magduf

Well if airlines go bankrupt, that's a lot of assets that could be sold at fire-sale prices, and an opportunity for other surviving airlines to jump in and take over those planes and routes. Since China seems to have contained the outbreak, and probably have the economic power to do it, maybe they'll buy up a bunch of failed airlines...

>Keeping money lying around does not spur the economy, which means fewer jobs, fewer products, and a stagnating economy.

This isn't true. If you personally "keep money lying around", that usually means putting it the bank, in a savings account, or maybe a CD. That money isn't doing nothing: it's being reinvested by the bank, earning them a return on their investment, and they're giving a little back to you in the form of interest. (Hopefully you're smart enough to put your main savings in a bank that actually gives you interest...)

It would be the same with any company. Saving money in low-risk investments would be the equivalent. That money is still being invested somewhere in the economy, just not in more volatile places.

>Companies can also be sued for keeping too much cash on hand, as for example, is the case with apple.

Sounds like there should be a new law to prevent this kind of thing. As the other poster pointed out, Japanese companies that have been around for eons don't seem to have this problem, so it's quite likely they keep lots of cash in savings to weather major downturns in business.

Exactly; it's basically an arms race.

State inspections are generally useless. They'll probably catch simple things like a burned-out bulb (because then they can charge you a huge markup to replace it), but not-so-obvious stuff like that will probably be missed. Here in VA, the private garages doing these inspections are only able to charge $16; obviously, that's not much incentive to spend a lot of time thoroughly checking a car out.

Huh? I'll have to ask my mother about this one (she also has IOLs), but I thought those replaced your lenses entirely; why would they cause an effect like that? That sounds like a complaint about radial keratotomy (PRK).

The road rage isn't that likely, because we're talking about two vehicles going opposite directions. Depending on the road (such as a median-separated highway), it can be very difficult to impossible for an angry driver to turn around and come after the person who beamed them.

Personally, when I see people beaming me on the other side of the road in a rural area, and I'm sure it isn't just overly-bright factory lights, I flip my high beams on and leave them on until they turn theirs off. I see way too many people on rural roads driving around with their brights on because they just don't care about other drivers, and prefer to leave them on. This isn't such an issue in cities.

I've really gotten to the point where I absolutely hate driving at night, especially in rural places or highways.

I live in Virginia, and we have annual vehicle inspections. Yes, headlights are among the test-points. It doesn't help; tons of vehicles have poorly-aimed headlights. Doing vehicle testing for $16 doesn't actually help anything when the testing places don't bother to test anything except that the lights all turn on. What incentive do independent garages have to do the tests thoroughly, instead of doing a quick half-assed test to get it done and maybe make some money if there's a burned-out signal marker bulb?

It's too difficult I guess. Police just want to sit at speed traps and give tickets for speeding, and ignore all other traffic infractions, because speeding is the easiest to enforce.

People like big vehicles; people like to sit up higher; small women especially like them because it makes them feel more powerful. Finally, Americans just don't care about fuel economy, or cornering ability, or having a vehicle that doesn't roll over easily.

It would be nice if the US adopted a law like that... I guess that requires too much governmental competence.

There is a certain cost to it.

Just like a reserve army full of reservists has a serious cost (those people all have to spend weekends training, after all: time that could be spent doing other things), a "health care army" would require people to get regular training to stay up-to-date and in practice. Basic first aid can be useful for anyone, but for having people ready to jump in and become healthcare workers in a crisis, they need a lot more than a first aid refresher once a year I think.

>It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day

The problem with Star Trek (esp. TNG) is that it doesn't reflect reality at all. It gives you the idea that the people in charge really know what they're doing and are competent. In our reality, this simply isn't the case.

I love watching TNG reruns to relax. It lets me fantasize about living in a well-run society run by mostly competent people. That's not the society I live in now, but this is why this form of entertainment is called "escapist".

One distinction I see is between repair and modification.

If you own your car, and the headlight burns out, why shouldn't you be allowed to repair it back to the original factory state? Why should you be forced to pay someone else to do this?

If someone tries to argue that you're going to do it wrong, it seems like the onus should be on them to prove that your repair was bad and dangerous.

Not disagreeing, but in your view what countries aren't going down that road, which aren't also authoritarian?

Not really, no. It depends on your situation. If you're fairly young, single, healthy, and have no kids, and can live cheaply, that difference in salary will quickly amount to a lot of savings.

Basically, the US is a good place to make a lot of money, esp. in the tech sector, as long as you avoid spending like a drunken sailor or getting married and having kids. Health insurance is expensive, but the much higher salaries much more than make up for that (but maybe not so much if you're supporting a wife and 3 kids). Education isn't an issue, or shouldn't be: the scenario we're talking about here is someone who's already out of college. (But here again, having kids will ruin the advantage, if you're paying for them to go to college.) Housing is overpriced in the US, yes, but it is in Canada too. If you think anyplace outside the Bay Area is bad, try looking at housing prices in Vancouver BC.

As for retirement, there's a reason so many US citizens become expats when they retire and move to places like Costa Rica.

Where the US really falls down is if you need a social safety net, if you have health issues (which can result in medical bankruptcy in the US), if you want to retire and not eat cat food, if you want to go to college without being saddled with enormous debt, etc. But if you have tech skills and can snag a high-paying tech job in the US, you'll probably save a lot more money for that time. But you should have an exit plan. A lot of people from places like India come here and work and live for many years, saving up a lot of money, and then go back home and live like kings.

The checks and balances don't work as designed, and haven't for a long time. Any time there's a government shutdown that lasts for more than a couple of days, that's proof that this is simply a system too flawed to keep.

A better system is a parliamentary system: in those, you don't have conflicts often between the branches, because the executive is chosen by parliament itself. And in the rare case there is a conflict, you can dissolve parliament, have a new election, then the new parliament can choose a new PM and life continues.

There's a reason every stable, advanced, democratic republic in the world has a parliamentary system instead of one like the US's. The US's system is more similar to those in Russia and Turkey.

No. You seem to be unfamiliar with the idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats". You're assuming that acting what appear to be your best short-term interests will equate to a better outcome in the long term, which is usually not the case.

For instance, should you vote to abolish police and courts, so you don't have to pay taxes for them? In the short term, that would net you more money. In the long term, it would mean you'll be living in a lawless wasteland and someone will rob and murder you.

Yes.

This is a court ruling I would have expected to see in America, not western Europe. WTF is going on over there?

I'm honestly not sure. Italy has some conditions that made it more vulnerable, like a larger portion of its population being older.

Yep, and for good reason: they absolutely should keep working (and spreading the disease around) if they have it, because they cannot afford not to. This is the consequence of having a society where there's no real social safety net to handle crises like this.

Personally, I'm a well-paid tech worker, but even for me, if I'm quarantined, my company policy is that I cannot come to work (nor can I work from home), and I must take either PTO or (if that's exhausted) medical leave of absence (without pay). Luckily, I'm single and frugal, live well below my means, and have lots of savings because I'm somewhat paranoid, so I can easily live for a few months without pay, but this just isn't true for most people, especially people without families who aren't overpaid tech workers like me. So I certainly cannot criticize people at the low end of the scale who avoid getting quarantined: they have to do this to survive. If we don't like this, then maybe we should have done a better job voting for leaders who would handle health crises better and set up social safety nets for things like this.

That's his opinion. Tens of millions of other Americans don't think so at all, and they're making their voices heard in national elections and successfully choosing our leaders.

If you want an example of how to competently handle this crisis, just look at South Korea.

The US had a whole month to get prepared for this, and instead did pretty much nothing, and even refused to import test kits and prepare itself for large-scale testing the way SK did.

The US has absolutely been incompetent, and while it hasn't been the only incompetent country (Spain is probably another one), it's easily the most visible because of its size and economic power and status as a superpower.

>We personally and responsibly elected officials to provide government assistance for various things rather than just hoping charity covers the gap.

Who's "we", and what jurisdiction are you talking about? If you're talking about the US federal government, you're factually wrong, especially for the executive branch, but also the Senate.

A safety net absolutely is "super partisan crazy talk" in the US, because a large fraction of the population simply doesn't support it, including another responder to this post. This just goes to show how different cultures can be. Your point-of-view is obviously not very American at all, and probably much more European, so the very idea of not providing food and a safety net in a time of crisis, to you, is almost unthinkable. However, for most Americans, this idea is seen as "socialist" and repugnant, whereas for example the idea of not having the freedom to own lots of guns is almost unthinkable to them.

In short, don't assume that most people share your basic values or worldview. You might be living in a place where they simply don't.

Japan has a different culture. When the government puts out a "strong recommendation", the society generally follows. This even happens with corporations. There's a culture of conformity there that just isn't present in western nations.

That right there is your problem. Go learn about how US elections work. Try reading the Constitution.

The problem with the infuser is that there's only one of them, unlike regular mugs where I have a whole bunch of them because they're practically free (they're a common gift item, after all). The infuser set-up is expensive, so I'm not going to buy 5 of them so I make tea frequently with no cleaning, so I need to hand-wash it. Regular mugs aren't like this: I can just use them and toss them in the dishwasher and get another one when I want another hot drink. And you're right, it's not a huge amount of time to hand-wash, maybe about a minute or so, but it's still a lot more than the utterly trivial amount of time it takes to put a mug in a dishwasher.

>80% of all cases are still in China.

That's impossible to know. We have no idea how many cases there are in the US, because we're not doing a significant amount of testing here, because our government is incompetent and unprepared for this.