LuxRosy

Rosy needs a break. Well, she has taken one, for a bit. There is SO MUCH going in Luxembourg now. So on this National Holiday   - the one after the fireworks - let's look at an economic news item while we rest our heads. Luxembourg has to pay cross-border unemployment benefits. Well really. How about that. But, they moaned so much to the EU about their "special situation" with "reliance on cross-border workers" that they got 7 years' time to get up to speed. My take on it is, the government thought, crap, now WE the public institutions need to pledge for the sins of the private sector. They are scrambling to buy time to figure out how to pay for it; likely, some kind of tax will be levied to cover the extra costs. But it also means that the ADEM will have to step up its game and maybe actually DO something... their caseload will double, from 15k job seekers to an estimated 30k. They're not able to handle the current people; poor advisor competen...

Recently the unemployment numbers came out, and the head of the job agency ADEM, (the word "aid" is in there, but the jury is out about how much aid they actually provide), Isabelle Schlesinger, was in the press crowing about how great the development in the job market is going. Yes, the absolute numbers of unemployed are going down. That is good and something to celebrate. But not the only thing to celebrate. The press writes "The decline was mostly in job-seekers under the age of 30 (down 7.5%) and the low-skilled (down 5.9%). The number of long-term unemployed also fell by 4.5%. On the other hand, the number of job hunting graduates rose by 7.5%." Rosy today will let you look a bit under the numbers here, specifically two data points that weren't fully discussed: 1. Number of educated people is INCREASING. Doesn't Luxembourg want to hire educated people? What is going on here? Sure, the absolute number of educated people (Bacelor and up, wh...

I haven't done all the research on this, so there is probably more to the backstory than what I can convey here. But, like many things in Luxembourg, there isn't much actual written information that is available, and likely to be true, or to depict the whole situation. There's something about complete disclosure that people who have something to lose, that, when they want to keep their power, don't always reveal. But more on that in another post. Today it's about the the automobile registration plates, license plates, name number plates, you understand. In Luxembourg, they follow the EU-norm with the blue field with stars to the left and the number to the right on a bright yellow field. Standard plates have two letters and four digits. But have you seen plates with just numbers, maybe four, or five? What's up with that? Well, it was that the history, again, here as I have heard, that when Luxembourg started to have registration plates, they just started ...

The Luxembourg tourism board recently put out a promotional video as a part of the Nation Branding campaign that was kicked off in 2017. Under the motto Inspiring Luxembourg, and Let's Make it Happen, well, are these guys really trying to fluff up things and blow a lot of hot air into this cold mucky place. Like a Potemkin village, or the Wizard of Oz, there is a lot of much ado about nothing to this short film. Rumor has it, it cost about half a million Euros. One report describes it as "it showcases the country in a poetic and offbeat way, and without ever mentioning the name, encouraging the viewer to allow his/her imagination to take flight." Well, imagination certainly takes flight, if you drink enough crémant.  The comments on FaceBook are all positive, with adoration about our beautiful Luxembourg, and many thumbs-up and hearts. Uh, yeah. This whole thing is just so... wrong, where do you start? Nothing about it is true. Now, if you take it as an aspiration...

Today is a bit of light in this grey country. And not just reflections from the little bit of snow on the ground. I was about to start my day and take care of things. I take the bus every so often, but mostly I drive. But today I wanted to take the bus. I don't have a monthly pass, so I buy the tickets from the M-Ticket app and use those. It's actually a fairly good system. And, it works! You open the M-Ticket app, the little orange icon, and you can chose to buy a single ticket, a day ticket, or a booklet for 16€. You get 10 single tickets, so that is only 1,60€, and you get 5 day tickets, so that is 3,20€ per ticket. That is a savings on each, plus, you have a stock of tickets on hand. To use them, you just open the app, select a ticket, and validate it. Voila! The ticket shows up as validated and shows the time valid from to when. And even better, the payment system is really smooth and easy! You set up Digicash on your phone, which of course is connected to your bank ...

Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA died this week. And in this, he is an unlikely source to describe how Luxembourg works. And what is this, you may ask? Lies. It's all based on lies. Specifically in this case, tax avoidance, or, as they call it here, "tax optimization".  That's a fancy way to say "you can avoid paying taxes due to your country of origin or to where you make your money, by claiming it here  and paying less tax."  There are different ways to express this, but you get my drift. One great example of this is IKEA. Luxembourg and IKEA go hand in hand like vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. IKEA makes a lot of money around the world, plays on its folksy Swedish roots, and Luxembourg helps it to save taxes in the places where it actually records its revenues. It's all very quiet and discreet; you would likely not associate IKEA and Luxembourg, because heck, the Swedish flag is blue and yellow and it's all sleek Scandinavian des...