this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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But as @somguy69 said, money laundering is not committed by the middle and lower classes. Using anti-terror tools against someone who neglects to declare some small income. It’s absurdly disproportionate and takes our option to be free from banks away. It’s a terrible trade-off.
3k EUR is not small income.
I'm not even sure what we're trading it for. Illusion of privacy from your own state?
Considering $us 1 has about the same spending power as €1, €3k covers room and board in Utrecht (the cheapest indexed city in NL) for about ~11 days:
https://aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem_action.asp?MenuHide=1&CountryCode=1101
And min wage is set at €2150 (take-home pay, so likely ~€3k gross). So yes, ⅓ of a month.
It’s a show stopper for me. I will not work for that amount because it’s a small fraction of my market value. That nixes Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. I’m fine with tax declarations so the real limit for me working in the EU is the €10k limit. But that’s still a pay cut. And it limits me to Germany and perhaps a few other countries. So working full-time in Europe has essentially become a non-starter for me.
Reread the thread. Privacy from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cloudflare, Paypal/Zittle, JP Morgan Chase, Visa, Mastercard, the telecoms, countless payment processors, as well as unwarranted gov. snooping.
And that just touches on the confidentiality aspect of privacy. Yet privacy is actually more about control.
Can you rent a flat anonymously? Doesn't that have to be reported for tax anyway? All of examples I'm seeing here are flat out tax fraud heaven.
I would hope so, as far as the EU goes. If the EU were to force leases to be registered and to name all occupants, it would be absurdly over interventionalist and it would be a blatant privacy abuse. Belgium requires leases to be registered but then the registration process makes email address a required field. So if someone does not have an email address registration is not possible (despite registration being a legal obligation -- would be interesting to see what happens in court when someone is prosecuted for not registering due to not having an email address). Apart from that, there is no rule that all occupants must be listed on the lease. And cash rent payments are legal.
It would also be surprisingly extreme if hotels were forced to collect identities of their guests. They likely do it anyway to know who to go after for damages, but a gov mandate would be excessively interventionalist.
Ok, this is pointless, you're advocating for tax fraud outright.
I’m not sure how you get such a perversely twisted idea from my thesis. Nothing in that comment you replied to advocates tax fraud. People should have the freedom to boycott banks. They should have the right to boycott Google and Microsoft. Participation in the private sector marketplace should be optional. Privacy rights enshrined in human rights law are an important component to my thesis. Your contempt for human rights is shameful. To be clear--
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 17:
(emphasis mine)
Wow, you found a universal tax fraud loophole that nobody did before - taxation is illegal invasion of privacy lol. You should consider career in accounting.
It’s bizarre how you think anonymous leases and hotel stays imply tax fraud. It’s that non-sequitur malfunction of logic that has led to the privacy abuses we face.
I have not seen once in my life a hotel that does anonymous leases. Because you could fuck up their shit and run. Where do you come up with those examples?
How can I meaningfully answer such a vague question? What example are you referring to? There are no “examples” of anything in the post you replied to.
I don't know what those numbers are supposed to be used for, but they are certainly not to be used for estimating cost of living.
Per diem is an estimate of room and board, so indeed it’s a city-specific measure of cost of living. The minimum wage figures are a nationwide amount that doesn’t deviate too far from cost of living (targets a “living wage”), but it obviously has the bluntness of being fixed nationwide. But as you can see from the per diem variations, there are vast differences from one city to the next. The min wage is likely above living wages in Utrecht, but below living wages in Amsterdam.
My point is that my salary is below the per diem of where I live yet I'm anything but poor. I would estimate the value to be half what's announced on that page.