I think you are confusing marginal tax with actual tax rate. I am very well paid, and my effective tax rate is like 35%. Still high, but I have socialized medicin, cheap care in my old age, and my kids got both free university degrees and a stipend. Also my parents are well taken care off, and won't need my help.There are ways to lower my tax rate further, but not worth it to pursue for me. Most people also save up fairly well in their 401k equivalents. Calling it "optional" is really only technically correct. Corporate taxes are basically flat rate and I think 22% at the moment, lowest in the EU.

Well... this. But also there are plenty of young coders who do have their shit together. It just seems like there's not much in between, at least judging from the interviews I have conducted over the last 10 years at FAANG level. At the end I started doing the simplest screening question I could think of, which was literally "This is not a trick question, and I hope you aren't offended, but we have to start somewhere. Write me a function that measures the length of a string. Again, this is not a trick question. You do not need to account for anything like Unicode encoding, null strings, optimal execution, just count the number of characters in the string". An surprising number of applicants just folded at this. Either they were just too nervous, or they truly couldn't code.

Disclaimer: Personal, anecdotal experiences... Apple appears to have lost some interest in macOS as a premium product for web developers some time ago. It's still good, and for this of us already invested in it it's still a reasonable choice, but just a few years ago the buzz that I got was that lots of devs were switching to it as "the UNIX dev platform where you could pay someone to install and support it" basically. That's no longer the case.

Hmm, I am working in Silicon Valley in a major tech company, and I am definitely not seeing a surplus of talent here. In fact, we usually have a hard time finding and retaining qualified people, even for somewhat generic positions.

Well, here we go.

Used to be that USA and Saudi Arabia were allies of necessity. Not so much anymore. Once the US can project power without risk of getting strangled by OPEC they are no longer a necessary ally, only a convenient one.

I guess Obama telegraphed this message early on in his presidency when he gave that speech in the middle east where he basically said the US would no longer prop up leaders that are not supported by their people.

My theory is that China and the US looked at the projections for 20 years ahead: Oil production would no longer be able to keep up with demand at that point. So time to make the change, and screw over Russia while they were at it. No longer having to prop up a cluster of corrupt despots who desperately tried to hold back the future with guns and bribes is a nice bonus. ISIS and Al Qaida is basically what USA reaps from that :(

It always seemed to me that you were positive about our future prospects and chances of surviving even during the darkest days of the cold war. Were you, and are you still? If you changed your point of view, what caused it to change?

Finally! :D

I think it would be extremely instructive if it was expressed as a ratio of - say - life expectancy pr. $ expended pr. year. Or the marginal cost per year of increase, or something. The debate is not really about how long the average person lives . it's about how many people are not treated for even simple ailments (morals), and the effectiveness of the system (cost/benefit).

I am from Denmark, but married to a US citizen. We have a lot of opportunity to compare notes. While Danish doctors are often somewhat rude and will cheerfully refuse to give you a prescription for stuff you are sure you need, we would never see a case like my wife's uncle. He lost his leg because he didn't see a doctor about the pain, and his reason for not seeing the doctor was that he was worried the visit would not be covered by his insurance. When he finally went, it was too late, and they had to amputate. So it goes. Meanwhile, in Denmark the government is often imploring the citizens to see their doctor more often, to keep health costs down by spotting problems before they become expensive to treat.

Personally, I have received many, many treatments ranging from setting of broken limbs to specialist examinations for this and than, and every night I use a C-PAP machine, paid for and maintained by the socialized health system, but supplied by a private specialist. I can, in fact, choose any doctor I want as my GP, or just make an appointment or show up as a walk-in. The only practical limit is that in order to see a specialist, I need a referral from a GP. This has never been a problem for me.

Our system? Socialized with a private option, with an overflow to the private system if the public system is too tardy - again at no extra expense for the user. You can add a private insurance if you wish, and many people choose to do so for things such as dental, plastic surgery etc, but it's really not required to stay hale and taxable :)