Do you think things were better before (circa the turn of the millennia)?

[Blade of Grass]

27 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

Before tourism, VAT was 27%

now, it's still 27%, so yeah not really a good thing.

Honestly, I am not sure what you mean by this.

What's the connect that you see between VAT and tourism, and why does VAT staying at 27% mean tourism is bad? 

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Well, vacation outside your own country is dumb, and for the rest (besides biz travel) are one time only travel (think immigration).

Why would i not fly? what's the point

Why is vacationing outside your own country dumb?

That sounds like a very small-minded world-view, there are so many great things that you can experience that exist in a place that is not your own country. History, culture, geography, food, architecture, etc are all things you can't really appreciate or properly experience just by staying in your native country. 

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That's not wrong it got optimized better, hell with my 2mbps i can stream (only youtube though) hd videos.

But i know that a decade ago i had dial up, that's sure

True, but a lot of those optimizations came out about a decade ago. Progressive page loading, async javascript, etc. 

[Lord Szechenyi]

3 minutes ago, Blade of Grass said:

Honestly, I am not sure what you mean by this.

What's the connect that you see between VAT and tourism, and why does VAT staying at 27% mean tourism is bad? 

Why is vacationing outside your own country dumb?

That sounds like a very small-minded world-view, there are so many great things that you can experience that exist in a place that is not your own country. History, culture, geography, food, architecture, etc are all things you can't really appreciate or properly experience just by staying in your native country. 

True, but a lot of those optimizations came out about a decade ago. Progressive page loading, async javascript, etc. 

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Tourism is a great economic driver, Tourism in Hungary accounts for about 10% of GDP and employment in 2017

so if the GDP is higher shouldn't taxes go lower?

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History, culture, geography, food, architecture

History, culture, geography and architecture can be faithfully learned and understood with wikipedia (or any trustworthy encyclopedia).

Food, well that's somewhat right, but you can get any asian food, indian food, and other dumb stuff right around the corner.

[Blade of Grass]

12 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

so if the GDP is higher shouldn't taxes go lower?

No, that's far too simplistic of a model for how political economy works. Tax policy is decided (simplistically) by balancing the needs of the government's budget, the amount of tax revenue they're currently taking in, and the amount of debt they can easily issue. But honestly, it's more complicated than this and probably beyond the scope of this conversation. 

But basically, if an industry is growing and employs double-digits of your labour market, it likely is beneficial to your economy. 

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History, culture, geography and architecture can be faithfully learned and understood with wikipedia (or any trustworthy encyclopedia).

Food, well that's somewhat right, but you can get any asian food, indian food, and other dumb stuff right around the corner.

Maybe understood! Sure, but experiencing it yourself is just an entirely different thing and the appreciation you get for it will likely be different. 

I hope you get to do it at some point. 

[Lord Szechenyi]

1 hour ago, Blade of Grass said:

No, that's far too simplistic of a model for how political economy works. Tax policy is decided (simplistically) by balancing the needs of the government's budget, the amount of tax revenue they're currently taking in, and the amount of debt they can easily issue. But honestly, it's more complicated than this and probably beyond the scope of this conversation. 

But basically, if an industry is growing and employs double-digits of your labour market, it likely is beneficial to your economy. 

Ok, i may be generalizing the money situation a bit too much, but no taxes have gone down, effectively making the country richer, and slightly more expensive to foreigners, but MUCH more expensive for us.

To give you an idea, our purchasing power is around a third of the Euro's.

As in, most euro countries the lowest salary is around 1000 Euros, and in Hungary it's about 100000Huf

However in the past 3-4 years (around the first brexit vote) it became even worse, before the eur/huf exchange rate was around 295-310, then it became 320-340.

(and with covid it peaks at 350-380 but i wont mention that) yet salaries have NOT increased, but prices did.

To give you an idea, a can of coke is about 1 euro is most western countries, here its now around 250Huf, which if you compare is like a western person buying 3 cans!

Or with tech, if i buy something at 300000Huf, although with exchange rate its slightly less than 1000 Euros it's if i was spending 3000!

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Sure, but experiencing it yourself is just an entirely different thing and the appreciation you get for it will likely be different. 

I hope you get to do it at some point. 

I have gone to a few countries, and i can tell you i had Z-E-R-O appreciation for it, i see no reason why anyone would go to a country to "experience" it other than maybe going to holland to smoke weed legally.

I can guarantee you most people don't even understand their own country, which makes them do very biased decisions regarding their own country (i'd say mainly politics) and should focus on it.

Travel to another city/state within your country before even thinking going anywhere else outside.

The only exception for this would be family.