Hydrogen [...] needs a dense concentration to ignite
This is too bad inaccurate. The only serious point where hydrogen is less safe than gasoline is the flammable and explosive limits (see e.g. here). While you need a spark to start a gasoline fire, a air-hydrogen mixture can start burning only because of environmental static electricity (i.e. a windy day).
...even a hydrogen fuel cell
Not sure it is relevant, BMW are committed to using internal-combustion engines with hydrogen. This may not be efficient as fuel cells, but is definitely cheaper from the point of view of who buys the engine. Furthermore, BMW have already manufactured some 11 models of a series 7 running on both hydrogen and gasoline, with 150 kW of power.
You are forgetting that nuclear does not produce neither money nor energy.
The fact that nuclear power does not work should be hinted by the other fact that, doh, nobody wants to build them anymore. Even the French have stopped. The investments are simply not worth it, and the energy balance is heavily dependent on finding uranium with a high concentration of the good isotope, else the enrichment costs eat up money and energy. And no, there are not many of those.
Nuclear fission is a miscarriage of science, that got initial funding by military objectives and survived promising improvements that never came.
As for the "safest, cheapest, most environmentally friendly" crap, I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.
CIA has created a link from their home page, saying:
We would like to check if you're a member of Al-Quaeda. If you are Osama bin Laden, please share with us your current residence so we can address our issues. We are interested in maintaining a trust relationship with you as a customer.
Internal sources indicate that the program will be made mandatory sometime during the next months.
I'll add that sometimes economic viability is not the only concern: Finland is planning to build a nuclear reactor, and that makes sense to them since they depend on russian coal, and Russia is not exactly a reliable partner. I maintain that, given the lots of natural gas that have been found in northern Norway, they would have better scrap the nuclear plant and have a way cheaper/safer/simpler/cleaner and most importantly economically sane gas turbine plant w/ gas pipe, that is definitely easier to expand should the need occur (say if Russia is forced to pay war damages to Chechnya and goes bankrupt).
However, apart from these special situations, the economic value of nuclear power is "marginal at best", as the article I referred to in great-grandparent says.
Sad to see so many people still believing the fairy tale of nuclear power. It's a source that has never been competitive, and there's no reason it will ever be.
Don't pull the "so why are they doing it" argument, Stalin had a astrologist too in his staff during world war 2.
So, if you search in scientific journals (with that thing called "peer review"), you find this article:
Paine, J. R.,
Will nuclear power pay for itself?, The social science
journal, Vol 33 N 4 (1996) 459-473
Read that. It basically proves that any economic advantage from nuclear plants is highly unlikely. It's also a common understanding among energy researchers that the energy you put in building and maintaining a plant is often more than what you get out of it in its lifetime.
To me, hearing "China builds nuclear plants" sounds like "China to educate nuclear engineers" and "China to have a lot of people who need little training to start assembling a bunch of nukes, and facilities that can be adapted/converted to that". China is probably just taking its place as a superpower, and big boys have big toys.
A final note: I noticed that attacking nuclear here is worse than supporting al-Quaeda. I noticed impressive pro-nuclear flaming in previous occasions. Maybe nuclear fission has a geeky aura that makes it look cool, yet science says you don't get a penny out of it. If this plan of China's really is a plan with economic or energetic focus, it will go down with Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Please look what Wikipedia says about Pebble bed reactors: under "Stationary designs and History" I read many prototypes, the first in 1966, have been built. Not a single real, industrial unit. Does it smell vaporware?
The belief of the 1960s progenitors of US affirmative action programs (most notably the late Sen. Moynihan) was that a period of #2 would permit #1 to succeed. I believe the last 40 years have proven him rather misguided. I don't know what the solution is - and I doubt there is one - but enforced discrimination isn't it.
You probably just implemented it wrong. Here in Norway it works just fine. At the last election for the student representatives at the university's board at NTNU, a male was quoted in because two girls were first and second.
That's a bit extreme since the quotes are 50/50 for only two seats, but today Norwegian society is much more egalitarian than what would have been decades ago. In politics, two out of four main parties are run by women (Kristin Halvorsen for Socialist Left, Erna Solberg for the Right), and even the populistic Progress Party plans to appoint a woman, Siv Jensen, when current Führer Carl I. Hagen steps down. Another smaller party with a female leader is the Centre Party. You can look at this recent poll to check that 50/50 is approximately respected, even though there is no law saying that 50% of the voters have to vote for a party led by a woman.
Note: I'm not a nationalist Norwegian. I'm born and grown up in Italy, where there is only one woman in the parliament for every 9 men.
And while we are on solar power, has any enviro ever bothered to analyse the effect of absorbing huge amounts of solar energy that is otherwise heating the planet
Yes, that effect is exactly zero. All energy absorbed as electricity will be used and ultimately burned into heat. This happens in your PC, in your light bulb, and in your fridge too.
First principle of thermodynamics, anyone?
electric conversion from batteries to wheels is about 94% efficient right now
That's a huge claim. References? It seems to me you're quoting numbers for vanadium-ion flow batteries, but they have a very low energy density and are totally unsuited for mobile use.
'Windows Security Center' is just about as insecure as it could possibly be.
Just imagine if Microsoft were an army instead, and decided to promote world peace... They would invade a country run by a dictator, continue the dictator's tortures even in the same places, inflame the world and make the world an insanely dangerous place to live.
Oh, wait...
They used to say that all eddies in bath thubs are supposed to be clockwise in the northern emisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern, because of Coriolis' force.
That until someone calculated the magnitude of this force, and found it totally irrelevant: small disturbances as the vibrations induced by the cat walking in the next room are enough to disrupt the simmetry, and the eddies are pretty much chaotic.
It seems to me that this article has exactly the same attitude of seeing only one pattern, and discarding all others, only because those scientist don't work with them.
In short, political affiliation might have a 0.0000nothing% to do with amygdala or other crap, but it's much more a matter of how one grew up.
Simply put: an internal combustion engine (ICE) has a well-to-wheel efficiency of about 11%. The point of monkeying around with hydrogen production is that fuel cells convert hydrogen with about 50+% efficiency. If you find a way to produce hydrogen which is at least 50% efficient, you have.5*.5 = 25% efficiency, which means more than halving energy consumption.
What? How does it work in the US now? Here over in Europe you normally randomly pick Joe Schmo's for that job, normally in group of 5-10. Statistically there is almost always one that will blow the whistle.
I do have this feeling that Osama might more easily become a script kiddie and trash the world's Windows systems with the computer equivalent of the Ebola virus. Most virii until now have focused on spreading itself or collecting information for spammers - but at some time, someone will use it for destruction of data.
Just imagine the results: ok, the military might be savvy enough to avoid microsoft, but what about all the businesses that use Windows in their offices?
Because they would be exposed to competition in office suites. If I write an excellent office suite for Windows, and somehow have a real chance to take on MSOffice, all they have to do is wait for the next deadly Windows worm, release a patch that everybody will have to install, and attach it something that will make my program crash; then blame me for my poor programming.
In Windows they own the house, in Linux they would be guests. Windows/Office is a powerful combination, and it makes no sense to break it. Rather, they will give discounts on Windows, give away software (typically to schools), or tolerate piracy as in China, so that when the market gets rich they can start some enforcing.
To a certain degree I agree with most of the points presented in the article. However, I disagree with the statement (point 6) that there should be less choice and more "funnelling" of projects, e.g. commingling Gnome and KDE.
Keeping a "collaborative competition" where new ideas are tried out, imitated and exchanged is a healthy practice. Of course having only one perfectly-managed project would be better, if you drop the question of how you get perfect management.
A single project will make some mistakes at one point or another (see Gnome's spacial browsing or whatever they call that devilish desktop-cluttering insanity), but if there is more than one project, the best idea will win. I'm actually worried by Gnome's problems, right now KDE is poised to become the One And Only® desktop for Linux in the heavyweight class. What will I migrate to if Gnome is not there anymore? I hope the goneME guys manage to turn the wind there.
However, English is slowly on the way out. This is nothing new, it has occupied a place taken by Greek, Latin, classical Arabic, French in different areas of the world and times of history. Simply, on a global scale.
The choice of international language is mostly due to social dynamics, and the rise of China as an economic power is going to have consequences. Either they learn English, or we learn Chinese (besides I've been told that some parts of Chinese are quite easy - not the writing of course...). Spanish is becoming more and more widespread in the US; who knows, in a few generations there won't be any USofA, there will be EUdeA (Estados Unidos de América).
As one living in a country different from my native one, I can say that most people in large countries don't really speak English - they merely improvise. They can order a coffee, but cannot withstand a real conversation, not with ease. It might be enough to survive, but not to say that "you speak the language".
Me, I still wait for the day someone finally realises that languages are tools as hammers and printers, and takes a rational perspective at it. Esperanto is indeed better fit as an international language than any ethnic language, not because of any superior mind behind it, just because it's engineered to be easy. However, given the current situation, it's easier for each one to learn English than convincing the world to use Esperanto.
But again, as G.B. Shaw put it,
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world; unreasonable people try to adapt the world to themselves; thus, all progress is due unreasonable people.
FIAT has already been wireless for quite a long time.
Anybody who tried to start a Duna knows.
As we say in Italy: La FIAT di cazzate ne ha fatte più Duna.
For foreigners: the FIAT Duna is by far the crappiest car ever to exit Turin's assembly line (or the world's for that sake). Its ultra-low quality gave her a special status as the crappy car par excellence.
Don't say this aloud, but the GPL is not worth the bits it's written on in France. The FSF states very good reasons not to translate the GPL in other languages, but in France if a contract is not in French, it's not worth anything. There is a law about this, maybe someone will provide a link (sorry my French is not that good).
I was told this by people that have been working on the subject---I help out the KDE-i18n-it team, and the issue of translating the GPL surfaces every now and then, and one point made is what I reported here.
I would really like to know whether this separate licence you mention is in French, any chances you find it?
First, right to health care is hardcoded in many legal systems; I'll give you the example of the Italian constitution, article 32:
La Repubblica tutela la salute come fondamentale diritto dell'individuo e interesse della collettività, e garantisce cure gratuite agli indigenti.
Nessuno può essere obbligato a un determinato trattamento sanitario se non per disposizione di legge. La legge non può in nessun caso violare i limiti imposti dal rispetto della persona umana.
The Republic safeguards health as fundamental right of the individual and interest of the community, and guarantees free-of-charge care for those who cannot pay.
No one can be forced to a certain health treatment unless by law. The law cannot in any case violate the limits imposed by the respect of the human being.
(As a compensation for this, there is no amendment protecting the "right" to carry guns)
So health is not meerly a priviledge, but a right, as proper education in spelling should.
How do I decide what is a right and what a privilege? Well, in this case, you probably think that health is a privilege because you never had any serious problems, nor did anyone close to you. Or if you did, you were insanely rich anyway. In both cases, good for you, and I hope you will eventually understand the point in a different way than the hard one.
Find someone to provide care free of cost, then we'll talk.
...I was thinking the state. Is it a sort of blasphemy on the other side of the Atlantic? It would not be "free as in beer", since I do pay 7.8% of my gross income to welfare; that is about 3,500 $ a year. But it's free as in freedom, since the system does not want you to pay on the basis of what you need (normally the more you need the less you can afford), but on the basis of what you can pay, thereby granting that all have access to health care. Hence, a right is guaranteed.
And why shouldn't an enterprising individual, if he chooses, opt out of the government system and hire his health care skills or products to the highest bidder?
As long as one pays his share to the public system, I have no problem with him going to a private institution, either paid with his own money or with some insurance. However, the system I described is built on the concept of solidarity, and "opting out" is escaping one's social duties. Such an opt-out possibility rapidly creates a health care for the have's and one for the have-not's, making it pointless to have a public system in the first place. And, anyway, handing over your health care to people that actually make more money the more you are hospitalized is a bad idea. At least in Italy, the private health sector has a lot of skeletons in its closet, as in the Galeazzi hyperbaric chamber accident of a few years ago. Back then, I lived there in Milan with another student, who happened to practice at that hospital. I got enough stories that I'd rather trust shamans than private health sector.
Personally, I feel like health care is like police or another basic public service. You normally don't have it private, and if you are so rich that you have private vigilantes, you don't slip paying the taxes to maintain the ordinary police.
What about the parliament? I make my own parliament, and I don't have to pay the salary of those dumbasses sitting in Rome. Now, that would be something, apartment-based secession!
I happen to live in Norway, a country that has one among the highest tax levels in the world (up to over 55% for the "toppskatt", the top tax on income exceeding about 50,000 dollars). It's normally not that high since there are standard detractions on the lower end, so I end up paying 25% of my wage. I own my flat and save about 800-1000 dollars per month, after mortgage and expenses, with no financial support from home.
Food is indeed insanely expensive, and I won't even mention alcohol. Pretty much everything is much more expensive than in Italy, my country of origin, and since Norway is still only halfway in the EU, imported food of acceptable quality (yes I brought my Italian food-pickiness with me) is even more expensive.
So, why here? Simple: they pay me 2 times what they would have paid me in Italy for a way worse job in a way worse place. The health care is indeed tax-financed (7.8% of gross income), and if anything should happen I have to pay maximumabout 200 dollarsper year, after which I get a "freecard" and can get all the health care I need for free (if you can read Norwegian, the link says that there is a separate count to about 800 dollars for less urgent services, as physiotherapy, dentist, even training). Of course, should I not be able to pay it (say I became penniless), I get the card for free. Health care is a right, not a ware!
Plus, the bureaucracy here has a let's-solve-the-problem approach, not a let's-get-rid-of-this-annoying-pest approach. I sometimes feel almost guilty when I contact the wrong guy in the administration, but they do the job anyway, even if they would not be supposed to. It's sort of being on Planet Nice.
Since there is no poverty, there is very little crime. I have been here over 3 years, and I've never, ever seen a fight. I'm a 1.84 tall guy so I would be safe anyway in the US too, but girls can walk around alone at 4 o'clock sunday morning, and they are safe; the place is full of immigrants, all the ones I saw well integrated and working. Never, ever seen a beggar. To tip it all 99.8% of electricity is produced with renewable sources (hydro).
So, in conclusion, it seems that you can get what you pay for. There are high taxes, but I do get a lot for it in return.
That's why I've grown very suspicious of politicians who promise tax breaks. They are probably planning a state worth it.
And yes, when I go back to Italy I often pack coffee, pasta and the like.
Slashdot Mirror
This is too bad inaccurate. The only serious point where hydrogen is less safe than gasoline is the flammable and explosive limits (see e.g. here). While you need a spark to start a gasoline fire, a air-hydrogen mixture can start burning only because of environmental static electricity (i.e. a windy day).
Not sure it is relevant, BMW are committed to using internal-combustion engines with hydrogen. This may not be efficient as fuel cells, but is definitely cheaper from the point of view of who buys the engine. Furthermore, BMW have already manufactured some 11 models of a series 7 running on both hydrogen and gasoline, with 150 kW of power.
You are forgetting that nuclear does not produce neither money nor energy.
The fact that nuclear power does not work should be hinted by the other fact that, doh, nobody wants to build them anymore. Even the French have stopped. The investments are simply not worth it, and the energy balance is heavily dependent on finding uranium with a high concentration of the good isotope, else the enrichment costs eat up money and energy. And no, there are not many of those.
Nuclear fission is a miscarriage of science, that got initial funding by military objectives and survived promising improvements that never came.
As for the "safest, cheapest, most environmentally friendly" crap, I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.
CIA has created a link from their home page, saying:
Internal sources indicate that the program will be made mandatory sometime during the next months.
I'll add that sometimes economic viability is not the only concern: Finland is planning to build a nuclear reactor, and that makes sense to them since they depend on russian coal, and Russia is not exactly a reliable partner. I maintain that, given the lots of natural gas that have been found in northern Norway, they would have better scrap the nuclear plant and have a way cheaper/safer/simpler/cleaner and most importantly economically sane gas turbine plant w/ gas pipe, that is definitely easier to expand should the need occur (say if Russia is forced to pay war damages to Chechnya and goes bankrupt).
However, apart from these special situations, the economic value of nuclear power is "marginal at best", as the article I referred to in great-grandparent says.
Sad to see so many people still believing the fairy tale of nuclear power. It's a source that has never been competitive, and there's no reason it will ever be.
Don't pull the "so why are they doing it" argument, Stalin had a astrologist too in his staff during world war 2.
So, if you search in scientific journals (with that thing called "peer review"), you find this article:
Read that. It basically proves that any economic advantage from nuclear plants is highly unlikely. It's also a common understanding among energy researchers that the energy you put in building and maintaining a plant is often more than what you get out of it in its lifetime.To me, hearing "China builds nuclear plants" sounds like "China to educate nuclear engineers" and "China to have a lot of people who need little training to start assembling a bunch of nukes, and facilities that can be adapted/converted to that".
China is probably just taking its place as a superpower, and big boys have big toys.
A final note: I noticed that attacking nuclear here is worse than supporting al-Quaeda. I noticed impressive pro-nuclear flaming in previous occasions. Maybe nuclear fission has a geeky aura that makes it look cool, yet science says you don't get a penny out of it. If this plan of China's really is a plan with economic or energetic focus, it will go down with Mao's Great Leap Forward.
Please look what Wikipedia says about Pebble bed reactors: under "Stationary designs and History" I read many prototypes, the first in 1966, have been built. Not a single real, industrial unit. Does it smell vaporware?
You probably just implemented it wrong. Here in Norway it works just fine. At the last election for the student representatives at the university's board at NTNU, a male was quoted in because two girls were first and second.
That's a bit extreme since the quotes are 50/50 for only two seats, but today Norwegian society is much more egalitarian than what would have been decades ago. In politics, two out of four main parties are run by women (Kristin Halvorsen for Socialist Left, Erna Solberg for the Right), and even the populistic Progress Party plans to appoint a woman, Siv Jensen, when current Führer Carl I. Hagen steps down. Another smaller party with a female leader is the Centre Party. You can look at this recent poll to check that 50/50 is approximately respected, even though there is no law saying that 50% of the voters have to vote for a party led by a woman.
Note: I'm not a nationalist Norwegian. I'm born and grown up in Italy, where there is only one woman in the parliament for every 9 men.
First principle of thermodynamics, anyone? That's a huge claim. References? It seems to me you're quoting numbers for vanadium-ion flow batteries, but they have a very low energy density and are totally unsuited for mobile use.
They would invade a country run by a dictator, continue the dictator's tortures even in the same places, inflame the world and make the world an insanely dangerous place to live.
Oh, wait...
They used to say that all eddies in bath thubs are supposed to be clockwise in the northern emisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern, because of Coriolis' force.
That until someone calculated the magnitude of this force, and found it totally irrelevant: small disturbances as the vibrations induced by the cat walking in the next room are enough to disrupt the simmetry, and the eddies are pretty much chaotic.
It seems to me that this article has exactly the same attitude of seeing only one pattern, and discarding all others, only because those scientist don't work with them.
In short, political affiliation might have a 0.0000nothing% to do with amygdala or other crap, but it's much more a matter of how one grew up.
Simply put: an internal combustion engine (ICE) has a well-to-wheel efficiency of about 11%. The point of monkeying around with hydrogen production is that fuel cells convert hydrogen with about 50+% efficiency. If you find a way to produce hydrogen which is at least 50% efficient, you have .5*.5 = 25% efficiency, which means more than halving energy consumption.
What? How does it work in the US now? Here over in Europe you normally randomly pick Joe Schmo's for that job, normally in group of 5-10. Statistically there is almost always one that will blow the whistle.
Think again, they did that already to others.
Don't own, but remember they bought $150 millions in Apple shares in 1997.
I do have this feeling that Osama might more easily become a script kiddie and trash the world's Windows systems with the computer equivalent of the Ebola virus. Most virii until now have focused on spreading itself or collecting information for spammers - but at some time, someone will use it for destruction of data.
Just imagine the results: ok, the military might be savvy enough to avoid microsoft, but what about all the businesses that use Windows in their offices?
Because they would be exposed to competition in office suites. If I write an excellent office suite for Windows, and somehow have a real chance to take on MSOffice, all they have to do is wait for the next deadly Windows worm, release a patch that everybody will have to install, and attach it something that will make my program crash; then blame me for my poor programming.
In Windows they own the house, in Linux they would be guests. Windows/Office is a powerful combination, and it makes no sense to break it. Rather, they will give discounts on Windows, give away software (typically to schools), or tolerate piracy as in China, so that when the market gets rich they can start some enforcing.
If the servers are out, try the torrents.
To a certain degree I agree with most of the points presented in the article. However, I disagree with the statement (point 6) that there should be less choice and more "funnelling" of projects, e.g. commingling Gnome and KDE.
Keeping a "collaborative competition" where new ideas are tried out, imitated and exchanged is a healthy practice. Of course having only one perfectly-managed project would be better, if you drop the question of how you get perfect management.
A single project will make some mistakes at one point or another (see Gnome's spacial browsing or whatever they call that devilish desktop-cluttering insanity), but if there is more than one project, the best idea will win. I'm actually worried by Gnome's problems, right now KDE is poised to become the One And Only® desktop for Linux in the heavyweight class. What will I migrate to if Gnome is not there anymore? I hope the goneME guys manage to turn the wind there.
However, English is slowly on the way out. This is nothing new, it has occupied a place taken by Greek, Latin, classical Arabic, French in different areas of the world and times of history. Simply, on a global scale.
The choice of international language is mostly due to social dynamics, and the rise of China as an economic power is going to have consequences. Either they learn English, or we learn Chinese (besides I've been told that some parts of Chinese are quite easy - not the writing of course...). Spanish is becoming more and more widespread in the US; who knows, in a few generations there won't be any USofA, there will be EUdeA (Estados Unidos de América).
As one living in a country different from my native one, I can say that most people in large countries don't really speak English - they merely improvise. They can order a coffee, but cannot withstand a real conversation, not with ease. It might be enough to survive, but not to say that "you speak the language".
Me, I still wait for the day someone finally realises that languages are tools as hammers and printers, and takes a rational perspective at it. Esperanto is indeed better fit as an international language than any ethnic language, not because of any superior mind behind it, just because it's engineered to be easy. However, given the current situation, it's easier for each one to learn English than convincing the world to use Esperanto.
But again, as G.B. Shaw put it,
FIAT has already been wireless for quite a long time.
Anybody who tried to start a Duna knows.
As we say in Italy: La FIAT di cazzate ne ha fatte più Duna.
For foreigners: the FIAT Duna is by far the crappiest car ever to exit Turin's assembly line (or the world's for that sake). Its ultra-low quality gave her a special status as the crappy car par excellence.
Don't say this aloud, but the GPL is not worth the bits it's written on in France. The FSF states very good reasons not to translate the GPL in other languages, but in France if a contract is not in French, it's not worth anything. There is a law about this, maybe someone will provide a link (sorry my French is not that good).
I was told this by people that have been working on the subject---I help out the KDE-i18n-it team, and the issue of translating the GPL surfaces every now and then, and one point made is what I reported here.
I would really like to know whether this separate licence you mention is in French, any chances you find it?
First, right to health care is hardcoded in many legal systems; I'll give you the example of the Italian constitution, article 32:
(As a compensation for this, there is no amendment protecting the "right" to carry guns)So health is not meerly a priviledge, but a right, as proper education in spelling should.
How do I decide what is a right and what a privilege? Well, in this case, you probably think that health is a privilege because you never had any serious problems, nor did anyone close to you. Or if you did, you were insanely rich anyway. In both cases, good for you, and I hope you will eventually understand the point in a different way than the hard one.
Last, you might read article 25 of this document.
...I was thinking the state. Is it a sort of blasphemy on the other side of the Atlantic? It would not be "free as in beer", since I do pay 7.8% of my gross income to welfare; that is about 3,500 $ a year. But it's free as in freedom, since the system does not want you to pay on the basis of what you need (normally the more you need the less you can afford), but on the basis of what you can pay, thereby granting that all have access to health care. Hence, a right is guaranteed.
As long as one pays his share to the public system, I have no problem with him going to a private institution, either paid with his own money or with some insurance. However, the system I described is built on the concept of solidarity, and "opting out" is escaping one's social duties. Such an opt-out possibility rapidly creates a health care for the have's and one for the have-not's, making it pointless to have a public system in the first place.
And, anyway, handing over your health care to people that actually make more money the more you are hospitalized is a bad idea. At least in Italy, the private health sector has a lot of skeletons in its closet, as in the Galeazzi hyperbaric chamber accident of a few years ago. Back then, I lived there in Milan with another student, who happened to practice at that hospital. I got enough stories that I'd rather trust shamans than private health sector.
Personally, I feel like health care is like police or another basic public service. You normally don't have it private, and if you are so rich that you have private vigilantes, you don't slip paying the taxes to maintain the ordinary police.
What about the parliament? I make my own parliament, and I don't have to pay the salary of those dumbasses sitting in Rome. Now, that would be something, apartment-based secession!
I happen to live in Norway, a country that has one among the highest tax levels in the world (up to over 55% for the "toppskatt", the top tax on income exceeding about 50,000 dollars). It's normally not that high since there are standard detractions on the lower end, so I end up paying 25% of my wage. I own my flat and save about 800-1000 dollars per month, after mortgage and expenses, with no financial support from home.
Food is indeed insanely expensive, and I won't even mention alcohol. Pretty much everything is much more expensive than in Italy, my country of origin, and since Norway is still only halfway in the EU, imported food of acceptable quality (yes I brought my Italian food-pickiness with me) is even more expensive.
So, why here? Simple: they pay me 2 times what they would have paid me in Italy for a way worse job in a way worse place. The health care is indeed tax-financed (7.8% of gross income), and if anything should happen I have to pay maximum about 200 dollars per year, after which I get a "freecard" and can get all the health care I need for free (if you can read Norwegian, the link says that there is a separate count to about 800 dollars for less urgent services, as physiotherapy, dentist, even training). Of course, should I not be able to pay it (say I became penniless), I get the card for free. Health care is a right, not a ware!
Plus, the bureaucracy here has a let's-solve-the-problem approach, not a let's-get-rid-of-this-annoying-pest approach. I sometimes feel almost guilty when I contact the wrong guy in the administration, but they do the job anyway, even if they would not be supposed to. It's sort of being on Planet Nice.
Since there is no poverty, there is very little crime. I have been here over 3 years, and I've never, ever seen a fight. I'm a 1.84 tall guy so I would be safe anyway in the US too, but girls can walk around alone at 4 o'clock sunday morning, and they are safe; the place is full of immigrants, all the ones I saw well integrated and working. Never, ever seen a beggar. To tip it all 99.8% of electricity is produced with renewable sources (hydro).
So, in conclusion, it seems that you can get what you pay for. There are high taxes, but I do get a lot for it in return.
That's why I've grown very suspicious of politicians who promise tax breaks. They are probably planning a state worth it.
And yes, when I go back to Italy I often pack coffee, pasta and the like.
Had this been Wikipedia I would have edited that to "et al."...
For the curious: et al. (no dot after et, it's a complete word) is short for the latin et alii, "and others".
Pronounciation should be something like "eht ahl".