La Danimarca taglia l’imposta sulle vendite del 25% a causa di una “crisi di lettura” di basso livello allarmante
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/08/21/denmark-cuts-25-book-sales-tax-due-to-alarming-low-level-reading-crisis
di sparki_black
La Danimarca taglia l’imposta sulle vendite del 25% a causa di una “crisi di lettura” di basso livello allarmante
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/08/21/denmark-cuts-25-book-sales-tax-due-to-alarming-low-level-reading-crisis
di sparki_black
20 commenti
> one in four 15-year-olds struggle to understand a simple text
There’s nothing simple about a text written in Danish.
Better question is, why was there 25% tax on book sales to start with?
What a country that is trying to encourage reading and not ban books? Nice to know such foresight and positivity exist still.
It’s a positive move but won’t have much of an impact. The point is not that books are too expensive – they are too challenging. You need to read, you need to focus, you need time, that’s all asking for much more than Tiktok or Youtube Shorts…
As if that tax was the reason people weren’t buying books…….
People consume information in audiovisual format now, that’s reality. And yes, 99% of online content is trash and I cannot comprehend the amount of hours wasted worldwide on meme-videos, staged reality content, viral “challenges”, you name it.
So what you do is that you make informational content more appealing and readily available. The European Union is one of the biggest sponsors of Kurzgesagt, the educational YouTube channel. THAT is how you serve the end goal of having a better educated population.
The reading crisis is a crisis of dopamine junkies who can’t focus or engage actively with the contents of a book. When children across all socio-economic classes start failing 9th and 10th grade danish and math, there’s clearly a problem and I cannot see that’s anything other than smartphones/tablets.
As long as children have their smart phones and tablets, they will choose that any day over book.
I suspect it wasn’t the tax that was/is the problem…
It’s kinda insane they have had %25 tax on books
Books will just be 25% more expensive.
Interesting, Waterstones (who owns Foyles and Backwells as well as Waterstone branches), have had their pre-tax profits rise by 4x last year to £43m.
I wonder what we’re doing differently in the UK?
Also visited a Waterstones in Amsterdam. I found it weird everything was in English…
It’s not a reading crisis at all. It’s a Danish physical book crisis. Danes read main English literature and book sellers are often found outside Denmark so the nation can’t know what we buy. Look at bookshelves and half the books are in English and bought online. Only kids read in Danish only.
I buy books on audible.co.uk. There is no Danish audible so it’s impossible for me to buy Danish audiobooks there and they can’t know what I buy. Many use Amazon for Kindle books as it’s easier. This does cut into the physical book market – we still read though.
Repost
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/NuP3dWJWM5
Useless tax reform incoming
Young people just can’t concentrate for that amount of time on one thing. My Gen Z nieces can sit through at most a 2 hour movie before they start scrolling on their phone and reading isn’t a favorite pastime for her or her friends. And yes, dumbing down of writing styles is a big problem. Most of her friends use AI to write reports and gather information. Why read when you can ask AI to write a paper about a topic.
It is all about time. Everyone fights for your time. And with no limits to use subconscious tactics, fueled by the need, and the absolute believe that is the only way, to sell products.
Teachers, parents, us are fighting big time “time stealers” and now AI – the missing spot is that, you have to be able to form some sort of a question to that AI, and you have to have some sort of sense of validity.
I say we start with the “time stealing”. As individual you are up against a giant. And you can try to be the one that is resistant to the manipulation – but it is Capitalism and there is no stop sign in that world.
These are amateur rules. Denmark has a lot to learn.
America saw there is an alarming level of reading crisis and cut the entire education department.
As I said on r/anime_titties
“This is cronyist rent-seeking at work. In practice everyone else will have to pay more in taxes in order to protect the interests of an industry that has managed to lobby itself this privilege. This kind of decision practically encourages lobbying to gain an unfair advantage over others, and sets a nasty precedent. This should not be celebrated, unless you own shares in the publishers that benefit from this, ultimately at the taxpayer’s expense.”
Tax social media instead, rotting brains.
Won’t do a thing
The project to Italianify the world is coming along really nice. I would like to personally thank everyone involved.