throwaway10507

You have just confirmed my point.

There is no EU country that has a Council like that. Heads of state very often don't represent the majority of a country.

How do EU parliament elections help you choose the EU commission members?

In your average EU country the elected parliament chooses the government. Not in EU.

Credit scoring systems are private stuff used by private companies, not run by the government and not used to evaluate anything with regards to the government. There's no way an additional column in a credit scoring DB would forbid you from attending a school, moving to a city, etc.

I meant the EU people, not the citizens (which I am too). Autocorrect added the apostrophe.

Let's not forget about EU's ChatControl. They even chose a dystopian name for it and were completely fine with that...

Cmd+backtick

Well to be fair, it's pretty common in EU that you can't bankrupt your way out of taxes, mandatory insurance, fines and other government fees.

This especially bites you in the states with mandatory universal health insurance scheme. The payment is based on your income in a given month/year - e.g. 30%. If you can't pay, your problem... Then, since you're in debt, they are not paying for your treatment. And there is no way to get out-of-the-system private health insurance, it simply doesn't exist. Hospitals have to treat you but the full price of treatment is added to your debt, no discounts are possible. People from the US never realize there are dark parts of the universal healthcare systems too. At least you can bankrupt out of your hospital debt in the US.

This is the reason why people just don't start business here. As an employee you're "safe" - the employer deducts your insurance payment from your wage and that's it, you're not investing into anything, not planning any cashflow.

Confiscation of owed income tax - sure. But the earnings? That's draconian. It's not illegal to work for foreign companies, even in China.

In most of EU, the tax authority first asks you nicely to fix your mistake, and only if you don't, they confiscate the owed amount plus a small fine (given that it's your first offense and they don't see it as intentional fraud).

I used to have my life in serious disorder and they confiscated the owed tax three times from me. Never got fined more than $100, though I had to call and apologize the second and third time to have it reduced from ~$500.