> In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
I think the defense is that it's the fault of the politicians (CDU/CSU, actually), as they are the ones allocating funds towards train infrastructure. The Deutsche Bahn is state-owned in all but name (which was one of the major fuckups of the last red-green government).
"We elected right-wing parties who are against sane wages and unions and often use/exploit immigrants to depress wages while funneling billions into companies and away from infrastructure projects. So we decided to elect an even more right-wing party to blame immigrants while doing even more funneling away. It will definitely solve all the infrastructure problems that those penniless brown people and weird speaking ones caused."
Because DB does not decide its own budget. And we're literally living in times where their employees are getting attacked and verbally abused by the passengers for the state of the train system
You're confusing economic status with cultural ideology.
If pushing ESG mandates, DEI initiatives, 'Stakeholder Capitalism' (over shareholder primacy), and top-down climate interventions isn't the platform of the modern elite Left, what is? The fact that they are wealthy hypocrites doesn't make them right-wing.
But if you prefer the term 'Technocratic Globalists,' fine. The point stands: Carney played to that room rather than the reality of the Canadian economy.
I'm sorry, but which leftist ideology promote capitalism and economic colonialism, which is 90% of what Davos elite talk about? Blair's 'third way'? I guess environmentalism pushed against climate change and sea plastics, but that's a stretch.
Stakeholder capitalism is basically saying 'we don't need to change the system to change things' or 'vote with your wallet', its keeping the status quo, _by definition_ right-wing politics.
DEI is trying to keep material conditions and systemic violence out of the discussion and individualize issues to make minorities participate/compete in the rat race, and avoid stuff like the BPP giving free meals to kids. It's like liberal feminist talking about 'empowerment' instead of 'emancipation'. It's less obviously about keeping the status quo, but it's still about keeping the system balanced, protecting capitalism. So not left wing.
> The fact that they are wealthy hypocrites doesn't make them right-wing
Wait until one of them get accused of sexual harassment/assault publicly, you'll see where those really comes from.
> People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD
That's not quit accurate.
American citizens will indeed have a very hard time to open a bank account in Switzerland. But the reason is not so much free speech than FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) [0] [1]
The requirements to host bank accounts for Americans are so onerous that banks rather forgo business with such clients than having to deal with the legal mess it incurs.
Another reason for a bank not wanting to deal with customers are if they are on a sanctions list. People winding up on such lists usually don't do so, because they said something nasty about Mr. Trump.
This, alas, may change if you look who got sanctioned in recent times just for raising the ire of the president (such as EC commissioners or ICC judges).
Any sovereign country can come up with whatever sanctions they want. The only reason the US ones have such broad reach particular in Europe is due to Europes hopeless reliance on US financial system, infrastructure and capital. Stop using eurodollar and us debt markets and sanctions would be much less impactful
> we look at Germany trains (and Switzerland trains) as always on time
When taking an international train from Germany to Switzerland, don't count on it that it will run through to the final destination.
SBB (Swiss National Railways) started to block German trains if their delay is more than 15 minutes (so, basically every DB train) and won't allow the train on their network.
This is only peripherically educational. Constantly delayed DB trains completely fouled up the scheduling on the extremely dense Swiss network. So they just won't allow it anymore.
On a sidenote: In 2024 SBB trains were 93.2% punctual. Connectivity punctuality (where you have to catch a connecting train) was 98.7%. A train is counted as punctual if the delay is less than 3 minutes (half the German figure).
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.