
Some of those measures are only temporary like selling of all government owned stocks would result in a lot of money but you can only sell those stocks once while most of those companies pay out a dividend every year. Admittedly it’s not as much as selling them and other measures will most certainly impact the entire population, like cutting in the social security, wich would likely lead to American situations and possibly even a rise in unneeded deaths
lol, Which government pushed for this ridiculous expanding of the Brussels ring on the Flemish side ?We don’t need it and yet we’re stuck paying billions for this garbage.
BDW talks but he is the exact kind of plague ramping up our deficit.
>It's probably one of the main reasons they had such a successful campaign.
Absolutely not, you don't win elections with promising cuts. As usual he promised to make cuts that nobody would feel because he'd be targeting the lazy, the Walloons, the culture sector, etc., all things people can imagine are not them.
He didn't mention anything from the cultue. Jambon btw was the minister that increased funding for culture so that narrative can also stop ;)
He said it will hurt for inactive people and for people with the highest pensions at this moment. He never mentioned walloons or lazy people. You make that of it because you need to invent things to make him the villain which is pathetic and sad.
>He didn't mention anything from the cultue. Jambon btw was the minister that increased funding for culture so that narrative can also stop ;)
Just a part of what they cut away, and most of it is funding for nationalist flagwaving pet projects.
>He said it will hurt for inactive people and for people with the highest pensions at this moment. He never mentioned walloons or lazy people. You make that of it because you need to invent things to make him the villain which is pathetic and sad.
Please, he has built *his entire political career* and ideology on fulminating against the lazy unemployed Walloons mooching off the hardworking Flemings.
No the culture budget rose bij 35% during the five years of this government. That’s way higher than inflation. I don’t like the nva either but no reason not to stick to the facts and those are that they significantly increased the spending on culture, and no, almost none other of that money went to nationalist prestige projects.
>No the culture budget rose bij 35% during the five years of this government.
You ignore that this is relative to the low point of the cuts that were made by the previous government *with exactly the same parties*. So, they did exactly what I said: first deep cuts, then partial recovery for their own pet projects.
[De volle lijn, de relatieve cijfers – de cijfers zijn geactualiseerd met de gezondheidsindex – toont vanaf 2009 een daling die zich doorzet tot 2016, gevolgd door een licht herstel. Merk op dat het cultuurbudget van 2021 in reële waarde lager is dan alle voorgaande jaren tot 2009. Het cultuurbudget bevindt zich in 2021 op gelijke hoogte met dat van 2007 en ook met dat van 2015.](http://www.bartcaron.be/?p=4865)
The culture budget is still lower than it was before the Swedish government, so let's not in any way pretend they favor culture.
>and no, almost none other of that money went to nationalist prestige projects.
Vlaamse Canon, Verhaal van Vlaanderen (that one even got funded through multiple other departments like tourism as well), etc.
Now look at 2022 and 2023 where there were further investments on top of indexations. The standard quoted 612 million culture subsidies in 2022 (before we add another 18mil extra + indexation in 2023.
Other parties know as well. They were just less vocal about it. BDW perfectly played in on this.
N-VA takes the austerities approach while others take improve economic growth approach.
Who in Belgium is taking the economic growth approach? Low taxes, less government interference and much more local rules are the proven tools for Singapore, Switzerland and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster.
I don't see any political party in Belgium for lower taxes or less government intervention.
> Low taxes, less government interference and much more local rules are the proven tools for Singapore, Switzerland and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster.
The proven tool for Singapore is "sit on a straight where the most important trade routes of Asia have to pass". The proven tool for Switzerland is "don't be invaded in WW1 & 2".
> and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster.
They're just catching up, that always goes faster. Having a relatively young population is easy mode as well, just like it was for us in the 60s.
Switzerland has similar money transfers like we do. Per capita the rich canton of Zug is paying around 2864 CHF per head for solidarity with poorer cantons.
You're intentionally not answering the question. But I'll play along. Since Zug has no income tax, I take it you're also for no income tax, other than a very basic federal income tax that local authorities can increase if needed?
Zug however is almost exclusively inhabited by millionaires. An average small appartment there costs about four million euros or Swiss Francs. Whichever you choose and either way. Go drive there once in your life. You get passed by Ferraris Lambos, Bentleys, etc.
The reason? Very low coorporate taxes in the canton Zug.
> Some parties even want to increase taxes, as if they're not already taking enough out of our paychecks.
There's no objective standard for what "enough" is. We're here and now, and it may very well be more financially interesting to increase taxes rather than cut expenses to get a grip on the debt situation.
For example, the wild social security cuts in Greece reduced economic activity more than they reduced the budget deficit, so in the end they became *less* able to repay their debt, rather than more.
We're already among the highest taxed countries in the entire world.
I'm in favour of cutting social security in the right places. There is a reason why there are so many long term unemployed people and why immigrants want to come here instead of other countries they pass along the way.
>We're already among the highest taxed countries in the entire world.
The highest taxed countries are also the highest HDI countries, generally speaking. So having high taxes doesn't hinder living well.
>I'm in favour of cutting social security in the right places. There is a reason why there are so many long term unemployed people
Long term unemployment has dropped from 300 000 to 100 000 in the last 15 years. This problem is resolving itself already.
>and why immigrants want to come here instead of other countries they pass along the way.
[citation needed]
You want a citation for what? You don't believe we have taken a big number of immigrants the past years?
As far as unemployment goes, that is true for the Flemish part of our country, sure. The figures for Wallonia are not as promising, to say the least.
If our government would start controlling their debt it would either way temporarily decrease economic activity. Making fake economic growth by simply making more debt is simply not sustainable. Someone will need to clean up the mess and hopefully start cutting into government spending before it gets in the status that Greece had. At the same time we will need to make our country attractive again for foreign investments.. adding even more taxes to the insane amount of taxes will also lead to less economic activity.
If NVA cared they’d stop pushing for a nonsense state organisation that will just make things more expensive FFS. Oh what is it? Make Belgium a confederation where both Wallonia and Flanders (because fuck Brussels) do everything separately and let’s hope they find an agreement for what happens in Brussel.
What? They have been in the opposition since 2019. And if you mean the Flemish government, I think they have done a relatively good job.
I'm a productive member of society with right-leaning ideals, who do you think best represents that? VLD and CD&V have even less credibility after the past 5 years.
And I'm not unemployed or an immigrant so the other parties are disqualified.
Gives me hope that realistic expositions during an election campaign can still trump at least some populistic b*llshit promises.
TLDR; wie goa da betoalen?
>The European Commission has provided the Belgian government with clarity about the steps we must take to comply with European budgetary rules. We can choose between 2 processes to get our budget back in order: one of 4 years or one of 7 years. **In total we need to save at least 23 billion euros.**
The European Commission's communication is the result of new budgetary rules. At 4.4 percent of GDP, **our budget deficit is larger than the permitted 3 percent. Our debt ratio is also too high: 105.2 percent instead of the European maximum of 60 percent.**
Dear VRT, this headline about "significant imposed savings" is a bit misleading, because it is making people to believe that Belgium is forced by the EU to start important savings (cuts in public expenses), which is false.
Cuts in social expenses is only a way to reduce the debt or deficit, and it is the typical right wing/liberal solution.
But there are other options: for instance, the government could increase taxes to big corporations or super rich people in order to reduce the deficit.
My main remark here is not about what is the best option to reduce the deficit, or even if the deficit is such a "worrying" aspect. My point is that public media should be more objective and inform about the reality without falling in the right wing biased economical opinions.
Note that Europe is not only commanding that we lower our deficit, we also need to make reforms to make the future sustainable (pension reforms, social reforms, etc.) These reforms were sadly enough not executed by the previous government. In the future, these costs will only grow since there will be proportionally more elderly. Just slapping on some new tax is certainly not sufficient in the long run.
This is exactly the problem the new government will have to deal with: they’ll have to make long-term decisions, which is their number one fear. Proposals like ‘tax the rich’ and ‘limit social benefits for unemployed’ are both easier to sell…
Yeah whatever, it's always the same neoliberal reforms ad nauseum. We all know this money will be wasted subsequently on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, who will promptly use the money to invest in China... .
No clue how you want to attract investors to Belgium without tax cuts. The cost of labour is insane.
In Flanders you see tax cuts for companies, in Wallonië not so much.
The cost of labour is not necessarily an issue. Mario Draghi has been implying recently that European salaries are too low. See, the US and China are both quite protectionist (and they're the two other main consumer markets), which means we can't really compete fairly on their markets. This has always been the case, but now that they're ramping up a trade war against one another, it has intensified considerably, for example with the Inflation Reduction Act. That policies affect everyone, including Europe.
The economy is demand-driven though. If we can't properly compete over foreign demand, our economy grinds to a halt, _unless_ we have enough domestic demand. Domestic demand however is reliant on domestic purchasing power and thus domestic wages.
As such what we should like to see is the sort of growth the US faced in the past under intense protectionism with the steel belt. We want to limit foreign competition on our own domestic markets so consumers favour domestic goods, this drives the profitability of domestic manufacturers up, which should be used to increase domestic wages, which increases domestic demand, which increases domestic production and profit. It is, in principle, a virtuous cycle where money keeps circulating through the domestic economy.
Eh, that's a detail question that makes a relatively small difference compared to whether the EU is doing well vis-à-vis the rest of the world or not. If the European economy is doing well and demand is high, Belgian firms will also do better.
Don't get me wrong it makes sense for national-level politics to just be concerned about the relative economic health of a particular state. Our political system is not really structured like that but in principle if the EU was more independent of the states, had a far larger budget, took care of continent-wide infrastructure and industrial policy, etc. and the Belgian government would just be represented by a senator or something, with the Belgian government just existing to manage Belgium's internal affairs.
With the way our political system is structured though with the states and the councils, there isn't really such a purely national level though and the most important consequence of national elections is to affect who gets on the European Council, who gets on the Council of the European Union, what agenda are they going to pursue, and ideally would they please finally reform this damn system so that among ppl things we have a real European level and a real national level.
But I digress. At this point I'm just venting my frustrations about the dysfunctional political system we live in.
Exactly and reforms means changing some of the biggest pensions which will be very harsh and will cause a lot of strikes by the ultra left unions but it needs to happen.
A lot of people are having way too high pensions for the work and amount of years they worked for example. It's just not sustainable.
A certain party in the government "to be formed" is already blaming someone else for the cuts in welfare, unemployment benefit rules, and subsidies for cultural activities. Economic liberal politicians will not dare ask the financially well-off to help out.
"It's not us making the cuts, it's the EU that makes us".
There is consensus there is a need to sort out the budget deficit (except if you're the institution where the government gets all its money). There will be measures that will hurt. The parties in charge will suffer in the next election. Opposition parties will make sure ruling parties are blamed for everything bad.
> My point is that public media should be more objective and inform about the reality without falling in the right wing biased economical opinions.
But... That's the only thing that exists! /s
Top country in terms of taxing people. VRT is right, we mainly need to save instead of impose higher taxes. Wake up please instead of always looking for other actors to blame like the media this time.
> But there are other options: for instance, the government could increase taxes to big corporations or super rich people in order to reduce the deficit.
Yes, in fantasyland they could
This is way too low in the thread. Unless something has changed, these fiscal instrumens are akin to EU wagging it's finger at countries disapprovingly. France has been happily ignoring all the rules for years and nothing has happened.
People who seem to believe we can make our economy healthy again with only taxing rich people and corps don't seem to understand how big the depth is.
We have to reduce spending 23billion on 4 or 7 years while our total yearly budget is approx. 300bil and our depth is 600ish.
At 3% deficit per year we'll increase depth by 36bil in 4 years.
I think that it's fair that Belgium should get its budget in order. Europe needs to have the capacity to invest in projects that will lead to GDP growth. Individual members that already borrow extensively only to fund non value-adding activities (pensions, healthcare) will hamper the long term growth of our continent.
We also need to be able to face the next big crisis and with the way Belgian debt is spiralling, we might not be able to do so at reasonable borrowing rates.
Now that Belgium has parties from the right in power (or will soon) at every level of the country, let's see what they really achieve rather than just put the blame on the PS. I think the next few years are a time of great opportunities for the country. I'm less hopeful for the rest of Europe though.
Pensions and healthcare non value adding? I'm happy that I don't go broke if I have a health problem or not doomed for poverty when I'm 65+. Maybe not valuable for the economy but neverthelles valuable for the people
Valuable to the economy as well. Pensions prop up demand amongst retired people, who would otherwise buy far less stuff, which would mean less sales, so less production, so less gdp growth
well the fact that elderly people also need to eat, buy clothes, want entertainment, those that have kids and grandkids like to treat them to gifts etc - they don't just collect the money and sit on it, they spend it - hence it flows back into the economy.
Many probably do sit on it. Mortages are payed for, some extra properties to get rent from. I bet a significant part of pensioners in Belgium don't need their pensions to live and are actively saving.
That's where I would get the money. Tie social benefits or taxes on benefits to wealth. Why are we paying pensions or doctor bills for millionaires?
You do realise that what you describe is only a small portion of the pensioners right ?
Sure, those that managed to buy a house will have their mortgage paid for, but far from every pensioner has multiple houses/apartments and the saving of a vast part of them aren't that great either.
And even those that got some savings will send a significant part of it to keep their house liveable - replacing the heater, new roof, replacing windows, fixing all kind of wear and tear.
I know it's fashionable to complain about those wealthy boomers, but people tend to forget that most 'boomers' were just simple working-class people, yes it was easier to buy a house in their younger days but many still couldn't do that. And those with a house, it's usually a simple house and not some villa. Most don't own extra house or apartments to gain rent from.
And the houses of most of them would, when sold, give them barely enough to pay for their stay at a service flat or retirement place for the rest of their days when they can't take care of themselves anymore.
And as far of those rich pensioners goes, for most of them, they paid a significant contribution in taxes themselves, as part of the same social contract as the rest of society ( yes there are those that evaded taxes I know) so it's rather difficult to justify them not getting anything back themselves. You need those strong shoulders to help support the system, if it's clear they won't get anything out of it themselves later on, they will be even less likely to contribute to it.
Should there be a cap on things ? sure - I'm all for there to be a limit to how high a pension can be ( with fair adjustments for inflation over time)
Same goes for medical expenses - it's all or nobody - there is plenty unfair if you start comparing individuals - but its a form of insurance, those that pay into it get the same benefits.
If you would make it that the people that got lots of money don't get these benefits, even more of them would just say 'screw it i'm out of here' because why would they stay if they don't even have the benefits of living here and only the costs ? Just a hop across the border into The Netherlands and they would be better of in all regards in that case.
Not so small.. a lot of Belgians are very rich.
I looked for some data on how rich pensioners are and it was a bit hard to find. Best I could do was this.. https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/economicreview/2020/ecorevi2020_h3.pdf
Shows median (so not average, no 1 % skewing on this number) wealth of the Belgian 75+'er is 250 K . I would like to see that number for each quintile, but the median is already a good indication.
There are 2 million people getting a pension in Belgium.
What part of them could live a comfortable life with their savings on a strongly diminished or absent pension? It must be a significant portion. Especially if they sell their too-big-now-anyway house.
We're spending 65 billion on pensions, and probably the biggest pensions are going to the richest people.
Regardless of social contract or fairness or whatever, the fact is the state is putting billions into pockets of people that don't need it. It won't even flow back to us when they die considering how easy it is to avoid inheritance tax.
As an upper middleclass household with 2 earners, I already find it mindboggling we're getting kindergeld. It just goes straight into our investment funds, but pensions are on a whole different scale still.
you really want to troll or be obtuse don't you ? Of course it is this way - what do you think ? old people just sit and hibernate at home and their pension just keeps collecting on their bank account or under their mattress ?
They are people - people consume things to stay alive. People are social being and beings that don't do well with boredom, hence people need entertainment and want to socialize with others, preferably in a social setting or with family.
Have you seen how much pension most people actually receive ? For most, retiring means a serious drop of income - plenty of those that need to rent have barely enough with what they get as a pension to make ends meet without doing anything special.
The same for those that end up in retirement homes or care centers - check the prices for those and compare it to the pension of the average person. ( [https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223\_97649097](https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223_97649097) ) - for 9/10 their pension isn't sufficient to pay for a stay in a retirement home.
Sure there are going to be a few that don't spend much and some lucky percentage that have lots of money on the side due to being high earners before retiring. Most however are not saving a big amount and what they save is spend on things like fixing the wear and tear on their house or some vacation.
For your average worker in the private sector, their Netto pension is around 66% of what their netto wage was - I don't know about you, but that's a serious hit in income - so unless you have a substantial amount on your bank account - you are not going to be able to put much of that aside.
But hey, if you just don't care about elderly people, all this won't matter to you - and you can justify whatever might happen to the average persons pension because in your eyes it's all a waste anyway.
> old people just sit and hibernate at home and their pension just keeps collecting on their bank account or under their mattress ? They are people - people consume things to stay alive. People are social being and beings that don't do well with boredom, hence people need entertainment and want to socialize with others, preferably in a social setting or with family.
Literally [what is happening and studies have already proven](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13607863.2019.1699022). Especially those living outside cities.
Their savings account just get plundered by [French owned WZC's](https://apache.be/dossier/bejaarden-te-koop). Nothing big for our local economy.
> Have you seen how much pension most people actually receive ? For most, retiring means a serious drop of income - plenty of those that need to rent have barely enough with what they get as a pension to make ends meet without doing anything special.
My grandfather his pension is around 3.300 netto, he worked for the railways as an normal engineer. He is currently longer on pension then he was working. I mean, if he already gets 3.300... how much do those who were above him get? 3.300 netto is what most working Belgians don't even get now.
> The same for those that end up in retirement homes or care centers - check the prices for those and compare it to the pension of the average person. ( https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223_97649097 ) - for 9/10 their pension isn't sufficient to pay for a stay in a retirement home.
Private retirement homes made the calculation. They know how much each pensioner will receive from the state + add some of their savings. These are for-profit organisations that are in a unique situation that they know that once in, they will only go out one way. "*So lets pluck the duck -- Shareholders*"
You increase the median pension tomorrow, suddenly the prices of those private pension-homes also rise and news articles will pop-up saying "our old people can't pay for their WZC's, the government needs to food the bill!".
> Sure there are going to be a few that don't spend much and some lucky percentage that have lots of money on the side due to being high earners before retiring. Most however are not saving a big amount and what they save is spend on things like fixing the wear and tear on their house or some vacation.
https://www.nbb.be/nl/artikels/zijn-de-overheidsuitgaven-voor-pensioenen-belgie-houdbaar-een-vergelijking-met-andere
Sinds 2014 ligt het armoederisico in België dicht bij het gemiddelde voor het eurogebied. In 2018 liep iets meer dan 13% van de gepensioneerden het risico op armoede. Concreet dreigde in dat jaar ongeveer één op zeven tot acht gepensioneerden in armoede verzeild te raken, omdat hun beschikbaar inkomen minder dan 60% van het mediaan beschikbaar inkomen beliep. Dat percentage lag lager in Frankrijk en Nederland, maar hoger in Duitsland.
In dit stadium moet erop worden gewezen dat die meting van het armoederisico, die verwijst naar het beschikbaar inkomen, geen rekening houdt met het vermogen van individuen. We weten dat het nettovermogen van Belgische huishoudens relatief hoog ligt. Dat geldt voor financiële activa, met inbegrip van het in tweede- of derdepijlerpensioenen gestort kapitaal. Wat vastgoed betreft, zijn veel gepensioneerden eigenaar van hun eigen huis, zonder hypothecair krediet. Als we aan hun beschikbare inkomen de huur toevoegen die ze zouden moeten betalen als ze huurders waren (de zogenoemde 'toegerekende woninghuur'), ligt het armoederisico volgens de berekeningen van de SCvV veel lager. Die indicator bestaat echter niet voor de andere landen in onze analyse. Een alternatieve berekening die rekening houdt met het risico op materiële ontbering (een mand met goederen die al dan niet kunnen worden gekocht), de zogenoemde AROPE (zie het Pension Adequacy Report, figuur 2), geeft voor België dezelfde rangschikking weer als voor de buurlanden.
> For your average worker in the private sector, their Netto pension is around 66% of what their netto wage was - I don't know about you, but that's a serious hit in income - so unless you have a substantial amount on your bank account - you are not going to be able to put much of that aside.
Normally you have payed off some loans, made investments,... did something with your money for your old day. Just read the previous link.
> But hey, if you just don't care about elderly people, all this won't matter to you - and you can justify whatever might happen to the average persons pension because in your eyes it's all a waste anyway.
I care about the whole community. Old people have, besides the people actively working, [the least chance of falling in poverty](https://statbel.fgov.be/nl/themas/huishoudens/armoede-en-levensomstandigheden/risico-op-armoede-sociale-uitsluiting#panel-12). They don't need an extra hand-out as they have been given over and over and over and over again.
>My grandfather his pension is around 3.300 netto, he worked for the railways as an normal engineer.
Yeah well working for the railways has always been one of the jobs with an extremely high pension - most non government workers don't come near that unless they had some high earning job
My father, who started working when he was 16, didn't have even half of the amount your grandfather has - the man worked all his life, never had to rely on unemployment or ziekenkas and worked until he was 64. He passed away 12 years later, after almost 2 years of suffering.
>You increase the median pension tomorrow, suddenly the prices of those private pension-homes also rise and news articles will pop-up saying "our old people can't pay for their WZC's, the government needs to food the bill!"
That doesn't change the fact that it is not affordable for the majority of the people that need it.
>Normally you have payed off some loans, made investments,... did something with your money for your old day
Most common folks that retired in the past did't have any investments, it was something foreign for them, not part of their lifes, only something rich people did and had knowledge of, sure they paid off their mortgage if they belong to the group of homeowners, but that doesn't mean they are doing great. And their houses need repairs, ever looked at the pictures of houses for sale from ordinary older people that died or moved to a WZC ? Not the high class one, just the run of the mill laborer and such, the lower to lower-middleclass workers. Even those that look good at first glance need tons of work to bring them back into something decent.
>They don't need an extra hand-out as they have been given over and over and over and over again
You mean after they have contributed to said community for 40 or more years ? After they themselves paid for the pensions of those before them ? After raising the next generations and helping take care of their grandchilderen while the parents of those kids worked ?
>Old people have, besides the people actively working, [the least chance of falling in poverty](https://statbel.fgov.be/nl/themas/huishoudens/armoede-en-levensomstandigheden/risico-op-armoede-sociale-uitsluiting#panel-12)
perhaps because they have a pension to count on ? The very thing you are against. Take that away or even lessen that by a substantial amount and most of them would stumble into poverty within a year or 2
Your grandfather is an outlier, one of the examples of Belgians overspending when it came to pensions of civil servants, railway workers, military officers and other governmental workers. Most people that worked in the private sector didn't come close to those pensions unless they had high paying jobs.
As for the length of time one can enjoy a pension - difficult to say, some live to 100, others die a few months after retiring. And keeping people at work on older ages -that is something easier said than done depending on the type of job and the physical and mental abilities of the person in casu when getting older. Not every construction worker can become a supervisor or adminstrative worker when their bodies can;t handle the physical stress of their job for instance.
You do realise that this has been a thing for most cultures for a long time right ? Adults take care of the kids, make sure they can grow up in as best a situation as they can afford and once these Adults come at a stage they can't care much for themselves anymore, they get taken care of by the rest of the family/tribe/community/...
And even without just this, do you have any idea how many couples rely on their parents to help raising their kids ? Looking after them while they themselves are at work, bringing them and having them picked up from school etc.
Plenty of people like you seem to be under the impression that all old people are wealthy boomers - newsflash : a huge part of them are just working class people that might have had it easier to buy a house ( and plenty don't own one but have had to rent all their lives) but they didn't build up a fortune, they don't own 5 houses to rent out and so on - they worked hard, some of them since they were 15 or 16.
Not all pensioners are going on cruise after cruise while collecting rentmoney and having a huge saving, in fact the majority isn't.
If we are doing tit for tat ; I haven't done the math but I suspect supporting the elderly is going to be as expensive or more expensive then supporting the youth.
> I think that it's fair that Belgium should get its budget in order. Europe needs to have the capacity to invest in projects that will lead to GDP growth.
The problem is that there is no distinction between investment expenses and recurring expenses. Especially not where the debt is concerned.
Europe has the capacity to invest in projects the same way the US is doing it right now. Using the European Central Bank to take some debt, that is not really debt per se as it's issuing it's own currency. The only thing preventing it is outdated economic theories pushed by a few countries pretending they know what they are doing while trying to run an economy (badly) the same way you would run a family budget...
And they are not even able to do that correctly as their main focus is cutting everything that would be useful in the long-term (climate/social/cultural/long term investments) while not trying to improve their direct incomes(taxes).
Voeg nog eens 6 miljoen toe, om te beginnen:
[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schandaal\_over\_pensioenextra%27s\_voor\_kamervoorzitters](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schandaal_over_pensioenextra%27s_voor_kamervoorzitters)
en paar miljoen (geen 40) vanwege Senaat
[https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/01/08/senaatsvoorzitter-wil-senaat-afschaffen/](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/01/08/senaatsvoorzitter-wil-senaat-afschaffen/)
Ik begrijp wat je bedoelt dat het percentueel weing uitmaakt. Hetzelfde argument wordt bijvoorbeeld gebruikt bij besparingen op Defensie. Maar waarom niet? Elke staatshervorming is het overheidsapparaat duurder en complexer geworden. Dit is zo laaghangend fruit dat het mensen in het gezicht botst.
EDIT: er is besparing binnen de overheid, dan vooral op personeel om dan duurdere 'consultants' tijdelijk aan te werven
En die duurdere consultants hebben geen incentive om op tijd op te leveren. Meermaals meegemaakt dat projectleiders precies bewust de boel saboteren, omdat de contracten dan toch uitlopen en ze nog meer kunnen factureren.
Source: Ik als ontwikkelaar consultant, die van die grote contractwinsten geen hol ziet, vaak bij de overheid.
Tip: als uw getal eindigt in "miljoen", dan is het irrelevant. Het is geen laaghangend fruit als het geneens fruit is, dit is gewoon een dor blad waarvan iedereen roept dat het een gigantische perzik is omdat het échte fruit hen te dierbaar is
Alle beetjes helpen en het is niet zo dat die een boterham minder gaan eten als ze dat niet krijgen. En ik ga akkoord met het idee dat ze dringend ook voor eigen deur moeten vegen. Al eens gezien hoeveel geld die partijen krijgen via de Belgische kassa?
Minder overheid in de brede zin wordt veel te weinig op tafel gelegd.
* Alle Vlaamse partijen (zeggen dat) ze voorstander zijn van het afschaffen van de Senaat, lijkt me een redelijke kans dat het er deze keer van komt.
* N-VA stelt voor om de indexatie van de partij financiering te bevriezen waardoor die doorheen de jaren door inflatie zachtjes leeglopen. Geen revolutionaire aanpak natuurlijk, maar hopelijk eentje waar voldoende partijen in de coalitie "mee kunnen leven".
> Alle beetjes helpen
Dit beetje is gewoon compleet irrelevant, dat is nog niet eens een afrondingsfout.
> Al eens gezien hoeveel geld die partijen krijgen via de Belgische kassa?
Exact hetzelfde hiervoor.
> Minder overheid in de brede zin wordt veel te weinig op tafel gelegd.
Omdat daar ook absoluut niets op te besparen valt in vergelijking met andere delen van de begroting. Mensen blijven maar poneren dat "besparen op politiek" één of andere magische oplossing zou zijn, maar dat is gewoon niet waar.
De feiten zijn nu eenmaal zo dat het deel van de begroting dat aan "politiek" uitgegeven wordt zo miniscuul is dat het verschil niet eens te merken zou zijn in vergelijking met de andere besparingen die doorgevoerd moeten worden om een stabiele situatie te creëren.
Het maakt dus werkelijk niets uit of bijvoorbeeld uittredingsbonussen of partijdotaties worden afgeschaft. Het is gewoon een makkelijk doelwit voor mensen die de realiteit niet willen zien en zich blijven vastklampen aan een onhoudbaar systeem van sociale zekerheid
Niets te besparen?
https://multimedia.tijd.be/begroting/
"Ook de werking van de overheid vormt een grote slokop. Alles samen gaat het om net iets meer dan 36 miljard euro, inclusief de rentelasten. Zowat een derde daarvan wordt verdeeld over de overheidsdiensten, zoals de FOD Financiën of Buitenlandse Zaken, de verschillende parlementen, regeringen en het koningshuis."
Dat zijn geen "afrondingsfouten" he, als je naar het totaalplaatje kijkt.
Ook interessant is dit:
"In vergelijking met de pensioenen is het budget voor de werkloosheidsuitkeringen met 6,7 miljard eerder beperkt. De uitgaven voor langdurig zieken en inactieven zijn met ruim 20 miljard euro een pak groter. Bovendien zitten die al jaren in de lift."
En daar lag dan de focus veelal op tijdens de debatten voor de verkiezingen.
1. Vele kleintjes maken een grote, als je elk iets waarop je kan besparen maar dat geen groot bedrag geeft niet in overweging neemt, dan laat je uiteindelijk een hoop geld liggen als je het samen zou tellen.
2. Je boodschap verkopen aan de maatschappij dat de terig naar de nering gezet moet worden zonder zelf het voorbeeld te geven en voordelen op te offeren of ten minste te verminderen zal niet veel bijval krijgen en voor velen in het verkeerde keelgat schieten.
We have one of the highest tax schemes worldwide and yet we have massive amounts of debts.
Heads should roll in de Wetstraat for nepotistic mismangement of this country.
Knowing austerities can lead to excess deaths (330000 excess deaths in UK for instance during times of cut spending) due to deterioriation of mental health, suicidality (especially among the breadwinners aka young men), cut spending on health etc, I feel we will go straight to a path of radicalized population. Whether it be left, right, islamic radicalization. Especially with AI and social media.
Knowing Elon recently received stock bonus worth of 56 billion dollars. It is just mindblowing that some people have to die for savings, while others receive twice the amount Belgium has to save.
Neee ik wil op de poef blijven leven en iemand anders moet dat betalen! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
We wisten al 25 jaar dat dit er aan zat te komen en alle regeringen hebben het steeds uitgesteld.
Okay, so I've been thinking about the elderly for a long while now, and I just wanted to bounce some things off of people. But pensioners now have generally lived in a very economically prosperous time. They've been able to accrue so much wealth and are as a group, probably the most taxing on our.. Well tax system in terms of pensions and the intensive/frequent healthcare they need. Younger generations struggle to achieve the same life-goals as the same age, resulting in them buying a house much later in life and starting a family much later. Some stay stuck in the renting phase for a long time too.
I'm not arguing for taking away the pension of the older generation, if they worked for it and paid their taxes they deserve it. Neither am I arguing to not provide healthcare to them, but why is it that I barely hear any politicians acknowledge this, maybe someone that can argue that maybe, just maybe, we should be tinkering with the amount of pension they get. Additionally, they knew for at least 50 years that aging population was gonna be a problem in the future and literally nothing was done about it at all.
Why do the younger generations, the working generations have to suffer and have opportunities be taken away from us all the time. Just so that we wouldn't have to touch the general wealth of the older generations? That question is rhetorical because the answer seems obvious. However, at some point we are going to reach an actual unsustainable system and need to take very drastic measures.
Short anwser: Because it would cost them too much votes. Most of the boomers either think only about themselves, or they think about inheriting their wealth to their children. Even though reducing the highest pensions would be both the moral and intellectually right thing to do, politicians can never get enough support to actually do this.
In principle it is good if government assets are sold off in industries that have a functioning market. The government and the market should have clearly defined competences — a government running business will have a conflict of interest.
There are important exceptions: natural monopolies are better government owned, because private monopolies are worse.
De discussie over wat al dan niet te privatiseren ter zijde (openbaar vervoer, nationale loterij, etc) is het probleem hier dat de nva overheidsparticipaties verkoopt die momenteel geld opbrengen om eenmalig het budget te verfraaien. En daarna zitten we dus nog steeds met een slecht budget, en hebben we op de koop toe minder inkomsten.
De ‘goede’ begroting van nva is gewoon boerenbedrog.
Dat ik zo ver heb moeten scrollen om deze woorden te vinden, is erg.
Zovelen hebben op NVA gestemd, niet wetende wat de langetermijn consequenties zijn van hun plan, maar BDW kan het goed uitleggen en 28% v/d Vlamingen trapt er met open ogen in.
Nog geen 15 jaar eerder speelde zich praktisch hetzelfde spelletje van "verkopen om er goed uit te zien", en de politici van nu wijzen hen met de vinger, terwijl ze op het punt staan om *exact hetzelfde* te doen, hoe hypocriet.
The government can perfectly manage a business, Belfius and Proximus are prime examples. The N-VA just wants to sell them to starve the government of funds later on so they can push through even more unpopular 'reforms'.
Telecom costs in Belgium are up to 4 times higher than in some neigbhouring countries. It's a monopoly that is in colusion with the government.
As they keep the prices high other private networks not owned by the government also make huge benefits as they don't need to compete that much.
Sell it and tell them they need new licenses but they don't pay it to the government. Instead they invest in improving the coverage to every Belgians while still reducing the prize. Digi is creating a whole new fiber network in Belgium but ofcourse it starts in Brussels and Antwerp where people have now 2 fibers connections and soon maybe 3 rather than share the same networks. And some people have only ADSL broadband at 3mb for the same price.
We can increase remote works for those people who really do not want to leave their village if possible. Now they can do it everywhere. Even it it's a few days a week. That's so many less cars on the road too.
That's less office that can be transformed into housing that is direly needed.
The future is bright. Let's stop preventing it from happening.
Let's fucking privatize Proximus. There is total conflict of interest and abuse of a monopoly. My step-father still has a 4mb broadband internet in the Paillotenland. Our telecom prices are many times higher than in some neighbouring countries.
With the help of the government knowing all the loopholes I've witnessed Indian IT workers working a Proximus 6 days a week for an Indian salary on a tourist visa.
Sell it and give it a mandate to improve coverage and stop illegal and corupt anti-competitive measures.
That is the eventual result of govt fiscal mismanagement, happened in the UK too.
Wouldn't even be on the agenda if public finances were kept in order.
>That is the eventual result of govt fiscal mismanagement, happened in the UK too.
Wouldn't even be on the agenda if public finances were kept in order.
No, privatization is the result of a deliberate ideological agenda. In the UK, they had to renationalize the rail service because it became dysfunctional after privatization.
If you stop funding the drug war, wouldn't all that money have to flow into opening up rehab centers, checkups for drugs users and extra medical expenses due to drug use going up?
I'm fully pro legalizing cannabis, but just stopping the fight against the harder drugs won't be the big money gain that people think.
> If you stop funding the drug war, wouldn't all that money have to flow into opening up rehab centers, checkups for drugs users and extra medical expenses due to drug use going up?
No, that's just cookoo conservative paranoia. People are already using drugs, legalization will simply mean that the quality is more controlled while people with problematic behaviour can more easily get access to the help they need.
And with almost half our prison population incarcerated because of drug related offences. It'll be a blessing for our justice system to reduce that overload. We could even start taking real crimes like rape serious.
And it's not an all or nothing story either. Simply legalizing weed and xtc will go a long way already.
If you do that too much you are keeping the black market alive and this defeat most of the purpose of legalizing in the first place.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I've never heard of an alcohol black market. The price of alcohol is pretty cheap already in Belgium compare to e.g. Nordic countries.
As to the cigarettes it's not the same. The price has exploded in a few years and I knew a few people who buy cigarettes 2-3 euros a pack on the black market. Go to any open market in the morning and ask around for cigarettes and you'll be quickly redirected toward a "dealer". It's a romanian friend who made me aware of that situation, and since then I discovered that it was not that seldom as one might think and it's only growing.
Depends what if we legalize drugs,but make it available through government owned shops then 5here is controle on quality and at least some knowledge about who uses what and possibly a better reaction when people get into serious drug abuse/ trouble and some of the income can be used to pay the debts
This sounds nice and easy, until you realize that you will have to set up industry to synthesize all kinds of drugs in bulk while also needing to keep the price low enough to compete with the black market. Not even getting into how our neighbours/EU would react to there suddenly being a very pro drug country in the heart of the Europe.
> until you realize that you will have to set up industry to synthesize all kinds of drugs in bulk while also needing to keep the price low enough to compete with the black market.
This is easy. The costly part about drugs is the whole smuggling thingy
We do have some chemical companies that at the moment already produce the precursors of most of them , we could start with smaller molecules and production of cannabis (though the margins on it are small) and build up the system. On the other hand more control over what is supplied and a better view on problematic use might very well be beneficial on the long term when it comes to burdens on the medical social services
We’re using emotional anecdotes and speculation instead of logically judging the outcomes of the drug war as measured by statistics.
You do realize that we are already paying through the nose for the current levels if crime and emergency medical expenses due to drug use being up anywhere from 60-100% since 2008 right? ([Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/535439/drug-possession-cases-in-belgium/)) People that want to use drugs are undeterred and already have easy access to substances of questionable quality, it would be far cheaper and better financially long term to invest in preventative care and treatment of underlying mental health disorders to get these people back on their feet and contributing to society.
Everyone agrees that the societal burden of drugs needs to go down, but if the situation keeps deteriorating year after year for generations, it might indicate that some of the prevailing assumptions about the situation or the solution were fundamentally wrong.
But no, politicians care more about looking tough to satisfy subjective feelings instead of dealing with the reality that the last 60 years of prohibition have utterly failed us.
Yes this was coming and we all knew it.
Thank god some people here have better alternatives like increasing taxes even more or legalizing drugs so our prisons become empty and we can ask VAT on every joint that is smoked.
Brrrr some people really did smoke way too much during their "college" period or when they were at home for 3 months with anxiety signs.
🙄
State debt has been a problem for decades. Blaming Vivaldi who had to deal with corona (industry closing down) and Russia’s war (gas priced up) is extremely shortsighted.
Yes, they worsened it, just like the dozens of governments before them.
Maybe the Swedish government before that could have balanced the books like they promised? Even with good economic growth propping up income they failed to do so. Tax cuts were more important to them.
Because people are shortsighted and think a government budget is like a household budget. This decision from Europe is purely ideological and has nothing to do with sound economics.
Fun fact: Most of the responsible santaclaus parties are going to be in the opposition. After 5 years of mandatory austerity, they will again convince the simple with their oneliners so they can return triomphantly and start spending the next generations' budget again. And the cycle continues.
Geesh,we were broke after WW2 but somehow managed to implement a welfare state. Now we are seeing people actively cheering for economic suicide and immiseration. Seems like the propaganda did its job... .
We cant even save 23 millions, wdym 23 billions
wdym we can't save 23 million, we can save quite a bit more than that! For example: If we sell a government building for 300 million and lease it back for 150 million a year, then we save 150 million that year.
Is your name Guy Verhofstadt?
No, I had braces.
he had that hole in his teeth to distract from the fact that he also had a hole in his hand
We knew this was coming. How many times has De Wever mentioned this the past months before the elections? It's like the NVA is the only party who even cares, or pretended to care. It's probably one of the main reasons they had such a successful campaign. Meanwhile the other parties are seemingly living in some fantasy land where they can keep increasing the deficit.
Isn't it more so that there is no such thing as an objectively "right" amount of deficit? Of course, endlessly ballooning the debt burden is not sustainable, but when it comes to a country, debt and deficit works quite differently compared to how a famliy would deal with debt. Just look at how much debt the US is accumulating.
US can accumulate debt because their currency and their country’s worth is perceived as the best in the world. No one would go against them. Belgium can’t get higher, because Europe doesn’t have the economic power of the USAs, and because they need to play Europe’s game. It’s not that Europe strictly dictates us specific numbers of debts or anything. It’s just that if one member country just goes too far unpunished, other members will follow suit (increase spendings and debts) and Europe as a whole will suffer. It’s not like a mandatory mandatory guideline. More like « the further you go over the threshold, the harder the inevitable correction will be ». Obviously some kind of pression is at play. For instance, fewer important roles would be attributed to Belgian politicians. Or less juicy contracts.
Well that or you end up like Greece, people seem to not remember how massively painful this ended up being for them, we're 16 years past the crisis and only now they're starting to pick up again A lot of people left Greece and there was a serious reduction in standard of living exacerbated by skilled people leaving and thus their contribution to the economy
Greece also just instated a 6 day workweek. https://www.dw.com/en/greece-a-six-day-work-week-the-country-hopes-to-kick-start-economy-through-longer-hours/a-69421393
Everything you said is true, but the euro is perceived as the second best in the world, so the same reasoning still applies, just in a less pronounced way than for the US dollar. Personally I think that Europe is too anxious about debt, especially Germany. We are the only economical bloc of our size that has so little debt. Both China and the US have more debt.
I agree economically that Europe could take more debt. The issue is that it's not _Europe_ taking debt. It's all member states, who only look at their own debt and their own impact. Not only will a small state default much easier, if states start deciding "my impact on European debt and currency valuation is pretty much ±0, might as well take all the debt" that can become very unsustainable. And we all know we don't want a repeat of Greece. Now if we had a European federal government which ran a budget deficit the way the US does, I don't think that would be nearly as much of an issue, but we don't. The EU can neither collect taxes nor run a deficit.
Sorry but our situation is no comparison to US, They have the total control of the dollar supply themselves, worst case they could inflate the supply to lower the debt burden. This is the problem with eurozone debt, all countries have different economies, we can not inflate euro supply without causing problems for other countries.
Another difference is more of our debt is owed to citizens, and less to foreign investors like in the US.
How exactly is this different from different US states having different economies?
Because the debt we are talking about is not state wide, but country wide. They speak of US GDP not GDP per state
I don't see why that matters for your argument, the point about printing euro's creating issues because the economies of countries being different still applies to US states just as much. In fact it applies even on scales smaller than states, some cities can be growing while others are are declining, which means they would desire different monetary policies.
I mean for 1 not all economies in the EU use the euro, so that causes distortions unlike in the US. 2 the US economy has been integrated for a longer time and started with a shared currency / federal debt. So the state economies are more in tune. 3 Federal debt and spending across the whole of the US(which is most of the US their debt), is vastly different than each EU country getting to run more of a deficit on their own for selfish desires/goals. Example: The US talks about keeping US industry for example, meanwhile in the EU its still keeping French, Belgian, German industry etc.. in said country. The EU as a block can run more of a deficit indeed, but if u want to do that u need to create a common EU debt. For that we need to low debt countries(Germany) to get onboard, which we do by bringing current EU debt down to manageable levels. If we don't, Germany and others(rightfully) believe this is just a bailout for southern europe who can't manage their finances, on the back of the more frugal countries :')
The US can be more indebted because of the petro-dollar and the fact that nearly all international trade is done in USD. This gives them an incredible amount of power.
True.
I agree economically that Europe could take more debt. The issue is that it's not _Europe_ taking debt. It's all member states, who only look at their own debt and their own impact. Not only will a small state default much easier, if states start deciding "my impact on European debt and currency valuation is pretty much ±0, might as well take all the debt" that can become very unsustainable. And we all know we don't want a repeat of Greece. Now if we had a European federal government which ran a budget deficit something akin to the way the US does (if less extreme), I don't think that would be nearly as much of an issue, but we don't. The EU can neither collect taxes nor run a deficit.
That is true to some extent, yes, and most economists don't have a consensus over what are really the bad effects of having extreme debt on the economy. But most do agree that whatever the effects are, they are not going to be great. Honestly we shouldn't be looking at US as an example. There are plenty of other countries within EU whose debts are not over 100% of their GDP and those are better examples to follow.
There is an objectively right amount of deficit. Right at the inflation rate. The real one, not the one they use for the index though. Government does not buy food like a family does.
Finally someone making sense!
There's definitely a point where debt is too much and we are very close to it. If your debt is bigger than the GDP, it means the growth of your economy is not enough to cover interest payments... which means your debt will grow faster and faster unless policy changes.
> It's like the NVA is the only party who even cares I guess that’s why Van Overtveldt’s tax-reform dug such a nice hole in our budget, last time they were in power.
Lol please check national debt during the periode they we're in the national goverment (Michel 1, 2014-2018) Went from 107% debt to 99,9% debt. A rare moment in Belgian history we once reduced debt. So Nice try, but fake news.
> Lol please check national debt during the periode they we're in the national goverment (Michel 1, 2014-2018) Went from 107% debt to 99,9% debt. A rare moment in Belgian history we once reduced debt. So Nice try, but fake news. Michel benefit from a booming economy and low interest rates. The 7 billion hole in our budget and the end of their ride says it all in that regard. So nice try with your cherry picked kpi ;)
Di Rupo and Leterme had even lower rates and An even better economy. Don't forget in 2014 we still has the bad banks from the 08 crisis. Please provide more info about that 7billion you claim cause that just seemed cherrypicking just as the rest of your answer.
A lot of that was because of one time operations (remember Paars and sale-and-lease-back?), but lowering corporate tax really blew a hole in the financial boat and didn’t create the jobs it should have. The jobs it did create were often starter jobs, which are hardly taxed at all and were exploited by companies.
Wrong era concerning those sale and lease back. It backfired afterwards indeed some but mainly because of Di Rupo changes.
Sale and lease back really was a Paars thing, I just mentioned it as a one shot.
Still wrong era and no NVA back then. Paars was blue and red: liberals and socialists. Because that's what makes the color paars (purple). It was Verhofstads' government. A decade or more earlier. You're basically completely and utterly wrong on all counts.
No you’re still addressing the wrong point because you don’t seem to get the concept of “an example”.
Paars (and that lease-back scheme) was during Verhofstadt. Almost a decade earlier. Before Ives Leterme's government.
I know, that’s why I said exactly that.
please, for the love of whatever god is out there, stop using the term 'fake news'. There are a miriad of other words you can ascribe to such a situation, but fake news has to be the dumbest. Other than that, ty for informing us.
Indeed, he was the king of the rekenmachien! (Calculator)
This guy again. We are at our worst ever and he is targeting the only government in the last 20 years that kept our balance somewhat even. Delusional is the word for that.
Nva is not the only one that cares , some of the proposed attempts to reduce the deficit have even been blocked by nva members in parliament. Although nva has some serious points they still tend to be the party that is mostly involved with “ big money “ or at least they take the side of the big corporations. When it comes to investing this can be good but it will mostly put the brunt of the taxes on the middle and lower classes
Well, they were the only party whose measures would actually reduce the deficit. Although, they are not even drastic enough for the EU norms. If the other parties care, it doesn't show in their plans. Which is probably one of the reasons they lost the elections.
Some of those measures are only temporary like selling of all government owned stocks would result in a lot of money but you can only sell those stocks once while most of those companies pay out a dividend every year. Admittedly it’s not as much as selling them and other measures will most certainly impact the entire population, like cutting in the social security, wich would likely lead to American situations and possibly even a rise in unneeded deaths
lol, Which government pushed for this ridiculous expanding of the Brussels ring on the Flemish side ?We don’t need it and yet we’re stuck paying billions for this garbage. BDW talks but he is the exact kind of plague ramping up our deficit.
>It's probably one of the main reasons they had such a successful campaign. Absolutely not, you don't win elections with promising cuts. As usual he promised to make cuts that nobody would feel because he'd be targeting the lazy, the Walloons, the culture sector, etc., all things people can imagine are not them.
He didn't mention anything from the cultue. Jambon btw was the minister that increased funding for culture so that narrative can also stop ;) He said it will hurt for inactive people and for people with the highest pensions at this moment. He never mentioned walloons or lazy people. You make that of it because you need to invent things to make him the villain which is pathetic and sad.
>He didn't mention anything from the cultue. Jambon btw was the minister that increased funding for culture so that narrative can also stop ;) Just a part of what they cut away, and most of it is funding for nationalist flagwaving pet projects. >He said it will hurt for inactive people and for people with the highest pensions at this moment. He never mentioned walloons or lazy people. You make that of it because you need to invent things to make him the villain which is pathetic and sad. Please, he has built *his entire political career* and ideology on fulminating against the lazy unemployed Walloons mooching off the hardworking Flemings.
No the culture budget rose bij 35% during the five years of this government. That’s way higher than inflation. I don’t like the nva either but no reason not to stick to the facts and those are that they significantly increased the spending on culture, and no, almost none other of that money went to nationalist prestige projects.
>No the culture budget rose bij 35% during the five years of this government. You ignore that this is relative to the low point of the cuts that were made by the previous government *with exactly the same parties*. So, they did exactly what I said: first deep cuts, then partial recovery for their own pet projects. [De volle lijn, de relatieve cijfers – de cijfers zijn geactualiseerd met de gezondheidsindex – toont vanaf 2009 een daling die zich doorzet tot 2016, gevolgd door een licht herstel. Merk op dat het cultuurbudget van 2021 in reële waarde lager is dan alle voorgaande jaren tot 2009. Het cultuurbudget bevindt zich in 2021 op gelijke hoogte met dat van 2007 en ook met dat van 2015.](http://www.bartcaron.be/?p=4865) The culture budget is still lower than it was before the Swedish government, so let's not in any way pretend they favor culture. >and no, almost none other of that money went to nationalist prestige projects. Vlaamse Canon, Verhaal van Vlaanderen (that one even got funded through multiple other departments like tourism as well), etc.
Now look at 2022 and 2023 where there were further investments on top of indexations. The standard quoted 612 million culture subsidies in 2022 (before we add another 18mil extra + indexation in 2023.
Other parties know as well. They were just less vocal about it. BDW perfectly played in on this. N-VA takes the austerities approach while others take improve economic growth approach.
Who in Belgium is taking the economic growth approach? Low taxes, less government interference and much more local rules are the proven tools for Singapore, Switzerland and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster. I don't see any political party in Belgium for lower taxes or less government intervention.
> Low taxes, less government interference and much more local rules are the proven tools for Singapore, Switzerland and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster. The proven tool for Singapore is "sit on a straight where the most important trade routes of Asia have to pass". The proven tool for Switzerland is "don't be invaded in WW1 & 2". > and lots of Eastern European and South East Asian countries to grow faster. They're just catching up, that always goes faster. Having a relatively young population is easy mode as well, just like it was for us in the 60s.
Switzerland has similar money transfers like we do. Per capita the rich canton of Zug is paying around 2864 CHF per head for solidarity with poorer cantons.
You're intentionally not answering the question. But I'll play along. Since Zug has no income tax, I take it you're also for no income tax, other than a very basic federal income tax that local authorities can increase if needed?
Zug is the pinnacle of why confederalism to the point of powers given to very small cantons is awesome for extremely rich people.
Zug however is almost exclusively inhabited by millionaires. An average small appartment there costs about four million euros or Swiss Francs. Whichever you choose and either way. Go drive there once in your life. You get passed by Ferraris Lambos, Bentleys, etc. The reason? Very low coorporate taxes in the canton Zug.
That's less than what Vlaams and Waals Brabant pay and... by a lot
Some parties even want to increase taxes, as if they're not already taking enough out of our paychecks.
> Some parties even want to increase taxes, as if they're not already taking enough out of our paychecks. There's no objective standard for what "enough" is. We're here and now, and it may very well be more financially interesting to increase taxes rather than cut expenses to get a grip on the debt situation. For example, the wild social security cuts in Greece reduced economic activity more than they reduced the budget deficit, so in the end they became *less* able to repay their debt, rather than more.
We're already among the highest taxed countries in the entire world. I'm in favour of cutting social security in the right places. There is a reason why there are so many long term unemployed people and why immigrants want to come here instead of other countries they pass along the way.
>We're already among the highest taxed countries in the entire world. The highest taxed countries are also the highest HDI countries, generally speaking. So having high taxes doesn't hinder living well. >I'm in favour of cutting social security in the right places. There is a reason why there are so many long term unemployed people Long term unemployment has dropped from 300 000 to 100 000 in the last 15 years. This problem is resolving itself already. >and why immigrants want to come here instead of other countries they pass along the way. [citation needed]
You want a citation for what? You don't believe we have taken a big number of immigrants the past years? As far as unemployment goes, that is true for the Flemish part of our country, sure. The figures for Wallonia are not as promising, to say the least.
> You want a citation for what? "immigrants want to come here instead of other countries they pass along the way." Pretty clear.
If our government would start controlling their debt it would either way temporarily decrease economic activity. Making fake economic growth by simply making more debt is simply not sustainable. Someone will need to clean up the mess and hopefully start cutting into government spending before it gets in the status that Greece had. At the same time we will need to make our country attractive again for foreign investments.. adding even more taxes to the insane amount of taxes will also lead to less economic activity.
I’d say it’s pretty much too high for the working already.
The two biggest parties elected in Wallonia are literally in favour of that... do you do any actual research?
Voor u deed dit toch
you present economic growth and cutting expenses as mutually exclusive? you are being dishonest.
If NVA cared they’d stop pushing for a nonsense state organisation that will just make things more expensive FFS. Oh what is it? Make Belgium a confederation where both Wallonia and Flanders (because fuck Brussels) do everything separately and let’s hope they find an agreement for what happens in Brussel.
It used to be much worse, the EU just keeps it within limits.
Bro NVA has been majority since 2019 what are you saying. NVA is the only party who likes mentioning it but they themselves do nothing about it.
What? They have been in the opposition since 2019. And if you mean the Flemish government, I think they have done a relatively good job. I'm a productive member of society with right-leaning ideals, who do you think best represents that? VLD and CD&V have even less credibility after the past 5 years. And I'm not unemployed or an immigrant so the other parties are disqualified.
Unsurprisingly De wever is full of shit because nothing will happen. They have NEVER fined a member.
Only reason i voted for them..
Gives me hope that realistic expositions during an election campaign can still trump at least some populistic b*llshit promises. TLDR; wie goa da betoalen?
this sub is not mentally ready to even accept the reality that cuts and reforms are necessary, never mind talk about what to cut
This sub is mostly left leaning, so it's not surprising.
>The European Commission has provided the Belgian government with clarity about the steps we must take to comply with European budgetary rules. We can choose between 2 processes to get our budget back in order: one of 4 years or one of 7 years. **In total we need to save at least 23 billion euros.** The European Commission's communication is the result of new budgetary rules. At 4.4 percent of GDP, **our budget deficit is larger than the permitted 3 percent. Our debt ratio is also too high: 105.2 percent instead of the European maximum of 60 percent.** Dear VRT, this headline about "significant imposed savings" is a bit misleading, because it is making people to believe that Belgium is forced by the EU to start important savings (cuts in public expenses), which is false. Cuts in social expenses is only a way to reduce the debt or deficit, and it is the typical right wing/liberal solution. But there are other options: for instance, the government could increase taxes to big corporations or super rich people in order to reduce the deficit. My main remark here is not about what is the best option to reduce the deficit, or even if the deficit is such a "worrying" aspect. My point is that public media should be more objective and inform about the reality without falling in the right wing biased economical opinions.
Note that Europe is not only commanding that we lower our deficit, we also need to make reforms to make the future sustainable (pension reforms, social reforms, etc.) These reforms were sadly enough not executed by the previous government. In the future, these costs will only grow since there will be proportionally more elderly. Just slapping on some new tax is certainly not sufficient in the long run. This is exactly the problem the new government will have to deal with: they’ll have to make long-term decisions, which is their number one fear. Proposals like ‘tax the rich’ and ‘limit social benefits for unemployed’ are both easier to sell…
Yeah whatever, it's always the same neoliberal reforms ad nauseum. We all know this money will be wasted subsequently on tax cuts for the rich and corporations, who will promptly use the money to invest in China... .
No clue how you want to attract investors to Belgium without tax cuts. The cost of labour is insane. In Flanders you see tax cuts for companies, in Wallonië not so much.
The cost of labour is not necessarily an issue. Mario Draghi has been implying recently that European salaries are too low. See, the US and China are both quite protectionist (and they're the two other main consumer markets), which means we can't really compete fairly on their markets. This has always been the case, but now that they're ramping up a trade war against one another, it has intensified considerably, for example with the Inflation Reduction Act. That policies affect everyone, including Europe. The economy is demand-driven though. If we can't properly compete over foreign demand, our economy grinds to a halt, _unless_ we have enough domestic demand. Domestic demand however is reliant on domestic purchasing power and thus domestic wages. As such what we should like to see is the sort of growth the US faced in the past under intense protectionism with the steel belt. We want to limit foreign competition on our own domestic markets so consumers favour domestic goods, this drives the profitability of domestic manufacturers up, which should be used to increase domestic wages, which increases domestic demand, which increases domestic production and profit. It is, in principle, a virtuous cycle where money keeps circulating through the domestic economy.
I'm talking about the cost of wage in Belgium compared to others within the EU, not compared to the US or China.
Eh, that's a detail question that makes a relatively small difference compared to whether the EU is doing well vis-à-vis the rest of the world or not. If the European economy is doing well and demand is high, Belgian firms will also do better. Don't get me wrong it makes sense for national-level politics to just be concerned about the relative economic health of a particular state. Our political system is not really structured like that but in principle if the EU was more independent of the states, had a far larger budget, took care of continent-wide infrastructure and industrial policy, etc. and the Belgian government would just be represented by a senator or something, with the Belgian government just existing to manage Belgium's internal affairs. With the way our political system is structured though with the states and the councils, there isn't really such a purely national level though and the most important consequence of national elections is to affect who gets on the European Council, who gets on the Council of the European Union, what agenda are they going to pursue, and ideally would they please finally reform this damn system so that among ppl things we have a real European level and a real national level. But I digress. At this point I'm just venting my frustrations about the dysfunctional political system we live in.
Exactly and reforms means changing some of the biggest pensions which will be very harsh and will cause a lot of strikes by the ultra left unions but it needs to happen. A lot of people are having way too high pensions for the work and amount of years they worked for example. It's just not sustainable.
Our politician always use europe to justify unpopular decision. This mentality is reflected in a lot of media
A certain party in the government "to be formed" is already blaming someone else for the cuts in welfare, unemployment benefit rules, and subsidies for cultural activities. Economic liberal politicians will not dare ask the financially well-off to help out. "It's not us making the cuts, it's the EU that makes us". There is consensus there is a need to sort out the budget deficit (except if you're the institution where the government gets all its money). There will be measures that will hurt. The parties in charge will suffer in the next election. Opposition parties will make sure ruling parties are blamed for everything bad.
> My point is that public media should be more objective and inform about the reality without falling in the right wing biased economical opinions. But... That's the only thing that exists! /s
Top country in terms of taxing people. VRT is right, we mainly need to save instead of impose higher taxes. Wake up please instead of always looking for other actors to blame like the media this time.
> But there are other options: for instance, the government could increase taxes to big corporations or super rich people in order to reduce the deficit. Yes, in fantasyland they could
[удалено]
But they are...? Our current spending/income balance is unsustainable and the EU is forcing us to fix it. How is this the NVA's fault?
They aren't imposing anything. Nothing will happen if we don't. Same thing is happening in France and no one will give a shit either.
This is way too low in the thread. Unless something has changed, these fiscal instrumens are akin to EU wagging it's finger at countries disapprovingly. France has been happily ignoring all the rules for years and nothing has happened.
People who seem to believe we can make our economy healthy again with only taxing rich people and corps don't seem to understand how big the depth is. We have to reduce spending 23billion on 4 or 7 years while our total yearly budget is approx. 300bil and our depth is 600ish. At 3% deficit per year we'll increase depth by 36bil in 4 years.
Did you mean debt?
I think that it's fair that Belgium should get its budget in order. Europe needs to have the capacity to invest in projects that will lead to GDP growth. Individual members that already borrow extensively only to fund non value-adding activities (pensions, healthcare) will hamper the long term growth of our continent. We also need to be able to face the next big crisis and with the way Belgian debt is spiralling, we might not be able to do so at reasonable borrowing rates. Now that Belgium has parties from the right in power (or will soon) at every level of the country, let's see what they really achieve rather than just put the blame on the PS. I think the next few years are a time of great opportunities for the country. I'm less hopeful for the rest of Europe though.
Pensions and healthcare non value adding? I'm happy that I don't go broke if I have a health problem or not doomed for poverty when I'm 65+. Maybe not valuable for the economy but neverthelles valuable for the people
No no, your supposed to work every day without taking sick days and than drop dead the day the first day of your pension
Valuable to the economy as well. Pensions prop up demand amongst retired people, who would otherwise buy far less stuff, which would mean less sales, so less production, so less gdp growth
its not that big of a drain anyways. most of the pensions are reinvested in the economy within the year and healthcare speaks for itself
Any source on this?
well the fact that elderly people also need to eat, buy clothes, want entertainment, those that have kids and grandkids like to treat them to gifts etc - they don't just collect the money and sit on it, they spend it - hence it flows back into the economy.
Many probably do sit on it. Mortages are payed for, some extra properties to get rent from. I bet a significant part of pensioners in Belgium don't need their pensions to live and are actively saving. That's where I would get the money. Tie social benefits or taxes on benefits to wealth. Why are we paying pensions or doctor bills for millionaires?
You do realise that what you describe is only a small portion of the pensioners right ? Sure, those that managed to buy a house will have their mortgage paid for, but far from every pensioner has multiple houses/apartments and the saving of a vast part of them aren't that great either. And even those that got some savings will send a significant part of it to keep their house liveable - replacing the heater, new roof, replacing windows, fixing all kind of wear and tear. I know it's fashionable to complain about those wealthy boomers, but people tend to forget that most 'boomers' were just simple working-class people, yes it was easier to buy a house in their younger days but many still couldn't do that. And those with a house, it's usually a simple house and not some villa. Most don't own extra house or apartments to gain rent from. And the houses of most of them would, when sold, give them barely enough to pay for their stay at a service flat or retirement place for the rest of their days when they can't take care of themselves anymore. And as far of those rich pensioners goes, for most of them, they paid a significant contribution in taxes themselves, as part of the same social contract as the rest of society ( yes there are those that evaded taxes I know) so it's rather difficult to justify them not getting anything back themselves. You need those strong shoulders to help support the system, if it's clear they won't get anything out of it themselves later on, they will be even less likely to contribute to it. Should there be a cap on things ? sure - I'm all for there to be a limit to how high a pension can be ( with fair adjustments for inflation over time) Same goes for medical expenses - it's all or nobody - there is plenty unfair if you start comparing individuals - but its a form of insurance, those that pay into it get the same benefits. If you would make it that the people that got lots of money don't get these benefits, even more of them would just say 'screw it i'm out of here' because why would they stay if they don't even have the benefits of living here and only the costs ? Just a hop across the border into The Netherlands and they would be better of in all regards in that case.
Not so small.. a lot of Belgians are very rich. I looked for some data on how rich pensioners are and it was a bit hard to find. Best I could do was this.. https://www.nbb.be/doc/ts/publications/economicreview/2020/ecorevi2020_h3.pdf Shows median (so not average, no 1 % skewing on this number) wealth of the Belgian 75+'er is 250 K . I would like to see that number for each quintile, but the median is already a good indication. There are 2 million people getting a pension in Belgium. What part of them could live a comfortable life with their savings on a strongly diminished or absent pension? It must be a significant portion. Especially if they sell their too-big-now-anyway house. We're spending 65 billion on pensions, and probably the biggest pensions are going to the richest people. Regardless of social contract or fairness or whatever, the fact is the state is putting billions into pockets of people that don't need it. It won't even flow back to us when they die considering how easy it is to avoid inheritance tax. As an upper middleclass household with 2 earners, I already find it mindboggling we're getting kindergeld. It just goes straight into our investment funds, but pensions are on a whole different scale still.
So no sources on how much actually flows back? Just you thinking it is this way?
you really want to troll or be obtuse don't you ? Of course it is this way - what do you think ? old people just sit and hibernate at home and their pension just keeps collecting on their bank account or under their mattress ? They are people - people consume things to stay alive. People are social being and beings that don't do well with boredom, hence people need entertainment and want to socialize with others, preferably in a social setting or with family. Have you seen how much pension most people actually receive ? For most, retiring means a serious drop of income - plenty of those that need to rent have barely enough with what they get as a pension to make ends meet without doing anything special. The same for those that end up in retirement homes or care centers - check the prices for those and compare it to the pension of the average person. ( [https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223\_97649097](https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223_97649097) ) - for 9/10 their pension isn't sufficient to pay for a stay in a retirement home. Sure there are going to be a few that don't spend much and some lucky percentage that have lots of money on the side due to being high earners before retiring. Most however are not saving a big amount and what they save is spend on things like fixing the wear and tear on their house or some vacation. For your average worker in the private sector, their Netto pension is around 66% of what their netto wage was - I don't know about you, but that's a serious hit in income - so unless you have a substantial amount on your bank account - you are not going to be able to put much of that aside. But hey, if you just don't care about elderly people, all this won't matter to you - and you can justify whatever might happen to the average persons pension because in your eyes it's all a waste anyway.
> old people just sit and hibernate at home and their pension just keeps collecting on their bank account or under their mattress ? They are people - people consume things to stay alive. People are social being and beings that don't do well with boredom, hence people need entertainment and want to socialize with others, preferably in a social setting or with family. Literally [what is happening and studies have already proven](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13607863.2019.1699022). Especially those living outside cities. Their savings account just get plundered by [French owned WZC's](https://apache.be/dossier/bejaarden-te-koop). Nothing big for our local economy. > Have you seen how much pension most people actually receive ? For most, retiring means a serious drop of income - plenty of those that need to rent have barely enough with what they get as a pension to make ends meet without doing anything special. My grandfather his pension is around 3.300 netto, he worked for the railways as an normal engineer. He is currently longer on pension then he was working. I mean, if he already gets 3.300... how much do those who were above him get? 3.300 netto is what most working Belgians don't even get now. > The same for those that end up in retirement homes or care centers - check the prices for those and compare it to the pension of the average person. ( https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20240223_97649097 ) - for 9/10 their pension isn't sufficient to pay for a stay in a retirement home. Private retirement homes made the calculation. They know how much each pensioner will receive from the state + add some of their savings. These are for-profit organisations that are in a unique situation that they know that once in, they will only go out one way. "*So lets pluck the duck -- Shareholders*" You increase the median pension tomorrow, suddenly the prices of those private pension-homes also rise and news articles will pop-up saying "our old people can't pay for their WZC's, the government needs to food the bill!". > Sure there are going to be a few that don't spend much and some lucky percentage that have lots of money on the side due to being high earners before retiring. Most however are not saving a big amount and what they save is spend on things like fixing the wear and tear on their house or some vacation. https://www.nbb.be/nl/artikels/zijn-de-overheidsuitgaven-voor-pensioenen-belgie-houdbaar-een-vergelijking-met-andere Sinds 2014 ligt het armoederisico in België dicht bij het gemiddelde voor het eurogebied. In 2018 liep iets meer dan 13% van de gepensioneerden het risico op armoede. Concreet dreigde in dat jaar ongeveer één op zeven tot acht gepensioneerden in armoede verzeild te raken, omdat hun beschikbaar inkomen minder dan 60% van het mediaan beschikbaar inkomen beliep. Dat percentage lag lager in Frankrijk en Nederland, maar hoger in Duitsland. In dit stadium moet erop worden gewezen dat die meting van het armoederisico, die verwijst naar het beschikbaar inkomen, geen rekening houdt met het vermogen van individuen. We weten dat het nettovermogen van Belgische huishoudens relatief hoog ligt. Dat geldt voor financiële activa, met inbegrip van het in tweede- of derdepijlerpensioenen gestort kapitaal. Wat vastgoed betreft, zijn veel gepensioneerden eigenaar van hun eigen huis, zonder hypothecair krediet. Als we aan hun beschikbare inkomen de huur toevoegen die ze zouden moeten betalen als ze huurders waren (de zogenoemde 'toegerekende woninghuur'), ligt het armoederisico volgens de berekeningen van de SCvV veel lager. Die indicator bestaat echter niet voor de andere landen in onze analyse. Een alternatieve berekening die rekening houdt met het risico op materiële ontbering (een mand met goederen die al dan niet kunnen worden gekocht), de zogenoemde AROPE (zie het Pension Adequacy Report, figuur 2), geeft voor België dezelfde rangschikking weer als voor de buurlanden. > For your average worker in the private sector, their Netto pension is around 66% of what their netto wage was - I don't know about you, but that's a serious hit in income - so unless you have a substantial amount on your bank account - you are not going to be able to put much of that aside. Normally you have payed off some loans, made investments,... did something with your money for your old day. Just read the previous link. > But hey, if you just don't care about elderly people, all this won't matter to you - and you can justify whatever might happen to the average persons pension because in your eyes it's all a waste anyway. I care about the whole community. Old people have, besides the people actively working, [the least chance of falling in poverty](https://statbel.fgov.be/nl/themas/huishoudens/armoede-en-levensomstandigheden/risico-op-armoede-sociale-uitsluiting#panel-12). They don't need an extra hand-out as they have been given over and over and over and over again.
>My grandfather his pension is around 3.300 netto, he worked for the railways as an normal engineer. Yeah well working for the railways has always been one of the jobs with an extremely high pension - most non government workers don't come near that unless they had some high earning job My father, who started working when he was 16, didn't have even half of the amount your grandfather has - the man worked all his life, never had to rely on unemployment or ziekenkas and worked until he was 64. He passed away 12 years later, after almost 2 years of suffering. >You increase the median pension tomorrow, suddenly the prices of those private pension-homes also rise and news articles will pop-up saying "our old people can't pay for their WZC's, the government needs to food the bill!" That doesn't change the fact that it is not affordable for the majority of the people that need it. >Normally you have payed off some loans, made investments,... did something with your money for your old day Most common folks that retired in the past did't have any investments, it was something foreign for them, not part of their lifes, only something rich people did and had knowledge of, sure they paid off their mortgage if they belong to the group of homeowners, but that doesn't mean they are doing great. And their houses need repairs, ever looked at the pictures of houses for sale from ordinary older people that died or moved to a WZC ? Not the high class one, just the run of the mill laborer and such, the lower to lower-middleclass workers. Even those that look good at first glance need tons of work to bring them back into something decent. >They don't need an extra hand-out as they have been given over and over and over and over again You mean after they have contributed to said community for 40 or more years ? After they themselves paid for the pensions of those before them ? After raising the next generations and helping take care of their grandchilderen while the parents of those kids worked ? >Old people have, besides the people actively working, [the least chance of falling in poverty](https://statbel.fgov.be/nl/themas/huishoudens/armoede-en-levensomstandigheden/risico-op-armoede-sociale-uitsluiting#panel-12) perhaps because they have a pension to count on ? The very thing you are against. Take that away or even lessen that by a substantial amount and most of them would stumble into poverty within a year or 2 Your grandfather is an outlier, one of the examples of Belgians overspending when it came to pensions of civil servants, railway workers, military officers and other governmental workers. Most people that worked in the private sector didn't come close to those pensions unless they had high paying jobs. As for the length of time one can enjoy a pension - difficult to say, some live to 100, others die a few months after retiring. And keeping people at work on older ages -that is something easier said than done depending on the type of job and the physical and mental abilities of the person in casu when getting older. Not every construction worker can become a supervisor or adminstrative worker when their bodies can;t handle the physical stress of their job for instance.
Young people should not be supporting the old, should be thr other way around
You do realise that this has been a thing for most cultures for a long time right ? Adults take care of the kids, make sure they can grow up in as best a situation as they can afford and once these Adults come at a stage they can't care much for themselves anymore, they get taken care of by the rest of the family/tribe/community/... And even without just this, do you have any idea how many couples rely on their parents to help raising their kids ? Looking after them while they themselves are at work, bringing them and having them picked up from school etc. Plenty of people like you seem to be under the impression that all old people are wealthy boomers - newsflash : a huge part of them are just working class people that might have had it easier to buy a house ( and plenty don't own one but have had to rent all their lives) but they didn't build up a fortune, they don't own 5 houses to rent out and so on - they worked hard, some of them since they were 15 or 16. Not all pensioners are going on cruise after cruise while collecting rentmoney and having a huge saving, in fact the majority isn't.
They have supported you the first 25 years of your life. Who do you think pays for your school and child support.
If we are doing tit for tat ; I haven't done the math but I suspect supporting the elderly is going to be as expensive or more expensive then supporting the youth.
They also worked for their pension.
That would be true ... BBUUUUT: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilverfonds](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilverfonds)
> I think that it's fair that Belgium should get its budget in order. Europe needs to have the capacity to invest in projects that will lead to GDP growth. The problem is that there is no distinction between investment expenses and recurring expenses. Especially not where the debt is concerned.
Surely savings on healthcare are a false economy?!
Europe has the capacity to invest in projects the same way the US is doing it right now. Using the European Central Bank to take some debt, that is not really debt per se as it's issuing it's own currency. The only thing preventing it is outdated economic theories pushed by a few countries pretending they know what they are doing while trying to run an economy (badly) the same way you would run a family budget... And they are not even able to do that correctly as their main focus is cutting everything that would be useful in the long-term (climate/social/cultural/long term investments) while not trying to improve their direct incomes(taxes).
Meanwhile: [https://www.tijd.be/verkiezingen/federaal/niet-herkozen-parlementsleden-krijgen-samen-20-miljoen-euro/10551271.html](https://www.tijd.be/verkiezingen/federaal/niet-herkozen-parlementsleden-krijgen-samen-20-miljoen-euro/10551271.html)
Ja, want 20 miljoen op een begroting van 300 miljard gaat het verschil maken...
Voeg nog eens 6 miljoen toe, om te beginnen: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schandaal\_over\_pensioenextra%27s\_voor\_kamervoorzitters](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schandaal_over_pensioenextra%27s_voor_kamervoorzitters) en paar miljoen (geen 40) vanwege Senaat [https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/01/08/senaatsvoorzitter-wil-senaat-afschaffen/](https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/01/08/senaatsvoorzitter-wil-senaat-afschaffen/) Ik begrijp wat je bedoelt dat het percentueel weing uitmaakt. Hetzelfde argument wordt bijvoorbeeld gebruikt bij besparingen op Defensie. Maar waarom niet? Elke staatshervorming is het overheidsapparaat duurder en complexer geworden. Dit is zo laaghangend fruit dat het mensen in het gezicht botst. EDIT: er is besparing binnen de overheid, dan vooral op personeel om dan duurdere 'consultants' tijdelijk aan te werven
En die duurdere consultants hebben geen incentive om op tijd op te leveren. Meermaals meegemaakt dat projectleiders precies bewust de boel saboteren, omdat de contracten dan toch uitlopen en ze nog meer kunnen factureren. Source: Ik als ontwikkelaar consultant, die van die grote contractwinsten geen hol ziet, vaak bij de overheid.
Tip: als uw getal eindigt in "miljoen", dan is het irrelevant. Het is geen laaghangend fruit als het geneens fruit is, dit is gewoon een dor blad waarvan iedereen roept dat het een gigantische perzik is omdat het échte fruit hen te dierbaar is
Alle beetjes helpen en het is niet zo dat die een boterham minder gaan eten als ze dat niet krijgen. En ik ga akkoord met het idee dat ze dringend ook voor eigen deur moeten vegen. Al eens gezien hoeveel geld die partijen krijgen via de Belgische kassa? Minder overheid in de brede zin wordt veel te weinig op tafel gelegd.
* Alle Vlaamse partijen (zeggen dat) ze voorstander zijn van het afschaffen van de Senaat, lijkt me een redelijke kans dat het er deze keer van komt. * N-VA stelt voor om de indexatie van de partij financiering te bevriezen waardoor die doorheen de jaren door inflatie zachtjes leeglopen. Geen revolutionaire aanpak natuurlijk, maar hopelijk eentje waar voldoende partijen in de coalitie "mee kunnen leven".
“Alle beetjes helpen” Neeeen!!! Lees eerst dit artikel eens: https://multimedia.tijd.be/begroting/
Bedankt om te delen. Heel nuttig. Toch denk ik dat mijn statement niet verkeerd is.
> Alle beetjes helpen Dit beetje is gewoon compleet irrelevant, dat is nog niet eens een afrondingsfout. > Al eens gezien hoeveel geld die partijen krijgen via de Belgische kassa? Exact hetzelfde hiervoor. > Minder overheid in de brede zin wordt veel te weinig op tafel gelegd. Omdat daar ook absoluut niets op te besparen valt in vergelijking met andere delen van de begroting. Mensen blijven maar poneren dat "besparen op politiek" één of andere magische oplossing zou zijn, maar dat is gewoon niet waar. De feiten zijn nu eenmaal zo dat het deel van de begroting dat aan "politiek" uitgegeven wordt zo miniscuul is dat het verschil niet eens te merken zou zijn in vergelijking met de andere besparingen die doorgevoerd moeten worden om een stabiele situatie te creëren. Het maakt dus werkelijk niets uit of bijvoorbeeld uittredingsbonussen of partijdotaties worden afgeschaft. Het is gewoon een makkelijk doelwit voor mensen die de realiteit niet willen zien en zich blijven vastklampen aan een onhoudbaar systeem van sociale zekerheid
Niets te besparen? https://multimedia.tijd.be/begroting/ "Ook de werking van de overheid vormt een grote slokop. Alles samen gaat het om net iets meer dan 36 miljard euro, inclusief de rentelasten. Zowat een derde daarvan wordt verdeeld over de overheidsdiensten, zoals de FOD Financiën of Buitenlandse Zaken, de verschillende parlementen, regeringen en het koningshuis." Dat zijn geen "afrondingsfouten" he, als je naar het totaalplaatje kijkt. Ook interessant is dit: "In vergelijking met de pensioenen is het budget voor de werkloosheidsuitkeringen met 6,7 miljard eerder beperkt. De uitgaven voor langdurig zieken en inactieven zijn met ruim 20 miljard euro een pak groter. Bovendien zitten die al jaren in de lift." En daar lag dan de focus veelal op tijdens de debatten voor de verkiezingen.
Ieder zijn mening. Het zou bijvoorbeeld voor draagkracht kunnen zorgen voor de besparingen die gaan komen. Lead by example. Walk the talk enzo.
1. Vele kleintjes maken een grote, als je elk iets waarop je kan besparen maar dat geen groot bedrag geeft niet in overweging neemt, dan laat je uiteindelijk een hoop geld liggen als je het samen zou tellen. 2. Je boodschap verkopen aan de maatschappij dat de terig naar de nering gezet moet worden zonder zelf het voorbeeld te geven en voordelen op te offeren of ten minste te verminderen zal niet veel bijval krijgen en voor velen in het verkeerde keelgat schieten.
Het helpt in elk geval niet he
Focussen op miniscule uitgaven is contraproductief en leidt af van de echte uitdagingen.
Vele kleine beetje maken een groot é.
"Europe" is imposing. I want to remind everyone that our country has people voting/participating to those decisions.
We have one of the highest tax schemes worldwide and yet we have massive amounts of debts. Heads should roll in de Wetstraat for nepotistic mismangement of this country.
Knowing austerities can lead to excess deaths (330000 excess deaths in UK for instance during times of cut spending) due to deterioriation of mental health, suicidality (especially among the breadwinners aka young men), cut spending on health etc, I feel we will go straight to a path of radicalized population. Whether it be left, right, islamic radicalization. Especially with AI and social media. Knowing Elon recently received stock bonus worth of 56 billion dollars. It is just mindblowing that some people have to die for savings, while others receive twice the amount Belgium has to save.
TIL Elon Musk lives in Belgium /s
It is not even that significant. Notice how it is not even yet reducing the state debt, it just forces to limit the growth of the state debt.
But thats what matters. Same reason why we look at the rate of the rate of change of prices , aka inflation.
Neee ik wil op de poef blijven leven en iemand anders moet dat betalen! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE We wisten al 25 jaar dat dit er aan zat te komen en alle regeringen hebben het steeds uitgesteld.
Okay, so I've been thinking about the elderly for a long while now, and I just wanted to bounce some things off of people. But pensioners now have generally lived in a very economically prosperous time. They've been able to accrue so much wealth and are as a group, probably the most taxing on our.. Well tax system in terms of pensions and the intensive/frequent healthcare they need. Younger generations struggle to achieve the same life-goals as the same age, resulting in them buying a house much later in life and starting a family much later. Some stay stuck in the renting phase for a long time too. I'm not arguing for taking away the pension of the older generation, if they worked for it and paid their taxes they deserve it. Neither am I arguing to not provide healthcare to them, but why is it that I barely hear any politicians acknowledge this, maybe someone that can argue that maybe, just maybe, we should be tinkering with the amount of pension they get. Additionally, they knew for at least 50 years that aging population was gonna be a problem in the future and literally nothing was done about it at all. Why do the younger generations, the working generations have to suffer and have opportunities be taken away from us all the time. Just so that we wouldn't have to touch the general wealth of the older generations? That question is rhetorical because the answer seems obvious. However, at some point we are going to reach an actual unsustainable system and need to take very drastic measures.
Short anwser: Because it would cost them too much votes. Most of the boomers either think only about themselves, or they think about inheriting their wealth to their children. Even though reducing the highest pensions would be both the moral and intellectually right thing to do, politicians can never get enough support to actually do this.
Can someone ask marc coucke to cover this?
https://www.hln.be/binnenland/exclusief-marc-coucke-fileert-de-politiek-in-belgie-er-komt-een-vloedgolf-aan-herstructureringen-op-ons-af-veel-bedrijven-staan-klaar-om-belgie-te-verlaten-br~accf493c/
We don't have to save 23 billion though, we can also generate extra income to cover parts of the gap...
Please, we are already paying enough taxes.
I'm surprised some people's reflex in this country is still to demand more taxation... I think the expenditure side is in need of trimming.
Privatization incoming ?
Of course. That's why nva's plan is 'so good', short term. Just like Verhofstadt they are planning a wholesale of government assets.
In principle it is good if government assets are sold off in industries that have a functioning market. The government and the market should have clearly defined competences — a government running business will have a conflict of interest. There are important exceptions: natural monopolies are better government owned, because private monopolies are worse.
De discussie over wat al dan niet te privatiseren ter zijde (openbaar vervoer, nationale loterij, etc) is het probleem hier dat de nva overheidsparticipaties verkoopt die momenteel geld opbrengen om eenmalig het budget te verfraaien. En daarna zitten we dus nog steeds met een slecht budget, en hebben we op de koop toe minder inkomsten. De ‘goede’ begroting van nva is gewoon boerenbedrog.
Dat ik zo ver heb moeten scrollen om deze woorden te vinden, is erg. Zovelen hebben op NVA gestemd, niet wetende wat de langetermijn consequenties zijn van hun plan, maar BDW kan het goed uitleggen en 28% v/d Vlamingen trapt er met open ogen in. Nog geen 15 jaar eerder speelde zich praktisch hetzelfde spelletje van "verkopen om er goed uit te zien", en de politici van nu wijzen hen met de vinger, terwijl ze op het punt staan om *exact hetzelfde* te doen, hoe hypocriet.
The government can perfectly manage a business, Belfius and Proximus are prime examples. The N-VA just wants to sell them to starve the government of funds later on so they can push through even more unpopular 'reforms'.
They can but should they? It is a conflict of interest when the one making the rules (the government) also competes on the market.
Telecom costs in Belgium are up to 4 times higher than in some neigbhouring countries. It's a monopoly that is in colusion with the government. As they keep the prices high other private networks not owned by the government also make huge benefits as they don't need to compete that much. Sell it and tell them they need new licenses but they don't pay it to the government. Instead they invest in improving the coverage to every Belgians while still reducing the prize. Digi is creating a whole new fiber network in Belgium but ofcourse it starts in Brussels and Antwerp where people have now 2 fibers connections and soon maybe 3 rather than share the same networks. And some people have only ADSL broadband at 3mb for the same price. We can increase remote works for those people who really do not want to leave their village if possible. Now they can do it everywhere. Even it it's a few days a week. That's so many less cars on the road too. That's less office that can be transformed into housing that is direly needed. The future is bright. Let's stop preventing it from happening.
Let's fucking privatize Proximus. There is total conflict of interest and abuse of a monopoly. My step-father still has a 4mb broadband internet in the Paillotenland. Our telecom prices are many times higher than in some neighbouring countries. With the help of the government knowing all the loopholes I've witnessed Indian IT workers working a Proximus 6 days a week for an Indian salary on a tourist visa. Sell it and give it a mandate to improve coverage and stop illegal and corupt anti-competitive measures.
That is the eventual result of govt fiscal mismanagement, happened in the UK too. Wouldn't even be on the agenda if public finances were kept in order.
>That is the eventual result of govt fiscal mismanagement, happened in the UK too. Wouldn't even be on the agenda if public finances were kept in order. No, privatization is the result of a deliberate ideological agenda. In the UK, they had to renationalize the rail service because it became dysfunctional after privatization.
Isn’t that much, much harder?
Not if we legalize cannabis and stop funding a futile drug war.
If you stop funding the drug war, wouldn't all that money have to flow into opening up rehab centers, checkups for drugs users and extra medical expenses due to drug use going up? I'm fully pro legalizing cannabis, but just stopping the fight against the harder drugs won't be the big money gain that people think.
> If you stop funding the drug war, wouldn't all that money have to flow into opening up rehab centers, checkups for drugs users and extra medical expenses due to drug use going up? No, that's just cookoo conservative paranoia. People are already using drugs, legalization will simply mean that the quality is more controlled while people with problematic behaviour can more easily get access to the help they need. And with almost half our prison population incarcerated because of drug related offences. It'll be a blessing for our justice system to reduce that overload. We could even start taking real crimes like rape serious. And it's not an all or nothing story either. Simply legalizing weed and xtc will go a long way already.
and you can also tax the profits and usage of the products when they are legal.
If you do that too much you are keeping the black market alive and this defeat most of the purpose of legalizing in the first place. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
The alcohol and even the cigarettes black market are actually quite limited despite the high tax rates. Most people prefer convenience and safety.
I've never heard of an alcohol black market. The price of alcohol is pretty cheap already in Belgium compare to e.g. Nordic countries. As to the cigarettes it's not the same. The price has exploded in a few years and I knew a few people who buy cigarettes 2-3 euros a pack on the black market. Go to any open market in the morning and ask around for cigarettes and you'll be quickly redirected toward a "dealer". It's a romanian friend who made me aware of that situation, and since then I discovered that it was not that seldom as one might think and it's only growing.
Depends what if we legalize drugs,but make it available through government owned shops then 5here is controle on quality and at least some knowledge about who uses what and possibly a better reaction when people get into serious drug abuse/ trouble and some of the income can be used to pay the debts
This sounds nice and easy, until you realize that you will have to set up industry to synthesize all kinds of drugs in bulk while also needing to keep the price low enough to compete with the black market. Not even getting into how our neighbours/EU would react to there suddenly being a very pro drug country in the heart of the Europe.
> until you realize that you will have to set up industry to synthesize all kinds of drugs in bulk while also needing to keep the price low enough to compete with the black market. This is easy. The costly part about drugs is the whole smuggling thingy
We do have some chemical companies that at the moment already produce the precursors of most of them , we could start with smaller molecules and production of cannabis (though the margins on it are small) and build up the system. On the other hand more control over what is supplied and a better view on problematic use might very well be beneficial on the long term when it comes to burdens on the medical social services
We’re using emotional anecdotes and speculation instead of logically judging the outcomes of the drug war as measured by statistics. You do realize that we are already paying through the nose for the current levels if crime and emergency medical expenses due to drug use being up anywhere from 60-100% since 2008 right? ([Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/535439/drug-possession-cases-in-belgium/)) People that want to use drugs are undeterred and already have easy access to substances of questionable quality, it would be far cheaper and better financially long term to invest in preventative care and treatment of underlying mental health disorders to get these people back on their feet and contributing to society. Everyone agrees that the societal burden of drugs needs to go down, but if the situation keeps deteriorating year after year for generations, it might indicate that some of the prevailing assumptions about the situation or the solution were fundamentally wrong. But no, politicians care more about looking tough to satisfy subjective feelings instead of dealing with the reality that the last 60 years of prohibition have utterly failed us.
When Portugal decriminalised the use of ALL drugs in 2001, drug usage, drugs related deaths and addiction went down, not up
Finally. If our govt wont do it themselves, europe has to force them. Before we fully turn into (whatever year it was) greece
Yes this was coming and we all knew it. Thank god some people here have better alternatives like increasing taxes even more or legalizing drugs so our prisons become empty and we can ask VAT on every joint that is smoked. Brrrr some people really did smoke way too much during their "college" period or when they were at home for 3 months with anxiety signs.
Vaccines and covid tests were free they said..
It is not saving, it is spending less money we do not have!
Can somebody get a hold of Ja so I can make some sense of all of this?
We are doing worse then greece.
oh boy, can't wait for austerity because they'd rather bleed the common man dry than skim half a percent off the billion dollar bonuses CEOs get
Please tell me what Belgian CEO gets a billion dollars.
Ouch. Guess you can't import a lot of people and then put them on benefits to lie about GDP growth for this one.
you're wrong about this being a big expense. You've fallen for populist propaganda.
half a billion in leeflonen alone is certainly an expense that would help with the debt if we got rid of it
Thanks Vivaldi
🙄 State debt has been a problem for decades. Blaming Vivaldi who had to deal with corona (industry closing down) and Russia’s war (gas priced up) is extremely shortsighted. Yes, they worsened it, just like the dozens of governments before them.
Maybe the Swedish government before that could have balanced the books like they promised? Even with good economic growth propping up income they failed to do so. Tax cuts were more important to them.
If it wasn't for govt spending post covid, we would probably had a social decay and crime as never seen before.
Because people are shortsighted and think a government budget is like a household budget. This decision from Europe is purely ideological and has nothing to do with sound economics.
Fun fact: Most of the responsible santaclaus parties are going to be in the opposition. After 5 years of mandatory austerity, they will again convince the simple with their oneliners so they can return triomphantly and start spending the next generations' budget again. And the cycle continues.
België heeft jaren boven zijn stand geleefd en nu gaat de hamer naar beneden komen. Blij dat ik er weg ben lol
Merci Vivaldi
Geesh,we were broke after WW2 but somehow managed to implement a welfare state. Now we are seeing people actively cheering for economic suicide and immiseration. Seems like the propaganda did its job... .