Perhaps not as low as 30 hours, but 35-38 is standard in most of the (non-US) world.

I'm Australian and most full time jobs I've had are 37.5h per week. Paid vacation is a standard 4 weeks per year, plus 10 public holidays (so 30 days/year in total). In some industries, working beyond that isn't permitted. In others, it would count as overtime paid at 150-200% of the normal hourly rate, so people take on the extra hours when they need a bit of extra cash.

Indeed. The #1 problem with the US education system IMO is that geography isn't a compulsory subject like it is in most other OECD countries (at least, a basic level). Geography encompasses a lot more than just rote learning where things are though. It takes about cultures and languages in various areas of the world. It teaches basic skills like how to represent a three dimensional view of something onto a 2D grid, how to orient yourself in space using a map, gives you some basic sense of distance and direction, explains basic principles of navigating on a sphere (the Earth) and why certain things aren't always intuitive (e.g. shortest distance between two points is usually not a constant compass bearing, i.e. great circle vs rhumb line distinction)...

I only did basic (year 7 and 8) geography myself but the number of people that simply cannot navigate, or look out at the horizon and understand where they fit within the wider picture, is astonishing.

Haha, very true. I'm a recent migrant to the US, having previously lived in a country with a universal single-payer system. One of my first challenges when I started work here was understanding my insurance options ... open enrollment, deductibles, co-pays, in-network vs. out of network etc. All this new terminology was really quite overwhelming given that I'd never had to ~think~ about healthcare AT ALL before in my life. I was used to turning up to any old doctor/clinic I could find, getting treated, swiping my healthcare card on the way out and ... leaving. Money barely came into it. But here - so many choices, so many restrictions. It's a minefield.

A lot of people I talk to here really can't wrap their mind around healthcare in a world where it isn't tied up intimately with the insurance industry. They also can't seem to understand that universal healthcare does not mean the government is somehow controlling your treatment. In my old country, doctors/clinics/some hospitals were regular, private businesses, just like in the US. If I didn't like one, I could go to another. The only difference is the government pays most or all of the bill at the end. Government-PAID healthcare does not always mean government-RUN healthcare...

Actually the 'US' country code is a weird one that covers a dozen-odd countries (all in North America). Canada being the other large one, but the NANP includes many Carribean countries too (with them essentially being assigned a North American area code as their de facto country code). This is for historical reasons. You don't see this occurring many other places - in all other regions, countries generally have distinct country codes. Two digits at a minimum, some three. Russia is the only exception I can think of with its +7 code.

I have a handful of 'old' phones sitting around. Most are 2G (or 2.5G at best) dumb phones. I leave them around for guests from overseas to use. I have family in America so for the most part, their 'home' phones are network locked. So when they arrive, they can buy a cheap pre-paid SIM and I lend them an old phone to use for a few weeks.

The newest 'old' phone I have sitting around is an iPhone 4 which I keep a travel SIM in for when I'm travelling overseas. My main/current phone is network unlocked of course, but it's easier to just take the 'travel phone' rather than fiddle around changing the SIM out. Since all my email/apps/music etc. sync through iTunes, there isn't really a downside to it ... all my stuff is on there just as on my main phone. Just with a different phone number. But I barely make calls and mostly use it for data/iMessage etc, so that doesn't matter.

Will be interesting to see what happens. The analog-digital switch was a big one, but it happened so long ago now. GSM was introduced in the early 90s, so most people under 35 or so would never owned an analog phone, so even their oldest old mobile phone should still work. My oldest is from 1995 (so, 19 years old!) and it still works perfectly well (2G GSM). Calls, SMS texts and (very slow) data all work. Going into the future, since GSM seems to be remaining backwards compatible through all revisions so far, I suspect those old phones will continue to work for a long time yet (battery replacements notwithstanding).

I am guessing you are in North America (a phone from 1998 that only makes analog calls?!) America is a bit of an outlier here - it moved to analog very late and to this day still has a mix of network technologies in use (CDMA/GSM). Japan and Korea also run (or used to, at least) a mix, so similar story there. But in most other places, it's been GSM and GSM alone since the early-mid 90s so old phones are still quite useable.

Yes this is quite possible. It may be that the searches are bringing up what users entering previous Chinese-language searches for similar terms eventually clicked on (i.e. what is more commonly deemed 'interesting' or 'relevant' to the users searching for those terms). English-language users would generally be interested in different results than Chinese users, and from the search engine's perspective, English and Chinese searches for the 'same thing' are two completely unrelated searches.

Simple example. If an English user types in Tienanmen Square, chances are a good percentage of them are looking for information about the massacre. However, if a Chinese user types in the equivalent Chinese search term (stupid Slashdot, no Unicode), they ~may~ be looking for information about that ... but probably not. There'd be a much higher proportion of Chinese-language results containing the term that have nothing to do with the massacre, compared to English sites (because in English, let's face it, it's one of the first things that springs into your mind when someone mentions Tiananmen). Because most Chinese ~sources~ are censored, the type of search results you get back reflects this.

So it's not necessarily active censorship, just search results (in a particular language) reflecting the predominant content (in that language) for the search term.

Not to say it's NOT active censorship ... but there's a 'innocent' answer for this as well.

Indeed. Idiots doing this kind of thing is why they ended up de facto banning laser pointers greater than 1 mW here in Australia (technically, if you had one before the ban, you can keep it, but you require a firearms licence since the pointers are now governed by the same laws that regulate weapons).

For the same reasons as it is difficult to regulate firearms in the US (constitutional rights, porous borders, inconsistent State-level laws), I suspect it would be difficult to regulate high-power laser pointers though, so yeah, not sure what you guys can do that'll actually have some effect, other than harsh enforcement...

I have one of those. I do actually like having it, for the reasons you say. Though in winter I do note it gets confused by snowbanks on the side of the road and occasionally cars in other lanes. Beep beep beeeeeeeep. Ahhhhhhh what?!

No it's about the bloody paperwork involved. It's ridiculous. Yes we may end up owing nothing to the IRS but the administrative burden is huge (or you pay someone else to do it for you).

Secondly, your example works ok for a simple tax situation (earned income from a job), but let me tell you it gets complicated when you start throwing in franked dividends (the US doesn't recognise imputation credits, so you end up getting double taxed on these). Or foreign retirement accounts (which are taxed by the host country when the money is paid IN, usually by the company NOT by you, so when the money comes out once you retire, it's not taxed by the host country but is considered fully taxable income by the IRS).

FATCA itself has nothing to do with the above examples, you're right. But it's just another layer of ridiculous complexity and unfairness to the whole treatment of expats by the IRS. It's a nightmare. A nightmare citizens of any other country do not have to worry about. Just Americans.

1. You assume that it's easy to become a citizen of another country just because you want to. They aren't handed out like candy you know. There are usually set criteria, and these may not be possible to meet.

2. Gaining NZ citizenship wouldn't affect the US citizenship, which would still exist. Renunciation of US citizenship is expensive and the IRS will STILL require you to file for up to 7 years after doing so.

3. The $90k threshold doesn't apply to all income types. Furthermore, in many countries, retirement funds pay out in a lump sum at a certain age. So you might hit 65, retire, and have a $1,000,000 income for the year. The host country doesn't tax that money, because it's already been taxed at the time it was paid IN to the account, earlier in life. The IRS doesn't give a shit about that though - it sees $1M income, it sees you didn't pay taxes to the foreign government on that income (so, no tax credit/deduction is available) and taxes you at the full marginal rate on that income (which has actually already been taxed - double taxation ahoy!) Great to see your retirement nest egg that you have to live on for the rest of your life reduced by 35% or whatever in a single hit.

It's incredibly complex, because every country's local taxation laws are different and the IRS definitions for things seem to assume all countries work the same way as the US. But it all stems from the basic fact that America, alone, taxes non-resident citizens on their world wide income. No other place does that. If they acted like every other country, none of the above would be an issue at all.

Sorry, but are you nuts?

In no other country on earth does maintaining a right to "come and go" require payment. That's the whole point of citizenship. Why should an American have to renounce that when anyone else in the opposite situation (retiring in America, but originally from somewhere else) would not have to do any such thing?

Also there are numerous situations where expat Americans are liable to pay tax to the US without making six figures. And in some cases, situations where they get double taxed on the same income by both governments. These are complex, but generally speaking are to do with retirement accounts, which may not be considered taxable income in the host country but are considered taxable by the IRS (the IRS' definition of retirement account pretty much ONLY covers American style 401(k)/Roth arrangements ... but other countries do things very differently and in some cases double taxation is unavoidable ... hooray for paying a combined ~60% tax on your retirement income!)

You're right - foreign banks cannot be COMPELLED to comply with a US law. Indeed, many of them ~cannot~ due to local privacy laws.

However, read the rest of the law and you'll see the issue. Foreign financial entities that do not comply with face a 30% withholding tax on all US-sourced income. And given that virtually every bank on earth trades in a mix of bonds and stocks from all over the planet, a fair proportion of which will be American ... the bank suffers a significant financial penalty for non-compliance.

So realistically their only options are:

1. Comply; or
2. Refuse any American customers, and force existing American customers to close their accounts (no American customers = no data to report to the IRS).

Many banks are taking option 2 in countries all over the world before this new American law kicks in. It is a royal pain in the behind for Americans overseas, most of whom are not wealthy cat-stroking tax-evading megalomaniacs, but normal people just living normal middle class lives.

Everywhere does this. It's a new US law (google 'FATCA') - all foreign banks have to report account details for Americans to the IRS, or face a 30% withholding tax imposed on any earnings the bank makes from US sources (which given the interconnectedness of global equity markets, affects pretty much any reasonable-sized bank).

Some banks comply. Most simply say "that's impossible/ridiculous/breaches local privacy laws" and simply refuse to do business with Americans. But it's not just an EU thing, it's everywhere.

It might not be "about" expats, but it hurts them. I know - my wife is a dual Australian and American citizen. She hasn't set foot on US soil in a decade but still has to declare her worldwide (i.e. Australian) income every year and file her US tax return. Not only that, she has to report the details and balances of all her bank accounts, every year. And because some of those accounts are jointly held with me (a non-US citizen), then guess what, the US has my details as well.

Now with FATCA coming in (http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-(FATCA)), the IRS is requiring foreign banks to determine which of their account holders may be American, and provide access to a record of transactions/balances for those accounts directly to the US! Needless to say, many banks are refusing to do this, either because it's administratively difficult (how are you going to figure out who is and isn't American unless you mass mail every single customer?) or because it breaches privacy laws in the relevant country. So many banks are simply refusing to deal with American customers and are requiring them to close their accounts.

No wonder record numbers of expats are renouncing their citizenship in recent years (~500 per month, last I heard). The whole concept of taxing non-resident citizens on worldwide income is ridiculous in the first place, and now these new laws just make it intolerable. It's not about us trying to avoid taxes - we pay our fair share and are not wealthy people. It's the administrative burden. Having to file so many extra returns, forms, etc, every single year, to a country you aren't resident in...