Saving 1% of your home value for repairs is actually the guideline set by the Dutch government. For HOAs there is even a legal mandate that they must set aside 0.5% of the rebuild value every year, but most decide on 1% to 2%.

You need impeccable timing if you want a baby. Make sure grandma falls down the stairs first otherwise the baby will be exiled to Liechtenstein.

> Kosovo

Technically a muslim majority country but likely not what OP ment.

> migrate to an Islamic country and bring over Christianity there, you would not be welcomed at all

That sounds a lot like what us Europeans did in North Africa not that long ago. We were indeed not welcomed.

Is the purpose of the comparison to show that it can indeed be a bad thing (i.e. you're simply agreeing with the parent), or implying that Europeans should be subject to the same treatment as punishment?

Will they use FIFO or LIFO to enforce the 10M?

And will those people be exiled or taken out to the back?

Based on the general behavior of humanity: probably a priority queue/heap.

A yes, the wise Europeans like the Dutch who have homes in Amsterdam that are sinking into the ground due to rotting wooden beams sinking in swamp ground and homes in Groningen with cracks all over due to the earthquakes that came with pumping gas out of the ground.

Or the dozens of structures in Italy that came crashing down, like the various bridges over the past twenty years (250 bridge collapse events in Italy between January 2000 and July 2025).

Yes us Europeans are indeed superior and we never pick the wrong building material ever.

Houses change over time. A house could have been build in 1920 without a toilet or central heating. Then over time it got a fireplace on the second floor, an indoor toilet, indoor bathroom, then central heating with gas, extra insulation, a couple decades later double paned windows, hybrid heating with a heat pump, then full electric heating, underfloor heating, solar panels, home battery.

Houses change a lot over time, it is nice to be adaptable and not need to carve out stone and concrete every time you add a feature to a home.

The most beautiful homes I have been inside in Europe were wooden cabins in Sweden. The exposed wood ceiling beams, the unpainted wooden panels everywhere, the little details. I never had that with stone or brick buildings. Mainly because they got plastered and painted over, you almost never see the raw materials on the inside.

What you call "carving out" concrete or brick is not a big deal. You hire workers that will do it, period.

I am from The Netherlands. Buildings from 19th century and before are incredibly rare. Maybe 1% of the total housing stock. Thanks to bombings in WWII and a rapidly growing population since.

In my current Spanish town I don't know any building older than 1900. Rapid expansion of coastal towns due to European mobility caused that.

It's not really a European vs American divide, it is more country specific than that.

Edit: Ireland apparently has one of the youngest building age in Europe so I guess a 17th century pub is very rare and special there too.

I'm from Italy and buildings from the 19th century are pretty common at the center of the cities. They were rich people's residences and have massively thick walls that make them very comfortable to live in, both because of thermal mass and acoustic isolation. They're mostly used for commercial purpose now, as they're in high demand as office space for lawyers, medical practices. Only rich people can afford living there (in the upper floors).

That means everything in your house is literally set in stone. Sometimes people want to redecorate, have plumbing in a different location or a TV on a different wall.

Sometimes people want stupid things. It's not difficult to hire masons that will redo internal walls. It's just a bit more expensive.

My father grew up in a home without central heating or an indoor toilet. Last time that home was listed on the market it had underfloor heating, two bathrooms, triple paned glass, an extension on the roof and various other modern amenities. Times change, houses should too. We are not longer pooping in an outhouse anymore.

I guess at one point people would wonder why you would want to poop inside the home, and call it "sometimes people want stupid things".