Bankrupt is a politically loaded term, but they have very high debt and taxes, political gridlock (it is very divided among French and Flemish linguistic lines, plus all the other traditional left/right polarization), and it is all but impossible to make reforms. IIRC there was no sitting government for 500 days at some point. It's also got all the classic problems of an aging population.

Belgium is a curious country that was formed via historical quirks around religion (many Flemish/Dutch speaking catholics not wanting to be part of protestant Netherlands, but that is a gross oversimplification and the history is very complex - read up on wikipedia if curious). Historically the Flemish were the poorer part of the country, but after deindustrialization the story flipped as most of the industry was in the French parts. The result is bitterness that holds the whole country back.

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thrownthatway 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Good job.

Now detail three strengths Belgium posses.

If you hyper focus on the problems, you’ll be completely oblivious to the solutions.

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hylaride 4 hours ago | parent [-]

They asked if it was bankrupt, not for a feel good or balanced essay.

That being said, Belgium can be and is wonderful. I'm a geopolitical nerd and I loved touring the WW1 battlefields.

Ghent is one of my favourite mid-sized cities in the world! It's got some of the best gothic architecture around, an amazing and creative beer scene, and is not overrun with tourists the way Bruges is. I was there for a conference (I'm Canadian) with a colleague who grew up in Paris. He literally said "If I knew Belgium had this, I would have visited far more often". Belgium gets a bad rap because it got so hammered in both world wars and if you just visit Brussels you're left with the impression that it has little history outside of one preserved tourist block.

	▲	thrownthatway 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You still didn’t answers the question. I’ll get the ball rolling. Belgium is tiny about 30,000 square kilometres. But it produces a metric fuck tonne of food. You only got to come up with two more now. C’mon, you can do eeeeit!
	▲	3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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