Social mobility is the ability to move between economic classes. IE, the ability and likelihood of someone to move into a higher economic bracket and earn more than his parents.
First of all, the "i.e." is wrong: there are many forms of social mobility: intergenerational, intragenerational, economic, educational, social status, There are also many ways of measuring it, and many methodological problems comparing it between different countries.
Having said that, even if we stick with intergenerational economic mobility and assume for the sake of argument that it could actually be measured and compared reliably, you don't understand what it means. Low inequality and high social mobility are largely properties of less successful countries, countries that fail to reward skill and risk taking, countries suffering from brain drain and capital flight, countries with arbitrary government policies.
To put it differently, what do you think social mobility and inequality ought to be in the US and why? What reason is there to believe that the levels of social mobility and inequality found in Germany are any better or fairer than the levels found in the US?
Ah, I see. So the "costs spiraling out of control" part that you guys said would happen immediately and didn't has merely been postponed. I get it.
Many parts of the law haven't even been implemented yet; for example, the Cadillac tax kicks in 2018, and Obama has dropped many features. Some of the bad effects people have predicted have already happened, like people having to switch to plans they don't want to switch to and premiums rising
You really have to be a blind partisan to maintain the delusion that ACA is working the way it was sold to the American people.
We're overly-content serfs, distracted by flashing lights, hard math, and the general complexity of our daily life; and you're helping us stay that way.
Well, you clearly do have problems with math and statistics, but you aren't representative of Americans.
If you really think that the European system is better, why don't you move there? I left Europe because I think the US system is better.
So, our average wealth goes from 357k (pretty respectable, even in comparison with Europe) to 222k. Very bottom of the list for Europe.
Comparing "average wealth" according to some table is nonsense; the demographics, purchasing power, tax structure, and composition of that wealth are entirely different in the US and European nations.
So really, I should have said, shave 1% of our population off, and all of a sudden we're wealthier than the likes of Spain and Greece, but none of those other commie socialist freedom haters.
So you compare the US distribution with the top 1% "shaved off" to European populations without 1% "shave off"? What sense does that make?
but when it comes right down to it- the Europeans enjoy better success for a greater percentage of their population.
Being from Europe, I can tell you that you're full of it, when it comes right down to it.
Exactly how difficult do you think it is to found your own company in Europe? In my country all that you need is a bit of starting cash (a few thousand Euros) and you're up and running in a day.
Sure, it's easy to register companies in Europe. That doesn't mean it's very profitable to do so.
And as for choosing a company to work for, I can assure you it's like pretty much anywhere else.
Unlikely. Patents only run so long and if you can't come up with something new every now and then you're relegated to pumping out cheap generic pharmaceuticals.
People aren't "relegated" to doing anything; they'll just leave the pharmaceutical industry entirely and do something better with their time and money.
The US pharmaceutical industry spends tons of dough developing new drugs, but most of the money isn't spent on curing new diseases; it's spent finding ways around competitors' patents on blockbuster drugs.
First of all, this isn't about "the US pharmaceutical industry"; European pharmaceutical companies are just as dependent on the US market as US pharmaceutical companies.
Second, you're wrong. While it is true that pharmaceutical companies waste a lot of time and effort gaming the patent system, they also spend a lot of time, money, and effort developing new drugs.
They know their job is to make as much money as possible.
Of course they do; they are supposed to!
Expecting them to serve the public good is romantic twaddle.
The "romantic twaddle" is that you believe that there is a contradiction between maximizing profit and serving the public good. Where pharmaceutical companies fail to serve the public good, it is because health care law (ACA, Medicaid, etc.) makes it financially attractive for them to do so.
Nobody in their right mind would buy an unproven $200 patented new drug variant if a $10 generic would do; the reason companies can make money with the $200 patented new drug variant is because insurers and Medicaid pay for it.
The point was that some people would choose non-monetary benefits over monetary benefits. As they say: money can't buy you love or friendship.
Yes, and Americans have more freedom to make those choices for themselves than Europeans.
News flash: unless it's your company, you're not deciding what you get to do.
You can choose which company you work for, and you can found your own company. Both of those are a lot easier in the US than in Europe.
In general: art and research are subsidized, not 'financed'. There is nothing stopping anyone from attracting private investments for their activities.
Nothing, except higher taxation, less wealth, and more regulation.
Because just as soon as the ACA passed, that's when hospitals started to be miserable places to be.
Right now, we're still in the "free money" phase of ACA. The destructive effects start creeping in as the costs continue to spiral out of control and now even sensible consumers of medical care can't escape the miserable conditions anymore.
but when you realize not everything is about money, you realize people can have motivations outside of profit maximization.
Anybody with half a brain generally doesn't acquire money for its own sake, they acquire it for a purpose: to go into space, to build the fastest race car in the world, to build a new and better search engine, to educate people, to make art, to protect the environment, etc.
In Europe, most of the interesting jobs you can get in Europe are publicly financed one way or another (research, art, etc.), which means you don't get to do what you think is right, you bloody well have to do what society tells you to do. But your mind has been so addled by European propaganda that you don't even notice.
That works only because the lucrative American market incentivizes drug companies to develop new drugs. If the US market had the same price controls as European markets, medical innovation would largely stop.
Who just increased their numbers in the House and took over the Senate? Except for executive action, the Democrats have nothing for the next two years.
There are plenty of progressives and big government types among the Republicans as well. The executive branch and the courts are still full of progressives with lots of power.
Your whining about "liburuls" controlling the US is a blend of propaganda and paranoid delusion.
Actually, it's spelled "liberals", go look it up. Of course, American "liberals" are misusing the label, since they are not liberals; they are, in fact, progressives and corporatists.
Yeah. Because American progressives have so much power these days... Snort. Try again...
ACA is still the law of the land. High speed rail isn't off the table. Affirmative action and race-based quotas are still in place in many places. Welfare and entitlement spending are still huge. The president is still trying to push through climate change agreements. Public sector unions still threaten the finances of many cities. Yeah, I'd say American progressives still have a lot of power.
And what would that accomplish? If the courts recognize those patents, of course companies will get them.
The problem is with the courts and the laws, not with Monsanto. Neither party has done sh*t to address this. One party remains silent, while the other party hides its own corrupt agenda behind fake anti-corporate rhetoric.
Plant patents were originally only intended to apply to non-sexual reproduction. Courts changed that in 2001, Congress remained silent, and no president seems to have made this a big issue when appointing judges.
Congress and the executive are condoning the creeping extension of the patent system while at the same time shoving billions in the hands of big agribusinesses. Like 1984's "two minutes of hate", the anti-corporate talk by many politicians is just a distraction from the reality that it is they themselves that are supporting all of this.
Right, but drive vendors could sign a driver and supply it with the hardware,
It's unclear that they could even if they wanted to. The Apple driver is already managing those devices and they all go through the same controller. In addition, writing a good storage driver is a lot of work, work third party vendors shouldn't have to go through just to add a standard piece of hardware to a system.
This kind of deliberate incompatibility is nothing new either. Apple was playing the same games with incompatibility of disk drives back to early Macintosh days.
Lots of people in Europe simply don't have cars because they can use the train.
The percentage of families without cars in the US is about 10%, and it's about 14% in Germany. And that difference is explained easily by the fact that Germans are significantly poorer. Anybody who values their time in Germany gets a car, because unless you live close to a major train station, relying on the train often takes hours longer than going by car.
From my 7+ year experience of German trains, they are not unpredictable
The train tickets do not cost several times that of a flight
I've done it many times, e.g., on Ryanair. More recently, long distance buses have become the cheapest mode of transportation. Your careless and lavish spending habits don't make an economic argument.
I don't know where you got your information, but it seems highly suspect, and at least has been countered by my own experiences, rendering your post entirely moot.
From living in Germany longer than you did.
Apparently, in "7+ years" in Germany, you haven't figured out a lot about the country.
No, you couldn't, since they are Apple's drivers not yours. Apple's driver takes over handling of external drives, but it refuses to TRIM them. Previously, people worked around that by patching the driver, but signing prevents that.
Slashdot Mirror
This was not the "limit the NSA" act, it was the "extend the PATRIOT bill" act. It's a good thing that it got killed.
Let's try again for something better in the next Congress.
First of all, the "i.e." is wrong: there are many forms of social mobility: intergenerational, intragenerational, economic, educational, social status, There are also many ways of measuring it, and many methodological problems comparing it between different countries.
Having said that, even if we stick with intergenerational economic mobility and assume for the sake of argument that it could actually be measured and compared reliably, you don't understand what it means. Low inequality and high social mobility are largely properties of less successful countries, countries that fail to reward skill and risk taking, countries suffering from brain drain and capital flight, countries with arbitrary government policies.
To put it differently, what do you think social mobility and inequality ought to be in the US and why? What reason is there to believe that the levels of social mobility and inequality found in Germany are any better or fairer than the levels found in the US?
Many parts of the law haven't even been implemented yet; for example, the Cadillac tax kicks in 2018, and Obama has dropped many features. Some of the bad effects people have predicted have already happened, like people having to switch to plans they don't want to switch to and premiums rising
You really have to be a blind partisan to maintain the delusion that ACA is working the way it was sold to the American people.
Well, you clearly do have problems with math and statistics, but you aren't representative of Americans.
If you really think that the European system is better, why don't you move there? I left Europe because I think the US system is better.
Comparing "average wealth" according to some table is nonsense; the demographics, purchasing power, tax structure, and composition of that wealth are entirely different in the US and European nations.
So you compare the US distribution with the top 1% "shaved off" to European populations without 1% "shave off"? What sense does that make?
Being from Europe, I can tell you that you're full of it, when it comes right down to it.
Sure, it's easy to register companies in Europe. That doesn't mean it's very profitable to do so.
I can assure you it's not.
People aren't "relegated" to doing anything; they'll just leave the pharmaceutical industry entirely and do something better with their time and money.
First of all, this isn't about "the US pharmaceutical industry"; European pharmaceutical companies are just as dependent on the US market as US pharmaceutical companies.
Second, you're wrong. While it is true that pharmaceutical companies waste a lot of time and effort gaming the patent system, they also spend a lot of time, money, and effort developing new drugs.
Of course they do; they are supposed to!
The "romantic twaddle" is that you believe that there is a contradiction between maximizing profit and serving the public good. Where pharmaceutical companies fail to serve the public good, it is because health care law (ACA, Medicaid, etc.) makes it financially attractive for them to do so.
Nobody in their right mind would buy an unproven $200 patented new drug variant if a $10 generic would do; the reason companies can make money with the $200 patented new drug variant is because insurers and Medicaid pay for it.
Yes, and Americans have more freedom to make those choices for themselves than Europeans.
You can choose which company you work for, and you can found your own company. Both of those are a lot easier in the US than in Europe.
Nothing, except higher taxation, less wealth, and more regulation.
Right now, we're still in the "free money" phase of ACA. The destructive effects start creeping in as the costs continue to spiral out of control and now even sensible consumers of medical care can't escape the miserable conditions anymore.
Anybody with half a brain generally doesn't acquire money for its own sake, they acquire it for a purpose: to go into space, to build the fastest race car in the world, to build a new and better search engine, to educate people, to make art, to protect the environment, etc.
In Europe, most of the interesting jobs you can get in Europe are publicly financed one way or another (research, art, etc.), which means you don't get to do what you think is right, you bloody well have to do what society tells you to do. But your mind has been so addled by European propaganda that you don't even notice.
That works only because the lucrative American market incentivizes drug companies to develop new drugs. If the US market had the same price controls as European markets, medical innovation would largely stop.
There are plenty of progressives and big government types among the Republicans as well. The executive branch and the courts are still full of progressives with lots of power.
Actually, it's spelled "liberals", go look it up. Of course, American "liberals" are misusing the label, since they are not liberals; they are, in fact, progressives and corporatists.
ACA is still the law of the land. High speed rail isn't off the table. Affirmative action and race-based quotas are still in place in many places. Welfare and entitlement spending are still huge. The president is still trying to push through climate change agreements. Public sector unions still threaten the finances of many cities. Yeah, I'd say American progressives still have a lot of power.
And what would that accomplish? If the courts recognize those patents, of course companies will get them.
The problem is with the courts and the laws, not with Monsanto. Neither party has done sh*t to address this. One party remains silent, while the other party hides its own corrupt agenda behind fake anti-corporate rhetoric.
Plant patents were originally only intended to apply to non-sexual reproduction. Courts changed that in 2001, Congress remained silent, and no president seems to have made this a big issue when appointing judges.
Congress and the executive are condoning the creeping extension of the patent system while at the same time shoving billions in the hands of big agribusinesses. Like 1984's "two minutes of hate", the anti-corporate talk by many politicians is just a distraction from the reality that it is they themselves that are supporting all of this.
It's even on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...
Most of the political positions people take, even those ostensibly related to science, seem to be related to social signaling and tribalism.
We pay attention because Sweden is frequently held up as a model for the US by American progressives.
"Warning: Game may contain images of big-breasted women in tight, skimpy outfits."
Let the market decide indeed!
I debunked the "sterile plants" myth elsewhere. But even if they were sterile, it still wouldn't matter.
How is that an argument for 500 kph Maglev trains?
I'm not opposed to everything that runs on rails, I question the cost effectiveness of high speed long distance passenger rail service.
It's unclear that they could even if they wanted to. The Apple driver is already managing those devices and they all go through the same controller. In addition, writing a good storage driver is a lot of work, work third party vendors shouldn't have to go through just to add a standard piece of hardware to a system.
This kind of deliberate incompatibility is nothing new either. Apple was playing the same games with incompatibility of disk drives back to early Macintosh days.
Can't you read or are you deliberately lying? From the very page you point to:
As I was saying: signing prevents modifying kernel extensions. That's the whole point!
The percentage of families without cars in the US is about 10%, and it's about 14% in Germany. And that difference is explained easily by the fact that Germans are significantly poorer. Anybody who values their time in Germany gets a car, because unless you live close to a major train station, relying on the train often takes hours longer than going by car.
Statistics tell a different story:
https://www.test.de/Deutsche-B...
I've done it many times, e.g., on Ryanair. More recently, long distance buses have become the cheapest mode of transportation. Your careless and lavish spending habits don't make an economic argument.
From living in Germany longer than you did.
Apparently, in "7+ years" in Germany, you haven't figured out a lot about the country.
No, you couldn't, since they are Apple's drivers not yours. Apple's driver takes over handling of external drives, but it refuses to TRIM them. Previously, people worked around that by patching the driver, but signing prevents that.