Financial management consultant, and co-founder of the 'Officenter' group, one of the major Belgian coworking groups
Hasselt
Joined January 2009
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kbats retweeted
德国 DW 电视台拍过一部关于巴黎郊区移民的纪录片。
镜头对准了生活在同一片区域的两个群体。
一边是大约七万人的法国华人。
在巴黎北郊的欧贝维利耶，他们建起了欧洲最大的服装批发中心。
这批人的生活方式很简单：
起早贪黑，开小作坊、看店、跑货运。
赚了钱继续投入生意，遇到难处自己想办法扛。
平时低调安静，很少向政府伸手要特殊补贴，也不上街制造混乱。
几十年下来，越来越多家庭买了房，把生意做了起来。
另一边，是同样生活在这片街区的北非移民群体。
从整体上看，他们在当地的经济融入相对滞后。
但纪录片捕捉到了一个细微却现实的心态变化：
一种把自食其力者视作威胁的情绪，正在悄悄蔓延。
按片子里的观察，
一些融入受挫的人，习惯以受害者自居，觉得社会欠自己太多。
可当他们转头看到身旁的华人时，心态变了。
他们不仅没有去学怎么做生意，反而把华人当成了竞争对手。
这种敌意到底从何而来？
最现实的冲突在于：华人的日子越过越好，受害者叙事就越难自圆其说。
大家同样是外来者，同样面对异国他乡的壁垒。
甚至华人刚来的时候连法语都不会讲，更谈不上本地人脉。
如果有人靠一天干十几个小时，能把日子一点点撑起来，
那句“我们过不好全怪外界不公”，就很难再理直气壮地说出口。
一个闷头自立的人，往往会让习惯归咎环境的人感到刺眼。
更深层的错位在于对财富的理解。
在很多索取者的认知里，财富是一块固定死的大饼。
他们看不到那些批发店是怎样一箱一箱货物搬出来的，
只觉得华人的店铺赚到了钱，就是占了自己的便宜。
再加上华人素来习惯忍让，遇到纠纷往往选择息事宁人，
这种心态上的失衡，很快就落成了现实中的治安麻烦。
抢劫、尾随、街头袭击，接二连三指向这群只想安分过日子的人。
靠双手养活自己、靠信誉积累财富，放在任何健全的社会都是最基本的尊严。
但如果一个地方习惯了把受害者身份当成通行的筹码，
那个默默把日子过好的人，
往往最先成为被针对的对象。
kbats retweeted
Inverse correlation between employee cost and productivity:
Why are Euro auto brands losing to China? Well... let's look at costs, productivity, employee output, etc. Hard to compete with this.
"Using VW’s auto plants as a proxy, labor costs, labor productivity, sick leave rates, unit costs and electricity costs in its China plants are a fraction of what they are in Europe, so no one should be surprised at the market share shifts on the right. Even the imposition of 17%-35% tariffs has done little to slow European imports of Chinese EVs."
kbats retweeted
Two new papers show that wealth taxes lead to very little out-migration by the wealthy, while increasing tax revenue.
Most think wealth taxes always make the wealthy flee , an exodus -- but there is no existing empirical evidence for such an exodus, anywhere, at any time 1/n
kbats retweeted
In het NPE wordt het voornemen de NL stroomsector in 2035 CO2-vrij te maken definitief geschrapt en ook niet vervangen door 2040 of 2050.
Hoewel een fraai persmoment, heeft voor zover mij bekend geen enkel Penta-land zich ingespannen de afgesproken 2035 ambitie te halen. (3/n)
kbats retweeted
Really great to see this: six Nobel Prize-winning economists (Duflo, Krugman, Diamond, Banerjee, Acemoglu and Stiglitz) just came out in favor of the California billionaire tax.
You don't have to be a radical leftist to see why it's a good idea. First, look at the numbers: ten years ago, the richest 0.001% of Californians were worth $700 billion. Today, that same group (about 250 people) is worth $2.3 trillion.
From 2019 to 2025, their wealth grew by $1.4 trillion. The California income tax they paid over that period was just 1.6% of that gain. A nurse or a plumber pays a higher state tax rate.
Yes, many of these people built great companies, and they've made a lot of money in the process. Good for them! The problem is that wealth on this scale stops being just money. It becomes extraordinary power.
In 2000, billionaires accounted for about 1% of all donations in federal elections. In 2024, it was 19%. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the platform you're reading this on: all owned and controlled by billionaires.
Now add AI. If you think power is concentrated now, just wait five years. It's going to get much worse.
So, what does Prop 40 actually do? It's a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of California's billionaires. That would raise about $100 billion, enough to offset the federal Medicaid cuts.
"But they'll all leave!" the critics say. Nope, they can't. The tax applies to any billionaire who lived in California on January 1, 2026, and the initiative only became public about five weeks before that.
"But it'll kill Silicon Valley!" Uh no, that won't happen either. Since the tax was announced, California's share of all new US venture capital has gone up, from about 50% to 80%. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who would be one of the biggest payers, said he would be "perfectly fine" with it and had "not even thought about it once".
Sure, some other billionaires can't stop thinking about it. Sergey Brin has already spent more than $100 million to defeat the proposal. At a holiday party in December he pulled Gavin Newson aside and said 'he could not stand the state’s proposed billionaire tax', because he thought the 5% tax would turn California into some kind of Soviet Union.
That is, of course, nonsense. This is not going to be some kind of socialist revolution. The proposal is about restoring balance to a mixed economy. You could even argue it's about saving capitalism itself from oligarchs like Sergey Brin. I think that's exactly why Nobel Prize-winning economists are coming out in favor of this tax.
If Prop 40 passes in November, it will be the first tax aimed specifically at billionaire wealth anywhere in the world. I think it could be the start of a global movement.
Anyway, read the whole letter here. It's really good 👇 gabriel-zucman.eu/files/prop…
kbats retweeted
Belgium is where Dutch people go to find Germans.
Crossing into Belgium barely feels like travelling abroad at first. The language is familiar, the brick houses are familiar, and even the weather seems to have crossed the border with you. Then you stop somewhere for a famous Belgian beer and somehow end up sitting next to the same Germans you saw in Scheveningen last summer.
The Dutch directness becomes softer. Lunch becomes something you are apparently allowed to spend time on. Beer arrives in a glass specifically designed for that beer, because serving it in the wrong one would presumably violate several Belgian principles.
Then you look around and realise you definitely aren't in the Netherlands anymore.
Belgian towns have a way of producing market squares, churches and old guild houses that seem far too impressive for the number of people walking around them. Food is taken more seriously, cafés invite you to stay, and crossing from Flanders into Wallonia can make a tiny country suddenly feel much larger.
Historically, that makes sense. These lands spent centuries being ruled, divided and fought over by larger European powers. Spanish Habsburgs, Austrians, French and Dutch all had their turn before Belgium became independent in 1830.
Our modern border is relatively young compared with how long the people on both sides have shared history, language and culture.
Maybe that's why Belgium always feels slightly strange to me. It's familiar enough that I recognise almost everything, but different enough that I never mistake it for home.
Like visiting a cousin who grew up with the same grandparents and somehow learned to cook better than you.
Then you drive home, get stuck behind a German camper on the motorway, and realise the Germans from Scheveningen have apparently been following you the entire time.
Heeft iemand een idee wat de box3 belasting in België zou opleveren als we die hier ook zouden toepassen (in vergelijking met onze (on)roerende voorheffing ?
kbats retweeted
Genormaliseerde stroomprijs in NL in de zomer. De middagdip wordt niet dieper, omdat steeds meer wordt afgeschakeld. Opmerkelijk is dat de ochtendpiek bijna is verdwenen, terwijl ook de avondpiek lager lijkt te worden.
#grafiekvandedag
kbats retweeted
NMBS en Bpost hebben samen 21.005 mensen op ZIEKTEPENSIOEN, 23 al voor hun dertigste. In totaliteit hebben 85.227 ‘ambtenaren’ een dergelijk pensioen en dit kost jaarlijks 2.540.000.000 euro. Maar het tekort zit hem bij de inkomsten zegt Van Peteghem 😡
tijd.be/politiek-economie/be…
kbats retweeted
If you were born in 1970, the S&P 500 increased almost 10-fold. If you were born in 1950, the market went nowhere
People born in the 1970s love stocks and believe that they can only go up.
People born in the 1950s hate stocks and consider them gambling and risky.
Everyone forms their own beliefs about money based on their own life experiences, not on objective truths.
kbats retweeted
The effective federal corporate income tax rate:
1950: 50%
1990: 25%
2020: 13%
Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate.
That is how we will pay for it.
kbats retweeted
Show this to your MAGA friends who try to paint a picture of a collapsing Europe.
🤖 Made with AI
kbats retweeted
51km/u rijden, 1m² terras teveel aanleggen, uw vuilniszak op de foute dag buitenzetten,...
U en ik worden voor het minste beboet
Maar iemand die door haar onbekwaamheid en dogmatisme onze energiebevoorrading volledig om zeep geholpen heeft, geraakt daar zomaar mee weg.
Politici klagen vaak dat ze een moeilijke job hebben en steeds maar kritiek krijgen : wel, volgens mij nog lang niet genoeg.
kbats retweeted
class war, capital wining, in one picture.
A smaller piece of every US Dollar earned in the economy is going to workers:
The proportion of wages and salaries in US gross domestic income (GDI) is down to ~43%, near the lowest since records began in 1929.
Gross domestic income measures the total income earned across the economy, including wages, corporate profits, and investment income.
This metric has been in a long-term decline since peaking at ~52% in the 1940s.
By comparison, between the 1940s and the 1960s, this percentage never fell below 48%.
In other words, a larger proportion of economic income is now flowing to corporate profits and investment income, rather than pay workers.
The gap between corporate profits and labor income keeps widening.
kbats retweeted
Why is AC so rare in much of Europe? Well, until recently it simply wasn't hot enough to need it. Here is the average number of days above 30C (86F) for major cities over time:
kbats retweeted
We slepen wat af met goederen. Ook voor u zijn thans heel wat transporteurs in de weer.
Opvallend de grote rol van de binnenvaart; ook voor u?
Van de zeevaart is ca. 40% olie/kolen, waarvan groot deel voor DE/BE.
#grafiekvandedag
kbats retweeted
Idem Brussel. Jaren geleden bezocht ik een huis in Laken. De verkopers zeiden in hun pitch: hier in de wijk wonen veel politici dus er vloeien veel middelen naar deze buurt
Ik was gedegouteerd
Het cliëntelisme in dit land tart de verbeelding 😞
