RE: ❌ A REALLY LONG RANT ON THE WATER SHORTAGE IN CAPE TOWN ❌
From a European or since that's quite diverse still, Dutch standpoint, this baffles me. We live in opposite worlds it seems.
I pay a lot of taxes, yes, but I get in return so much: no bills wen going to the doctor, clean (even no Chlorine like in the US) water which comes out of the tap without limit, the best roads (even if I cross the border to Belgium I notice how awful their roads are), sick leave (first two weeks no questions asked, salary continues for 2 years while being sick, after that you'll get government pay), minimum 5 paid weeks to go on holiday or whatever (this is law), and I don't even know what else, oh right, free education. That's a welfare state that costs but gives back a lot as well.
We've been privatizing a lot in the pas 1-2 decennia, like railways, post delivery, electricity and even parts of our healthcare, but it doesn't work as well as it should in theory. Where 'the market' should have made these things cheaper for the consumer, it became more expensive. Now Dutch people are calling for more government involvement again. Seems like something like that is unthinkable for the average person living in South-Africa.
I often think 'should we go live somewhere else?' (health wise a few degrees warmer on average would be ideal for me!), but we often realize there's no countries where we could live care-free like we do here - no worries, a phone number for every problem you have.
(And yes, when we wanted to go out of the country for 9 months I noticed how hard that was - an extremely well-organized country means there's a lot of rules here that make it hard for you to just pack your backs and leave without writing a lot of organisations to 'arrange your affairs'. A nation full of rules has it's down-side as well - but I haven't seen a perfect system exist anywhere in the world, yet.)
we do indeed live in opposite worlds. When we visit Europe we are always so amazed at how everything works so well. We can't take the trains here, it is too dangerous.
See, one of the differences is the amount of people who are working and paying tax vs the amount of people living off the welfare. here, it is only 3% of the country who is paying taxes - i am sure these stats are very different the Netherlands. This is making our economy fall apart. What little money there is being made is being appropriated to feeding and housing people, instead of back into our country and different economies. Of course I have a heart and hate to see everyone living in such poverty, it's absolutely heart-breaking. I really feel that people who are born in to this welfare state get used to the hand outs and would rather live below the poverty line with everything free.
Then, there are also those who cannot get further in life due to the welfare system; growing up poor, going to poor schools etc is not going to get you far in life - so even if you wanted to rise up, I would think it very difficult to do so.
I am not quite sure what the answer is, but the government here is so greedy and corrupt that I am sure most of our taxes go to houses, cars and Gucci suits for our Ministers. This is why I suggest the tax revolt. So money generated in industries can be pumped back into those industries, not into Nkandla or other such nonsense!