? “Christmas” is used as an adjective all the time.
“The Christmas Nashville Bombing” makes it sound like they bomb Nashville every Christmas. Somehow, “Nashville Christmas Bombing” doesn’t make it sound like they bomb somewhere every Christmas and Nashville won this year’s draw. Not really sure why, though.
3 Likes
It is a part of a compound noun that looks like an adjective and is often used in that way, but is not really an adjective. Most people would consider phrases like “That is a really Christmas ornament” or “My tree is more Christmas than your tree” as ungrammatical.
In English we’d solve this by saying that the ornament or tree are “Christmasy”.
1 Like
I dunno if Weinachtenlich would be acceptable, but it’s fun to say.
I know. It‘s because adding -y is a productive way of turning a noun into an adjective in English.
Still the phrase is not „Nashville Christmassy bombing“, so „Christmas bombing“ is a noun + noun compound where „Christmas“ is interpreted to be an adjective.
We say „weihnachtlich“, but your version does sound more fun.
1 Like
Sorry to let you down. I know this was a fun diversion for you. It didn’t start well. We spent the first 36 hours in the mountains where it gets down to a bone-chilling 55 degrees and she never stopped whining the whole time. But also she refused to wear any extra layers I gave her - because stubborn Irish is an important part of her identity.
1 Like
Did she also give great importance to embracing the stereotypes of drunk, belligerent, and ginger?
Suzzer took care of those himself!
2 Likes
Insert Irish curse joke.
There were many jokes about the Irish, and also Germany since she’s lived there most of her adult life. And USA #143 of course. And the French because ldo.
3 Likes
Apparently in Germany if you’re 70 and made good money in your life, your health insurance premium is like $800/month? Sounds like USA Medicare is actually superior in one aspect. She said Germany privatized a lot of that stuff and the prices have skyrocketed.
She said she has nothing against Muslims but isn’t sure all the refugees are ever going to assimilate. I told her in a few generations everything always works out.
She also said Germany doesn’t have staggered tax rates - that her tax rate of 40-something % is paid on every dollar she earns. Is that correct?
Mostly it was just her making fun of all the regulations and guard rails for everything in Germany and how everyone always obeys the rules, even silly ones. She got distressed every time I crossed the double yellow line to pass - which everyone always does in Central America - although not as much in Costa Rica.
No. Their tax works the same as other progressive tax.
1 Like
This girl is an engineer and smart. Maybe 1% of western workers understand that their top tax rate is not their effective tax rate?
I even asked her that directly and she said no, it’s different in Germany. I knew it couldn’t be 44% on every euro. She makes about 100k Euros.
My cousin who is extremely smart and level-headed, same way. Although he probably makes $500k-ish, so his effective is a lot closer to his top. When his job moved everyone from CA to WY that made a huge difference in tax for him.
Almost. Regular income tax has progressive rates, but Social security „taxes“ for unemployment, pension and healthcare have fixed rates and actually cap out, which does make them regressive to a certain extent.
Edit: as your paystub does show those things but most people just see their gross income and the money that they get in their bank account, almost no one can tell you their effective tax rate.
Self-employed people and some others can have private health insurance and the prices there are indeed skyrocketing as insurance rates are supposed to „pay forward“ so your rates aren‘t too high at old age, but since that is usually investsted in securities and such, there is almost no interest on those payments, so they are rising too.
„Regular“ public health insurance is pretty fixed at around 14% of your paycheck (has been there for decades). Half of that comes out of your paycheck and half is payed by your employer on top of your taxes income.
1 Like
So if you’re 70, made decent money in your life (say 100k Euros/year at the end), and have been retired for 5 years - are you paying $800/month health insurance premium? Is it maybe because the person was self-employed?
It is possible although there are ways to switch back to public health insurance but that might not be easy.
Well at least she didn’t find someone else to hook up with while she was there for a week or two before you arrived. That was my major concern (apart from cvoid obv).