4 ms·

I'm sure I can find counter examples. Off the top of my head, aerosol deodorant is 1/3 in the UK vs US. Generic medicines, e.g. Aspirin, Paracetamol, or Ibuprof

I'm sure I can find counter examples. Off the top of my head, aerosol deodorant is 1/3 in the UK vs US. Generic medicines, e.g. Aspirin, Paracetamol, or Ibuprofen are cheaper. Cheese. Basic shit. Seems like a bit of a straw-man argument anyway. Businesses don't usually pay consumer-oriented taxes like VAT (UK), or Mehrwertsteuer (DE). So which taxes are we talking about exactly? And importing stuff isn't too hard. If it was a truly Dutch issue, you'd set up the import business in another EU country, and then ship it to the Netherlands once it's inside the Union.

owenversteeg 8y ago
I just checked and it appears Ibuprofen/Paracetamol are roughly 1 cent per pill in reasonable quantities for both sides of the pond. My quick Googling showed Amazon had them for slightly cheaper than British supermarkets in fact. After checking Walmart vs British supermarkets for decent quality cheese (and I'm fairly selective about my cheddar) I found the prices to be roughly equivalent. Prices for edible cheddar are far higher here in the Netherlands, by the way. I'll give you aerosol deodorant, but I think that comes down to a preference for stick deodorant in America - which costs approximately as much as British aerosol deodorant. That's one product; I named ten, and I can provide plenty more. The fundamental problem of not having access to many products for a reasonable price is a big one, and unfortunately I think Europeans just accept it. Look, I'm pro EU, and I'm not protesting the taxes we pay in the Netherlands. I think they go to a good cause, and I don't think high taxes make it impossible to start a business. But onerous regulations do. Shit like this just adds to the pile of things that a startup has to deal with, and eventually it's too much. I'm not saying that higher regulations are just a Dutch issue, by the way. I think it's a general European issue. I just picked the Netherlands because I live here and have personal experience with startups here (as well as in Germany.) I generally like the GDPR, but many details of it were moronic. I've visited hundreds of sites where you have to individually deselect each of hundreds of trackers. Is that legal? Nobody knows! The GDPR is a nightmare for startups: you've got tens of contradictory blog posts from legal experts saying different things, 28 individual country regulators involved... Even if your startup is very privacy-friendly, you still (probably - nobody knows for sure!) have to put up one of those ugly big GDPR-walls to every EU visitor, which messes up your user experience and turns people away.

owenversteeg 8y ago

I just checked and it appears Ibuprofen/Paracetamol are roughly 1 cent per pill in reasonable quantities for both sides of the pond. My quick Googling showed Amazon had them for slightly cheaper than British supermarkets in fact. After checking Walmart vs British supermarkets for decent quality cheese (and I'm fairly selective about my cheddar) I found the prices to be roughly equivalent. Prices for edible cheddar are far higher here in the Netherlands, by the way. I'll give you aerosol deodorant, but I think that comes down to a preference for stick deodorant in America - which costs approximately as much as British aerosol deodorant. That's one product; I named ten, and I can provide plenty more. The fundamental problem of not having access to many products for a reasonable price is a big one, and unfortunately I think Europeans just accept it. Look, I'm pro EU, and I'm not protesting the taxes we pay in the Netherlands. I think they go to a good cause, and I don't think high taxes make it impossible to start a business. But onerous regulations do. Shit like this just adds to the pile of things that a startup has to deal with, and eventually it's too much. I'm not saying that higher regulations are just a Dutch issue, by the way. I think it's a general European issue. I just picked the Netherlands because I live here and have personal experience with startups here (as well as in Germany.) I generally like the GDPR, but many details of it were moronic. I've visited hundreds of sites where you have to individually deselect each of hundreds of trackers. Is that legal? Nobody knows! The GDPR is a nightmare for startups: you've got tens of contradictory blog posts from legal experts saying different things, 28 individual country regulators involved... Even if your startup is very privacy-friendly, you still (probably - nobody knows for sure!) have to put up one of those ugly big GDPR-walls to every EU visitor, which messes up your user experience and turns people away.