the rest of the fucking world uses post-tax income, because that’s how much money you can actually plan to take home. The taxes are a consideration, but if a job advertises €50k, it means the employee is taking home €50k.

Looks around confused in German

It’s an interesting overall take still! But I am wondering now how income is handled in other European countries, I actually don’t know.

Honestly I love taxes. I don’t love that billionaires don’t pay enough taxes and the unequal tax burden across different social groups but I love taxes and I love the idea of taxes. My dream would be a society where I work for basically pocket money and everything else - quality staple food and fresh food, education, healthcare, adequate housing, transportation, communication, childcare - is provided to me.

Please go on

Don’t forget the pesticides that are so fucked up that the farmers end up infertile

I can’t buy non organic bananas, I feel like I am castrating someone. But realistically probably organic also isn’t that much better.

I 100% agree with everything you said. I am very much pro legalisation of weed and decriminalization of all drugs. Unless you are cooking up tons and tons of fentanyl you shouldn’t be in jail.

To me, education and awareness includes not equating marijuana and oregano.

I am making the argument for both, that is exactly the point I am making. I see too many people demonising alcohol and calling marijuana not dangerous in the same sentence, comparing it to oregano. Both substances are dangerous. And of course marijuana is addictive, what are you talking about? You can absolutely become both physically and mentally addicted to it. You can develop a tolerance, and you can trigger psychosis in predisposed younger people. I’ve seen all three cases in university and it wasn’t pretty.

Again, I am not advocating for the criminalisation of possession or consumption. I am only advocating for not downplaying that mj is a drug. Right now, the narrative parallels that “a glass of wine or two won’t hurt”, “let’s have a beer with friends”, “let’s get the champagne to celebrate”, “alcohol is fine at social events” that we used to hear some decades ago about alcohol. It didn’t end well. Why are we doing this again with weed now?

While I absolutely don’t agree with atzanteol, this statement is also utterly ridiculous. You own both marijuana and oregano with the intention of consumption. One of them is addictive, can cause psychosis, and can destroy lives.

All drugs should be decriminalized. So should weed. Maybe it even should be legal. But let’s try to not repeat the same mistakes we did with alcohol. Nowadays I think most people would agree that alcohol can be consumed in moderation, but its overall effect on public health is devastating and alcoholism is a real problem that affects way too many people, also people you wouldn’t think of. Science revised its guidelines of claiming a little drink a day is fine or even healthy to the best choice is no drink at all.

Its dangers were downplayed for so, so long. And now that we are legalizing weed I see the exact same sentiments about it that alcohol used to have. Marijuana is not an innocent, harmless substance. It can easily be abused and cause damage to individual lives, families, and friends.