throwaway190102

Nobody is banning you (or your employer) from buying additional private health insurance.

Oh??

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/health/private-health-ins...

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Uhhh, the BBC is funded by the UK Government...

Government != Society

Eh, it's still better than most places, even if we do get a little echo-chambery at times.

Tuition is only part of the costs of going to college. There's room & board, books, various course fees and charges that aren't actual tuition.

The best solution to this I've found is the moto Z series of phones. Integrated battery and an external battery that attaches to the back with magnets. I don't really use the other mods but there's a battery attached to the back of my phone all the time and a spare in my bag.

then naturally it will be relatively hard to get rich because there is so much competition.

This doesn't follow. The economy is not a zero-sum game. edit: presuming a sufficiently elastic money supply.

What are you basing this assumption on?

Check out Falkon, or Epiphany.

already appears broken.

That's a lot better than existing sat based solutions. if the throughput could get close to 4g speeds I'd see it as a legitimate contender, but there are still some applications it will never really be viable for unless you can build some sort of network of the things and circumvent most of the terrestrial network entirely until you get really close to the destination, But even with that I doubt it could get much better.

If it isn't being selected, then clearly there's insufficient competition to drive better prices and better packages.

No, not everyone is going to have your use patterns or knowledge. Most ordinary folks are just price sensitive. "What's the lowest price thing I can get that's not dialup."

I agree there need's to be more competition, but so long as there exits cheaper packages bellow the "minimum broadband" definition there will be many normal people who buy them.

Actually they have it rigged so that they get a raise every year, unless they vote not to.

Though I'm not sure how you imagine congress could give anyone else a raise, or a pension aside from government employees.

This reminds me of processing. https://processing.org/

You're right about dividends, but payroll comes out before profit calculations.

elected officials need to form an elite of superior intelligence and ability to comprehend the world

This is much less of a problem if you can hold down scope-creep on the role and responsibilities of government.

I don't think that's quite how that works.

But your point on double-taxation is certainly valid in some contexts.

You are correct. Payroll is part of expenses.

Oversimplified:

Profit = $Revenue - $Expenses

Tax = $profit % $Tax_rate

No, The only portion of revenue that goes to shareholders would be that of profits, and Netflix doesn't pay dividends so none of that money goes to shareholders. It goes to capital re-ivestment, or the workers in the form of bonuses and the like. The sharholders in a company like netflix only make money when the companies shares become more highly valued (usually from that profit re-investment).

Also implicit in this statement I think, is the assumption that shareholders don't provide as much value to the business, or perhaps the economy writ large. Arguably the investors at least initially play a more crucial role than any employee no mater how back-breaking their work because without starting capital most businesses don't even get started in the first place. But in general all aspects of the business contribute to success, Shareholders, employees, and executive. I don't think moralizing one class over another is useful to this sort of conversation.

Individual workers are allowed to do this. In the form of deductions for various types of expenses such as medical and various other deductions.

But it means something different to make a wage and to make a profit. There are definitely loopholes to close in our busted tax system, I agree with that 100%. While we are at it we should eliminate all subsidies for various types of carved out businesses from oil to corn. But Characterizing loss calculations as a loophole I don't think is correct. If I'm not mistaken most corporate tax schemes in the rest of the world use similar concepts, it's a fairly basic accounting concept.

This is part of the basis for a recent book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Here's the article that later became the book by the same title: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

Also a relevant article by Lenore Skenazy & Jonathan Haidt with a similar thesis: https://reason.com/archives/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generatio...

people can't afford to have kids anymore.

I don't think this is the issue. It's much more a cultural thing, statistically richer countries have lower birthrates. But getting married and having kids is no longer accepted as "just what you do". Less people are getting married, that also may play a role.

I'd also imagine it's different in different areas. Might even map to incomes, or political leanings of different zip codes.