Have a broader view.

I say that eating is just as important as medical services, much more important. I will also say that we all should be eating organic, fresh, custom made food with the strict supervision of qualified chiefs, who provide only the best food, and are always selected from top 5% of the class.

Or let people have a choice and eat whatever is that they want.

At least people have a real, legitimate and practical choice when it comes to catering decisions. In medical services your choices and competition are severely limited.

Agree, Switzerland is far far from libertarian utopia. Quite contrary, there are so many rules and taxes, however it is all layered and the cantons and, eventually, local communities have a say on how to spend their money. Amending the social fabric for every individual is not practicable, however Switzerland has stricken a balance that ensured the wealth for their nation.

I do not get why having an influx of foreign wealth should be mentioned at all? Their economy got literally rewarded for doing what is right for the people, for their companies and their clients. Reasonable taxes are ok, however it should be up to the countries where the wealth is originating to deregulate their own countries, rather than going after the people who benefited from the complexity, corruption and stupid laws in their native countries.

Going after successful people, that do not belong to the ruling class, is one of the indicators of totalitarian regime.

You have a choice and people around you have a choice. Right now you do not.

Give the consumers the choice whether to participate in malpractice protection scheme or not. Similar to the tire protection: when you visit car repair shop you have an option to buy "tire protection" as a premium, but nobody forces you to. Basically if you are visiting your doctor with a cold, you have an option to buy malpractice protection for, say $20, but if you don't you do not have a right to litigate the doctor if he misses that you have some other medical issue.

Reality is that only a small fraction of the premiums collected for malpractice, probably less than 10%, are actually paid to the malpractice claims. The rest of the money are paid towards litigation expenses (lawyers).

I have read the original article at the Atlantic. This is a horrific horrific article, written by the sympathizers and apologists of the red terror in France, Soviet regimes (China and Soviet Union). Article also says that reduction of the number of the workers was a factor increasing the income the working class and decreased inequality.

First, it casually mentions Soviet and Chinese revolutions with their confiscation and redistribution. Article fails to mention, that such changes were followed by the civil wars against peasantry and the workers, the use of chemical weapons against insurgents, massive red terror, massive incarcerations, loss of the academic, scientific, professional, business and cultural elite by both troika death sentences and emigrations. Don't try to mention this "equality measure" in Russia, for you risk to be roughed up by those who hate communism. Also, article fails to mention, that these revolutions created a super-elite class which keeps most of the wealth in these countries, basically brainy yet criminally dishonest former communist party members who got filthy rich.

Secondly the article mentions confiscatory rate as the solution. Author simply fails to mention that if a marginal rate exceeds 50% people are less likely to try to make more money, and, most importantly, marginal income tax rate does not touch the principle, which is rarely if ever taxed.

This topic of inequality has been covered ad nauseum by Austrian economists, with the one and only conclusion: it is the excessive government regulation that is causing inequality. Here are some basic examples:... medical profession is completely regulated in the USA. The number of medical school graduates is strictly regulated in order not to produce surplus professionals. Many other factors, such as regulations and, for example, requirement to a have malpractice insurance, do add up to the medical practice costs and, subsequently, to the prices. As such, even now with Obamacare in effect, healthcare is un-affordable luxury for many, and some people are suffering from lack of it. If the profession is completely unregulated, and would allow unlimited immigration of medical specialists from anywhere in the world, combined with loosened importation of medications, malpractice reform, would seriously give death blow to the healthcare industry, which does not provide a meaningful increase in the longevity of lives of Americans compared to the countries such as Costa Rica or Albania.

Finally article fails to mention that there are countries where catastrophe was not required to have exceedingly high standard for their citizens. Switzerland. Super low federal taxes, most of the decisions are done locally by the cantons, historically libertarian governmental approach by the Government. There was never a catastrophe in Switzerland, but their living standard is one of the highest in the world. Also, inequality is not considered an issue, there are plenty of rich people, who live there with many regular Swiss minding their own business and not worrying about inequality: why would they?

Pure ethanol spirit is the best optical equipment cleansing liquid.

Even in the Soviet Union, which was officially obsessed with anti-alcoholism campaign, this type of designation was both given and taken without questions.

Joking aside, Russian cosmonauts considered it a matter of principle to smuggle alcohol to the space. Another, equally important principle, is to deny the fact of contraband and consumption to it.

There are a lot of red brick houses in the world. If only the date of the building of the house is known and the bricks are not repurposed from other buildings, similar information can be derived.

If they can measure the magnetic properties of the mortar you can even get the direction.

So you want to use wind energy to freeze portions of the ocean where it would not be freezing otherwise?

This is the stupidest idea I have heard after 2016 elections.

Wind power efficiency is really low. In addition to that that much energy WILL slow down the winds and will cause a different type of climate cataclysmic fuck up.

Further, if so much wind power is harnessed, then it is so much better to use this wind power to replace fossil fuel manufactured electricity.

Also, the number of birds killed by the wind power and the number of sea lives perished due to the changed natural ocean flows will be much greater than the biodiversity lost due to the climate change.

For the record, warmer earth means more habitable land on earth.

Finally, Earth is still in the ice age, according to the scientists. Climate change, meaning warming, is supposed to happen anyway.

Google it.

Those who did not vote for Trump, seem to think of matters too broadly, so broadly that the broad impact extends to someone else's pocket.

Right.... AirBNB has some illegal unlicensed activity and NYC uses law to impose heavy fines.

At the left side of the argument, illegal unlicensed people in NYC get taxpayer subsidized healthcare and public services and, including cash benefits.

Can somebody explain to how to reconcile enforcement of one laws and ignoring the second laws, printed on the same paper with the same ink.

Seriously, PC is a form of control, and under control you are not allowed to be honest.

No wonder, why Clinton was perceived as less honest, as deceitful and un-reliable. This study just confirmed the bias which has been evidence during the recent elects.

Why is that a common criminal who swindles federal money, a total of $0.2 million, who, based on the description, was working in aviation industry, perhaps at Boeing or some other related company is so much more important than Boeing wasting billions and billions of dollars, doing it consistently, over a long period of time, and using nice euphemisms as budget overruns or increases in cost. Presidential plane $4 billion project has been called a wastefully excessive (in price) and nobody got interviewed by FBI. Last time I have checked the mugshots in the newspaper, a person has been arrested in my town for $100 shoplifting. Why so much publicity on individual cases of private individuals?

Cassetes have died long time ago and were totally pushed out by CD's.

CD's, at the same time, have been conquered by mp3/digital audios.

Now if you are talking about a bunch of retro aficionados, who collect vinyl, collect tapes, collect 35mm cameras. I am glad I do not hear that VHS tapes provide a more reliable image and have a soul.

Realistically, 140% increase is not enough to sustain increased interest in retro technology.

Can we all agree that Comcast really sucks, because there is no real and adequate competition?

Comcast sucks. Just sucks big time. Sneaky price increases, connection issues. Where I live, in residential area, they just disconnect in the middle of the day regularly. When I work from home I no longer rely on comcast for the connection during working and conference calls.

As such, do we agree, that the service sucks?

If you do, I challenge now you to think how will Universal healthcare will suck in the USA.

I was born and grew in a country where there many things "universal". Including healthcare.

Reality is that "healthcare" is a commodity, not a right as some people are trying to portray. If you will call commodity a right few things will happen:
1. To keep the costs low the services will be consolidated in "big" healthcare centers. There will be no real competition.
2. Since healthcare will be "free", there will be excess demand and there will be rationing. Let's say your mother is 74, has chronic disease and needs hip joint replacement. Your family will be told that it is not practical for people who have remaining life expectancy of less than 5 years to get replacement because it will be considered as waste. You will be offered unlimited painkillers though.
3. There will be excessive demand for free services. In some countries with universal healhcare to get a dental service (non-emergecy), the wait time could be 1.5 years or more. You will be places in a que.

As much as people despise current US Healthcare system, there still are some elements of competition (not many though, as pricing levels do not support existence of meaningful competition). For believers in free healthcare, please consider what people are saying about other de facto competition - Comcast.