It's legal in some EU countries as well. Companies outside collective bargaining agreements are under no obligation to provide you with any pension plan here.

> But it is not self-sustainable and not good enough for medium-and-above income earners.

It seems good enough for median earners. After taxes and health insurance, it's basically even.

Perhaps not self-sustainable you mean that unless something changes, it's not going to be able to keep paying out at current rates.

Well, I got news for you - that's what is happening for almost all government-run pension programs across the world on this model. Pay as you go does't work when you keep the same payment, and have 10x a higher ratio of recipients to payees.

This isn't unique to Social Security or the US. It's just a mathematical fact of the system.

You cannot have 99% of people contribute `x` and 1% of people receive `y`, and then switch that to 70% contribute and 30% receive, without either increasing `x` or reducing `y`.

You could have planned ahead for this long ago, and seen that the ratio was going to change and increased `x` over time accordingly or planned to reduce `y` over time accordingly. But we didn't, and mostly no one else has either.

GP was confused probably. In EU when we hear a "pension plan" we usually think "social security", since we* pay a significant part of our earnings for this, so this is something we definitely count on and, at least in theory, it should be enough for good retirement (in practice it really varies). Many countries also have mandatory private plans that companies have to pay for, but I think people* think of them as "something extra on top" instead of the main retirement source.

*Asterisk because EU is big and diverse, and I don't know every country rules.

Flanders has not been a part of the Netherlands for almost 200 years and was only ever really part of it for 15 years (It's the Dutch speaking part of Belgium).

Thank you! Learning something new every day :)

Netherlands recommends 70 euro per adult and 30 euro per child. There's probably some coordination going on between countries that they all land on roughly the same ammount of money.

They co-ordinate most things now, rightly or wrongly.

Either way these are small change, and thanks to the slow but persistent reduction, many places refuse to accept cash and/or don't even have the facilities to deal with it!

You can still get it on some DS models.

The current i5 is a 2.3 ton car with 600 horsepower. A city car.

A big city car. Interpret as you wish :)

There's a bunch of potentially unpermitted tunnels under the property. Quite the liability.

And if they were permitted you'd still have the liability. It's not like the permitting authority is gonna say "aw well we let you do it this is on us" if something happens.

"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).

How this works in the UK normally is when you're knee deep in the purchase process you have to get legal searches and a survey and the lawyers or surveyor will find the tunnels have no permissions and then you will not be able to borrow money to buy the property because no bank will lend when there is an adverse survey or there are legal questions associated.

You can get these types of things sorted (eg apply for retroactive planning permission) and the council will send a surveyor and give you an opinion but you are running the risk that they insist you either make it good (remedy anything they don't think was done right) or (worst case scenario) tell you to put it back like it was before the unpermitted work was done. This happens more often than people think.

That's why the house has been reduced in price so much - to find someone who feels like the headache is worth it. I have my doubts to be honest.

Planning permission isn't required if what is there has been established for over ten years without objection. I suspect that's the case here.

However, I think you're right that no bank will lend. They expect only a cash buyer who can "regularise" it and sell it on at considerable expense. Hence the price.

Apparently they have planning permission approved already to build houses on this land.

Next: Gluten free bread made of 100% wheat flour. Well of course there's naturally occuring gluten, but we didn't add it as a seperate ingredient.

We also have "nitrite-free" ham and bacon that have nitrites: "No nitrates or nitrites added except for naturally occurring nitrites in celery powder."

I mean there is gluten free wheat flour, which my body doesn't really respond to well either.

I disbelieve you. "Gluten-free" is a scientific term and also a marketing term, and the two terms do not mean the same thing.

For marketing and labeling purposes, if you are below a certain threshold, then your product is "free" of that ingredient. That is "gluten-free wheat".

Wheat is inherently glutinous. Without gluten it ceases to be wheat. You can ask the Catholic Church about this. We have examined the issue for 2,000 years and we are quite opinionated on what is, and is not, valid.

There is now a sub-industry where altar bread is made with very low gluten. This can be offered to celiacs and allergic people, as the Eucharist. However, some churches actually advertise as "gluten-free". This is a grave mistake on their part. There are truly "gluten-free" altar breads that are nothing but potato or rice. These can't be Eucharist. But "VLG" very-low-gluten can be marketed and sold commercially as "gluten-free". It engenders much confusion, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of hurt feelings, like the above post. Well, more than feelings apparently.

I honestly have no idea and never even thought about the Christian aspect .. I maybe I shouldn't have used flour. there is "glutenfreie Weizen Stärke" which I guess translates to "gluten free wheat starch" which is not the same as flour

Electric cars are heavier but 2 tons of batteries barely matters on a 50 ton tractor trailer combination. It'll just carry ~3-10% less load.

In other words: to carry the same amount of freight you need to do 3%-10% more trips, which means 3%-10% more tire wear, which means 3%-10% more tire dust.

I haven't done the math but i feel like a 10% increase in tire wear is probably offset by a 90% reduction in brake dust and not burning 10 000+ liters of diesel per year.

How much actual braking does a semi truck do? It's usually cruising down the highway, and they tend to use gears and jake brakes down long grades.

People have done the math for electric cars, and the elimination of micro-particulates from the exhaust and the massive reduction from brake dust significantly outweighs the increase from tires.

Also, tire micro-particulates are mostly deposited on the road rather than in the air where they are far more dangerous.

It'd be nice to see similar analysis for large trucks. I suspect the answer is the same, but it'd be nice to confirm.

~80% of semi freight loads are volume limited rather than weight limited.

>Look, I get it, many people are afraid of the societal impacts of AI, or distrust it in another way.

In the Netherlands it is not just about AI datacenters, even before the rise of AI pushback against Meta's planned datacenter made them cancel it. There has been a lot of criticism of the municipality that allowed Microsoft to expand its datacenters. The argument is that this is a small country that already has to make tradeoffs to get to its desired energy mix (wind turbines near cities on land) and then these datacenters are built that consume the power that is generated by sacrificing the little remaining open space. In the last few years there is actually a electricity shortage in some regions so "we can hook up this 200 MW datacenter but not your house" is a bad look.

Organizing can help. When you put all your VGA cables in place you realize you probably don't need 15 but the 4 best ones are fine (which you also won't use but hey progress). I'm still hoarding IDE cables but at least not a excessive ammount.