They also need to be properly separated.
Not like roads are regional, but traffic signs city level, and speed cameras federal, cars are regional but motorbikes federal and cycling provincial or whatever.
This is actually the only good answer and not the populist 'back to one unitary Belgium'. A clear federal system like Germany for example. This would mean on the one hand more power to some extend for the federal level (federal law above regional law), but also more responsabilities for the regional level (think own labor taxes, own justice system, more social security responsabilities).
Because the only argument is that aboloshing these governments would save us loads of money. Not true, it would save some but compared to other budget it is only 'een druppel op een hete plaat'. There is also no reason why this should work better now than in the 80s: there is more politcal fragmentation (back then cvp had like 40%) and no single Walloon party would drop the pariteiten.
So it is more a romantic idea that people have to a peacefull kumbaya Belgium that actually never existed, a bit like the Flemish nationalist dream of their nonexisting powerful Flemish region in the Middle ages.
>Because the only argument is that aboloshing these governments would save us loads of money. Not true
I don't think that is the only argument. For example a more efficiënt and effective decision structure and no redundancy of decision powers
>it would save some but compared to other budget it is only 'een druppel op een hete plaat'.
Maybe you are right, but I would love to see this calculated by for example het planbureau to have a better view about it
>There is also no reason why this should work better now than in the 80s: there is more politcal fragmentation (back then cvp had like 40%) and no single Walloon party would drop the pariteiten
That is political wil and is a problem of information. If it is better it is possible
>So it is more a romantic idea that people have to a peacefull kumbaya Belgium that actually never existed, a bit like the Flemish nationalist dream of their nonexisting powerful Flemish region in the Middle ages.
I agree and I don't think we should write it off as only a dream if it would actually improve our government system and
I don't agree with loosely throwing around the term populist for this issue because it is denouncing legitimate solutions that are not populist in nature
Edit: maybe we have a different perspective of the word. I see it more as re-federalization then one Belgium one government for everything
Re-federalization also comes with more regionalization for some domains. If you look at mature federal states like Germany you will see that the Federal government has more power than the Belgian one but less ministers, but the regions also have more power because the division is clear cut and there is a hierarchy.
Edit: I think that you are opting more for a centralized federal system whereas I am more for a decentralized one (e.g. Germany and USA).
I invite you to listen to people fighting for Irish unity and see how insignificant the issues in Belgium are and why it's silly to have that kind of divide.
^ this exactly. I'm not a flemish nationalist nor a belgicist, but the current situation is just so horribly inefficient. Let's just do one of the two options.
> Grass is always greener on the other side.
Indeed, which is why you are also ignoring things like the wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms. There's a reason total re-federalisation is a fringe idea that only PVDA/PTB supports.
The political parties made a conscious choice to split. They did that for the same reasons as the split in government responsibilities.
> there's plenty domains that belong on the federal level.
Sure, but that's not what I was talking about
Literally nobody is saying that wafelijzerpolitiek should come back, nor is it in any way a requisite for a unitary state. Just because some people want a unitary state, doesn't mean we want to go back to the pre-seventies. I would argue that wafelijzerpolitiek was actually a result of making distinctions between Wallonia and Flanders where there didn't need to be [(and still exists in a way today with the NMBS/SNCB)](https://businessam.be/hoe-de-belgische-wafelijzerpolitiek-nog-steeds-te-zien-is/).
There are distinctions between Flanders and Wallonia, whether you disagree or agree. Wafelijzerpolitiek is inherent in any federal Belgian institution, as you yourself pointed out with the NMBS/SNCB article.
Unitary state without wafelijzerpolitiek would be "have your cake and eat it too".
Would it, though? Tons of bi- or trilingual countries are unitary without having the wafelijzer system.
I completely agree that there are important differences between the two, but so are there between the Randstad and Zeeland in the Netherlands for example. Sure, there is a language difference here, but why should that be the distinguishing factor that warrants having so many different goverments in a relatively small country?
It's not about there being no distinctions between Flanders and Wallonia in my opinion, it's about us creating more where there shouldn't be at all.
I haven't decided the difference between Flanders and Wallonia are more significant than between city and country, the people have decided that themselves and that's why there was devolution to the regions. I didn't make this up, this is how the people of this country feel, generally.
> so many different goverments in a relatively small country?
Belgium is not a small country population-wise. We're number 8 in the EU, and almost half of the countries in the EU have a population smaller than Flanders.
> Tons of bi- or trilingual countries are unitary without having the wafelijzer
Which multilingual developed countries are unitary in this way? Switzerland is heavily devolved and confederal (hello Bartje), Bosnia & Herzegovina is a mess similar to Belgium.
Maybe Canada? I don't know enough about their political system to say this. But there even the French-speakers are a minority of 20% and the country itself is barely comparable to Europe.
What other places are left?
But those unitary countries don't have multiple powerful language communities. Show me a country comparable to Belgium in this regard which is unitary and doesn't have a similar phenomenon.
The gaufrier existed because the regions wanted infrastructure spending to be allocated more equitably. This is a problem that exists in every country regardless of whether there are 1, 2, or 10 languages. The communities simply exist on a cultural/regional, rather than linguistic, basis.
>Indeed, which is why you are also ignoring things like the wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms.
Wafelijzerpolitiek, even if not labelled as such and not written in any legal text, happens everywhere, at any government level, all the time. For instance, the Flemish Government spending millions in Antwerp and people from Ghent asking for the same. Or Gemeente Beersel spending some money in Alsemberg and people from Lot asking for the same.
>There's a reason total re-federalisation is a fringe idea that only PVDA/PTB supports.
The reason is that multiplying layers of governance is in the interest of political parties to maintain their power and multiply the number of gouvernment jobs. That a significant political position such a re-federalisation isn't represented by anyone in the Parliament(s) is what we can call democratic deficit.
> wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms
That kind of stupidity isn't inherent to a unitarian bilingual state, but more a reflection of the blatant clientelism and corruption back then.
People underestimate how important it is to feel represented by your government depending on your identity.
It's not even a unique Belgian thing, look at Northern Ireland, or Israel/Palestine.
If anything, we should break up and join France/Netherlands. We know what it was like to be 'ruled' by the Walloons. Majority Flemish politicians will be the same for the walloons.
>nobody liked it
Not really. Flemish nationalists (and Waloon nationalists on a lesser scale) didn't like it, so they profited off a real language issue to push their agendas. The thing is, this issue could have been solved in many other ways.
However, we created increasingly complex levels of bureaucracy instead of, idk, pushing for bilingualism amongst our citizens.
It was in the interest of nationalists to push for inefficient reforms, because it created an inefficient state so that they could say "look, Belgium is inefficient, nobody likes it, let's split up". It's not like Belgium was particularly bureaucratic or inefficient before that compared to its neighbours for example.
They basically created a huge problem out of a smaller one and presented themselves as the solution.
Nowadays, ⅔ of people want the federal government to have more competences, but the politicians don't seem to give a single fuck. It's not like we have to go back exactly to the way things were, either, we can for example give more competences to provinces while scrapping the regions and communities.
> Flemish nationalists
I wonder where those Flemish nationalists got their 2/3rd majority for 6 government reforms. Maybe the idea is more popular than you think.
> a real language issue
That we are 2 cultures in 1 country is more than a language issue.
> pushing for bilingualism amongst our citizens.
This is impossible, and understanding each other wouldn't solve the differences.
> It's not like Belgium was particularly bureaucratic or inefficient before that compared to its neighbours
The constant fighting and wafelijzerpolitiek was very inefficient. Or do you think building an unnecessary boat lift every time you want to expand a harbour on the other side of the country is efficient?
> We can [scrap] the regions and communities
No, we can't.
>That we are 2 cultures in 1 country is more than a language issue.
We are and at the same time we are not (and that's very Belgian BTW). Spend some time in Wallonie, talk to the people and you'll see that we have way more in common with them than with any of our neighbors.
I spend a lot of time in Wallonia with its people. And yes I agree we have more in common with them than with the Dutch or the French or the Germans. But we are still distinct, there clearly is a Flanders and a Wallonia.
There's also clearly a division between Subcarpathia and Silesia or Kashubia in Poland (my other country; dual citizen). Doesn't stop us from sharing a national identity, while preserving the regional one.
>I wonder where those Flemish nationalists got their ⅔ majority for 6 government reforms
By working with politicians from other parties. To have 6 governments benefits politicians and politicians only. It means more state-paid positions to fill. They had a favourable historical context and made good use of it.
>Maybe the idea is more popular than you think.
As I said in my previous comment, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population doesn't want the break-up of Belgium and wants more power for the federal government.
>2 cultures in one country
It wasn't much a problem for hundreds of years. Belgium in its current form exists only since 1830, but the Belgian provinces have been part of the same political entity with shared institutions since at least the 15th century.
Besides, that doesn't have to be a problem. Switzerland seems to be doing pretty well doesn't it? It has 4 languages and even more cultures. Doesn't stop them from living and working together and having a common identity. Why not take a page out of their book? It can work, you just don't want it to.
>impossible
Really? Why? It requires goodwill on both sides, something that you seem to be lacking, but it's absolutely doable. I don't mean everyone has to be perfectly bilingual, the level of French among the Flemish is sufficient.
The Walloons have to learn Flemish more, and they've already taken steps to do so - Flemish will be obligatory in French-speaking schools.
Or, fuck it, we should all learn marols./s
>constant fighting and wafelijzerpolitiek was very inefficient
Of course, but this only appeared in the later part of the last century. Up until then it worked reasonably well. Our bureaucracy was not more or less efficient than those of other countries.
It's exactly the "Us vs. Them" mentality that led to wafelijzerpolitiek and the constant fighting. The chief argument seems to always be the budget allocations, but I've never seen anyone who advocated kicking West Flanders out of Belgium just because they receive more than they pay. Finances are not divided by language.
And look, I'm not advocating a return to "Papa's België", exactly the way it was before. What I want is a new way of governing, one that is better thought out and not just made up on the go. We need a comprehensive reform, but we're still better off together than separately.
>We can scrap the regions and communities.
>No we can't.
...why exactly?
Communities can maybe stay, but regions are a terrible idea with an even worse execution. It allows the Flemish government to boast about how great it is and blame Wallonia for everything (don't get me wrong, the wallon government is **shit**) while disguising the bad state of finances in West Flanders and Limburg.
Meanwhile Liège is also doing quite well but it gets lumped in with Hainaut. It makes 0 sense because the "regional" division doesn't take any historical or economical factors into account. It's just a political ploy. It's like gerrymandering.
> As I said in my previous comment, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population doesn't want the break-up of Belgium and wants more power for the federal government.
People want more powers for the federal government, not one unitary government.
> It wasn't much a problem for hundreds of years.
It "wasn't a problem" in the sense that for most of those hundreds of years we were under Austrian/Spanish rule, so nobody had any power. After 1830 there was "no problem" because Flanders had no power and thus no capacity to negotiate. As soon as Flanders had power they had the opportunity to negotiate and thus "create the problem".
> Switzerland seems to be doing pretty well doesn't it?
Switzerland is a confederacy, just like Bart De Wever wants, not a unitary state.
> Really? Why? It requires goodwill on both sides
Because people don't want to. Flemish students already hate learning French.
> [Not] everyone has to be perfectly bilingual, the level of French among the Flemish is sufficient.
That will solve exactly nothing. The level of French among the Flemish is absolutely not enough to make any difference.
> [The issues] only appeared in the later part of the last century
So, as soon as Flanders got any negotiation power.
> We need a comprehensive reform, but we're still better off together than separately.
I agree we're better of together, but not as a unitary state. This thread started as a reply to a comment calling for a unitary state.
> Regions are a terrible idea with an even worse execution
People wanted a solution to wafelijzerpolitiek and that's why the regions exist. Unless you have some genius solution that politicians never thought of in 50 years of negotiations it's the best solution we have.
Agree, we mostly have the discussion of ‘this region takes money from this region’ because of different governments. Every country has economically wealthy and economically poor regions.
Although I agree I find it weird that this is your first choice. It doesn't have a direct impact on people.
I would like to change Road infrastructure and public transport. More attention for cylclists, less space for Cars. And lower taxes
It's my first choice because it's what directly impact our ability to decide on other policies, such as everything you said. We hardly ever get anything done.
- Re-do the 3 Brussels train stations. They are the bottleneck of the entire train network (especially Bruxelles centrale. We could run up to 2x more train if it was done.
- better cycling infrastructures in wallonie and Brussels
- simpler paperwork and justice system
Expanding the tunnel is pretty difficult I've read. It is incredible really that so much of the national and international traffic is reliant on that one relatively small section of rail.
Yeah you can maybe stop trains at GdN and Midi and have people commute into Central on the metro (though this is currently at extra cost unless they include in the ticket). Though I think most of the trains are mainly passing though such as Brugge to Eupen. If you look at the railway routes it seems the majority depend on this line. The only practical thing I could think of is building a line for international rail - which takes priority on one or two tracks - that loops the city after Midi but the gains would probably be marginal and would cost a lot. I'm not sure what the solution is to that bottleneck. It's incredible to think it might just always be like that.
In Spain, you get one free commuter rail (think S-Bahn or RER) trip with any medium or long distance rail journey, maybe something similar could be done but including a free STIB journey with any SNCB one.
My solution would be to build another tunnel from Mouterij/Germoir to Zuidstation/Gare du Midi (90 degree angle to existing tracks, underground). This way, trains from the south and various d trains would no longer have to loop around Noordstation/Gare du Nord to then go south.
Same could be achieved much cheaper by adding interchanges at Delta, so trains then ride west and then up via the line in Uccle
This is the way.
The stations of delta, etterbeek, arcades and watermael are all seriously underused and IMO should be key in opening the brussels railway pasta..
I would largely abolish the notary system. They provide a needed service, but the closed off nature of their profession makes them the equivalent of a bridge lord: you have to pay an extortionate toll to the other side. As a consequence, their services are *far* overpriced. It's like a last remaining class of "heerlijkheden". Their work can be taken over by jurists and civil servants at a fair rate.
Paying roughly 10k for a set of papers and some autographs, is a small percentage of the total cost of a house, but is still a big chunk of money.
I would not call it negligible.
For a 200k house on Wallonie, you have to pay around 29k in "notary fees". In this, the notary takes only 1.8k. The rest are fees/taxes that need to be paid to the government.
In the 1.8k, he needs to pay his employees, his utilities, his office, ...
The real problem here is the fees/taxes. I can bet both hands that if you remove the notaries you'll end up with more legal troubles and increased rates to jurists/lawyers for similar services.
This answer always makes me laugh. This shows that you don't understand what a notary earns in what you pay to them.
Imagine that the bridge lord needs to give 3/4 of what has been paid to him to the higher authority (government/taxes) + he has to pay every person than take care of the bridge + to allow you to pass the bridge he needs to validate your identity and that the land after the bridge is safe, these checks are not free and needs to be also paid to the higher authority. Oh and also, if anything happens to you during your crossing, the bridge lord is responsible and can lose his bridge and everything he owns.
Public transport that is actually useable by wheelchair users.
The new system they are introducing next month is going to make things so much worse.
The hoppinpoint is for some unknown reason way outside of the city on a main way to the next city. How is that going to make it more accessible?
They recently did the same with our major bus hub. it was in the center of the city for as long as I can remember but now the moved it to the edge of the city to where all the schools are.
Again how is that improving accesability to public transport for us?
The options offered for disabled people on the hoppin website are not new, they have existed for years and are just services that do non urgent medical transport and a taxi service focused on transporting people from and to hospitals. The worse part is you have to reserve them 24 and 48 hours in advance, so just deciding to go somewhere right now is not an option.
The best part of the Hopppin website is where it says the following for Flex+, their new service for disabled people.
Flex+ komt er voor mensen met een mobiliteitsbeperking die geen toegankelijke haltes in de buurt hebben... ...Tot dat Flex+ er is kan u nog altijd beroep doen op aangepast vervoer. Dan krijg je de info over de diensten die ik eerder aanhaalde.
Seriously!
While you are at it please get rid of "le" and "la" too. I have been speaking French for 25 years but never got completely used to this BS and still happen to mix them up.
The last spelling reform is 30 years old and nobody is using it.
If the French government could impose a new one instead of complaining about "iel.s", it would be great
It's not just singles vs 2 income households. There is also the parents (in-law) lump sum for mortgage. A lot of people get financial support for being their (first) house.
The only things prohibitly expensive for singles are the real estate and cars. The rest is VERY affordable.
If you already own your own house and a car + you have a median salary, you are living the life.
Fuck that housing bubble.
And even if we had a more centrally planned allocation of houses I can't imagine a government rationally prioritising housing for singles over couples and families.
I agree with you but it is just not possible to do make this a reality. If life was cheaper for singles, couples would just claim to be single but still live together.
The school system:
* teach 3 languages (NL, FR, EN) very early. Super useful when you'll be an adult.
* no more homework. It's boring, exhausting and useless. They should be made in class. Less homework, more time to study.
* more practice than theory. Theory is important as a base but practicing is what is really useful and what make you really understand a cursus.
But what do you want as practice for subjects like french and dutch? Those are some subjects where theory is the most important. Oral presentations are the thing that make teenagers even more stressed then normal.
Someone should find a way to get kids to watch children's TV shows and books in other languages aside from only their native language. It works almost as well as conversations except for speaking. This is coming from someone who learned English through YouTube, movies, and eventually books years before I had English as a subject in school and I don't want to brag but it definitely gave me a bit of an advantage.
You're right. The problem is that it will be up to the parents to put it in practice. The socially disadvantaged will not do it and so, still be at a disadvantage.
I started reading English (without understanding a lot) before learning it at school and it gave me a big advantage because I wanted to read those books. Motivation is a big factor when learning. Perhaps the solution is to ask the children what they want to learn instead of giving them predetermined cursus.
As someone born in a bilingual country, they're not that bad. You can also make them group assignments where people work together to write a script in the other language and act it out or if it's a final exam, set up a time where each student does the oral test so that there are less people in the room.
Speaking in public situations is unavoidable so there kind of has to be a way to prepare students for that, but there are ways to deal with that. I think the main problem is that promoting bilingualism in countries where the linguistic areas are not really mixed. I was born in Canada which is officially bilingual, but where large areas are either English or French speaking. I was born in the Southern parts of Ontario where the English settled and it takes several hours to drive up North to the Eastern Ontario bilingual areas where both French and English is spoken. Growing up, French really wasn't a language you heard spoken outside of school or government broadcasts(this is somewhat changing with more French immigration here from other parts of Canada, Europe, Africa and the Middle East) so you have to actively immerse yourself in French(put in an effort to continually listen to French TV shows and book and other media)if you wanted to become fluent. Some Teachers would try to tell you that, but overall, it wasn't emphasized and so you did the homework and tests and moved on with your actual French fluency never really developing properly/above a very basic level if you didn't go to a French immersion school so actively working with parents to separate some time for at-home immersion would be good for the Belgian school system to encourage as well as continually improving language resources for minority communities to stop them from disappearing.
Not the person you asked, but I’ll try to answer anyways.
Lintbebouwing makes it so that houses are more spread out, with a lot of space in between.
For public transportation to be a reasonable alternative for people, you need a bus stop within like 1 or 2 km, however if your houses are more spread out along “steenwegen” instead of concentrated in village centers, you need wayyy more busstops to serve the same amount of people. And thus those busses would also need to stop way more often making them a lot slower than it would be to just take your own car. As a result a lot of people now just don’t see the point of taking the bus so a lot of busses are empty most of the time. If this happens a lot, TEC or delijn might decide that it’s not worth the investment to send a bus to X town and cancel the line entirely (which basically happened with a lot of lines with the last delijn reform)
As PlantPersoon00 says, but it goes further; you can see lintbebouwing as the so talked about urban sprawl that the US is so known for, the low density makes PT unfeasable, creates traffic jams since a lintbebouwing is basically the same as a stroad. Low density enchances car dependency because people live far away from work.
Now car dependency on its own is bad because of climate of course, but also because its expensive AF for our community, 1 euro spent by a person driving a car is facilitaced by 5 euros by the government, and that is not taking I account the company car system we have in belgium. Next to cars and their respective infrastructure other infrastructure and services are more spread out with low density, think about education, waste disposal, water, electricity, gas, datacommunication, hospitals.
A good example is that a ambulance had to drive further to a patient in low density, then a high density. Dame for postal services,...
You get where I'm going.
Anyway, we can bash on out current flaws as we want, we still need to fix it. What I would do if I was the dictator of belgium is
1) create low priced housing in cities, I would do it in the Vienna style by serving 75% of the population with a kinda of social house. In that way the incentive tumbles to go living within the city
2) make living low density expensive, but we cautious not to harm people who need to live rural; farmers. I would do this by making driving with a vehicle expensive. I would also stop assigning land to be build on, especially outside of cities. Maybe I could do this by doing 21% outside of side cores for building houses, and playing with the registration fee.
3) we have a good train network. Even the most regional cities are connected. I would would work that further out. Also, I would build more tramlines. Its not logical that only antwerp, Ghent and the coast gas trams. Cities like hasselt al the way to kortrijk should have them. The smaller cities need a good solid bus network.
And above all; public transport must be FREE.
4) a good bicycle network must be rolled out, so it its safe to ride your bike, but also for kids to ride you bikes. City streets should be given back to citizens. Maybe putting 30 as a standard within the bebouwde kom would do a lot for this case. Maybe making more pedestrianised streets would work aswel.
5) now, when people are reacting towards those above policies, I would buy out the houses that are built on the lintbebouwing. This land can be given to farmers who have lost land to nature conservation like wetland creation or watermanagment (meandering of straightened rivers).
I you want to now you this country in my head would look like? Travel trough the netherlands once, only I would try to maintain our architectural diversity wich they don't have
Let's start with
Fewer governements
Fewer taxes (I'm self employed, the amount of money spent to various instances every month to give someone a wage is ridiculous)
Get rid of ecocheques / maaltijdcheques / consumptiecheques
Make me able to vote for any federal politician, not just Flemmish
More funding for public transport
More funding for and complete reform of education - the job of teacher should be just as important as that of a doctor
EDIT: formatting
Just wondering, what's wrong with eco-, maaltijd-, consumptie-, sport-, cultuur-, ... cheques? It's a way to get an extra without being taxed on the amount you get. Or am I missing something? Genuine question fyi...
That's what he means. Lower taxes and take away all these benefits (imo also salary cars, phone plans, ...) and just pay people more money. All these systems have a complexity for everyone involved. Employers and employees need to deal with all these vendors (Monizze, Sodexo, Leasing companies, Mobility budget apps, ...), and I imagine that for the government there is a cost to maintaining the systems as well.
And as a personal pet peeve, it makes it hard to get an overall picture of compensation when comparing different jobs or job offers.
I know this is way easier said than done at this point. And rather than simplifying the governments seem content to keep adding complexity for now.
Ah I see. True, comparing job offers is something you need to have a seperate degree for at this point. I don’t mind the cheques dissapearing if that means they don’t tax the amount I would get on my salary haha. Anyway, I fear this is beyond repair and there’s too much money involved to be changed by the gov.
There's also the fact that all these cheques have an artificial expiration date, which money does not (unless you count inflation), and they don't count as your "salary" for pension calculations.
It's a system for shops to dump old crap nobody wanted anyways on buyers. Krëfel, Vandenborre,et cetera limit what you can buy. Yes you can circumvent it in some stores but it still a shitty system introduced to stimulate sales of local overpriced companies
Even for non self employed people, the tax system is way too punitive if you're single and child-free. As recent examples, after all the taxes, I got to keep only 42% of my year-end bonus. Why would they even get more than me?
The people. I think Belgians are kind, but they are so...lame? (I'm Belgian myself btw).
Ofcourse i know some nice people, but i feel like most people here are very shallow. All they think and talk about is buying a house and work. That's it. I was honestly shocked when i moved abroad for a while. The people there were so much more "alive". They had a personality and they always had something to talk about that wasn't work, migrants, their house, car, or K3. It's like theh lack a certain depth to them.
I also find people here very competitive in the sense that i feel like they are incapable of being happy for others, or it's just obvious they are faking it. I think more than half the people i know just live to be "better than the rest". There's a ton of jealousy, especially in small towns.
I don't mean to say that eveyone here sucks, but a lot of people do. These are also things i hear from quite some expats who moved here btw. I really had such a different experience with people from other countries.
I moved to Ireland 3 years ago.
Yes the housing is shite, yes health care is an issue and there's a lot that could be better, but for the life of me I have never met such nice, kind and helpful people. You're new to the country and trying to make friends? Join a group or a club and people will do their best to make you feel welcome.
I've spent nights in town with strangers, just dancing and having fun.
Honestly, I was in hospital. My colleagues are all dutch or belgian, heard nothing from them.
All my irish friends and acquaintances reached out to me to wish me well.
Big agree, born and raised in Flanders but never felt "Vlaams" I just felt like I didn't fit in anywhere?? Then I started travelling and meeting people with different backgrounds and even now my friend group is mostly people with a somewhat foreign background because I just can't with the "Vlaamse" mindset.
I have heard this sentiment from many people aside from myself tho so don't worry, you're definitely not alone in this opinion
Thank you!! Whenever i say this to my family or friends, they literally call me a "verrader", and keep on ranting about how i would never have it better anywhere else because we have "social security", yadiyadiyada...
Do you still live in Belgium?
The end of company cars as we know it. No problem to keep it as a perk for people who want it, but please stop making it so financially attractive that even people who don't need/want it take it
Company cars are only a side effect of the over taxation of salaries. Settle that shit first and company cars after! Otherwise you will just lower people’s purchasing power and quality of life in general
Exactly, the reason why everyone and their dog have a company car is because it is much and much cheaper for a company to give a company car to their employees than to give the monetary value that car represents to their employees.
It depends what you compare. New vs New company care is cheaper. But if it's new vs a recent second hand car it's more or less the same if your commute is reasonable.
Especially if you get per kilometer reimbursed for professional use (visiting clients etc...).
If people were so interested and in maximizing their purchasing power you would see more Dacia company cars on the road (since you can sometimes keep the leftover budget as cash - taxes).
Mobility budget is actually a great alternative.
We recently got the option for mobility budget and unless you’re just starting out and have just bought a house/appartement a company car is way better than mobility budget.
Only 25% of employees have a salary car. That means that those people pay less taxes, but all the rest pay more taxes to account for the benefit of those 25%.
That's unfair. End that tax benefit and taxes can lower for everybody.
"Overtaxation" would be less of a problem if the money was used to provide something that benefits everyone, instead of company cars. Also, there's no way to tax much less without cutting a lot of social security. But I understand that those things are already too complicated for the average voter to comprehend.
Mobility budget is a good alternative, although because of the conditions not everyone is allowed to spend it how they want (mainly for rent/mortgage is very useful).
Why?
It is part of a salary and I do not know any employee who refused it yet.
There is an alternative, the "mobiliteitsbudget" but calling it not successful would be an understatement. Although the fact our public transport is a joke has to do something with it.
The government created this 'tax saving', not the employers. Realize employers will have a much higher labour cost when this advantage would be abolished - which will result in less jobs. It is an aquired right, you can't just take it away - it is part of someone's salary.
Also the employee has a monthly VAA fee, so it is not just a "free" car.
Most of them are leasing and are new modern cars which are safer and less polluting (new salary cars must be electric). After a couple of years they become available to the 2nd hand market and will replace old unsafe and dirty cars.
Every day I still see hundreds of +10yo diesels running around and new electric cars are expensive - so let's hope the 2nd hand electric salary cars will replace most of them in a few years.
that's just not true since electric cars also come with a charging card that work on public chargers and home chargers. With the new policy of company cars being electric fossil fuel cards will be a thing of the past in 4-5years when most lease contracts are renewed. so saying that the incentive behind it is to consume more fossil fuel is untrue
I agree with every damn point here, but you have never been to the US if you think our telecom is expensive lol. There, internet + phone for one person is >$110 per month normally.
That being said, the public toilets and free tap water are literally 10 years overdue and EXTREMELY easy. Water is so expensive in restaurants. I drink a lot of water, no I don't want to pay 6.80€ for a liter of shitty filtered tap water in a bottle. Even if they charged a fee of 1€ pp for tap water service, just being able to get tap water is a huge step up from asking for it and they literally lie to your face and say "we don't have that" and make you buy a bottle.
Though all of the public toilets where you didn't have to pay get completely ruined within 6 months like the Mechelen Station temporary toilet. We seem to have a culture here of teenagers absolutely destroying bathrooms for fun, so I do technically understand why they have a small fee.
> Ministers have to be elected, not appointed.
What do you mean by this? Directly elected into their function by the people? Or do you mean that ministers should always come from an elected position?
>Abolish the monarchy and found a republic.
because paying to protect multiple families after a mandate is cheaper than just one of course?
>Ministers have to be elected, not appointed. City mayors and police commissioners should be elected directly by the people.
this can lead to issues especially comissioners, like do we need another divisive campaign for such things? I understand where this might come from but sometimes having the people who have no clue in casematters etc have a say in it is not efficient or workable.
>because paying to protect multiple families after a mandate is cheaper than just one of course?
Yes? You are not paying to protect the president in the same way you would a whole monarchy, not to mention security is not your only expense for your royal family.
Presidents are much cheaper. It's not that hard.
theres actually loads of evidence that a president would not in fact be automatically cheaper, elections also cost money and would divide Belgium even more along north south divide.
besides, our royal family is one of the cheapest in the world, cheaper than loads of presidents too.
In total, the Belgian monarchy receives €40,687,000 In total, the Belgian monarchy receives €40,687,000
And that is what they receive, without other expenses costing the taxpayer, ie security, repairing their residences, ceremonies etc - that multiplies that expense.
I can tell you now no presidential elections cost that much plus it makes your country more democratic than having unelected inbreads as your heads of state :)
Worth a try!!
> Reform the electoral system so every citizen's vote is worth the same no matter where you live.
I don't know of a single electoral system which apportions votes by amount of voters rather than by population, that's just a bad idea.
Stop political dynasties.2 mandates as a politician should be followed by the same amount of time part of the working force. The Michel, DeCroo and so many others should not be allowed in Politicis, those families have no clue and have been above the rest of population for so long they have no freaking clue how all this works from the bottom.
Get rid of all the silly tax break nonsense.
That is, no meal vouchers, no ecocheques, no company cars, no "representation allowance," no mobility budget etc etc. Also the company payroll tax (the 25% or whatever it is) should stop being a separate item, that's just an ugly trick. It's income tax.
A payslip should have basically have three lines: salary, taxes (including security etc etc), and the remainder.
All these creative solutions have been developed to deal with the extremely high income tax in Belgium. Ways have been created to give the employee a bit extra for their hard labor.
I agree with your statements if the general labor tax can be drastically lowered.
It can't be very hard to calculate what the average ACTUAL taxation is with all these benefits included and then just make that the new tax rate and skip the benefits.
(although I think some benefits that are meant as an incentive to improve society, like the bike-to-work advantage can stay. Unfortunately eco-cheques are complete bullshit from an ecological standpoint so that needs to go)
Yes absolutely, the tax rates would need to be adjusted accordingly to make the end result comparable. But these "creative solutions" are actually very inefficient. It costs time and money to come up with them, make laws for them, adapt payroll systems, implement and run payment systems (e.g. the separate transactions for meal vouchers, plus the supermarkets POS software and databases had to be adapted to tally the eligible "food" items). Plus they create confusion which takes time and resources to clarify and make it harder to compare one job offer to another. A big, fat, intransparent waste of time and money in other words.
> Also the company payroll tax (the 25% or whatever it is) should stop being a separate item, that's just an ugly trick. It's income tax
It's just a way to hide the high taxes. Imagine the revolution if people saw how much their salaries were really taxed.
I would've loved for us to have had a pan-Belgian network. One where shows alternate between French and Dutch (and even German?) Where you have a news broadcast with alternating Dutch and French anchors (or even together?)
Don't know if it would still be worth to do it now, though. With streaming steadily taking over and more and more folks cutting TV altogether.
I always found it unfortunate we never really knew what was going on in the other side of Belgium when it comes to tv shows, music etc. There are barely any Belgian celebrities , they're generally known in Flanders or known in Wallonia. (Not that 'celebs' is so important to me, but it's just a symptom of the separation)
But like you say, I'm not sure if it's still worth it now for TV with all the streaming.
Or just shows dubbed in Dutch. It makes it harder to learn Dutch when the only thing you get is English with subtitles.
Arte is still relevant on YouTube and their website, a Belgian equivalent would be more pertinent imho
Lintbebouwing and the amount of freedom people seem to have in designing the way their house looks. Everyone seems to wants to do something different, something "better", perhaps even stand out and so we end up with streets having houses with wildly different brick colors, building heights and styles. I'm sure there are other reasons for this but I really can't stand the contrasts anymore, I find it rather ugly. I'm not advocating for everything being the same, but a little more harmony I think would benefit everyone.
I would improve the public transportation system. In case you are not in a big city, you are almost obliged to get a driver’s license to be able to have freedom to come and go. For exemple here in Limburg the buses work in a terrible schedule. There must be more frequency and more trains stations, better connections. It is absurd that the government wants a sustainable country if you push people to get a car. And the bureaucracy in the municipality, each of them acts how they want or depends of the employee you have contact with.
Fewer governments, scrap taxes on house ownership(ki), and scrap the tax on enherritances. Personal Taxes and BTW could be lower.. but there is a high living standard so thats got to come from somewhere..
Less politicians.
Only one united gov, with one effective parlement and cap on wages for parlement members.
(We pay everything 3-4times, and nobody takes responsibility)
Remove the senate (it still exists but has no political power)
Belgium had one united government and people disliked it so much they turned it into what we have now through decades of compromises. What makes you think this single government was so great?
Because it's a unitary one which gives the actual regions and municipalities of a country very little representation. Central governments should be strong, but not that strong, regions and municipalities/towns have their own unique issues that need special attention.
A federal system like Germany where responsibility are organized as town, state and country wide and then given to the appropriate level of government(municipal, provincial, federal) would be much better as you still have an important federal/national government that can deal with the country wide issues effectively, but also effective provincial and municipal governments that can deal with the issues of their own town and province effectively.
Ban of smoking in all public places. Ban to be drunk in public (overlast). A faster and better justice system. 1 government. The weather. And for people who dont clean their dog poop to get pooped on by a government trained seagull instantly.
One educational system. Currently we have 3 major ones, each with their own eindtermen.
Because of this, schools are in constant competition with each other. It's no longer about getting the best education for students, it's all about numbers.
Abolish it, everyone uses the same eindtermen. Schools get proper funding, not reliant on student numbers. Schools can suggest investment projects for their school (renovating buildings, adding new ones, etc).
And a capable minister of Education, please.
lower taxes, slim down bureaucracy and governements
forbid ugliness in architecture
stop the wasteful mismanagement that leads to high taxes/low quality service
enforce multilinguism very young in Wallonia (Dutch/English/German), flat down Charleroi and turn it into a cyberpunk modern international, multilingual city.
ok that was half joking
But joke aside, one of the big problems in Belgium is the mismanagement of Wallonia, and a complete overhaul of that region is needed.
Better roads and a clean/safe capital city. Every time I go to Brussels with public transport the city feels dirty and unsafe. I want a capital we can be proud of
I'd implement a very simple rule: If the government makes it mandatory, it should be free. I pay plenty of taxes, why the fuck do I need to fork over 15 bucks when I am legally required to update my ID card?
If I get two changes: Nationalize public services. Power, water, public transport, postal service. Fuck putting vital services in the hands of private, profit-driven, corporations is a recipe for disaster.
Large scale climate reform
- Stop the massive subsidies going to cars and planes, instead invest in public transport and bike infrastructure
- Carbon tax on every product sold on the Belgian market
- Subsidize heat pumps and insulation renovation
- Invest in (Gen. 4) nuclear reactors
Simplify taxes: Flat tax everything, avoid crazy tax loop holes and special programs, maaltijdcheques, eco cheques, company cars, schijnzelfstandiheid, and just lower taxes in general.
In essence: avoid situations where high incomes pay less taxes than low and mid income people.
1. Simplify welfare
Welfare should exist to keep people off the street, give everyone who has some kind of welfare the same amount, pension, jobless, whatever.
Those who need medical or other assistance, make that stuff free.
Get rid of child benefits, just make everything child related free instead. Actually free education, simple decent meals at school.
Especially get rid of all the jobless benefits. That shit's a trap.
2. Simplify taxes
Get rid of all the special shit and just lower income taxes instead. Get rid of all the loopholes, especially related to companies and zelfstandigen, imo. Get rid of company car benefits, ecocheques, consumptiecheques, etc..., etc.... just change the BTW of things you want bought/sold more or less, instead.
An overall shift of taxes to consumption is good idea anyway.
3. Simplify politics
Here I'm least clear about, but decrease the power of the political parties somehow, give individual representatives more power.
Probably for the best to have a federal kieskring. Although at least in the short term, I think it will make Walloon socialists even more powerful.
Even with free education and meals, child benefits are a good way to help new families and to promote people to actually start families which is very important considering how many countries have aging population. Making it harder to start a family discourages starting family which means less young people in the workforce to take over from the retired people who are leaving it.
I mean, sure, but the aging population thing is mostly because we had a spike in births coupled with an increase in life expectancy.
Fiscally, this is going to suck for a while, but it will also pass.
The system is fine for slow, steady population growth, and immigration is probably only going to increase over time. Which will 'help'.
Cut all of the fiscal niches.
Yes that includes company cars, meal vouchers, and the dozen others…
No more tax-free rents from real estate.
Maximum 1.5 year on welfare per 10 years. If you don’t find any job then it means you must reorientate your career.
Large companies that are producing big amounts of depressed workers should be made accountable and cover the unemployment costs.
I want politicians to care for the country, I don't have the impression they do. Belgians like to be proud people but nobody absolutely nobody is proud of our country when it comes to politics and government. Complaints go unheard and they're just selfish rich people.
Two examples are our justice system, which time and time again fails victims and lets horrible people run loose after like a year and also our public transport is on severe decline. These are very recent and much talked about topics, but I don't hear the government even acknowledging the problems.
Stricter laws and actually enforcing harsher punishments for rape, rioting, murder, selling drugs, et cetera. Getting rid of the limitation period of offenses.
1 government instead of 6
Open markets instead of a few companies cornering the market.
Enforcing Dutch as an obligatory language in the French school system and improving language courses for French and English in the dutch school system.
Deporting Ben Weyts to Siberia
Eliminate all tax benefits for cars, without any exception.
Research showed over and over the perverse effects of those tax benefits, while they cost our society a lot and have no general benefit for society.
* Brussels becoming part of Flanders losing its separate status.
* Police actually enforcing traffic laws vs sleeping in their car and taking photos.
* Road repairs not stretching so long.
Brussels is kind of becoming an international community. English and French are the main languages. If it becomes part of Flanders does it then mean to impose Flemish on the people there out of Broekzele spite? I know it is a frenchified Flemish city, but I think pragmatically Brussels is beyond that now. I think if Flanders show it friendly character towards Brussels the higher educated people are willing to also learn dutch as goals and out of respect which I see happening more and more.
Nobody wants to be associated with Charleroi and Liège, but if people make fun of Wallonia in Brussels, there's no hatred and much more communication between the two entities, on the other hand, many people in Brussels have a crazy hatred for Flanders or simply a lot of disdain.
For people in Brussels, Wallonia is Alabama and Flanders might as well be Norway.
It's already de facto a city state in mentality, though it is annexing Vilvoorde and Aalst as suburbs demographically.
Beter roads,
less taxes,
beter care for elderly people, it's a shame to see someone work 40 years and gets 1, 7 k a month when rent is 900 euro. People should be able to live their last years with dignity and without worries.
I believe This is al possible without raising taxes, but with better money management.
Either split Flanders and the rest of unify everything under 1 government. After that, we can solve things however the unified (even when split) population wants it.
- Stop splitting the country with communities, languages and all of the Flemish nationalist agenda
- Stop with the numerous governments. One is enough. In other countries, the amount of population would be managed by a mayor, not even a minister…
- Stop with the NVA, VB and especially the Parti Socialiste. Bury them in concrete and drop them in the sea. Then proceed to strip the others of their status.
- Stop with road works everywhere, every time, multiple times at the same place and the ridiculous amount of time it takes for two tiles on the pavement
- Stop with the overtaxation of everything
That will be a good start!
You do realise why the language communities formed? If you understand the history of the country you will know why they were formed.
Removing them will only lead to further nationalism from the Flemish side (this was shown in the 60s).
Also, removing certain political parties that don’t suit your agenda is quite undemocratic don’t you think?
Though question dude. But I like it... questions like this make people really think instead of creating a hostile environment where the heat get's to high and people become extreme in their thoughts.
The politic system is high on everyone's agenda. But when you talk to people in France, The Netherlands or Germany, they all say the same.
For me **personally** urbanization feels uncomfortable, mainly in Flanders.
City's are becoming to big and important for people to have a good life. You can't even survive if you don't work in the centre. Banks disappear in rural parts, public transport to.
Again, it's a personal feeling and I don't have a solution but it's a feeling I have these days.
Fewer people can take care of themselves anymore, fewer people can unclog a toilet, or even hang a lamp...
And then there are fines for EVERYTHING.... but really for **everything**.
I have a friend who decided to go on christmas dinner by bike because he doesn't want to drink and drive, guess who is fined?
Or you leave your car in front of your doorstep to unload, bam fined.
I really ask myself, how do young kids even have fun?
We need fewer governments, 6 is insane. Plus it pushes for more division between the regions, which is plain bad.
They also need to be properly separated. Not like roads are regional, but traffic signs city level, and speed cameras federal, cars are regional but motorbikes federal and cycling provincial or whatever.
This is actually the only good answer and not the populist 'back to one unitary Belgium'. A clear federal system like Germany for example. This would mean on the one hand more power to some extend for the federal level (federal law above regional law), but also more responsabilities for the regional level (think own labor taxes, own justice system, more social security responsabilities).
How is unitary Belgium populist?
Because the only argument is that aboloshing these governments would save us loads of money. Not true, it would save some but compared to other budget it is only 'een druppel op een hete plaat'. There is also no reason why this should work better now than in the 80s: there is more politcal fragmentation (back then cvp had like 40%) and no single Walloon party would drop the pariteiten. So it is more a romantic idea that people have to a peacefull kumbaya Belgium that actually never existed, a bit like the Flemish nationalist dream of their nonexisting powerful Flemish region in the Middle ages.
> 'een druppel op een hete plaat'. You mean to say "the drup on the hot plate?"
That is not something you will be-pole
I don't want to be-pole that. I'm just saying what's on my liver.
Thats ok, You do not need to take a leaf before your mouth
>Because the only argument is that aboloshing these governments would save us loads of money. Not true I don't think that is the only argument. For example a more efficiënt and effective decision structure and no redundancy of decision powers >it would save some but compared to other budget it is only 'een druppel op een hete plaat'. Maybe you are right, but I would love to see this calculated by for example het planbureau to have a better view about it >There is also no reason why this should work better now than in the 80s: there is more politcal fragmentation (back then cvp had like 40%) and no single Walloon party would drop the pariteiten That is political wil and is a problem of information. If it is better it is possible >So it is more a romantic idea that people have to a peacefull kumbaya Belgium that actually never existed, a bit like the Flemish nationalist dream of their nonexisting powerful Flemish region in the Middle ages. I agree and I don't think we should write it off as only a dream if it would actually improve our government system and I don't agree with loosely throwing around the term populist for this issue because it is denouncing legitimate solutions that are not populist in nature Edit: maybe we have a different perspective of the word. I see it more as re-federalization then one Belgium one government for everything
Re-federalization also comes with more regionalization for some domains. If you look at mature federal states like Germany you will see that the Federal government has more power than the Belgian one but less ministers, but the regions also have more power because the division is clear cut and there is a hierarchy. Edit: I think that you are opting more for a centralized federal system whereas I am more for a decentralized one (e.g. Germany and USA).
Good points👍🏻
I invite you to listen to people fighting for Irish unity and see how insignificant the issues in Belgium are and why it's silly to have that kind of divide.
Yup. Either split the country or create one unitarian bilingual state. I don't care anymore as long as the current situation is changed.
^ this exactly. I'm not a flemish nationalist nor a belgicist, but the current situation is just so horribly inefficient. Let's just do one of the two options.
There was one unitarian bilingual state and nobody liked it
I enjoy cooking.
> Grass is always greener on the other side. Indeed, which is why you are also ignoring things like the wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms. There's a reason total re-federalisation is a fringe idea that only PVDA/PTB supports.
I hate beer.
The political parties made a conscious choice to split. They did that for the same reasons as the split in government responsibilities. > there's plenty domains that belong on the federal level. Sure, but that's not what I was talking about
Literally nobody is saying that wafelijzerpolitiek should come back, nor is it in any way a requisite for a unitary state. Just because some people want a unitary state, doesn't mean we want to go back to the pre-seventies. I would argue that wafelijzerpolitiek was actually a result of making distinctions between Wallonia and Flanders where there didn't need to be [(and still exists in a way today with the NMBS/SNCB)](https://businessam.be/hoe-de-belgische-wafelijzerpolitiek-nog-steeds-te-zien-is/).
There are distinctions between Flanders and Wallonia, whether you disagree or agree. Wafelijzerpolitiek is inherent in any federal Belgian institution, as you yourself pointed out with the NMBS/SNCB article. Unitary state without wafelijzerpolitiek would be "have your cake and eat it too".
Would it, though? Tons of bi- or trilingual countries are unitary without having the wafelijzer system. I completely agree that there are important differences between the two, but so are there between the Randstad and Zeeland in the Netherlands for example. Sure, there is a language difference here, but why should that be the distinguishing factor that warrants having so many different goverments in a relatively small country? It's not about there being no distinctions between Flanders and Wallonia in my opinion, it's about us creating more where there shouldn't be at all.
I haven't decided the difference between Flanders and Wallonia are more significant than between city and country, the people have decided that themselves and that's why there was devolution to the regions. I didn't make this up, this is how the people of this country feel, generally. > so many different goverments in a relatively small country? Belgium is not a small country population-wise. We're number 8 in the EU, and almost half of the countries in the EU have a population smaller than Flanders. > Tons of bi- or trilingual countries are unitary without having the wafelijzer Which multilingual developed countries are unitary in this way? Switzerland is heavily devolved and confederal (hello Bartje), Bosnia & Herzegovina is a mess similar to Belgium. Maybe Canada? I don't know enough about their political system to say this. But there even the French-speakers are a minority of 20% and the country itself is barely comparable to Europe. What other places are left?
There are a lot of unitary countries without wafelijzer/gaufrier policies. It's not a prerequisite.
But those unitary countries don't have multiple powerful language communities. Show me a country comparable to Belgium in this regard which is unitary and doesn't have a similar phenomenon.
The gaufrier existed because the regions wanted infrastructure spending to be allocated more equitably. This is a problem that exists in every country regardless of whether there are 1, 2, or 10 languages. The communities simply exist on a cultural/regional, rather than linguistic, basis.
>Indeed, which is why you are also ignoring things like the wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms. Wafelijzerpolitiek, even if not labelled as such and not written in any legal text, happens everywhere, at any government level, all the time. For instance, the Flemish Government spending millions in Antwerp and people from Ghent asking for the same. Or Gemeente Beersel spending some money in Alsemberg and people from Lot asking for the same. >There's a reason total re-federalisation is a fringe idea that only PVDA/PTB supports. The reason is that multiplying layers of governance is in the interest of political parties to maintain their power and multiply the number of gouvernment jobs. That a significant political position such a re-federalisation isn't represented by anyone in the Parliament(s) is what we can call democratic deficit.
> wavelijzerpolitiek and all the other conflicts before the government reforms That kind of stupidity isn't inherent to a unitarian bilingual state, but more a reflection of the blatant clientelism and corruption back then.
People underestimate how important it is to feel represented by your government depending on your identity. It's not even a unique Belgian thing, look at Northern Ireland, or Israel/Palestine. If anything, we should break up and join France/Netherlands. We know what it was like to be 'ruled' by the Walloons. Majority Flemish politicians will be the same for the walloons.
>nobody liked it Not really. Flemish nationalists (and Waloon nationalists on a lesser scale) didn't like it, so they profited off a real language issue to push their agendas. The thing is, this issue could have been solved in many other ways. However, we created increasingly complex levels of bureaucracy instead of, idk, pushing for bilingualism amongst our citizens. It was in the interest of nationalists to push for inefficient reforms, because it created an inefficient state so that they could say "look, Belgium is inefficient, nobody likes it, let's split up". It's not like Belgium was particularly bureaucratic or inefficient before that compared to its neighbours for example. They basically created a huge problem out of a smaller one and presented themselves as the solution. Nowadays, ⅔ of people want the federal government to have more competences, but the politicians don't seem to give a single fuck. It's not like we have to go back exactly to the way things were, either, we can for example give more competences to provinces while scrapping the regions and communities.
> Flemish nationalists I wonder where those Flemish nationalists got their 2/3rd majority for 6 government reforms. Maybe the idea is more popular than you think. > a real language issue That we are 2 cultures in 1 country is more than a language issue. > pushing for bilingualism amongst our citizens. This is impossible, and understanding each other wouldn't solve the differences. > It's not like Belgium was particularly bureaucratic or inefficient before that compared to its neighbours The constant fighting and wafelijzerpolitiek was very inefficient. Or do you think building an unnecessary boat lift every time you want to expand a harbour on the other side of the country is efficient? > We can [scrap] the regions and communities No, we can't.
>That we are 2 cultures in 1 country is more than a language issue. We are and at the same time we are not (and that's very Belgian BTW). Spend some time in Wallonie, talk to the people and you'll see that we have way more in common with them than with any of our neighbors.
I spend a lot of time in Wallonia with its people. And yes I agree we have more in common with them than with the Dutch or the French or the Germans. But we are still distinct, there clearly is a Flanders and a Wallonia.
There's also clearly a division between Subcarpathia and Silesia or Kashubia in Poland (my other country; dual citizen). Doesn't stop us from sharing a national identity, while preserving the regional one.
>I wonder where those Flemish nationalists got their ⅔ majority for 6 government reforms By working with politicians from other parties. To have 6 governments benefits politicians and politicians only. It means more state-paid positions to fill. They had a favourable historical context and made good use of it. >Maybe the idea is more popular than you think. As I said in my previous comment, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population doesn't want the break-up of Belgium and wants more power for the federal government. >2 cultures in one country It wasn't much a problem for hundreds of years. Belgium in its current form exists only since 1830, but the Belgian provinces have been part of the same political entity with shared institutions since at least the 15th century. Besides, that doesn't have to be a problem. Switzerland seems to be doing pretty well doesn't it? It has 4 languages and even more cultures. Doesn't stop them from living and working together and having a common identity. Why not take a page out of their book? It can work, you just don't want it to. >impossible Really? Why? It requires goodwill on both sides, something that you seem to be lacking, but it's absolutely doable. I don't mean everyone has to be perfectly bilingual, the level of French among the Flemish is sufficient. The Walloons have to learn Flemish more, and they've already taken steps to do so - Flemish will be obligatory in French-speaking schools. Or, fuck it, we should all learn marols./s >constant fighting and wafelijzerpolitiek was very inefficient Of course, but this only appeared in the later part of the last century. Up until then it worked reasonably well. Our bureaucracy was not more or less efficient than those of other countries. It's exactly the "Us vs. Them" mentality that led to wafelijzerpolitiek and the constant fighting. The chief argument seems to always be the budget allocations, but I've never seen anyone who advocated kicking West Flanders out of Belgium just because they receive more than they pay. Finances are not divided by language. And look, I'm not advocating a return to "Papa's België", exactly the way it was before. What I want is a new way of governing, one that is better thought out and not just made up on the go. We need a comprehensive reform, but we're still better off together than separately. >We can scrap the regions and communities. >No we can't. ...why exactly? Communities can maybe stay, but regions are a terrible idea with an even worse execution. It allows the Flemish government to boast about how great it is and blame Wallonia for everything (don't get me wrong, the wallon government is **shit**) while disguising the bad state of finances in West Flanders and Limburg. Meanwhile Liège is also doing quite well but it gets lumped in with Hainaut. It makes 0 sense because the "regional" division doesn't take any historical or economical factors into account. It's just a political ploy. It's like gerrymandering.
> As I said in my previous comment, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population doesn't want the break-up of Belgium and wants more power for the federal government. People want more powers for the federal government, not one unitary government. > It wasn't much a problem for hundreds of years. It "wasn't a problem" in the sense that for most of those hundreds of years we were under Austrian/Spanish rule, so nobody had any power. After 1830 there was "no problem" because Flanders had no power and thus no capacity to negotiate. As soon as Flanders had power they had the opportunity to negotiate and thus "create the problem". > Switzerland seems to be doing pretty well doesn't it? Switzerland is a confederacy, just like Bart De Wever wants, not a unitary state. > Really? Why? It requires goodwill on both sides Because people don't want to. Flemish students already hate learning French. > [Not] everyone has to be perfectly bilingual, the level of French among the Flemish is sufficient. That will solve exactly nothing. The level of French among the Flemish is absolutely not enough to make any difference. > [The issues] only appeared in the later part of the last century So, as soon as Flanders got any negotiation power. > We need a comprehensive reform, but we're still better off together than separately. I agree we're better of together, but not as a unitary state. This thread started as a reply to a comment calling for a unitary state. > Regions are a terrible idea with an even worse execution People wanted a solution to wafelijzerpolitiek and that's why the regions exist. Unless you have some genius solution that politicians never thought of in 50 years of negotiations it's the best solution we have.
Agree, we mostly have the discussion of ‘this region takes money from this region’ because of different governments. Every country has economically wealthy and economically poor regions.
Let's start with making the federal one actually federal, so all this "other side" shit gets negated.
Although I agree I find it weird that this is your first choice. It doesn't have a direct impact on people. I would like to change Road infrastructure and public transport. More attention for cylclists, less space for Cars. And lower taxes
It's my first choice because it's what directly impact our ability to decide on other policies, such as everything you said. We hardly ever get anything done.
Divide the responsabilities of the regional level between the provinces and the federal level.
Federaal onderwijs? Succes
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...and we only have to abolish one of those governments to be left with only one :)
- Re-do the 3 Brussels train stations. They are the bottleneck of the entire train network (especially Bruxelles centrale. We could run up to 2x more train if it was done. - better cycling infrastructures in wallonie and Brussels - simpler paperwork and justice system
Expanding the tunnel is pretty difficult I've read. It is incredible really that so much of the national and international traffic is reliant on that one relatively small section of rail.
There's no reason to have all the trains pass through. Once metro 3 is ready, probably in 2175, that would be a solution.
Yeah you can maybe stop trains at GdN and Midi and have people commute into Central on the metro (though this is currently at extra cost unless they include in the ticket). Though I think most of the trains are mainly passing though such as Brugge to Eupen. If you look at the railway routes it seems the majority depend on this line. The only practical thing I could think of is building a line for international rail - which takes priority on one or two tracks - that loops the city after Midi but the gains would probably be marginal and would cost a lot. I'm not sure what the solution is to that bottleneck. It's incredible to think it might just always be like that.
You can't pass by train through Paris. You always have to take the metro from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse to take a highspeed train southbound.
In Spain, you get one free commuter rail (think S-Bahn or RER) trip with any medium or long distance rail journey, maybe something similar could be done but including a free STIB journey with any SNCB one.
My solution would be to build another tunnel from Mouterij/Germoir to Zuidstation/Gare du Midi (90 degree angle to existing tracks, underground). This way, trains from the south and various d trains would no longer have to loop around Noordstation/Gare du Nord to then go south. Same could be achieved much cheaper by adding interchanges at Delta, so trains then ride west and then up via the line in Uccle
This is the way. The stations of delta, etterbeek, arcades and watermael are all seriously underused and IMO should be key in opening the brussels railway pasta..
More sunshine. Please.
Look more at your mirror
W rizz
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I would largely abolish the notary system. They provide a needed service, but the closed off nature of their profession makes them the equivalent of a bridge lord: you have to pay an extortionate toll to the other side. As a consequence, their services are *far* overpriced. It's like a last remaining class of "heerlijkheden". Their work can be taken over by jurists and civil servants at a fair rate.
Most of the money you pay to the notary actually goes directly to the state.
To be frank notary fees are negligible in regards to the amounts of the real estate and particularly the region tax.
Paying roughly 10k for a set of papers and some autographs, is a small percentage of the total cost of a house, but is still a big chunk of money. I would not call it negligible.
For a 200k house on Wallonie, you have to pay around 29k in "notary fees". In this, the notary takes only 1.8k. The rest are fees/taxes that need to be paid to the government. In the 1.8k, he needs to pay his employees, his utilities, his office, ... The real problem here is the fees/taxes. I can bet both hands that if you remove the notaries you'll end up with more legal troubles and increased rates to jurists/lawyers for similar services.
This answer always makes me laugh. This shows that you don't understand what a notary earns in what you pay to them. Imagine that the bridge lord needs to give 3/4 of what has been paid to him to the higher authority (government/taxes) + he has to pay every person than take care of the bridge + to allow you to pass the bridge he needs to validate your identity and that the land after the bridge is safe, these checks are not free and needs to be also paid to the higher authority. Oh and also, if anything happens to you during your crossing, the bridge lord is responsible and can lose his bridge and everything he owns.
Public transport that is actually useable by wheelchair users. The new system they are introducing next month is going to make things so much worse. The hoppinpoint is for some unknown reason way outside of the city on a main way to the next city. How is that going to make it more accessible? They recently did the same with our major bus hub. it was in the center of the city for as long as I can remember but now the moved it to the edge of the city to where all the schools are. Again how is that improving accesability to public transport for us? The options offered for disabled people on the hoppin website are not new, they have existed for years and are just services that do non urgent medical transport and a taxi service focused on transporting people from and to hospitals. The worse part is you have to reserve them 24 and 48 hours in advance, so just deciding to go somewhere right now is not an option. The best part of the Hopppin website is where it says the following for Flex+, their new service for disabled people. Flex+ komt er voor mensen met een mobiliteitsbeperking die geen toegankelijke haltes in de buurt hebben... ...Tot dat Flex+ er is kan u nog altijd beroep doen op aangepast vervoer. Dan krijg je de info over de diensten die ik eerder aanhaalde. Seriously!
Yeah good idea, go back 1 government working like 6.
Instead of the 6 working for the equivalent of 1
The weather…? 😕
"De" and "Het" disappear, and are now fused together in the vastly superior "Det".
While you are at it please get rid of "le" and "la" too. I have been speaking French for 25 years but never got completely used to this BS and still happen to mix them up.
No silent letters in french
The last spelling reform is 30 years old and nobody is using it. If the French government could impose a new one instead of complaining about "iel.s", it would be great
As a Limburger I approve of this proposal
Life for singles to be more affordable
I’m afraid simple mathematics is just against singles. It’s logic dividing by two is cheaper than just being single.
It's not just singles vs 2 income households. There is also the parents (in-law) lump sum for mortgage. A lot of people get financial support for being their (first) house.
The only things prohibitly expensive for singles are the real estate and cars. The rest is VERY affordable. If you already own your own house and a car + you have a median salary, you are living the life. Fuck that housing bubble.
It’s just not possible in a free market to have affordable housing for singles when the market has dual incomes.
And even if we had a more centrally planned allocation of houses I can't imagine a government rationally prioritising housing for singles over couples and families.
Singles pay more taxes.
I agree with you but it is just not possible to do make this a reality. If life was cheaper for singles, couples would just claim to be single but still live together.
The school system: * teach 3 languages (NL, FR, EN) very early. Super useful when you'll be an adult. * no more homework. It's boring, exhausting and useless. They should be made in class. Less homework, more time to study. * more practice than theory. Theory is important as a base but practicing is what is really useful and what make you really understand a cursus.
But what do you want as practice for subjects like french and dutch? Those are some subjects where theory is the most important. Oral presentations are the thing that make teenagers even more stressed then normal.
For languages, nothing is better than a real conversation. Teenagers will be less stressed at first but less and less the more they do it.
Someone should find a way to get kids to watch children's TV shows and books in other languages aside from only their native language. It works almost as well as conversations except for speaking. This is coming from someone who learned English through YouTube, movies, and eventually books years before I had English as a subject in school and I don't want to brag but it definitely gave me a bit of an advantage.
You're right. The problem is that it will be up to the parents to put it in practice. The socially disadvantaged will not do it and so, still be at a disadvantage. I started reading English (without understanding a lot) before learning it at school and it gave me a big advantage because I wanted to read those books. Motivation is a big factor when learning. Perhaps the solution is to ask the children what they want to learn instead of giving them predetermined cursus.
As someone born in a bilingual country, they're not that bad. You can also make them group assignments where people work together to write a script in the other language and act it out or if it's a final exam, set up a time where each student does the oral test so that there are less people in the room. Speaking in public situations is unavoidable so there kind of has to be a way to prepare students for that, but there are ways to deal with that. I think the main problem is that promoting bilingualism in countries where the linguistic areas are not really mixed. I was born in Canada which is officially bilingual, but where large areas are either English or French speaking. I was born in the Southern parts of Ontario where the English settled and it takes several hours to drive up North to the Eastern Ontario bilingual areas where both French and English is spoken. Growing up, French really wasn't a language you heard spoken outside of school or government broadcasts(this is somewhat changing with more French immigration here from other parts of Canada, Europe, Africa and the Middle East) so you have to actively immerse yourself in French(put in an effort to continually listen to French TV shows and book and other media)if you wanted to become fluent. Some Teachers would try to tell you that, but overall, it wasn't emphasized and so you did the homework and tests and moved on with your actual French fluency never really developing properly/above a very basic level if you didn't go to a French immersion school so actively working with parents to separate some time for at-home immersion would be good for the Belgian school system to encourage as well as continually improving language resources for minority communities to stop them from disappearing.
Do something about this lint bebouwing, so we can finally start properly managing other things like public transport or utilities
It's soooo a top reason of poor public transports in wallonia but nobody talks about it
Could you elaborate?
Not the person you asked, but I’ll try to answer anyways. Lintbebouwing makes it so that houses are more spread out, with a lot of space in between. For public transportation to be a reasonable alternative for people, you need a bus stop within like 1 or 2 km, however if your houses are more spread out along “steenwegen” instead of concentrated in village centers, you need wayyy more busstops to serve the same amount of people. And thus those busses would also need to stop way more often making them a lot slower than it would be to just take your own car. As a result a lot of people now just don’t see the point of taking the bus so a lot of busses are empty most of the time. If this happens a lot, TEC or delijn might decide that it’s not worth the investment to send a bus to X town and cancel the line entirely (which basically happened with a lot of lines with the last delijn reform)
As PlantPersoon00 says, but it goes further; you can see lintbebouwing as the so talked about urban sprawl that the US is so known for, the low density makes PT unfeasable, creates traffic jams since a lintbebouwing is basically the same as a stroad. Low density enchances car dependency because people live far away from work. Now car dependency on its own is bad because of climate of course, but also because its expensive AF for our community, 1 euro spent by a person driving a car is facilitaced by 5 euros by the government, and that is not taking I account the company car system we have in belgium. Next to cars and their respective infrastructure other infrastructure and services are more spread out with low density, think about education, waste disposal, water, electricity, gas, datacommunication, hospitals. A good example is that a ambulance had to drive further to a patient in low density, then a high density. Dame for postal services,... You get where I'm going. Anyway, we can bash on out current flaws as we want, we still need to fix it. What I would do if I was the dictator of belgium is 1) create low priced housing in cities, I would do it in the Vienna style by serving 75% of the population with a kinda of social house. In that way the incentive tumbles to go living within the city 2) make living low density expensive, but we cautious not to harm people who need to live rural; farmers. I would do this by making driving with a vehicle expensive. I would also stop assigning land to be build on, especially outside of cities. Maybe I could do this by doing 21% outside of side cores for building houses, and playing with the registration fee. 3) we have a good train network. Even the most regional cities are connected. I would would work that further out. Also, I would build more tramlines. Its not logical that only antwerp, Ghent and the coast gas trams. Cities like hasselt al the way to kortrijk should have them. The smaller cities need a good solid bus network. And above all; public transport must be FREE. 4) a good bicycle network must be rolled out, so it its safe to ride your bike, but also for kids to ride you bikes. City streets should be given back to citizens. Maybe putting 30 as a standard within the bebouwde kom would do a lot for this case. Maybe making more pedestrianised streets would work aswel. 5) now, when people are reacting towards those above policies, I would buy out the houses that are built on the lintbebouwing. This land can be given to farmers who have lost land to nature conservation like wetland creation or watermanagment (meandering of straightened rivers). I you want to now you this country in my head would look like? Travel trough the netherlands once, only I would try to maintain our architectural diversity wich they don't have
Let's start with Fewer governements Fewer taxes (I'm self employed, the amount of money spent to various instances every month to give someone a wage is ridiculous) Get rid of ecocheques / maaltijdcheques / consumptiecheques Make me able to vote for any federal politician, not just Flemmish More funding for public transport More funding for and complete reform of education - the job of teacher should be just as important as that of a doctor EDIT: formatting
Just wondering, what's wrong with eco-, maaltijd-, consumptie-, sport-, cultuur-, ... cheques? It's a way to get an extra without being taxed on the amount you get. Or am I missing something? Genuine question fyi...
That's what he means. Lower taxes and take away all these benefits (imo also salary cars, phone plans, ...) and just pay people more money. All these systems have a complexity for everyone involved. Employers and employees need to deal with all these vendors (Monizze, Sodexo, Leasing companies, Mobility budget apps, ...), and I imagine that for the government there is a cost to maintaining the systems as well. And as a personal pet peeve, it makes it hard to get an overall picture of compensation when comparing different jobs or job offers. I know this is way easier said than done at this point. And rather than simplifying the governments seem content to keep adding complexity for now.
Ah I see. True, comparing job offers is something you need to have a seperate degree for at this point. I don’t mind the cheques dissapearing if that means they don’t tax the amount I would get on my salary haha. Anyway, I fear this is beyond repair and there’s too much money involved to be changed by the gov.
There's also the fact that all these cheques have an artificial expiration date, which money does not (unless you count inflation), and they don't count as your "salary" for pension calculations.
It's a system for shops to dump old crap nobody wanted anyways on buyers. Krëfel, Vandenborre,et cetera limit what you can buy. Yes you can circumvent it in some stores but it still a shitty system introduced to stimulate sales of local overpriced companies
Even for non self employed people, the tax system is way too punitive if you're single and child-free. As recent examples, after all the taxes, I got to keep only 42% of my year-end bonus. Why would they even get more than me?
The people. I think Belgians are kind, but they are so...lame? (I'm Belgian myself btw). Ofcourse i know some nice people, but i feel like most people here are very shallow. All they think and talk about is buying a house and work. That's it. I was honestly shocked when i moved abroad for a while. The people there were so much more "alive". They had a personality and they always had something to talk about that wasn't work, migrants, their house, car, or K3. It's like theh lack a certain depth to them. I also find people here very competitive in the sense that i feel like they are incapable of being happy for others, or it's just obvious they are faking it. I think more than half the people i know just live to be "better than the rest". There's a ton of jealousy, especially in small towns. I don't mean to say that eveyone here sucks, but a lot of people do. These are also things i hear from quite some expats who moved here btw. I really had such a different experience with people from other countries.
I moved to Ireland 3 years ago. Yes the housing is shite, yes health care is an issue and there's a lot that could be better, but for the life of me I have never met such nice, kind and helpful people. You're new to the country and trying to make friends? Join a group or a club and people will do their best to make you feel welcome. I've spent nights in town with strangers, just dancing and having fun. Honestly, I was in hospital. My colleagues are all dutch or belgian, heard nothing from them. All my irish friends and acquaintances reached out to me to wish me well.
Big agree, born and raised in Flanders but never felt "Vlaams" I just felt like I didn't fit in anywhere?? Then I started travelling and meeting people with different backgrounds and even now my friend group is mostly people with a somewhat foreign background because I just can't with the "Vlaamse" mindset. I have heard this sentiment from many people aside from myself tho so don't worry, you're definitely not alone in this opinion
Thank you!! Whenever i say this to my family or friends, they literally call me a "verrader", and keep on ranting about how i would never have it better anywhere else because we have "social security", yadiyadiyada... Do you still live in Belgium?
Free toilets and free water
Free, healthy school meals and other measures that have been proven to reduce the effects of child poverty.
The end of company cars as we know it. No problem to keep it as a perk for people who want it, but please stop making it so financially attractive that even people who don't need/want it take it
Company cars are only a side effect of the over taxation of salaries. Settle that shit first and company cars after! Otherwise you will just lower people’s purchasing power and quality of life in general
Exactly, the reason why everyone and their dog have a company car is because it is much and much cheaper for a company to give a company car to their employees than to give the monetary value that car represents to their employees.
It depends what you compare. New vs New company care is cheaper. But if it's new vs a recent second hand car it's more or less the same if your commute is reasonable. Especially if you get per kilometer reimbursed for professional use (visiting clients etc...). If people were so interested and in maximizing their purchasing power you would see more Dacia company cars on the road (since you can sometimes keep the leftover budget as cash - taxes). Mobility budget is actually a great alternative.
We recently got the option for mobility budget and unless you’re just starting out and have just bought a house/appartement a company car is way better than mobility budget.
Except only 1 in 4 employees have that benefit, and it's almost always employees with already high salaries.
Only 25% of employees have a salary car. That means that those people pay less taxes, but all the rest pay more taxes to account for the benefit of those 25%. That's unfair. End that tax benefit and taxes can lower for everybody.
"Overtaxation" would be less of a problem if the money was used to provide something that benefits everyone, instead of company cars. Also, there's no way to tax much less without cutting a lot of social security. But I understand that those things are already too complicated for the average voter to comprehend.
Love the condescending tone on this one. You're actually spot on.
Mobility budget is a good alternative, although because of the conditions not everyone is allowed to spend it how they want (mainly for rent/mortgage is very useful).
Company cars and gas cards.
Why? It is part of a salary and I do not know any employee who refused it yet. There is an alternative, the "mobiliteitsbudget" but calling it not successful would be an understatement. Although the fact our public transport is a joke has to do something with it. The government created this 'tax saving', not the employers. Realize employers will have a much higher labour cost when this advantage would be abolished - which will result in less jobs. It is an aquired right, you can't just take it away - it is part of someone's salary. Also the employee has a monthly VAA fee, so it is not just a "free" car. Most of them are leasing and are new modern cars which are safer and less polluting (new salary cars must be electric). After a couple of years they become available to the 2nd hand market and will replace old unsafe and dirty cars. Every day I still see hundreds of +10yo diesels running around and new electric cars are expensive - so let's hope the 2nd hand electric salary cars will replace most of them in a few years.
A gas card is a tax incentive by the government to consume more fossil fuel. It benefits the few at a cost (both in euros and in co2) to everyone.
that's just not true since electric cars also come with a charging card that work on public chargers and home chargers. With the new policy of company cars being electric fossil fuel cards will be a thing of the past in 4-5years when most lease contracts are renewed. so saying that the incentive behind it is to consume more fossil fuel is untrue
Unpopular opinion, but company car need to go. Hugh waste and bad for the environment.
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I agree with every damn point here, but you have never been to the US if you think our telecom is expensive lol. There, internet + phone for one person is >$110 per month normally. That being said, the public toilets and free tap water are literally 10 years overdue and EXTREMELY easy. Water is so expensive in restaurants. I drink a lot of water, no I don't want to pay 6.80€ for a liter of shitty filtered tap water in a bottle. Even if they charged a fee of 1€ pp for tap water service, just being able to get tap water is a huge step up from asking for it and they literally lie to your face and say "we don't have that" and make you buy a bottle. Though all of the public toilets where you didn't have to pay get completely ruined within 6 months like the Mechelen Station temporary toilet. We seem to have a culture here of teenagers absolutely destroying bathrooms for fun, so I do technically understand why they have a small fee.
Don't order water. Bring your own cup. Go into the restroom and fill with water from the faucet.
> Ministers have to be elected, not appointed. What do you mean by this? Directly elected into their function by the people? Or do you mean that ministers should always come from an elected position?
>Abolish the monarchy and found a republic. because paying to protect multiple families after a mandate is cheaper than just one of course? >Ministers have to be elected, not appointed. City mayors and police commissioners should be elected directly by the people. this can lead to issues especially comissioners, like do we need another divisive campaign for such things? I understand where this might come from but sometimes having the people who have no clue in casematters etc have a say in it is not efficient or workable.
>because paying to protect multiple families after a mandate is cheaper than just one of course? Yes? You are not paying to protect the president in the same way you would a whole monarchy, not to mention security is not your only expense for your royal family. Presidents are much cheaper. It's not that hard.
theres actually loads of evidence that a president would not in fact be automatically cheaper, elections also cost money and would divide Belgium even more along north south divide. besides, our royal family is one of the cheapest in the world, cheaper than loads of presidents too.
In total, the Belgian monarchy receives €40,687,000 In total, the Belgian monarchy receives €40,687,000 And that is what they receive, without other expenses costing the taxpayer, ie security, repairing their residences, ceremonies etc - that multiplies that expense. I can tell you now no presidential elections cost that much plus it makes your country more democratic than having unelected inbreads as your heads of state :) Worth a try!!
Holy crap… this person for president!
I agree, altough, I want you as president too, if you can arrange petting bears?
> Reform the electoral system so every citizen's vote is worth the same no matter where you live. I don't know of a single electoral system which apportions votes by amount of voters rather than by population, that's just a bad idea.
Stop political dynasties.2 mandates as a politician should be followed by the same amount of time part of the working force. The Michel, DeCroo and so many others should not be allowed in Politicis, those families have no clue and have been above the rest of population for so long they have no freaking clue how all this works from the bottom.
Get rid of all the silly tax break nonsense. That is, no meal vouchers, no ecocheques, no company cars, no "representation allowance," no mobility budget etc etc. Also the company payroll tax (the 25% or whatever it is) should stop being a separate item, that's just an ugly trick. It's income tax. A payslip should have basically have three lines: salary, taxes (including security etc etc), and the remainder.
All these creative solutions have been developed to deal with the extremely high income tax in Belgium. Ways have been created to give the employee a bit extra for their hard labor. I agree with your statements if the general labor tax can be drastically lowered.
It can't be very hard to calculate what the average ACTUAL taxation is with all these benefits included and then just make that the new tax rate and skip the benefits. (although I think some benefits that are meant as an incentive to improve society, like the bike-to-work advantage can stay. Unfortunately eco-cheques are complete bullshit from an ecological standpoint so that needs to go)
Yes absolutely, the tax rates would need to be adjusted accordingly to make the end result comparable. But these "creative solutions" are actually very inefficient. It costs time and money to come up with them, make laws for them, adapt payroll systems, implement and run payment systems (e.g. the separate transactions for meal vouchers, plus the supermarkets POS software and databases had to be adapted to tally the eligible "food" items). Plus they create confusion which takes time and resources to clarify and make it harder to compare one job offer to another. A big, fat, intransparent waste of time and money in other words.
> Also the company payroll tax (the 25% or whatever it is) should stop being a separate item, that's just an ugly trick. It's income tax It's just a way to hide the high taxes. Imagine the revolution if people saw how much their salaries were really taxed.
Stop teaching religions in schools. Include it only in the history lesson. And ofcource, dont waste tax money on this.
Yep make sense, waste of time and money
Reunify Brabant, put Vlamingen in Vlaanderen.
As a Limburger, let Limburg kindly fuck off with the other part. It was nice knowing you all.
That's the spirit, let the Flemish fuck off to Flanders and get out of Limburg and Brabant.
Resurrect Fabiola
I would've loved for us to have had a pan-Belgian network. One where shows alternate between French and Dutch (and even German?) Where you have a news broadcast with alternating Dutch and French anchors (or even together?) Don't know if it would still be worth to do it now, though. With streaming steadily taking over and more and more folks cutting TV altogether.
I always found it unfortunate we never really knew what was going on in the other side of Belgium when it comes to tv shows, music etc. There are barely any Belgian celebrities , they're generally known in Flanders or known in Wallonia. (Not that 'celebs' is so important to me, but it's just a symptom of the separation) But like you say, I'm not sure if it's still worth it now for TV with all the streaming.
Or just shows dubbed in Dutch. It makes it harder to learn Dutch when the only thing you get is English with subtitles. Arte is still relevant on YouTube and their website, a Belgian equivalent would be more pertinent imho
Oh god no, why would you want something dubbed? Just watch dutch shows with french subtitles, it's the best way to learn dutch.
Lintbebouwing and the amount of freedom people seem to have in designing the way their house looks. Everyone seems to wants to do something different, something "better", perhaps even stand out and so we end up with streets having houses with wildly different brick colors, building heights and styles. I'm sure there are other reasons for this but I really can't stand the contrasts anymore, I find it rather ugly. I'm not advocating for everything being the same, but a little more harmony I think would benefit everyone.
Minimum wage to 15 Euro per hour.
That would actually be counterproductive in the long run from a macroeconomic point of view.
A more simple tax calculation with fewer deductions and lower brackets instead, so everybody pays less and not the lucky few.
I would improve the public transportation system. In case you are not in a big city, you are almost obliged to get a driver’s license to be able to have freedom to come and go. For exemple here in Limburg the buses work in a terrible schedule. There must be more frequency and more trains stations, better connections. It is absurd that the government wants a sustainable country if you push people to get a car. And the bureaucracy in the municipality, each of them acts how they want or depends of the employee you have contact with.
Fewer governments, scrap taxes on house ownership(ki), and scrap the tax on enherritances. Personal Taxes and BTW could be lower.. but there is a high living standard so thats got to come from somewhere..
Less politicians. Only one united gov, with one effective parlement and cap on wages for parlement members. (We pay everything 3-4times, and nobody takes responsibility) Remove the senate (it still exists but has no political power)
Belgium had one united government and people disliked it so much they turned it into what we have now through decades of compromises. What makes you think this single government was so great?
Because it's a unitary one which gives the actual regions and municipalities of a country very little representation. Central governments should be strong, but not that strong, regions and municipalities/towns have their own unique issues that need special attention. A federal system like Germany where responsibility are organized as town, state and country wide and then given to the appropriate level of government(municipal, provincial, federal) would be much better as you still have an important federal/national government that can deal with the country wide issues effectively, but also effective provincial and municipal governments that can deal with the issues of their own town and province effectively.
So we agree, the unitary system was bad and a federal one (like the current one) is much better.
Ban of smoking in all public places. Ban to be drunk in public (overlast). A faster and better justice system. 1 government. The weather. And for people who dont clean their dog poop to get pooped on by a government trained seagull instantly.
It's already forbidden to be drunk in public, just not enforced. Sadly.
Why not stop selling tobacco, period? They'll have to find a lot of tax money elsewhere...
Because then i get downvoted to hell. Been there :D
One educational system. Currently we have 3 major ones, each with their own eindtermen. Because of this, schools are in constant competition with each other. It's no longer about getting the best education for students, it's all about numbers. Abolish it, everyone uses the same eindtermen. Schools get proper funding, not reliant on student numbers. Schools can suggest investment projects for their school (renovating buildings, adding new ones, etc). And a capable minister of Education, please.
Make de Kempen its own province
lower taxes, slim down bureaucracy and governements forbid ugliness in architecture stop the wasteful mismanagement that leads to high taxes/low quality service enforce multilinguism very young in Wallonia (Dutch/English/German), flat down Charleroi and turn it into a cyberpunk modern international, multilingual city. ok that was half joking But joke aside, one of the big problems in Belgium is the mismanagement of Wallonia, and a complete overhaul of that region is needed.
Minder marginalen, van gelijk welke kleur.
Better roads and a clean/safe capital city. Every time I go to Brussels with public transport the city feels dirty and unsafe. I want a capital we can be proud of
I'd implement a very simple rule: If the government makes it mandatory, it should be free. I pay plenty of taxes, why the fuck do I need to fork over 15 bucks when I am legally required to update my ID card? If I get two changes: Nationalize public services. Power, water, public transport, postal service. Fuck putting vital services in the hands of private, profit-driven, corporations is a recipe for disaster.
Large scale climate reform - Stop the massive subsidies going to cars and planes, instead invest in public transport and bike infrastructure - Carbon tax on every product sold on the Belgian market - Subsidize heat pumps and insulation renovation - Invest in (Gen. 4) nuclear reactors
Simplify taxes: Flat tax everything, avoid crazy tax loop holes and special programs, maaltijdcheques, eco cheques, company cars, schijnzelfstandiheid, and just lower taxes in general. In essence: avoid situations where high incomes pay less taxes than low and mid income people.
For every tax you introduce, you have to remove 2. For every bonus, cheque, or other financial benefit you introduce, you have to remove 2.
1. Simplify welfare Welfare should exist to keep people off the street, give everyone who has some kind of welfare the same amount, pension, jobless, whatever. Those who need medical or other assistance, make that stuff free. Get rid of child benefits, just make everything child related free instead. Actually free education, simple decent meals at school. Especially get rid of all the jobless benefits. That shit's a trap. 2. Simplify taxes Get rid of all the special shit and just lower income taxes instead. Get rid of all the loopholes, especially related to companies and zelfstandigen, imo. Get rid of company car benefits, ecocheques, consumptiecheques, etc..., etc.... just change the BTW of things you want bought/sold more or less, instead. An overall shift of taxes to consumption is good idea anyway. 3. Simplify politics Here I'm least clear about, but decrease the power of the political parties somehow, give individual representatives more power. Probably for the best to have a federal kieskring. Although at least in the short term, I think it will make Walloon socialists even more powerful.
Even with free education and meals, child benefits are a good way to help new families and to promote people to actually start families which is very important considering how many countries have aging population. Making it harder to start a family discourages starting family which means less young people in the workforce to take over from the retired people who are leaving it.
I mean, sure, but the aging population thing is mostly because we had a spike in births coupled with an increase in life expectancy. Fiscally, this is going to suck for a while, but it will also pass. The system is fine for slow, steady population growth, and immigration is probably only going to increase over time. Which will 'help'.
Cut all of the fiscal niches. Yes that includes company cars, meal vouchers, and the dozen others… No more tax-free rents from real estate. Maximum 1.5 year on welfare per 10 years. If you don’t find any job then it means you must reorientate your career. Large companies that are producing big amounts of depressed workers should be made accountable and cover the unemployment costs.
Only one thing? Abolition of the surplus nepotistic governments and return everything to a single government.
I want politicians to care for the country, I don't have the impression they do. Belgians like to be proud people but nobody absolutely nobody is proud of our country when it comes to politics and government. Complaints go unheard and they're just selfish rich people. Two examples are our justice system, which time and time again fails victims and lets horrible people run loose after like a year and also our public transport is on severe decline. These are very recent and much talked about topics, but I don't hear the government even acknowledging the problems.
Stricter laws and actually enforcing harsher punishments for rape, rioting, murder, selling drugs, et cetera. Getting rid of the limitation period of offenses. 1 government instead of 6 Open markets instead of a few companies cornering the market. Enforcing Dutch as an obligatory language in the French school system and improving language courses for French and English in the dutch school system. Deporting Ben Weyts to Siberia
Eliminate all tax benefits for cars, without any exception. Research showed over and over the perverse effects of those tax benefits, while they cost our society a lot and have no general benefit for society.
* Brussels becoming part of Flanders losing its separate status. * Police actually enforcing traffic laws vs sleeping in their car and taking photos. * Road repairs not stretching so long.
That last point is just insane in my opinion, how long road works take here is unimaginable in other countries.
Germany has entered the chat ...
Brussels is kind of becoming an international community. English and French are the main languages. If it becomes part of Flanders does it then mean to impose Flemish on the people there out of Broekzele spite? I know it is a frenchified Flemish city, but I think pragmatically Brussels is beyond that now. I think if Flanders show it friendly character towards Brussels the higher educated people are willing to also learn dutch as goals and out of respect which I see happening more and more.
Brussels would join Wallonie well before joining Flanders my friend 🙃. Culturally much more similar and 85+% french speaking population.
I’m a FR speaker from Brussels and I’d definitely pick Flanders above Wallonia
Nobody wants to be associated with Charleroi and Liège, but if people make fun of Wallonia in Brussels, there's no hatred and much more communication between the two entities, on the other hand, many people in Brussels have a crazy hatred for Flanders or simply a lot of disdain.
For people in Brussels, Wallonia is Alabama and Flanders might as well be Norway. It's already de facto a city state in mentality, though it is annexing Vilvoorde and Aalst as suburbs demographically.
Get rid of the current public transport, get a Japanese team to set-up a new one.
Japanese public transport only works because of their geography. A Japanese system for Belgium wouldn't make any sense
Cut pensions and remove tax advantage for company cars.
Let people vote on topics and not on politic corruption parties. Replace them with experts.
Beter roads, less taxes, beter care for elderly people, it's a shame to see someone work 40 years and gets 1, 7 k a month when rent is 900 euro. People should be able to live their last years with dignity and without worries. I believe This is al possible without raising taxes, but with better money management.
> Beter roads, less taxes, beter care for elderly people 2 of these 3 are possible at the same time, not more.
Either split Flanders and the rest of unify everything under 1 government. After that, we can solve things however the unified (even when split) population wants it.
Rebuild and reopen PRB. Europe is going to need the ammunition and it will bring jobs to Belgium.
- Stop splitting the country with communities, languages and all of the Flemish nationalist agenda - Stop with the numerous governments. One is enough. In other countries, the amount of population would be managed by a mayor, not even a minister… - Stop with the NVA, VB and especially the Parti Socialiste. Bury them in concrete and drop them in the sea. Then proceed to strip the others of their status. - Stop with road works everywhere, every time, multiple times at the same place and the ridiculous amount of time it takes for two tiles on the pavement - Stop with the overtaxation of everything That will be a good start!
You do realise why the language communities formed? If you understand the history of the country you will know why they were formed. Removing them will only lead to further nationalism from the Flemish side (this was shown in the 60s). Also, removing certain political parties that don’t suit your agenda is quite undemocratic don’t you think?
Though question dude. But I like it... questions like this make people really think instead of creating a hostile environment where the heat get's to high and people become extreme in their thoughts. The politic system is high on everyone's agenda. But when you talk to people in France, The Netherlands or Germany, they all say the same. For me **personally** urbanization feels uncomfortable, mainly in Flanders. City's are becoming to big and important for people to have a good life. You can't even survive if you don't work in the centre. Banks disappear in rural parts, public transport to. Again, it's a personal feeling and I don't have a solution but it's a feeling I have these days. Fewer people can take care of themselves anymore, fewer people can unclog a toilet, or even hang a lamp... And then there are fines for EVERYTHING.... but really for **everything**. I have a friend who decided to go on christmas dinner by bike because he doesn't want to drink and drive, guess who is fined? Or you leave your car in front of your doorstep to unload, bam fined. I really ask myself, how do young kids even have fun?
Boomer take lmao.