But those jobs should be automated so no-one has to do them.
And that process should be supported by a high minimum wage - hitting the employers, not taxing productive work to provide tax credits to subsidise such terrible jobs.
Automation leads to more high-tech jobs and investment, and higher productivity, which leads to higher wages as companies compete for highly skilled employees, etc.
Economic mobility and productivity is the key to prosperity.
> And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event?
This is sadly the same in Europe, as dentistry mostly isn't covered under public healthcare in the UK and Sweden for example. So we pay almost 50% tax just to be in the same position!
But I support universal healthcare (including dentistry and opticians), it's a critical part of economic mobility. People can't move jobs or take risks if they'll lose healthcare coverage.
I'd love to move, but getting a green card is a nightmare.
I don't want to work for 5 years trapped with one employer and facing deportation with a matter of weeks if I lose my job, on an L-1 visa (and to do that I'd still have to find a position to move to in my company).
Seems weird to pit socialism against free markets.
There's nothing about disallowing private ownership of the Earth's common resources, natural monopolies, etc. that stops having free markets everywhere else.
If anything, allowing that is what corrupts free markets - as even with privatisation, you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid because we can only build a limited number of them and can't support multiple disjoint networks. But those corporations can then use that captive market for an unfair advantage entering other markets / verticals.
I think the best solution would be free markets and liberalisation, except in natural monopolies, and a lot of taxation against accumulated and inherited wealth (not income) to provide a level playing field and economic mobility.
> you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid
My philosophy is to have a system that monitors innovation done in a sector and if it is deemed insufficient we turn it into a government department (and pay a reasonable price) The government department is compared to private industry in other countries, if performance is deemed insufficient it will be privatized. (with privatized I don't mean given away for 1 euro) It should continue to have the same employees after the transition unless it switches between public and private and back to fast. Then people should be replaced and shuffled around at all levels.
To use the railroad example, if the company is able to find funds to stay on the cutting edge technically, in service level, price and reliability it should [most definitely] stay a company. If it is just sitting there not doing much of anything besides maximizing revenue we might as well have the government run it.
If we really need the service (as is the case with railroads) and it needs bailing out we give each tax paying person or entity an amount of shares that scales with the amount of tax they paid.
I'm ok with high taxes for sale and redistribution, but I don't think they have such large impact on economic mobility, at least at the top. After all real tax pressure on companies has been steadily going down, but the rate of change in the fortune 100 had been steadily increasing
I mean economic mobility like making it easy for people to switch jobs, move city, work for startups, etc.
So separating healthcare coverage from your employment is one important step, as is providing modern, in-depth STEM + Medicine education so people are able to work in highly skilled jobs where we really need them.
That's a big part of driving disruption and progress.
Economic mobility != fortune 500 companies being swapped out with one another. Even more so as people increasingly opt out of individual stocks and just end up buying VTSAX or similar.
It almost seems like a metric designed to mislead about economic mobility in fact. Where did you read about it?
Fortune 500 companies are comprised of people who can receive varying pay packages based on their company's performance, the closer to the top they are the more direct this relationship is.
>you never have a real free market on the railways, highways, or electricity grid because we can only build a limited number of them and can't support multiple disjoint networks
Search indexes too - the electricity costs alone for running one are prohibitive.
> There's nothing about disallowing private ownership of the Earth's common resources, natural monopolies, etc. that stops having free markets everywhere else.
What are "the Earth's common resources"? Is farmland one of those? What about forests, are those part of those "common resources"? If the answer is "yes" your claim of there not being any hindrance between Socialism and "free markets everywhere else" falls flat since it would not be possible to have a free market in essential goods - food and shelter.
For where it concerns "natural monopolies" I tend to agree. As to "a lot of taxation against accumulated and inherited wealth (not income)" I mostly disagree since this is a big disincentive against saving and living within one's means. Parents who want to take care of their children to help them on their way would be punished for their thriftiness (which turns "income" into "wealth") to finance slackers and spendthrifts, the classical dilemma which gave rise to the likes of Ayn Rand writing "Atlas Shrugged". Such a system does not promote economic mobility either since it takes away the incentive to become mobile - why bother when the state provides "equity"?
As the article demonstrates, there's nothing preventing socialists from voluntarily choosing to live in socialist communities, inside of the context of a market oriented economy. The conclusion is that most people simply prefer not to.
>To find out what percentage of people especially want to live under socialism, we need a situation where people have a reasonably attractive socialist option and also a reasonably attractive nonsocialist one. If it is not precisely the optimal experiment to answer our question, the Israeli experience with kibbutzim comes as close as the real world can.
Socialists are free to develop other arrangements. Is it a problem of innovation?
The distinction here is that even under a hypothetical laissez-faire ideal, socialists would be free to create their own socialist communities of any type. Whereas within a compulsory socialist economy laissez-faire markets are prohibited.
The laissez-faire ideal can accommodate the socialists' individual choices, but the converse is not true.
Well, the comment you are answering to reacted to your comment saying "The conclusion is that most people simply prefer not to".
I agree that the argument made in the article is a strawman argument: no wanting to live in a kibbutz should not be equated to not wanting to live in a socialist society.
I even wonder how many people with a socialist party membership lived in kibbutz at the period of this article, which would demonstrate that this assertion is ridiculous. As this article implies that kibbutz where promoted by the government, I would say that the government was pro-socialism, and if it was an elected government, it would show that a majority of the population is pro-socialism and yet does not want to live in kibbutz. I wonder how many socialist politicians at the time did not even lived in kibbutz, demonstrating the logical flaw of the argument.
But I also disagree with your argument "laissez-faire ideal is an environment where if X does not take off, it means X is a bad idea or is not wanted". It's like saying "you can choose to be a wolf or a sheep, and in this pen, you have a laissez-faire ideal, and we observe that the majority prefer to be wolves, so it's the proof that a sheep pen is a bad idea". No, it means that as soon as there is a laissez-faire that allow wolves eating sheep, it's better to be a wolf even if your ideal was to be a sheep.
I agree with the poster in that I wouldn't want to live in a cult like society or a socialist commune. The question is: "Why can socialists not develop a more desirable communal order under purely voluntary conditions?"
Naturally, under market forces those socialists would pursue these more desirable arrangements.
>No, it means that as soon as there is a laissez-faire that allow wolves eating sheep, it's better to be a wolf even if your ideal was to be a sheep.
Most analogies are problematic, but this one is especially so. Voluntary association is equated with "wolves eating sheep" or violence. While violent repression of free exchange is somehow peaceful. From that point I'd expect an invocation of the (widely debunked) labor theory of value, followed by a sloppy generalization claiming free exchange is exploitative in all cases.
The well known analogy of wolves and sheep is, "Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner"
At least far back as Plato, the problem of the tyranny of the majority has been raised. Perhaps this is the more desirable outcome?
> Naturally, under market forces those socialists would pursue these more desirable arrangements.
But why capitalists don't do so too? Why is there still capitalists living in countries with strong socialist policies like in Canada, Europe, ...
Sure, those countries are not socialist ideals, but they are certainly not capitalist or libertarian ideals either.
It feels like you are assuming that the default world is "capitalist", and that the socialists have to prove themselves. The reality is that the capitalist ideal is as rare as the socialist one (but when asked about that, some pro-capitalists will come up with reasons or excuses that they will never accept when they are used by pro-socialists. It's not a discussion, they just believe they are smarter when they are not)
> Voluntary association is equated with "wolves eating sheep" or violence.
You did not understand the analogy. When someone does an analogy with bees and flowers in it, it does not mean that they mean that sexual relationships involve literal honey. If my analogy contains wolves and sheep, it does not mean that I mean that society, capitalism or interaction between socialists and capitalists involve literal wolf-vs-sheep predation.
Simply, it is incorrect to say that if you let everyone be free, everyone will be able to reach their ideal. The wolves and sheep thing is not an analogy, it's an counter-example showing that this way of thinking is just very very naive.
As for capitalism, capitalism is different from socialism, it interacts differently, BUT it interacts with socialists. It is stupid to pretend that socialists are somehow living in a bubble and capitalists in another bubble. If a bakery is using the capitalist system to diffuse bread, it affects the bakery next door that is using the socialist system to diffuse bread. And inversely, sometimes it is even the socialist system that is the "wolf" for the capitalism. But the interaction is complex and pretending that it does not impact the choice of individuals that will therefore not choose their ideal but choose what is best in the current environment is ridiculous.
American engineers are lucky to earn enough to be able to save up and do stuff like this, like on $200k you can save enough to really try a start-up for a year or two.
Whereas in Europe we're lucky to get $80k in the same jobs, and then the state steals half of that :/
I'm not paying the premium for health insurance, no. But I am paying 200 a month to upgrade to "platinum", I'm paying 400 a month because Blue Shield lists a lifesaving medicine I've been on for 2 decades as a tier 3 drug, so I had to battle with them for 3 weeks to get them to "cover" it at 400 a month out of my pocket. I then have a 4k per family deductible we need to reach on top of the drug co-pays. So when my wife thought she broke her toe it cost is 1500 out of pocket. This is the absolute best, top tier platinum" insurance afforded me administered by a "non profit" that was stripped of much of its non profit status for making billions in profit.
All that adds up to 7204 out of our pocket per year before any sort of catastrophic or even regular event like childbirth.
This is the big thing. The bigger salary more than covers the difference. And it's not just tech. Nurses in the UK make 25,000 pounds per year, nurses in the US make $85k or more.
I would rather have the higher salary with student loans, my own health insurance, and no subsidized childcare than make 25K GBP (at a higher tax rate!)
Exactly, it's not unheard of for police officers to make up to 300k a year, including overtime, here in the bay area. Starting pay for many "regular" jobs is well over 6 figures here
Fine as long as you're able to keep earning said salary. It's the state you end up in when you're not for whatever reason that's arguably the big difference. My own partner's a nurse and has gone through extensive periods where her income has been low or non-existent and while it wasn't really an issue given the presence of my salary to fall back on it's not hard to see how difficult things might become esp. if there were no/limited government subsidized healthcare and high levels of student debt (again, thankfully not such a problem in Australia - even as a foreign student, as she was, there are measures in place to ensure they don't saddle themselves with unreasonable debt. Citizens can often pay off higher education fees within a few years of graduating, and no repayments are required in years your salary is below a certain threshold)
Even with best-in-class health insurance in the US, one "gotcha" leaves you with an unpayable bill. Usually, your company provides health insurance. Health insurance != health care. Larger companies (I assume this translates to tech) will also usually have a clinic on-site for smaller things and it's heavily subsidized or free.
None of this prevents you from 6-figure debt for something like a difficult, but largely by-the-book, birthing experience or a car accident.
Generally it's out of pocket maximum to a point, like $250k. Then it's normally split, something like 80-20, where you have to cover 20% of the bill. That seems like a lot until you have something like cancer, where you need surgery plus chemo in the same year, which adds up quite fast.
> Generally it's out of pocket maximum to a point, like $250k. Then it's normally split, something like 80-20, where you have to cover 20% of the bill.
Not since the Affordable Care Act of 2010. It got rid of benefit maximums and implemented out of pocket maximum. An out of pocket maximum up to a limit is a contradiction. The situation works exactly opposite, you first pay 100% up to deductible, then you pay a proportion according to your copay, then you pay 0% after the out of pocket maximum.
Annual out of pocket maximums are typically $5k to $10k for individual/family at any half decent employer.
Yes, but it can be tens of thousands in many cases, and it does not cover many things that it should, insurance companies put deliberate effort into screwing people put of their claims.
It is next to unheard of to have an extremely large bill if you have good health insurance. Even if you do, at tech levels of salary, if you were to effectively save the extra money, you should have no problems covering it.
I wish. My wife and I both work at different big tech companies as developers and the only thing health insurance does is guarantee we won't go bankrupt in the event of an emergency. Last month on top of spending several hundred on the monthly insurance cost, I spent $300 on rather mundane pediatrician appointments for my two kids who had ear infections. Ironically I had much better healthcare coverage when I worked at a steel mill.
Depending on the plan, you may still be on the hook for part of your premium. And if you have any dependents (kids, spouse, etc.) the cost of their premiums is fully your responsibility.
Is $160/week just for your coverage? I've worked at small startups and medium sized public companies, and my healthcare coverage costs have been far less than that.
It depends. I work at a tech company as an engineer and insurance eats about $1K/month. My employer contributes only about $400 to the plan.The total plan cost is $1.4K. Keep in mind, while I pay this just for insurance, I am waiting to get a $3,000 dollar bill from the hospital (still!) for when my daughter had to go to the ER in December.
Dental coverage is not available in many places with nationalized healthcare, such as Canada, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, and de facto uncovered in the UK. You must pay with a private plan or out of pocket. Only a portion of costs is covered in France, Denmark, and Belgium while the patient must pay the entire amount upfront.
Germany has a situation similar to the US where basic care is fully covered, but more complicated care is not fully covered.
Yeah, dental plans are honestly kind of stupid. They typically have a MAXIMUM amount they will cover, after which you have to pay out of pocket. Which.. is not what I purchase insurance for. I purchase insurance to cover me for the huge bills I can't afford that would destroy me.
That said, if my employer is going to subsidize it, I'm going to take the free money.
My manager moved from the US to Sweden, said he got about 60% in Sweden. His Wife isn't working in Sweden yet and they still have more money on pocket. Very anecdotal and might be inflated one way or the other. But I'm not so sure it's as clear-cut as some might think. Unless you're the top X % raking in the biggest $$
You don't have to be top X%. If you are single and graduating college, you will absolutely net more money in US in the tech sector, way more if you are exceptionally skilled.
After that, it depends on your living situation and family situation. Of course 200k in California with 3 kids and a house is likely going to be less than what you could make in EU.
For anyone working in big tech it is very clear cut from a financial perspective. That isn’t the only consideration for sure, but it’s wishful thinking to believe otherwise.
In countries with socialised health insurance systems any political party that threatens to take it away (or defund it) tends not to get chosen at election time, strangely enough.
Visas, different languages, and family mean that people often don't really have a choice. Likewise, most employers only provide insurance from a single provider.
In France, apparently you can go on unemployment for 2, up to 3 years to start a startup. With up to 80% pay.
In Germany you can get 6 months of unemployment insurance when starting a startup out of unemployment. Or get 6 months paid when starting a startup out of Uni. Then you could get various public funding opportunities like a startup bonus (for example 50K public funding for 50K private investment in an innovative company in Berlin).
- the culture is not the same as the US. French people tend to be very financially risk-averse
- the VC eco-system in France exists but it is trash
- people who have the skills to create startups in France tend to do it outside of France because they will have access to better capital/labor markets (for example, DataDog and Docker both have french founders)
> - people who have the skills to create startups in France tend to do it outside of France because they will have access to better capital/labor markets
There are a lot of French people here in the bay area.
From what they told me, it's actually easier to come to the bay area, navigate through the US immigration system and get funded than get funded at home. Not only that, some startups got funding from VC funds with LPs... from France!
Also, how easy is it to fire people in France? If it’s difficult then startups will be much more reluctant to hire in the first place, and founders to embark on the whole startup adventure which necessarily implies a lot of hiring/firing.
There is no such claim. Id claim that a system that helps all of of society by providing health, employment, income, childcare, housing and transportation security isn’t necessarily completely toxic for a small number of Startup founders, as a system. Since it also may help founders to an extent. Its about individual risks that are possible.
The problem in Germany and France is the VC and business culture, but thats not primarily a result of income taxes.
Because in France, in order to hire someone you need to have a shit ton of cash on hand... and then if they suck, you can't just fire them. It's too expensive to start a venture, so the folks that are willing to risk it leave in order to do so.
Because tech talent is cheap for the amount of productivity in US with ability to fire at will.Ease of fooling and swindling people if you have the right connections.
In Europe shit that gets you into jail is a just a small monetary fine in USA.
Not to mention that in Germany many University students not only get free schooling, but also housing AND a monthly stipend. Essentially UBI for students!
Definitely not really true. Under 15% of students receive BAFÖG [1]. No idea where you got the idea that German students get free housing at many Universities as that couldn't be further from the truth considering that there are only enough rooms for around 10% of all students [2] and those are definietly not free, although pretty cheap. However many struggle to find an Apartment, especially in bigger Cities like Berlin or Munich.
I said many, not all :). You're right, housing isn't free, but if you get student housing it's usually less than the monthly stipend thus free for the student.
not really. The average monthly stipend (that only 15% even get) is 579€, which is arguable not enough for rent in most bigger Cities (and that is ignoring that you also need to eat).
The vast majority of students are either financed by their parents (the stipend is dependent on their income and if they earn more than a certain amount they a legally obligated to help their child) or by themselves. In Germany the university is mostly free (a couple hundred euros a semester), but most definitely don't live for "free".
IMHO it is the worse time to start a startup. You should do it while still in the uni so that you can get all kinds of help. Equally good seems some actual experience(?) People have been writing software and running businesses for a good while. Maybe they know something?
Just to add a non-snarky reply: I agree, we are lucky, but I fear (especially based on the replies to your statement), the majority of American engineers would prefer things to be more like they are in Europe.
"There are dozens of us!" that are aware of how lucky we are!
Sure. But if you want to complain that europeans don't build these sorts of products as some sort of reason why they should expect lower pay, you need to engage with the fact that people living and working in europe are building these products.
I live in a high cost of living city. Texas has no capital gains tax, no income tax, and I don't own a property (obviously I see this through higher rent at $1450 for a 1x1. I pay the 8.25% sales tax and my highest income tax bracket is 23%. I am nowhere near 50%.
On the flipside, we have no health insurance when we're laid off, and even getting the sniffles costs a fortune. As for layoffs, last I checked Europe has meaningful worker protections. Neither do we get six weeks of vacation over here. Parental leave (unless you're FAANG) is iffy. Unless you happen to conform to a demographic shape, you'll get treated pretty shittily by everybody, including the state.
But if you like living without a net in exchange for high pay, by all means, come over here.
On an income of $200k in California, for example, your tax rate is something like 8% (marginal). If you total it up with federal taxes, it's something like a 27% tax rate.
Most likely your parent misunderstands the _marginal_ income tax rates.
That said, income tax is not the only kind of tax. In the US, federated government entities mean a mesh of taxes accumulate. Income tax + Payroll Tax + Social Security + Medicare + Property Tax + Sales Tax aggregate. CA and NY are a little higher than other competing states, but not by much.
While the overall isn't as high as 50%, at $200k, your marginal income tax rate is 42.75%, a sales tax rate of 10%, and a property tax rate of 1.25%.
So, after $185k, while you've probably already paid 7% ($14k prop) on your home, and probably another 1% (2k sales), leading to what could be considered 50.75% tax.
Wow and you have an appreciating asset(not really) and are buying stuff. It's way lower if you have a corp/LLC and just expense stuff along with reloc and depretiation.
That said having a job sucks anywhere as you are the tax base.
That appears to be the effective rate for income tax, but there are also sales taxes, "stamp" tax on things like houses and cars, excise taxes (especially on fuel), property tax, and inflation. I'm pretty confident you can get above half at a high income in California, New York, or especially Massachusetts.
You do get something for that, but it is surprising (to me anyway) for example how similar the percentages of GDP spent on social welfare are between the blue U.S. states and Australia, and how much more the Australians seem to get for the money.
> You do get something for that, but it is surprising (to me anyway) for example how similar the percentages of GDP spent on social welfare are between the blue U.S. states and Australia, and how much more the Australians seem to get for the money.
Most social welfare programs that people can get in NY are niche. You generally have to meet certain demographic requirements. It also takes years of paperwork and waiting to get into anything if you aren't a single/battered mother.
I paid well over 40% of my income in taxes and had no hope of ever accumulating any assets or meaningful retirement and zero safety net if anything went south for me. My friends in Denmark and Sweden only paid a little bit more for what is effectively a cradle-to-grave nanny state. And they all manage to own their apartments.
That's a bunch of stereotyping. I work in the telecom industry and live in a place without bay area or Seattle type cost of living. I get 15-days caregiver leave, 12 weeks paternity leave and 20 days of vacation. A sr sw engineer where I am at will get about $175k with bonus. A staff engineer will make about $300k with RSU. It's not Big Tech but definitely better than what Europe has. Again not being in the bay area helps. I have a very flexible work schedule and a pretty awesome work life balance.
Don't go by what the media portrays. Your comment makes it sound like Tech workers can never take vacation or have kids. It couldn't be furthest from the truth.
There is no great source on the details across the nation, but there are a hodgepodge of municipal-level studies that shed a light.
There were roughly 20k gun homicides in the US in 2021[0]. It's been fluctuating between 10k and 20k over the past five decades or so, with the last few years seeing a quick increase and seeing a (hopefully) local peak in rates.
In one study in San Francisco, ~70% of gun homicide victims had a criminal record, and three quarters of that figure knew the suspect[1]. A similar study in Milwaukee found that ~90% of both victims and suspects of gun homicides had a criminal record[2], and the top two reasons identified of the circumstances behind the homicide were arguments/fights and robberies. There are other studies done at local levels in many other places with similar results.
A DOJ study notes that three quarters of all gun homicides were during the commission of a (different) felony[3]. And you can query the CDC WONDER mortality database[4] yourself to see that gun homicide rates in "large central metro" areas are twice as high as those in medium, small, or non-metro areas, and that men 15-34 years of age comprise the majority of gun homicide victims.
So, perhaps my "gang-on-gang" statement wasn't really accurate (since a "gang-related" incident is loosely defined), and I'll leave the "vast majority" determination to you; but the point is that most gun homicides occur among the "criminal element" in "bad parts of town", and is not really relevant to life as a software engineer.
Exactly, the reason "active shooter" situations frighten ordinary folks is because they're the rare type of shooting that can victimize you even if you're law-abiding and don't live in a very high crime area.
In 2020, 687 people were killed in railway accidents in the EU, being Poland the country with the highest number with 148 fatalities, followed closely by Germany with 137.
Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.
there's a lot more than I would have thought in the US.
Railroad deaths totaled 893 in 2021, a 20% increase from the 2020 revised total of 744 and the highest since 2007. Nonfatal injuries totaled 5,781, a 4% increase from the 2020 revised total of 5,544.
wow, I guess mass shootings are no problem at all and when they happen we should be like, "so what? 3000 people died of cancer today, who cares if some kids got their faces blown to pieces". thanks for clearing that up! problem solved
It's possible to think it's not ok but also so vanishingly unlikely to happen that it's not a useful comparison point for quality of life in Europe vs America.
For me, "never get sick or have any kids or anything" is a much stronger point against life the US - these are issues almost everyone has to confront.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I promise you I have never thought that HN was "sophisticated". This is an internet forum.
> I'll keep matching the energy I see here
The problem here is in the "I see". People don't see their own negative contributions clearly. We overestimate the bad that others are bringing and underestimate our own by 10x or more. This is why it always feels like the other started it and did worse [1], while we are merely reacting, defending ourselves, or (to use your word) matching. We all have this bias, which means that if all you do is match what you see, you'll in fact be escalating and worsening a downward spiral [2].
What you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) should instead do is consciously adjust for objects in the mirror being closer than they appear [3]. That is, if you make a point of responding with less negativity than what you see others as bringing, it may be possible to partly compensate for that bias. In that case this crude and unsophisticated blob of internet humanity may at least manage not to burn itself to a crisp [4].
(I'm sorry for footnoting my own past comments - it's an embarrassing practice but it's the only easy way I have to link people to past explanations. Such links are helpful for clarifying and also for depersonalizing; they quickly make it clear that all of these issues are systemic and have been the same for years.)
But the awesome part is that you can ask it to explain parts and it usually does pretty well.
I was using it for debugging WINE - where I have no DirectDraw4 / DirectX6 experience, and it's much nicer than trying to trawl through ancient MS documentation myself.
Sad to see people always use tools maliciously, I found ChatGPT quite helpful for rubber duck debugging. Give it some log files and code excerpts, and it can help grab API docs, causes of similar issues, etc.
After using a Linux phone (specifically, the PinePhone) as my daily driver for the past 19 months, I must say that the overall experience has been quite poor. While basic functions like calling and texting are functional, the device falls short in many other areas. For instance, web browsing can be challenging - although most websites do load properly, opening the keyboard has made multiple website completely unusable or behaving strange.
Additionally, while I have experimented with apps for different platforms like Matrix and Mastodon, many of these are still works in progress, and compiling them can be a time-consuming process.It's worth mentioning that even the most optimized apps for Linux phones can still crash from time to time. Additionally, many apps that might work perfectly fine on a Linux desktop are simply not designed to be used on a phone, making them unusable in practice.
While there is a solution for running Android apps on the phone (Waydroid), it too can be unreliable at times and has been known to cause the phone to hang. Furthermore, there are numerous software-related issues, such as crashes after updates, voice-related problems (e.g. microphone or speaker not working), modem connectivity issues requiring a reboot, and the device failing to turn on the screen until a hard reboot is performed (it thinks it's being held up to the ear like during a call). Lastly, battery life is a real issue. It's worth noting that I'm running the Phosh interface on Arch Linux.
The irony is my newer iPhone has at least half of the same issues:
Keyboard doesn’t open randomly, sometimes browsers lock/hangs (both Safari & Brave), apps will crash for seemingly no reason, random OS crashes (rare but at least monthly), phone will think its being held to ear even on a level surface mid-call.
Linux phones are definitely still a ways away, but its funny how similar the problems are, they’re just less severe.
Frankly, what does "designing hardware as a EE" have to do with software issues your parent has described? Pine64 sells PinePhones, but doesn't do any software development, not even kernel drivers. That's not "failure", that's the expected outcome. You got what you paid for. The community does an amazing job supporting the hardware, but there's only so much you can do with self-motivated volunteers on such a complex project.
There are other projects out there where you pay for both hardware and FLOSS software development, such as Librem 5 with PureOS.
I tried using my Pinephone, but after years of development it's still impossible to quickly type your unlock pin without the whole thing lagging. That's right, the simplest screen ever, displaying just a grid of numbers lags
That's not how it works with marriage here either. It's only assets acquired during the marriage that is split. There are some exceptions, I'm not a lawyer.
Yeah, feminism has gone completely insane. At the moment of marriage all assets are divided equally in most countries, regardless of when they were obtained. And in many countries a man can even be liable for child support if his wife cheats on him.
That said a lot of countries actually have lower taxes for married couples like Germany, or separate it entirely like in Sweden.
>At the moment of marriage all assets are divided equally in most countries, regardless of when they were obtained.
Is this correct for European countries, UK, Australia, NZ, or Canada?
I have never heard of it for any state in the US. Typically, everything before the marriage contract is signed is not part of the community property in the marriage.
Actually it's slightly worse because asset split might skew more towards the person with lesser income to make it more equitable.
So it's entirely possible you could be the primary earner for a marriage and then when the divorce happens you actually leave with less than half of what you provided.
Huh? I live in a super red state in the USA. All assets you come into the marriage with remain solely yours. Anything you created together rightfully gets split as you were partners at that point, but inherited assets aren't counted in that (weren't created together). We don't have any sort of required alimony. You have to take one class to get divorced (but don't have to take it together) one time that is basically a 'think this through' to prevent a heat of the moment mistake in getting divorced. Seems correct and fair to me. Again, this is one of the redder states in the country. But we do have some pretty crazy common law marriage laws (the state's gotta make sure people aren't living in sin) though I don't know how those are enforced.
If you have significant assets and marry someone without a prenuptial agreement you don't get to blame feminism for your lack of due dilligence. The default marriage contract is 50/50 of everything, and if you want different terms you need to hire a lawyer before you sign the contract.
The child should be supported by a minimum livable amount (part of its rent + food + education + expenses). Instead there are crazy amounts based on the lifestyle the spouse was used to.
Funnily, if you were rich and go broke, you don't get to ask welfare or an employee to give you a salary based on the "lifestyle you were used to".
Again it's based on what the child was used to. Y'all are hyper fixated on the spouse I'm getting heavy reddit vibes here I'm expecting to start hearing about hypergamy and age of consent any minute now.
So? Why should the child get "what it was used to" and not a mere comfortamble amount? Especially if the father had a change of luck and makes less post-divorce?
I don't see any concern for kids from families that have not gone through divorce, but have gone broke or bankrupt. I don't see the state or anyone coming to pay them money to "maintain their lifestyle".
Why is this "lifestyle maintainance" only applicable to kids of divorced parents?
And why are children who started life poor less deserving of such money? They're just as capable as kids from rich parents to "get used" to a more luxurious lifestyle, they just never had the chance.
I actually am concerned about all of those things! Everyone should have their needs met, at the expense of those who have more than enough to meet their needs.
It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area? or a comfortable amount? Have you seen the poverty line calculations, or the asset limitations on disabled people? The state is not good at carrying this responsibility.
The current system leaves it up to the parents. Not what the parents say they want post-separation, but how they actually acted. That's why it's based on pre-split allocations.
>It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
Things are to be examined in context, relatively to similar concerns, and to societies priorities and decisions at large, not as isolated domains. At the very least one should ask why this class of people deserves more than another, why their "lifestyle level" is relevant and is not for other cases and so on.
>The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area?
The area shouldn't matter. Use minimum wage as a calculation. If they kid is supposed to live on that while working their ass off as an adult, they can live on that as a kid too, especially since they still have a parent they live with to supplement that. If minimum wage is too low, the lawmakers should raise it for adults too.
Then the child should stay with the parent most able to provide for them. The big issue a lot of people have with the inequity of child support is that fathers who want custody of their kids are continually denied it by the state.
Involved, stay-at-home, full time fathers are given at best 50% custody and then a hefty child support obligation and told to go out and get a job. Uninvolved mothers are given primary custody by default and then collect a massive paycheck as a result.
Sure, but in the US the courts almost always gives custody to the mother, and then the father only gets to see his kids on weekends or less, and he has to pay for the privilege in forms of said support.
This isn't remotely true. Custody tends towards mothers because men often don't pursue joint custody. In cases where they do legally pursue it, they get it more often than not.
And again you're mistaking the fundamental nature and intention of child support. It's not a fee for the privilege of seeing your child. A parent can pay less child support by having the child more. Family court judges are fairly progressive and like this. Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it. Men are simply less often willing to prioritize eg daily school transportation requirements vs their job.
1. In 51% of child custody cases, both parents agree for the mother to be the custodial parent.
6. 79.9% of custodial parents in the United States were mothers.
The math doesn't add up, assuming this is correct.
>Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it.
I just discovered this was the case in my state at least. This is good to hear. In the 80s when I was growing up, it wasn't; it was more like I described earlier.
In the past, women were the most likely to win a custody battle because they were considered the primary caregivers of their children, as most fathers spent the most time outside the household because of their work schedules. Although the current share of custodial mothers is still bigger than that of custodial fathers, recent divorce child custody statistics tell us that the number of custodial fathers has soared over the past few years.
In the US this varies widely by state, My state requires non-married fathers to take additional legal action in signing an additional document declaring parentage before they are allowed on a birth certificate in the first place.
Jesus Christ. Feminism is not the idea that women are weak and need donations from men to survive. Laws set up based on that assumption are very much not feminist.
And that process should be supported by a high minimum wage - hitting the employers, not taxing productive work to provide tax credits to subsidise such terrible jobs.
Automation leads to more high-tech jobs and investment, and higher productivity, which leads to higher wages as companies compete for highly skilled employees, etc.
Economic mobility and productivity is the key to prosperity.
> And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event?
This is sadly the same in Europe, as dentistry mostly isn't covered under public healthcare in the UK and Sweden for example. So we pay almost 50% tax just to be in the same position!
But I support universal healthcare (including dentistry and opticians), it's a critical part of economic mobility. People can't move jobs or take risks if they'll lose healthcare coverage.