(1) Germany is semi-private. They have state-run insurance as well
That's incorrect.
Plenty of Americans are denied care, and more were denied before the ACA kicked insurance companies into shape.
The ACA is a crony capitalist scheme to forcibly transfer even more money from rate payers to insurance companies, drug companies, and special interest voting groups. It did nothing to fix the US insurance market.
If the US wanted a British-style public health care system, it could do that tomorrow, without any changes to the US private insurance system: the US Medicare/Medicaid budget is already large enough to cover every American at UK rates.
People like you are the kinds of useful idiots that keep the current, unsustainable, inefficient crony capitalist system in place in the US. I hope you rot in hell for it.
Note that the UK isn't a good model -- France or Germany are.
Germany has an all private insurance system; part of it is heavily regulated, the other part is more free market.
it means things like having to share a room in a hospital or wait for elective procedures
It also means not receiving life saving procedures if you are deemed not valuable enough by the state, and it means having to pay for a shitload of drugs out of pocket.
My cousin just had her second baby in Germany.
Germany is facing a demographic catastrophe; that's why they pay massive amounts of money for women to have birth. In different words, this isn't representative of medical care in Germany in general.
In the US, they'd kick you out with a few-thousand dollar bill after less than a day.
I wish they did, because that's what an insurance plan actually should do. But instead, many US plans cover births.
Private insurance companies are far more efficient at cutting services while squeezing their victims (patients) for all they have than governments or heavily government-regulated insurers.
Private insurance companies operate under the conditions set for them by markets. In the heavily regulated US system, they maximize profit by cutting services because their patients are forced to pay them no matter what. In a free market system, patients could actually vote with their dollars... and their feet.
Economic mobility index says that the US is closer to a feudal society than most European countries... (higher is worse in this case)
The European plutocracy/aristocracy consists of far too few people to have any effect on intergenerational income elasticity. On top of that, they don't actually usually earn income anyway; earning income is for the little people.
No, what you're seeing in those statistics is something very different. Low intergenerational income correlations are a sign of social dysfunction, of a society that grinds its most talented people into dust and determines salaries and job security based on tenure and collective bargaining, not individual merit. Which is, of course, exactly what Europe does. And you no doubt think it's a good thing.
True: being afraid of going to the doctor is an excellent way of scaring people into living a healthy lifestyle. After all, the difference in life expectancy between the US and the UK is not due to the quality of medical care in the US (which is superior) or its availability (nearly universal), but to lifestyle choices: obesity, drug use, violence, etc.
And if you get sick, you're not saddled with medical debt.
Unless, of course, you decide that the UK public health system doesn't cut it and you need to get treatment in the private sector after all.
European countries are doing an admirable job of taking care of their own citizenry compared to the US.
Oh, I think the European model would be a significant improvement for the US. Of course, what that actually means is raising taxes on the middle class by 50% and cutting back medical services massively. But that's what it takes to balance the budget. It's also
Europe would be better off without American giant corps siphoning off its residents' data.
I agree completely! Europe would be lovely if it returned to the romantic ideal of pastoral lands with young and healthy lads and gals working the fields and living in quaint villages, ruled over by aristocrats. That's the kind of country Americans like to visit. And it has the additional benefit that Europe won't be able to engage in its old destructive behaviors: wars, genocides, colonialism, etc. I'm glad forward (or backward) thinking Europeans like you want to make this happen. Europe is halfway there already, so if you need some help make it go all the way, you can count on my support.
Why don't they all (U.S. included) just fix their existing tax laws so that these companies can't use loopholes and accounting tricks to launder their profits through countries like Ireland that give them preferential tax treatment?
The US already has higher corporate taxes and a world-wide tax regime, and that's why these profits stay with shell companies. So the US isn't responsible for this at all. This is purely an intra-European issue right now, where European jurisdictions compete for taxing profits of American companies.
Of course there is an easy and correct fix: the US should lower its corporate taxes to far below European taxes, and the profits should be taxed almost exclusively in the US, since the US created the infrastructure necessary to build these companies.
"In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures."
In any sensible world, that is handled the same way it was handled for the telephone system: communications providers don't listen in on private conversations without a court order. We used to impose severe penalties for that kind of eavesdropping.
And, thank you, Facebook for being at least so open about it. People have a choice in communications platforms and "Communicate on Facebook--We Give You More Surveillance than the Stasi! Now with AI!" is a really catchy sales pitch. Let's see how that works out for you.
I do nonetheless want to find out whether they are in fact illegally discriminating in their recruitment practices,
I think it is crystal clear that they are discriminating against white and Asian males; it makes no difference to me whether that is legal or illegal.
I do nonetheless want to find out whether they are in fact illegally discriminating in their recruitment practices
Why? What does that accomplish? As far as I can tell, that just validates Google's bigotry and folly and lends credence to the false idea that Google choosing not to hire you or me somehow represents an injury to us. See, as a white male, I don't have any of the marvelous privileges progressives ascribe to me, but there is one privilege I do have: the knowledge since childhood that I would never get anything without working hard for it and that if I wanted to survived, I needed to get the skills to make it in the world on my own.
I think it's much better to give Google free reign to continue doing what they are doing, openly and freely. Let's see how well their "there is strength in diversity" mantra works and how long they will survive building a large tech company while discriminating against white and Asian males. Given their current predicaments, it seems that their attempt at making the company progressive and diverse is actually leading to massive conflicts, intolerance, and bigotry. And if they do succeed, unlikely as that seems, even better for them and their employees; their success or failure simply doesn't bother me one way or another.
Good for you! If I'd been discriminated against, I'd probably exploit whatever I could.
Then you obviously don't value yourself very much and view a job as some kind of favor bestowed upon you. I have always viewed my contributions as being valuable to a company, and if a company is stupid enough to reject me over some non-job-related attribute, why would I want to contribute my value to them? There are plenty of other companies to choose from.
I'd get the 'foreign sounding' name, but do y'all think that there are conversations had over ( free) lunch, scribbles in the margins of a cv, with some innocuous 'gay' symbol that'd put gay applicants at the top of the pile ?
Many jobs involve recruitment through personal contacts, and if you know someone socially, they'll usually already know if you're gay. That's also how you find out whether a company is a good place to work: through friends who already work there. But if you really want to, you can simply mention it during the screening phone interview: "I'm gay, what's your policy on diversity and same-sex partner benefits?"
However, given that it is now illegal for them to discriminate based on sexual orientation, I usually hide my sexual orientation until after I have an offer. That way, they are not influenced either way by my sexual orientation; it has no relevance to my job or job performance.
Here's the easy solution to this problem. Don't include information on race, gender, etc. on employment applications and you don't have to worry about excluding people
I think there is an even easier solution: encourage and even force Google and YouTube to live by the principles they advocate and support politically. Let them blacklist all white and Asian males in their hiring process and then let's see how well their business does with those kinds of policies in place.
Perhaps Eric Schmid and Sundar Pichai could even hasten the process of achieving a more balanced corporate management structure by resigning and leaving; I mean, talk about two icons of white/Asian male privilege!
I'm a gay immigrant. I decided long ago that I don't want to work for companies that want to discriminate against me, and I'm not going to use nondiscrimination laws to force them too. Why would I want to work for a homophobic or xenophobic company? Why would I want to help them succeed in business?
The same is also true for YouTube and Google. They might make an exception for a nominally white male if he is gay and an immigrant like me, but I am not going to make an exception for them.
The entirety of the world's history books could fit on a disc or microSD card nowadays, which is easier to hide than a cache of books (and its contents are less obvious).
It's meaningless if people don't bother to read or understand it and if truth is buried under a huge pile of propaganda. And that's what's been happening. See, people figured out since Fahrenheit 451 that the way to control "truth" is not to silence people, but for intellectuals (authors, journalists, academics, etc.) to bury the truth. Furthermore, there doesn't need to be any plan, collusion, or conspiracy to bury the truth, intellectuals will do it out of simple self-interest, because their ideal position in life is to be the priestly high caste with everybody else worshiping them.
Now legislators say they want to start working on fixes to the problem before it's too late.
Yeah, they are going to ban fake videos! It's gonna work just as well as banning underage drinking, poverty, pot smoking, illegal guns, prostitution, and all the other things Washington has banned! If you don't like something, pass a law against it, and it magically disappears! That's what Ron Wyden believes, and he doesn't let facts get in the way of what he holds dear and true!
Are you kidding? You demonstrate an enormous ignorance of the world.
No, I'm not kidding. Major complications after abortions are extremely rare. As for financial consequences, the proper comparison for a woman is joblessness without children vs joblessness with children, and the latter is clearly financially quite a bit better for the woman.
So the idea that access to contraceptives and sex education prevent abortions is foolish
...except that the evidence disagree with you.
No, it doesn't. Obviously, sex education and contraception can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, but you attributed high US pregnancy and abortion rates to their lack of availability in the US, and that explanation doesn't work.
The real problem is that since the 1960's, the US has been massively subsidizing irresponsible sexual behavior and childbearing: families that can't afford to have children, single mothers, etc. And that's the fault of people WHO TRY TO FORCE WOMEN TO HAVE CHILDREN WHEN THEY GET PREGNANT.... you know, the stupid fucking pro-forced-birth conservatives.
Abortion in the US is widely available and has been legal for forty years, so that argument also doesn't make sense.
You want to talk about harm done... stupid idiots like you, who can't live in reality and believe your bullshit fantasy... that's what's fucking up this country.
I think you just demonstrated who is "fucking up this country". You can't even have a rational argument with someone who is pro-choice without become abusive and hostile.
Access to contraceptives, and actual sex education is what drives down unwanted pregnancy,
Abortions rose rapidly in the US in the late 1960â(TM)s, along with a massive ease of access to contraceptives and sex education. So the idea that âoeaccess to contraceptives and sex educationâ prevent abortions is foolish. Donâ(TM)t get me wrong: I think contraceptives should be widely available and everybody should know about what happens when a man sticks his dick in a woman. But the reason for the high rates of single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, etc. are clearly not ignorance; rather the opposite: women know very well how to get pregnant, they simply donâ(TM)t consider it a big deal anymore: there is little social stigma attached to it anymore, and there are almost no financial or medical consequences attached to an abortion or single motherhood anymore.
and stupid fucking conservative douche bags like you do everything possible to make those things harder for people to get.
The real problem is that since the 1960â(TM)s, the US has been massively subsidizing irresponsible sexual behavior and childbearing: families that canâ(TM)t afford to have children, single mothers, etc. And thatâ(TM)s the fault of people like you. And the amount of harm people like you have been causing to women and children is staggering.
Social conservatives and anti-abortion foes hardly have a monopolly on impinging on peopleâ(TM)s freedoms. Your beliefs about social justice impinge upon my freedom. Your beliefs about who should pay for illegitimate children or the consequences of your gluttony also impinge upon my freedom.
Democrats, Republicans, progressives, âoeliberalsâ, social conservatives, and religious conservatives are vying with each other about who can screw people who disagree with them the most; the only thing they disagree over is the specific oppressive policies they want to impose on others.
The extent and intent of the âoebanâ is known: itâ(TM)s about the budget proposal. Using terms like âoefetusâ or âoetransgenderâ or âoescience-basedâ is going to cause pushback from conservative representatives in Congress, and since these are in the majority now, if Trump wants his budget passed, he wants to avoid those kinds of controversies. Given a Republican majority in both houses, that is what an administration has to do. If Hillary were president, sheâ(TM)d have to do the same thing if she didnâ(TM)t want her budget sent back to her.
Heck, the Federal Government is the reason you're allowed to own a phone at all. They used to only rent them to people.
The government is the reason you couldn't own a phone for a long time in the first place. You started being able to own a phone once government started to de-regulate the phone system.
If people felt unsafe using Uber, Uber would lose riders, and if Uber drivers were unsafe, they wouldn't get insurance. Given Uber's constant tracking of both drivers and passengers, you're probably safer in an Uber ride than in a taxi.
No, Uber bans are simply about money and power, using "public safety" as a smokescreen: the London city government wants to force people to send money in the direction of their political cronies: taxi operators, unions, public transit monopolies, because they know full well that Uber can hurt all those government-imposed monopolies badly.
in any case where the developer didn't foresee when signing contracts, it's necessary to negotiate with individual property owners, some of whom would be very uncooperative
The only "property owner" that matters when it comes to ISPs is the city government, because it's their public roads that go to every home. And they are indeed very uncooperative and monopolistic, not to mention intrinsically corrupt.
Residential roads should primarily be owned by private associations of the people owning the adjacent properties, and those associations should then decide which private utilities, ISPs, and other services to use.
And how would that apply? Are you trying to say that no government and complete privatization would be good for economic growth?... then there's a level of public service that is better than either anarchy or 1984
Of course there is. Hence I said small government, not "no government". Do you have trouble with the difference between "small" and "no", or do you just like to randomly put up strawmen and put words in people's mouths?
What is the right level? Well, we have both international data and US historical data. Total government spending should probably be less than 20% of GDP, although based on international data, it seems like 10% os even better. At the federal level, we should certainly be spending less than 10% of GDP, and most government spending should be local. Local spending is on the things that matter most: roads, school, police, fire, etc., and federal spending is crowding out local spending. A good start would be to cut our per capita government spending on entitlements, healthcare, and social services to average EU levels in absolute terms (since it's absolute spending that matters).
More importantly, though, our budgets should first and foremost be balanced, at all levels of government. That's, you know, what most "advanced nations" do; it's the law in Europe. That means cutting spending, cutting benefits, and raising taxes on the middle class. The reason the US government is on such a spending spree compared to Europe is because we can keep borrowing.
Yes, and one country's method results in jail time if you decide to become a conscientious objector while the other results in a slow painful death [theguardian.com] from radiation poison. By all means, fight your country's injustices, but don't try to morally equate them.
Stop putting up strawmen; I didn't "morally equate" anything. I simply made it clear that the US government has effective means of forcing companies to comply with the demands of its spy agencies. And if you think that the US (or France or the UK) limit themselves to jailtime, you're a naive fool. Governments across the globe shoot, bomb, poison, and strangle people who get in their way, and that includes the governments of so-called "liberal democracies". Obama and Clinton were masters of the drone strike.
I'm not talking about how many "cyber" criminals reside in Russia, I'm talking about the very obvious state-sponsored groups.
You mean like "state sponsored" (i.e., NSA, CIA financed) contractors and startups in the US?
Slashdot Mirror
That's incorrect.
The ACA is a crony capitalist scheme to forcibly transfer even more money from rate payers to insurance companies, drug companies, and special interest voting groups. It did nothing to fix the US insurance market.
If the US wanted a British-style public health care system, it could do that tomorrow, without any changes to the US private insurance system: the US Medicare/Medicaid budget is already large enough to cover every American at UK rates.
People like you are the kinds of useful idiots that keep the current, unsustainable, inefficient crony capitalist system in place in the US. I hope you rot in hell for it.
Germany has an all private insurance system; part of it is heavily regulated, the other part is more free market.
It also means not receiving life saving procedures if you are deemed not valuable enough by the state, and it means having to pay for a shitload of drugs out of pocket.
Germany is facing a demographic catastrophe; that's why they pay massive amounts of money for women to have birth. In different words, this isn't representative of medical care in Germany in general.
I wish they did, because that's what an insurance plan actually should do. But instead, many US plans cover births.
Private insurance companies operate under the conditions set for them by markets. In the heavily regulated US system, they maximize profit by cutting services because their patients are forced to pay them no matter what. In a free market system, patients could actually vote with their dollars... and their feet.
The European plutocracy/aristocracy consists of far too few people to have any effect on intergenerational income elasticity. On top of that, they don't actually usually earn income anyway; earning income is for the little people.
No, what you're seeing in those statistics is something very different. Low intergenerational income correlations are a sign of social dysfunction, of a society that grinds its most talented people into dust and determines salaries and job security based on tenure and collective bargaining, not individual merit. Which is, of course, exactly what Europe does. And you no doubt think it's a good thing.
True: being afraid of going to the doctor is an excellent way of scaring people into living a healthy lifestyle. After all, the difference in life expectancy between the US and the UK is not due to the quality of medical care in the US (which is superior) or its availability (nearly universal), but to lifestyle choices: obesity, drug use, violence, etc.
Unless, of course, you decide that the UK public health system doesn't cut it and you need to get treatment in the private sector after all.
Oh, I think the European model would be a significant improvement for the US. Of course, what that actually means is raising taxes on the middle class by 50% and cutting back medical services massively. But that's what it takes to balance the budget. It's also
I agree completely! Europe would be lovely if it returned to the romantic ideal of pastoral lands with young and healthy lads and gals working the fields and living in quaint villages, ruled over by aristocrats. That's the kind of country Americans like to visit. And it has the additional benefit that Europe won't be able to engage in its old destructive behaviors: wars, genocides, colonialism, etc. I'm glad forward (or backward) thinking Europeans like you want to make this happen. Europe is halfway there already, so if you need some help make it go all the way, you can count on my support.
The US already has higher corporate taxes and a world-wide tax regime, and that's why these profits stay with shell companies. So the US isn't responsible for this at all. This is purely an intra-European issue right now, where European jurisdictions compete for taxing profits of American companies.
Of course there is an easy and correct fix: the US should lower its corporate taxes to far below European taxes, and the profits should be taxed almost exclusively in the US, since the US created the infrastructure necessary to build these companies.
In any sensible world, that is handled the same way it was handled for the telephone system: communications providers don't listen in on private conversations without a court order. We used to impose severe penalties for that kind of eavesdropping.
And, thank you, Facebook for being at least so open about it. People have a choice in communications platforms and "Communicate on Facebook--We Give You More Surveillance than the Stasi! Now with AI!" is a really catchy sales pitch. Let's see how that works out for you.
I think it is crystal clear that they are discriminating against white and Asian males; it makes no difference to me whether that is legal or illegal.
Why? What does that accomplish? As far as I can tell, that just validates Google's bigotry and folly and lends credence to the false idea that Google choosing not to hire you or me somehow represents an injury to us. See, as a white male, I don't have any of the marvelous privileges progressives ascribe to me, but there is one privilege I do have: the knowledge since childhood that I would never get anything without working hard for it and that if I wanted to survived, I needed to get the skills to make it in the world on my own.
I think it's much better to give Google free reign to continue doing what they are doing, openly and freely. Let's see how well their "there is strength in diversity" mantra works and how long they will survive building a large tech company while discriminating against white and Asian males. Given their current predicaments, it seems that their attempt at making the company progressive and diverse is actually leading to massive conflicts, intolerance, and bigotry. And if they do succeed, unlikely as that seems, even better for them and their employees; their success or failure simply doesn't bother me one way or another.
Then you obviously don't value yourself very much and view a job as some kind of favor bestowed upon you. I have always viewed my contributions as being valuable to a company, and if a company is stupid enough to reject me over some non-job-related attribute, why would I want to contribute my value to them? There are plenty of other companies to choose from.
Many jobs involve recruitment through personal contacts, and if you know someone socially, they'll usually already know if you're gay. That's also how you find out whether a company is a good place to work: through friends who already work there. But if you really want to, you can simply mention it during the screening phone interview: "I'm gay, what's your policy on diversity and same-sex partner benefits?"
However, given that it is now illegal for them to discriminate based on sexual orientation, I usually hide my sexual orientation until after I have an offer. That way, they are not influenced either way by my sexual orientation; it has no relevance to my job or job performance.
I think there is an even easier solution: encourage and even force Google and YouTube to live by the principles they advocate and support politically. Let them blacklist all white and Asian males in their hiring process and then let's see how well their business does with those kinds of policies in place.
Perhaps Eric Schmid and Sundar Pichai could even hasten the process of achieving a more balanced corporate management structure by resigning and leaving; I mean, talk about two icons of white/Asian male privilege!
I'm a gay immigrant. I decided long ago that I don't want to work for companies that want to discriminate against me, and I'm not going to use nondiscrimination laws to force them too. Why would I want to work for a homophobic or xenophobic company? Why would I want to help them succeed in business?
The same is also true for YouTube and Google. They might make an exception for a nominally white male if he is gay and an immigrant like me, but I am not going to make an exception for them.
It's meaningless if people don't bother to read or understand it and if truth is buried under a huge pile of propaganda. And that's what's been happening. See, people figured out since Fahrenheit 451 that the way to control "truth" is not to silence people, but for intellectuals (authors, journalists, academics, etc.) to bury the truth. Furthermore, there doesn't need to be any plan, collusion, or conspiracy to bury the truth, intellectuals will do it out of simple self-interest, because their ideal position in life is to be the priestly high caste with everybody else worshiping them.
You don't run "Linux VMs inside a container", you run processes or Linux distributions inside containers.
Yeah, they are going to ban fake videos! It's gonna work just as well as banning underage drinking, poverty, pot smoking, illegal guns, prostitution, and all the other things Washington has banned! If you don't like something, pass a law against it, and it magically disappears! That's what Ron Wyden believes, and he doesn't let facts get in the way of what he holds dear and true!
No, I'm not kidding. Major complications after abortions are extremely rare. As for financial consequences, the proper comparison for a woman is joblessness without children vs joblessness with children, and the latter is clearly financially quite a bit better for the woman.
No, it doesn't. Obviously, sex education and contraception can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, but you attributed high US pregnancy and abortion rates to their lack of availability in the US, and that explanation doesn't work.
Abortion in the US is widely available and has been legal for forty years, so that argument also doesn't make sense.
I think you just demonstrated who is "fucking up this country". You can't even have a rational argument with someone who is pro-choice without become abusive and hostile.
Abortions rose rapidly in the US in the late 1960â(TM)s, along with a massive ease of access to contraceptives and sex education. So the idea that âoeaccess to contraceptives and sex educationâ prevent abortions is foolish. Donâ(TM)t get me wrong: I think contraceptives should be widely available and everybody should know about what happens when a man sticks his dick in a woman. But the reason for the high rates of single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, etc. are clearly not ignorance; rather the opposite: women know very well how to get pregnant, they simply donâ(TM)t consider it a big deal anymore: there is little social stigma attached to it anymore, and there are almost no financial or medical consequences attached to an abortion or single motherhood anymore.
The real problem is that since the 1960â(TM)s, the US has been massively subsidizing irresponsible sexual behavior and childbearing: families that canâ(TM)t afford to have children, single mothers, etc. And thatâ(TM)s the fault of people like you. And the amount of harm people like you have been causing to women and children is staggering.
Social conservatives and anti-abortion foes hardly have a monopolly on impinging on peopleâ(TM)s freedoms. Your beliefs about social justice impinge upon my freedom. Your beliefs about who should pay for illegitimate children or the consequences of your gluttony also impinge upon my freedom.
Democrats, Republicans, progressives, âoeliberalsâ, social conservatives, and religious conservatives are vying with each other about who can screw people who disagree with them the most; the only thing they disagree over is the specific oppressive policies they want to impose on others.
The extent and intent of the âoebanâ is known: itâ(TM)s about the budget proposal. Using terms like âoefetusâ or âoetransgenderâ or âoescience-basedâ is going to cause pushback from conservative representatives in Congress, and since these are in the majority now, if Trump wants his budget passed, he wants to avoid those kinds of controversies. Given a Republican majority in both houses, that is what an administration has to do. If Hillary were president, sheâ(TM)d have to do the same thing if she didnâ(TM)t want her budget sent back to her.
The government is the reason you couldn't own a phone for a long time in the first place. You started being able to own a phone once government started to de-regulate the phone system.
If people felt unsafe using Uber, Uber would lose riders, and if Uber drivers were unsafe, they wouldn't get insurance. Given Uber's constant tracking of both drivers and passengers, you're probably safer in an Uber ride than in a taxi.
No, Uber bans are simply about money and power, using "public safety" as a smokescreen: the London city government wants to force people to send money in the direction of their political cronies: taxi operators, unions, public transit monopolies, because they know full well that Uber can hurt all those government-imposed monopolies badly.
The only "property owner" that matters when it comes to ISPs is the city government, because it's their public roads that go to every home. And they are indeed very uncooperative and monopolistic, not to mention intrinsically corrupt.
Residential roads should primarily be owned by private associations of the people owning the adjacent properties, and those associations should then decide which private utilities, ISPs, and other services to use.
Of course there is. Hence I said small government, not "no government". Do you have trouble with the difference between "small" and "no", or do you just like to randomly put up strawmen and put words in people's mouths?
What is the right level? Well, we have both international data and US historical data. Total government spending should probably be less than 20% of GDP, although based on international data, it seems like 10% os even better. At the federal level, we should certainly be spending less than 10% of GDP, and most government spending should be local. Local spending is on the things that matter most: roads, school, police, fire, etc., and federal spending is crowding out local spending. A good start would be to cut our per capita government spending on entitlements, healthcare, and social services to average EU levels in absolute terms (since it's absolute spending that matters).
More importantly, though, our budgets should first and foremost be balanced, at all levels of government. That's, you know, what most "advanced nations" do; it's the law in Europe. That means cutting spending, cutting benefits, and raising taxes on the middle class. The reason the US government is on such a spending spree compared to Europe is because we can keep borrowing.
Stop putting up strawmen; I didn't "morally equate" anything. I simply made it clear that the US government has effective means of forcing companies to comply with the demands of its spy agencies. And if you think that the US (or France or the UK) limit themselves to jailtime, you're a naive fool. Governments across the globe shoot, bomb, poison, and strangle people who get in their way, and that includes the governments of so-called "liberal democracies". Obama and Clinton were masters of the drone strike.
You mean like "state sponsored" (i.e., NSA, CIA financed) contractors and startups in the US?