as a way of redistributing money from innocent businesses
No, that's just a strawman created by left wing ideologues. In fact, what's objectionable about these kinds of so-called "health and safety laws" is that they often serve the interests of big powerful businesses and hurt the interests of most people, by increasing prices, reducing choices, and increasing barriers to entry.
Who do you think has the most to gain from making competition from private rentals illegal in Amsterdam? Condo owners who need to be "protected" from rental revenues and appreciation of their apartments? Local merchants who benefit from more tourism? Obviously not. The idea that private rentals, which exist and work all around the world, are a threat to city residents, or health or safety is ludicrous.
This law is clearly designed to protect big, soul-less, corporate-style hotels (and Amsterdam has a lot of those) against new, cheaper, and better competition. It's quite ironic that you try to defend such corporate welfare as consumer protection against business. But, of course, that's normal for these kinds of laws. The problem with people like you is not that you are "collectivist", is that you let yourself be manipulated for corporate agendas.
You really want a free market? Get rid of wall street, get rid of stocks, get rid of "wealth management" firms, and get rid of publicly traded companies where the decision makers are kept completely isolated from the consequences of their decisions.
Well, that's kind of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, because like it or not, a lot of that economic machinery is keeping us wealthy. In principle, corporations and stock work reasonably well; it's the political corruption and rent seeking that needs to be kept in check.
It would be sufficient if investors actually lost their money if they made bad choices, and if corporate officers were held responsible if they misbehave. It would also help if the government didn't create as many and as strong artificial monopolies (spectrum, patents, copyrights, etc.), didn't create as many barriers to entry (safety regulations, drug testing, etc.), didn't engage in as much corporate welfare, and didn't bail out failing companies and banks as much in order to "save jobs" and "save the economy". Unfortunately, Obama has been even worse in those regards than Bush or his predecessors.
You never actually denied what I said though - is it or is it not true that there are many things that Americans pay out of post-tax income that Europeans typically pay out of pre-tax income?
No, it is absolutely not true. And it shouldn't need disputing. When someone with a reasonable education claims the earth is flat, do you bother "disputing" it, or do you just laugh? Go look it up.
So far, my experience here in Europe (6 years in Germany
You have lived in Germany and you believe that people in Europe don't have to pay for their health care out of their salaries?
First is the concept of using the "median" when looking at income. In my understanding, the distribution of income in Europe is a lot flatter than in the US.
Well, gosh, that is why people use the median: it is insensitive to the kind of difference in income inequality ("high CEO pay") people love to complain about. And frankly I doubt you'd even be able to tell a European and a US income distribution apart.
My experiences when travelling to the US (both for personal and business reasons) have been quite negative with the amount of poverty I've perceived
Yet, you yourself observed that the homeless and poor are primarily an issue of urban environments, both in the US and Europe. Did you live in US suburbs? In mid-sized cities and towns? You know, where most middle class Americans actually live? Do you know why US cities have so many street people?
the quality of life there was significantly lower than here and also lower than my homeland of New Zealand.
The quality of life in New Zealand is extremely high, because it is beautiful, has a great climate, and is sparsely populated. However, its standard of living and economic opportunities are not so great. I mean, did you come to Germany for the nice beaches?
The second thing that I think is important with the numbers you provided is that it's household income.
Which part of "There are lots of other statistics you can look up yourself, but they all end up pretty much telling the same story." was so hard to understand?
I'm not trying to persuade you of the correctness of my data, I'm challenging your assumptions and suggesting you to go out and educate yourself. If you're not willing to do that, nothing I can say is going to convince you.
Injuries? If you manage to get at it inside the case and do it just right, a computer fan can take a bit of skin off and it hurts like hell; that's about the extent of it.
OK, so let's say it is "just a matter of keeping the schools open later". How much later?
As far as I'm concerned, not at all. Kids can do homework at school and at the public library during normal working hours. That's more than enough. This is a fabricated problem and fabricated outrage. Apparently, local school boards and library boards think the same.
. Where I live, people live out in the countryside because property taxes in the more "urban" areas are cripplingly high
Yes, taxes in urban areas are very high, and life in rural areas is much cheaper. Now, tell me: how does that translate into a need for the nation to subsidize Internet access in rural areas? Why should the people who already pay high taxes pay even more so that people in cheap, low-tax rural areas pay even less?
Since a typical American will pay for many different kinds of costs from his AFTER tax income; and a typical European pays with them in BEFORE tax income;
Oh, don't worry, we save lots of money by eating roadkill and shoving our old people off cliffs, so that makes up for it. Really, where do you get your "information" about the US and other European nations from? Pravda? Or do you just make it up out of thin air yourself?
"Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty." (emphasis mine). The values I see there hardly qualify as "significant"
Let me translate those "insignificant" numbers. A 20% difference (UK) amounts to about 10-40 years worth of growth at Europe's anemic growth rates, and a 40% difference (France) puts the median at the US poverty line.
Well, I work for a large international company for the European HQ
Well, and I was actually living and working in Europe for a dozen years, paying European taxes, getting European healthcare, living in European homes, watching European TV, and paying into European retirement plans (a really bad deal). When I moved to Europe, I actually believed all this stuff about a better standard of living, an educated and cultured populace, and liberal attitudes. At first, couldn't figure out why reality differed so much from the image Europe projects of itself, but after looking at the economic numbers, it became quite clear.
Another way to think about it is that, I can walk into almost any third-party store and for €30 walk out in 15 mins with a new functioning Nokia candy-bar phone with credit. Can't really get that in the US?
Yes, there are many companies that sell phones plus credit prepackaged at supermarkets and drugstores. They start at around $15 for phone plus minutes. I usually buy one for overseas visitors and throw it away when they leave. You can fill up with prepaid cards too. A step up from that are the prepaid options from the carriers.
The US does lack SIM card portability, which sucks. But if you just want cheap phone or smartphone service, you can certainly get it at prices comparable to, or cheaper than, Germany.
Business has never operated "honorably". What keeps businesses in check is the ability to walk away and do business with someone else. That's called a free market. Government ought to encourage that and use its regulatory and legal power to enforce it. Unfortunately, both parties have done their best to kill free markets and choice.
That's a pretty simplistic view. We're talking here about the people who are disadvantaged in the 1st place – they tend not to get too much representation in the public sphere as it is. The people who tend to pull water at school board meetings, Townhall meetings, and so on also tend to be the people who have enough money to afford their own private Internet
I see. So you're saying that these people are just not full adults; they are incapable of speaking up for themselves of voting. So good people like you need to take pity on them and tell them what to do and shovel other people's tax dollars their way. Do you know how f*cking arrogant that is? And if the school boards and city government around here are any indication, your "facts" are wrong too; most people with money don't bother going because they have better things to do. They do, however, vote against increased taxes when spending gets out of control.
My mother and stepfather live in a somewhat rural area and are stuck on dial-up because there is one company that offers high-speed Internet and the overhead for the equipment, installation, and so on reaches into the thousands of dollars. I'm not making this up
And they also pay hundreds of thousands of dollars less for their home than they would near the city, let alone in the city. You think about that when you choose where to live. I bought a nice place without Internet access, and paid thousands for a microwave link. I still came out ahead. So do your mother and stepfather.
If balking at thousands of dollars makes me cheap, though, I would definitely be curious to see your paycheck.
No, you're just greedy. You want the nice and money-saving aspects of country life, but you don't want to pay for the costs that come along with it.
There are lots of other statistics you can look up yourself, but they all end up pretty much telling the same story. Except for Luxembourg and Norway, Americans are economically better off than even well-performing European nations, and economically far better off than Europeans as a whole. Another way economists like to look at this is how people spend their money; there are consistent patterns depending on the standard of living. The richer you are, the less you spend on food, for example. That also pretty much gives the same result.
I've been to the US many times, and I live in Europe. There are parts of Europe that are relatively poor, yes; but the largest and most populous areas all seem significantly better off than I've seen in the US.
I know what you mean, but you can't judge standard of living that way. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin look nice and well-maintained, but that doesn't mean that the people living there are well off. Many of those destinations are also highly subsidized, at the expense of the rest of the country. On the other hand, just because people look like bums or their homes look like dumps to you in the US doesn't mean those people are poor. And I suspect that you tend to meet young people who tend to be just out of college and have lots of debt in the US; they quickly get richer, but then probably don't have time to hang out with European tourists anymore.
It's local taxes and local decision making. If people don't want to pay that money for their own kids, that's their choice.
I don't see why the federal government needs to come in with rural Internet access initiatives if people locally are too cheap to pay for it themselves.
Sorry, liberals don't like it when the churches do things like "donating free space" to help people.
No, liberals don't like it when churches use government funding to pretend that they are "donating" something to help people. Neither do libertarians, or sensible conservatives. And a lot of "church help" boils down to just that: government funding funneled through religious organizations in order to promote their own agenda.
never mind that in Canada that churches and synagogues have been doing this up here for the better part of a decade already and it's open to the public
I know this may come as a shock to you, but the Canadian political system or society, is in fact, not everybody's idea of the ideal society.
It seems to me that many of (but not all) the countries with the happiest citizens, lowest abject poverty, and best standards of living are those that are highly socialised democracies. They are still for the most part capitalist, but the government retains significant control (through fairness regulation) to discourage a lot of the evil that can spring from the dog-eat-dog style of unbridled capitalism.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. People who make such statements generally imply that it would be better if US "dog-eat-dog style of unbridled capitalism" were more like European "highly socialised democracies". Is that what you were trying to get at? There are several things wrong with that analysis. First, the US is itself a "highly socialised democracy", with a vast social safety net. Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty. Also, Europeans are nowhere near as happy, educated, or well off as they or Americans seem to think they are. And the social safety net in Europe is not all it's cracked up to be either, and it's busting European budgets. For the US to become more like Europe would mean a significant decline (and that's the direction Obama's progressivism is taking the nation).
But it IS a fair statement to say that the purpose of a government should be to regulate and benefit the society as a whole. They are created by the people and therefore should be FOR the people. This is, in essence, a socialistic statement.
That view of government is what monarchists, fascists and socialists have held for centuries: we are looking for the right kind of "good government" that can then help everybody. The problem with it is that it doesn't work with real human beings in the real world. There is a long string of historical failures, and economists and social scientists have a pretty good idea of why it's failing.
In such a system, you may be concerned that many would abuse the privilege and simply allow the government to take care of them to the minimum standard; then remain unemployed and happily living out their days care-free.
"Welfare" comes in many forms, and many people do exactly that: many corporations, union members, farmers, government bureaucrats, and other groups manage to lobby government instead of contributing productively. Note that this isn't a left-vs-right issue: when people complain of "corporate welfare" or of "political union corruption", they are both right.
We shouldn't let people starve, and we should make sure everybody has a basic education and basic health care. But that can be done with a fraction of the entitlement spending we (US) or Europe is spending right now. Most government spending in the US and Europe goes to groups who really don't need it, but have the political power to push it through.
No, it couldn't. Capitalism has lots of problems, but producing poverty and restricting liberty are generally not among them. Socialism does have some real benefits, but it has even higher costs. A country can choose whether it wants to be Cuba or the US, but it can't choose to have Cuba's level of equality with America's wealth and liberty.
Define "traditionally American levels" - taxes today are lower than at any point from 1933 to the mid-eighties, yet median income, as a percentage of GDP per capita, has been trending downwards since the '80s [zompist.com]; meanwhile, CEO pay has skyrocketed [xkcd.com]. Do you call that sustainable?
You may not like them, but low taxes, high inequality, and high CEO pay certainly are sustainable. Why wouldn't they be?
(And you should really read some economically more sound literature; the pages you point to are full of basic errors.)
though I'd still favor a system that promotes greater wealth equality. High rate flat tax with the first 30k or so exempt, something like that...
Wealth equality is easy to achieve: you make everybody equally poor. And, actually, that's pretty much the only way of achieving it.
So as an anarcho-syndicalist I agree completely on the political side of their ideology, but cannot tolerate the cultural/economic aspect.
That's because your politics are driven by ideals: you think that if you just try hard enough, you can create an ideal society through government intervention. But that's like thinking that if you just try hard enough, you can create a perpetual motion machine. Worse, people like you tend to accuse everybody who disagrees with your means of achieving that end of being selfish crooks.
I've spent time in socialist countries and it was miserable. And the closer a country gets to socialism, the more miserable and poor people end up being, the more their liberties end up being restricted, and the more corrupt government becomes. And that's why I can't tolerate the "cultural/economic aspects" of socialism or progressivism, and about half of America seems to agree with me.
Most libertarians would be happy to turn back the clock on government regulations and government taxes to more traditionally American levels, for the simple reason that the current situation is not sustainable. Progressives are so much into sustainability, why don't you start with finances?
While not for the absolute novice user (as it can be dangerous) the disk management utility is very user friendly for middle to advanced users. Just select the volume, delete it, and extend the current partition using a GUI.
How do I know this is safe? How do I know that some weird piece of WIndows software isn't going to take offense? That Windows isn't going to refuse to boot because I did something Microsoft doesn't approve of?
Recovery partitions are a bad idea. Microsoft should have included an external medium for recovery, preferably with a small storage slot inside the unit (for a MicroSD card or small USB dongle). That way, it doesn't take up space, and you can be sure it's not corrupted or takes up space. And for $1000, I think that's not too much to ask.
Specific to 64-bit installs is that 32-bit binaries are also installed for the vast majority of the operating system. This is due to the WoW64 compatibility layer that allows for (generally) seamless usage of 32-bit software on a 64-bit Windows operating system.
So does Linux. It doesn't take gigabytes.
Another key distinction with Linux systems is how the system is service (ie. OS updates are applied). When you install an update to Windows via Windows or Microsoft update an update package is downloaded and installed which will include any number of updated binaries. Crucially, the original binaries are not removed but kept in a cache in case they are needed later. This is important in the event an update is removed in future, as it allows Windows to automatically downgrade the affected binaries to the "next best" available binaries available in the servicing cache (which might be the originally released versions, or those from an earlier update).
Why would a newly installed, from-the-factory computer have old binaries? And if it's a "cache", why can't it be cleared and versions be downloaded again on demand?
In any case, Linux supports full downgrading as well and caches old downloads as well, and they don't take that much space and they can be cleaned.
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No, we merely have gotten to the point where people like you kill any political discussion by setting up one strawman after another.
I wonder whether it's the fact that they keep getting their bicycles stolen that makes the Dutch so rude and arrogant.
No, that's just a strawman created by left wing ideologues. In fact, what's objectionable about these kinds of so-called "health and safety laws" is that they often serve the interests of big powerful businesses and hurt the interests of most people, by increasing prices, reducing choices, and increasing barriers to entry.
Who do you think has the most to gain from making competition from private rentals illegal in Amsterdam? Condo owners who need to be "protected" from rental revenues and appreciation of their apartments? Local merchants who benefit from more tourism? Obviously not. The idea that private rentals, which exist and work all around the world, are a threat to city residents, or health or safety is ludicrous.
This law is clearly designed to protect big, soul-less, corporate-style hotels (and Amsterdam has a lot of those) against new, cheaper, and better competition. It's quite ironic that you try to defend such corporate welfare as consumer protection against business. But, of course, that's normal for these kinds of laws. The problem with people like you is not that you are "collectivist", is that you let yourself be manipulated for corporate agendas.
Well, that's kind of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, because like it or not, a lot of that economic machinery is keeping us wealthy. In principle, corporations and stock work reasonably well; it's the political corruption and rent seeking that needs to be kept in check.
It would be sufficient if investors actually lost their money if they made bad choices, and if corporate officers were held responsible if they misbehave. It would also help if the government didn't create as many and as strong artificial monopolies (spectrum, patents, copyrights, etc.), didn't create as many barriers to entry (safety regulations, drug testing, etc.), didn't engage in as much corporate welfare, and didn't bail out failing companies and banks as much in order to "save jobs" and "save the economy". Unfortunately, Obama has been even worse in those regards than Bush or his predecessors.
No, it is absolutely not true. And it shouldn't need disputing. When someone with a reasonable education claims the earth is flat, do you bother "disputing" it, or do you just laugh? Go look it up.
You have lived in Germany and you believe that people in Europe don't have to pay for their health care out of their salaries?
Well, gosh, that is why people use the median: it is insensitive to the kind of difference in income inequality ("high CEO pay") people love to complain about. And frankly I doubt you'd even be able to tell a European and a US income distribution apart.
Yet, you yourself observed that the homeless and poor are primarily an issue of urban environments, both in the US and Europe. Did you live in US suburbs? In mid-sized cities and towns? You know, where most middle class Americans actually live? Do you know why US cities have so many street people?
The quality of life in New Zealand is extremely high, because it is beautiful, has a great climate, and is sparsely populated. However, its standard of living and economic opportunities are not so great. I mean, did you come to Germany for the nice beaches?
Which part of "There are lots of other statistics you can look up yourself, but they all end up pretty much telling the same story." was so hard to understand?
I'm not trying to persuade you of the correctness of my data, I'm challenging your assumptions and suggesting you to go out and educate yourself. If you're not willing to do that, nothing I can say is going to convince you.
Injuries? If you manage to get at it inside the case and do it just right, a computer fan can take a bit of skin off and it hurts like hell; that's about the extent of it.
As far as I'm concerned, not at all. Kids can do homework at school and at the public library during normal working hours. That's more than enough. This is a fabricated problem and fabricated outrage. Apparently, local school boards and library boards think the same.
Yes, taxes in urban areas are very high, and life in rural areas is much cheaper. Now, tell me: how does that translate into a need for the nation to subsidize Internet access in rural areas? Why should the people who already pay high taxes pay even more so that people in cheap, low-tax rural areas pay even less?
Oh, don't worry, we save lots of money by eating roadkill and shoving our old people off cliffs, so that makes up for it. Really, where do you get your "information" about the US and other European nations from? Pravda? Or do you just make it up out of thin air yourself?
Let me translate those "insignificant" numbers. A 20% difference (UK) amounts to about 10-40 years worth of growth at Europe's anemic growth rates, and a 40% difference (France) puts the median at the US poverty line.
Well, and I was actually living and working in Europe for a dozen years, paying European taxes, getting European healthcare, living in European homes, watching European TV, and paying into European retirement plans (a really bad deal). When I moved to Europe, I actually believed all this stuff about a better standard of living, an educated and cultured populace, and liberal attitudes. At first, couldn't figure out why reality differed so much from the image Europe projects of itself, but after looking at the economic numbers, it became quite clear.
Yes, there are many companies that sell phones plus credit prepackaged at supermarkets and drugstores. They start at around $15 for phone plus minutes. I usually buy one for overseas visitors and throw it away when they leave. You can fill up with prepaid cards too. A step up from that are the prepaid options from the carriers.
The US does lack SIM card portability, which sucks. But if you just want cheap phone or smartphone service, you can certainly get it at prices comparable to, or cheaper than, Germany.
Business has never operated "honorably". What keeps businesses in check is the ability to walk away and do business with someone else. That's called a free market. Government ought to encourage that and use its regulatory and legal power to enforce it. Unfortunately, both parties have done their best to kill free markets and choice.
I see. So you're saying that these people are just not full adults; they are incapable of speaking up for themselves of voting. So good people like you need to take pity on them and tell them what to do and shovel other people's tax dollars their way. Do you know how f*cking arrogant that is? And if the school boards and city government around here are any indication, your "facts" are wrong too; most people with money don't bother going because they have better things to do. They do, however, vote against increased taxes when spending gets out of control.
And they also pay hundreds of thousands of dollars less for their home than they would near the city, let alone in the city. You think about that when you choose where to live. I bought a nice place without Internet access, and paid thousands for a microwave link. I still came out ahead. So do your mother and stepfather.
No, you're just greedy. You want the nice and money-saving aspects of country life, but you don't want to pay for the costs that come along with it.
Here's a simple number that sums it all up; it's median equivalized household income, meaning it's not sensitive to outliers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
There are lots of other statistics you can look up yourself, but they all end up pretty much telling the same story. Except for Luxembourg and Norway, Americans are economically better off than even well-performing European nations, and economically far better off than Europeans as a whole. Another way economists like to look at this is how people spend their money; there are consistent patterns depending on the standard of living. The richer you are, the less you spend on food, for example. That also pretty much gives the same result.
I know what you mean, but you can't judge standard of living that way. Cities like London, Paris or Berlin look nice and well-maintained, but that doesn't mean that the people living there are well off. Many of those destinations are also highly subsidized, at the expense of the rest of the country. On the other hand, just because people look like bums or their homes look like dumps to you in the US doesn't mean those people are poor. And I suspect that you tend to meet young people who tend to be just out of college and have lots of debt in the US; they quickly get richer, but then probably don't have time to hang out with European tourists anymore.
It's local taxes and local decision making. If people don't want to pay that money for their own kids, that's their choice.
I don't see why the federal government needs to come in with rural Internet access initiatives if people locally are too cheap to pay for it themselves.
Paying to get something nice open sourced is a good thing.
Paying to have a stripped down IDE and language open sourced... not so much.
If you want to learn programming, use JavaScript, Python, or Ruby; they're free, easy-to-use, and they scale up to real problems.
The article says these kids go to McDonalds after the public library closes (where they already get free Internet access).
If this is really such a hardship, why not keep school and/or the public library open a little longer?
No, liberals don't like it when churches use government funding to pretend that they are "donating" something to help people. Neither do libertarians, or sensible conservatives. And a lot of "church help" boils down to just that: government funding funneled through religious organizations in order to promote their own agenda.
I know this may come as a shock to you, but the Canadian political system or society, is in fact, not everybody's idea of the ideal society.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. People who make such statements generally imply that it would be better if US "dog-eat-dog style of unbridled capitalism" were more like European "highly socialised democracies". Is that what you were trying to get at? There are several things wrong with that analysis. First, the US is itself a "highly socialised democracy", with a vast social safety net. Americans have a significantly higher standard of living than Europeans, and lower absolute poverty. Also, Europeans are nowhere near as happy, educated, or well off as they or Americans seem to think they are. And the social safety net in Europe is not all it's cracked up to be either, and it's busting European budgets. For the US to become more like Europe would mean a significant decline (and that's the direction Obama's progressivism is taking the nation).
That view of government is what monarchists, fascists and socialists have held for centuries: we are looking for the right kind of "good government" that can then help everybody. The problem with it is that it doesn't work with real human beings in the real world. There is a long string of historical failures, and economists and social scientists have a pretty good idea of why it's failing.
"Welfare" comes in many forms, and many people do exactly that: many corporations, union members, farmers, government bureaucrats, and other groups manage to lobby government instead of contributing productively. Note that this isn't a left-vs-right issue: when people complain of "corporate welfare" or of "political union corruption", they are both right.
We shouldn't let people starve, and we should make sure everybody has a basic education and basic health care. But that can be done with a fraction of the entitlement spending we (US) or Europe is spending right now. Most government spending in the US and Europe goes to groups who really don't need it, but have the political power to push it through.
No, it couldn't. Capitalism has lots of problems, but producing poverty and restricting liberty are generally not among them. Socialism does have some real benefits, but it has even higher costs. A country can choose whether it wants to be Cuba or the US, but it can't choose to have Cuba's level of equality with America's wealth and liberty.
You may not like them, but low taxes, high inequality, and high CEO pay certainly are sustainable. Why wouldn't they be?
(And you should really read some economically more sound literature; the pages you point to are full of basic errors.)
Wealth equality is easy to achieve: you make everybody equally poor. And, actually, that's pretty much the only way of achieving it.
That's because your politics are driven by ideals: you think that if you just try hard enough, you can create an ideal society through government intervention. But that's like thinking that if you just try hard enough, you can create a perpetual motion machine. Worse, people like you tend to accuse everybody who disagrees with your means of achieving that end of being selfish crooks.
I've spent time in socialist countries and it was miserable. And the closer a country gets to socialism, the more miserable and poor people end up being, the more their liberties end up being restricted, and the more corrupt government becomes. And that's why I can't tolerate the "cultural/economic aspects" of socialism or progressivism, and about half of America seems to agree with me.
Oh, cut the crap and demagoguery.
Most libertarians would be happy to turn back the clock on government regulations and government taxes to more traditionally American levels, for the simple reason that the current situation is not sustainable. Progressives are so much into sustainability, why don't you start with finances?
When is this mythical creature supposed to have lived?
How do I know this is safe? How do I know that some weird piece of WIndows software isn't going to take offense? That Windows isn't going to refuse to boot because I did something Microsoft doesn't approve of?
Recovery partitions are a bad idea. Microsoft should have included an external medium for recovery, preferably with a small storage slot inside the unit (for a MicroSD card or small USB dongle). That way, it doesn't take up space, and you can be sure it's not corrupted or takes up space. And for $1000, I think that's not too much to ask.
Frequently. With Windows. It's best to reinstall from external media. A small USB stick would have done the trick.
It is available to the user. All you need to do is erase Windows and install Linux. :-)
As opposed to... Europe, where Microsoft gets away with advertising 64G and 128G versions.
So does Linux. It doesn't take gigabytes.
Why would a newly installed, from-the-factory computer have old binaries? And if it's a "cache", why can't it be cleared and versions be downloaded again on demand?
In any case, Linux supports full downgrading as well and caches old downloads as well, and they don't take that much space and they can be cleaned.