MarchHare

is it democratic for most elected governments to keep pushing for legislature again and again, waiting a bit between attempts? Repeat it ad nauseam um 'till people get bored of protesting.

Yes. This is how slavery was ended in the British empire and how the civil rights act passed in the US.

I wonder to what point some of these methods just increase housing prices.

For example, having the developer plant trees along the street means the price of the new build goes up (of course the developer will pass along costs), and existing residents get an improved neighbourhood without increased taxation. But is this not something the council should be paying for? After all the new homeowners will be paying council tax, why must the also pay a fee to join the community?

Sounds like your lot just went up ~100k for free?

Being from central Kansas, I always say I'm from the great plains. Lumping the prairie into it's own group always seemed useful to me.

It's not only foreign banks refusing American customers. American companies such as Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab and so on won't open investment accounts for Americans abroad and will freeze accounts if they discover you are abroad.

The same crowd also appear to be the ones worried about voter fraud, so they're consistency has limits.

avoiding taxes, perfectly legally

Given the undemocratic and privileged positions many enjoy in the house of lords, some could say the legality of their methods is nothing more than corruption.

My point about the US is that at least the option of good beer is available pretty much everywhere, which is a big improvement over the last few decades.

I left the US for the UK and the beer scene here leaves much to be desired. While better on average, the range of beer is limited.

The US used to be known for terrible beer (and there is plenty of that still) but there are now thousands of microbreweries producing great stuff. I hope there could be a similar awakening for bread. And cheese.

Food banks exist already, why would UBI change that.

Ireland may be where many corporations are registered but is not necessarily where the employees are located. Similar to how many companies are registered in Delaware.

Getting to use a car quickly becomes having to use a car in much of the U.S.

There is a lot of middle room between suburbia and NYC for build environments.

I love how vanguard.com will redirect to vanguard.co.uk, which will then proceed to inform that they do work with US persons.

Out of curiosity what SIPP provider do you use?

Interactive brokers are the only broker I've found to actually advertise as for expats, but the 10k min is a bit much for me.

I find myself in the odd position of hoping for republican tax reform to happen, if only for the repeal of FATCA (S. 869)

It's not a big deal if you haven't made the egregious choice of investing any extra money you may have earned, perhaps via an ETF.

Furthermore, good luck finding a place to invest in the first place. If looking for a US company, the likes of Vanguard and Charles Stanley will freeze your account if they find you reside outside the US. In the UK, I've gotten very used to seeing the text 'we are unable to open accounts for US, Cuban, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea persons'.

I make well below the standard deduction and just want to save a bit for my future. The US laws as they stand make this very difficult.

Isn't that an argument for more urbanisation and less destruction of habitat via suburban sprawl?

Whats wrong with urbanisation?

The tax cuts were sold with the phrase, "supercharge growth". So yeah, that kinda was a bit of the point.

While I do empathise that people are making a living, I look forward to the day when the black cabs are gone. The amount of pollution they put out is awful.

Which country are they leaving and where are they going?

Yeah, one and two are obviously tory/labour, after that it gets confusing.

The SNP are the third biggest UK party.

One factor nobody has mentioned yet, social stigma. Busses in the US are often associated with poor people who can't afford a car or have lost their licenses. Trams do not have the same stigma.

I grew up on a farm in Kansas outside of a town of 650 people. No minorities, 7 different christian churches.

One thing that stuck out, we had a gay tennis coach who everyone loved. Easy to hate the unknown, paint a picture of the other, hard to do when there is a friendly face as a counterpoint.

Depends on the role, for junior devs my company doesn't care if you have ever programmed before. If the person is clever, we can teach them to program. For example, the most recent hire has a masters in maths from oxford, he may have never seen Big-O, but he could certainly understand it if need be.

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

Sure but rather than directly hiring N people to run the water works and plumbing crews, the city could contract out the maintenance of those things to a private company. It would still own the pipes and be on the hook for the maintenance, but it wouldn't be directly employing the workers. If company X doesn't work out (say due to crappy service), then they could award the maintenance contract to company Y. In this model, the private company doesn't get a local monopoly on the resource, only a contract to provide the service for some limited duration (say N years).

This American Life had an example of this with Colorado Springs city services, act 3 of http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/459/w...

My understanding is the Vancouver has light regulation in some aspects, hence the term Vancouverism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouverism