That's a list of ISPs which provide service in some part of Norway. It doesn't say anything at all about the specific availability in the locale of Nervei, Norway.
The flaw in your comment is that it treats the entirety of the USA as one entity when it comes to internet speeds.
I have multiple gigabit fiber providers available to me and pay $70/month for a low latency symmetrical gigabit link to my suburban house at the edge of the city. Other people in some rural areas only have DSL or satellite Internet. Other people in cities are more like me, but there are a few cities where legal restrictions cause some people to be stuck virtually at dial-up.
Lots of different States, different cities, different legal rules and population density/distances over time equal different outcomes. I don't know for sure as I don't live there, but I'd guess Nervei, Norway doesn't have as good of Internet access as I do in the USA, despite being in "Northern Europe".
The problem is that when you say "we" should do something, most people seem to mean somebody else should go do it. You just want to help tell those other people what to do.
You also don't need a $500 smartphone, but people seem to want one anyway. We spend more on larger houses (except in a few heavily zoned cities who distort their local housing market to prop up home prices for existing residents) and get more house as a result. We buy safer, more fuel-efficient cars than we used to. We spend a lot on being trendy, following fashion, rather than on basic necessities.
If you wanted to live a typical 1950s existence with that level of technology and health care, etc... it's less expensive (inflation adjusted) to do so now than it was back then. But people don't want to live that way in the US any more because we have much more and much nicer stuff now.
If you want to go all the way back to 1790 (which is when better data starts), you could work a couple of weeks a year at minimum wage and pay for their average person's life style today, because it really sucked back then. Data from 1790 indicates wages for a skilled worker of about $0.02 / hour. With equivalent things available then costing 15X as much today, that's $0.30 / hour today. 30X if you include "modern" equivalents.
Most people seem to forget that for much of history, average people in the U.S. lived in little one to two room cabins with dirt floors and a big family. You know, how a big chunk of the world still lives today, although way less people than did even 20 years ago.
"The 1%" isn't some static group of people which never changes. Almost everyone is at some point in their lives in both the bottom 20% and the top 20% of income earners. That's just life.
– 70% of the population will have experienced at least one year within the top 20th percentile of income;
– 53% of the population will have experienced at least one year within the top 10th percentile of income; and
11.1% of the population will have found themselves in the much-maligned 1% of earners for at least one year of their lives.
At the same time, it’s much more rare for a person to reach the top 1% and stay there. According to PSID data, only 0.6% of the population will experience 10 consecutive years in the top 1% of earners.
The reasons for Medicare saving any money don't actually pan out. For example, Medicare doesn't have lower administrative costs, it just shifts those costs (and more) to fraud costs instead. It doesn't matter what you call the money being spent, it's still spending more. Medicare is already heavily subsidized by non-Medicare patients, to the point where 15 percent of Doctors no longer accept Medicare and another 30% limit the number of Medicare patients they're willing to accept. Without those subsidies from other patients, we just end up with less health care as providers (the people doing the actual work) go out of business or don't go into business and go do something else with their time instead.
You just have to look at how Medicare actually operates, at how the VA health system actually operates, to see how a Medicare For All plan would actually operate. It isn't a pretty picture, it's mostly waste, poor care and even poorer outcomes, but it does rip off taxpayers and consumers for the benefit of the Democrat's buddies, so I guess it has that going for it.
Not to mention that the issue we're discussing is happening in the most left-wing and anti-capitalist location in the United States. It's not like people can't afford to buy houses on their wages in parts of the U.S. where free market ideas are more prevalent, it's all about the left-wing Democrat run strongholds.
Of course, there are a couple of places who have "solved" the housing cost issue due to decades of Democrat rule. That's places like Detroit where they've increased taxes so much for so long and used it for inflated government union worker salaries and pensions to the point where they no longer provide much in the way of services while at the same time taxing property so much that no one can afford the super cheap homes in the crime-ridden neighborhoods their left-wing rule has brought about.
You forgot to mention that the famines under Communism killed 25 times as many people as the relatively minor famines (by comparison) under the Tsars. Also, the Tsars' economic system was primarily legal serfdom, not anything like free market capitalism. At best a few areas were allowed to follow some market policies in order to industrialize towards the end of the Tsars and those specific small areas had significant positive economic growth.
Bullshit. Every time Venezuela nationalized another industry, that industry stopped being able to function properly and actually produce as many goods anymore. Oil, steel, whatever, they all stopped being as productive after they were nationalized by the socialist kleptocrats in charge.
From 1998 to 2018, oil production in Venezuela is down from 3.5 million barrels per day in December of 1997 vs 2 million in October of 2017.
So what happened in the last 20 years? From Wikipedia : “After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country’s oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution. Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields on stream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total. Chávez’s policies damaged Venezuela’s oil industry due to lack of investment, corruption and cash shortages.”
Probably just a fluke, though, right? I mean, steel production in Venezuela increased from 3400 tons in 1998 to about 4600 tons in 2008. The steel industry was nationalized by the Venezuelan government in 2008 and production declined to under 1600 tons. Huh, definitely a pattern forming. Similar stories of lower production and losses in the other industries after they were taken over: aluminum, cement, gold, iron, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper and the media.
If you disagree, pick any industry in Venezuela which was nationalized where that isn't true and let us know the name of it so we can look into the economic statistics.
At this point, pretty much no industry in Venezuela hasn't been killed by the socialist policies of the government via inflation, minimum wages, price controls, etc..., but it all started with the government nationalizing and taking over companies and entire industries, "for the people", of course.
The number of private companies in Venezuela was 14K in 1998. In 2011 it was 9K. (ABC News) The government there has taken over and runs at least 500 companies and loses money on at least 70% of them. Some news reports say they’ve ruined thousands of companies./blockquote>
Repeating a claim isn't demonstrating it. Perhaps you could start with a link to a scientific study which shows the negative harms, if that isn't too much trouble?
First you'll need to demonstrate some significant harm from microplastics, or even have a theory of how they'd be harmful. The ones that come out the other side, to use your example, have specifically been found to not be harmful in any way.
More people being able to afford products because they use inexpensive plastic rather than more expensive and resource intensive materials isn't a "problem", it's a technological advance.
The machine politics and resulting massive abuse of pensions and spending on the politicians friends in Chicago and Detroit are national problems which can't be solved at the local level?
You didn't name a single Democratic controlled city which had clean government and no special deals for their buddies, which was the original question.
Yes, the BDAC was organized by the FCC. There's your first clue that the FCC isn't the BDAC and the BDAC isn't the FCC. It's similar to how while the Presidency is created by the Constitution, the President isn't the Constitution and if the President says something, it's not the Constitution saying it.
The FCC is a specific commission which has members who vote on things they're authorized to vote on by Congress. None of the commissioners of the FCC are also members of the BDAC.
Here are the advisory committees established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), none of which have any power other than to "advise":
Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee
Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council
Consumer Advisory Committee
Disability Advisory Committee
Diversity and Digital Empowerment
North American Numbering Council
Technological Advisory Council
World Radiocommunication Conference
So when the members of one of these advisory committees gives their advice, they aren't acting on behalf of the FCC, speaking on behalf of the FCC, nor on behalf of the commissioners who are members of the FCC, they're instead attempting to influence the FCC (and others) by giving their advice.
California continues to suffer the highest rates of poverty, child poverty, homelessness and unsheltered homelessness in the country. California continues to rank near the bottom on national education tests while failing to educate the majority of students to meet statewide standards on English and mathematics.
For all the talk of balance, California continues its long march toward devoting greater resources to pensions. According to a report released last year by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, while state contributions to pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS were just $1.6 billion in 2002-03, they are on track to hit $19.5 billion by 2029-30. And that’s just at the state level; the problem is just as bad or worse for counties, cities and school districts.
You realize the FCC didn't vote on, nor participate in, nor announce any of this, right?
It's there in the summary, this is a suggestion to the States from the BDAC, an industry recommendation board.
Like pretty much all the other industries, they think we should tax or regulate other people, especially their competition, and give them the benefits.
The frequency with which they get their way is why we need to not grant these regulators the power to actually do it for them.
Right, it's the local left-wing Democratic Party politicians who are the champions of putting politics and special deals for their buddies aside and just working on solving problems for people.
Never mind what they actually do, as evident in all the long time Democratic political strongholds like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc.
But hey, don't believe your lying eyes, we really just need to put them in charge of more communities and this time it'll be different, right?
The BDAC is an industry committee, it's not the FCC. It's organized by the FCC so the industry can make suggestions. It doesn't matter who is on the FCC, or even if this committee exists, the industry is going to suggest you tax other people to give them money, just like just about every other industry. Next someone will exclaim surprise that Tesla thinks we should increase the gas tax in order to subsidize EVs.
Where the rubber meets the road is if anyone actually goes along with their new tax proposal or not. Fortunately, the FCC doesn't have the authority to do so and hopefully most States (which is the target of the proposal) aren't stupid enough to create a new obscure tax to collect.
Sell the iphone and the game console and buy an inexpensive computer and stick one (or more) of the many free computer programming environments on it after checking with someone knowledgeable about how to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you could always go check with the guys who monitor this sort of thing and expose the worst abusers, rather than the apologists for the Universities involved....
Please note that it's not privately owned parks having an issue....
That's a list of ISPs which provide service in some part of Norway. It doesn't say anything at all about the specific availability in the locale of Nervei, Norway.
The flaw in your comment is that it treats the entirety of the USA as one entity when it comes to internet speeds.
I have multiple gigabit fiber providers available to me and pay $70/month for a low latency symmetrical gigabit link to my suburban house at the edge of the city. Other people in some rural areas only have DSL or satellite Internet. Other people in cities are more like me, but there are a few cities where legal restrictions cause some people to be stuck virtually at dial-up.
Lots of different States, different cities, different legal rules and population density/distances over time equal different outcomes. I don't know for sure as I don't live there, but I'd guess Nervei, Norway doesn't have as good of Internet access as I do in the USA, despite being in "Northern Europe".
SF is one of the most expensive places in the country for gas. The current national average is $2.25/gallon (Or 0.779 CDN $/Litre), with some parts of the country as low as $1.80/gallon.
The problem is that when you say "we" should do something, most people seem to mean somebody else should go do it. You just want to help tell those other people what to do.
We don't need to work so hard, we choose to.
You also don't need a $500 smartphone, but people seem to want one anyway. We spend more on larger houses (except in a few heavily zoned cities who distort their local housing market to prop up home prices for existing residents) and get more house as a result. We buy safer, more fuel-efficient cars than we used to. We spend a lot on being trendy, following fashion, rather than on basic necessities.
If you wanted to live a typical 1950s existence with that level of technology and health care, etc... it's less expensive (inflation adjusted) to do so now than it was back then. But people don't want to live that way in the US any more because we have much more and much nicer stuff now.
If you want to go all the way back to 1790 (which is when better data starts), you could work a couple of weeks a year at minimum wage and pay for their average person's life style today, because it really sucked back then. Data from 1790 indicates wages for a skilled worker of about $0.02 / hour. With equivalent things available then costing 15X as much today, that's $0.30 / hour today. 30X if you include "modern" equivalents.
Most people seem to forget that for much of history, average people in the U.S. lived in little one to two room cabins with dirt floors and a big family. You know, how a big chunk of the world still lives today, although way less people than did even 20 years ago.
"The 1%" isn't some static group of people which never changes. Almost everyone is at some point in their lives in both the bottom 20% and the top 20% of income earners. That's just life.
For example:
The current Medicare's unfunded liabilities are somewhere between $37 and $58 Trillion, depending on how you count them. The idea that more Medicare would save money fails the laugh test. We're not even currently managing to fully pay for the Medicare which has been promised to people.
The reasons for Medicare saving any money don't actually pan out. For example, Medicare doesn't have lower administrative costs, it just shifts those costs (and more) to fraud costs instead. It doesn't matter what you call the money being spent, it's still spending more. Medicare is already heavily subsidized by non-Medicare patients, to the point where 15 percent of Doctors no longer accept Medicare and another 30% limit the number of Medicare patients they're willing to accept. Without those subsidies from other patients, we just end up with less health care as providers (the people doing the actual work) go out of business or don't go into business and go do something else with their time instead.
You just have to look at how Medicare actually operates, at how the VA health system actually operates, to see how a Medicare For All plan would actually operate. It isn't a pretty picture, it's mostly waste, poor care and even poorer outcomes, but it does rip off taxpayers and consumers for the benefit of the Democrat's buddies, so I guess it has that going for it.
Not to mention that the issue we're discussing is happening in the most left-wing and anti-capitalist location in the United States. It's not like people can't afford to buy houses on their wages in parts of the U.S. where free market ideas are more prevalent, it's all about the left-wing Democrat run strongholds.
Of course, there are a couple of places who have "solved" the housing cost issue due to decades of Democrat rule. That's places like Detroit where they've increased taxes so much for so long and used it for inflated government union worker salaries and pensions to the point where they no longer provide much in the way of services while at the same time taxing property so much that no one can afford the super cheap homes in the crime-ridden neighborhoods their left-wing rule has brought about.
You forgot to mention that the famines under Communism killed 25 times as many people as the relatively minor famines (by comparison) under the Tsars. Also, the Tsars' economic system was primarily legal serfdom, not anything like free market capitalism. At best a few areas were allowed to follow some market policies in order to industrialize towards the end of the Tsars and those specific small areas had significant positive economic growth.
Bullshit. Every time Venezuela nationalized another industry, that industry stopped being able to function properly and actually produce as many goods anymore. Oil, steel, whatever, they all stopped being as productive after they were nationalized by the socialist kleptocrats in charge.
If you disagree, pick any industry in Venezuela which was nationalized where that isn't true and let us know the name of it so we can look into the economic statistics.
At this point, pretty much no industry in Venezuela hasn't been killed by the socialist policies of the government via inflation, minimum wages, price controls, etc..., but it all started with the government nationalizing and taking over companies and entire industries, "for the people", of course.
Repeating a claim isn't demonstrating it. Perhaps you could start with a link to a scientific study which shows the negative harms, if that isn't too much trouble?
For example, a quick Google search turns up a claim based on a Scient article that Orca's are in danger because of PCBs, which are not microplastics. The article lists the top three threats to their populations and again, no microplastics in the list.
So where are you getting this information?
First you'll need to demonstrate some significant harm from microplastics, or even have a theory of how they'd be harmful. The ones that come out the other side, to use your example, have specifically been found to not be harmful in any way.
Where? In a vending machine, for the same amount of product?
Anywhere I've seen, a big plastic bottle was literally half as expensive per ounce of soda as trying to get cans or glass bottles.
More people being able to afford products because they use inexpensive plastic rather than more expensive and resource intensive materials isn't a "problem", it's a technological advance.
The machine politics and resulting massive abuse of pensions and spending on the politicians friends in Chicago and Detroit are national problems which can't be solved at the local level?
Yeah, not quite....
You didn't name a single Democratic controlled city which had clean government and no special deals for their buddies, which was the original question.
There's more scandals than that in just Obama's 8 years as President, let alone the City and State political machines.
Now you're just trolling. Rod Blagojevich, Dan Walker and Otto Kerner were all Democratic politicians.
Yes, the BDAC was organized by the FCC. There's your first clue that the FCC isn't the BDAC and the BDAC isn't the FCC. It's similar to how while the Presidency is created by the Constitution, the President isn't the Constitution and if the President says something, it's not the Constitution saying it.
The BDAC has no power, other than to make a recommendation, i.e. give their advice.
The FCC is a specific commission which has members who vote on things they're authorized to vote on by Congress. None of the commissioners of the FCC are also members of the BDAC.
Here are the advisory committees established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), none of which have any power other than to "advise":
So when the members of one of these advisory committees gives their advice, they aren't acting on behalf of the FCC, speaking on behalf of the FCC, nor on behalf of the commissioners who are members of the FCC, they're instead attempting to influence the FCC (and others) by giving their advice.
Hopefully, that clears up the difference for you.
You mean like North Carolina, on it's third consecutive year of large budget surpluses?
You need to get out of your bubble more.
Also, I hate to break it to you, but California government has been controlled by Democrats for far longer than they've had an officially balanced budget. It's still not balanced if you actually account for public employee pension obligations in a reasonable manner:
You realize the FCC didn't vote on, nor participate in, nor announce any of this, right?
It's there in the summary, this is a suggestion to the States from the BDAC, an industry recommendation board.
Like pretty much all the other industries, they think we should tax or regulate other people, especially their competition, and give them the benefits.
The frequency with which they get their way is why we need to not grant these regulators the power to actually do it for them.
Right, it's the local left-wing Democratic Party politicians who are the champions of putting politics and special deals for their buddies aside and just working on solving problems for people.
Never mind what they actually do, as evident in all the long time Democratic political strongholds like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc.
But hey, don't believe your lying eyes, we really just need to put them in charge of more communities and this time it'll be different, right?
The BDAC is an industry committee, it's not the FCC. It's organized by the FCC so the industry can make suggestions. It doesn't matter who is on the FCC, or even if this committee exists, the industry is going to suggest you tax other people to give them money, just like just about every other industry. Next someone will exclaim surprise that Tesla thinks we should increase the gas tax in order to subsidize EVs.
Where the rubber meets the road is if anyone actually goes along with their new tax proposal or not. Fortunately, the FCC doesn't have the authority to do so and hopefully most States (which is the target of the proposal) aren't stupid enough to create a new obscure tax to collect.
Sell the iphone and the game console and buy an inexpensive computer and stick one (or more) of the many free computer programming environments on it after checking with someone knowledgeable about how to do that.