sparky

Portugal.

Health care is free in the public system. Prescriptions cost but they are token amounts, usually like 50 cents to 5 euros.

Emergency and urgent care is generally good.

Routine care, like family doctor / GP stuff, has some issues with wait times.

Private hospital systems exist as do private insurance plans, but these are pretty inexpensive. In general, they treat routine to minor problems. For major surgeries or serious stuff like cancer treatment, you’ll likely be handled in the public hospitals anyway.

I’ve never tried salvia but if this is an accurate description of the trip then I guess I’ll pass..

This is my most reluctant upvote in a while.

Oh yeah. The principal and the other administrators floated suspension, among other things. My parents had to take off work to come in and fight them with me. The staff were all so hopelessly ignorant of all things IT that they were acting as if I’d been using some kind of malware. After they decided to kick me off, they emailed all my teachers telling them I’d been banned for “hacking” and “deploying computer viruses”. It was all quite surreal. This was in Virginia, USA.

Has something changed in your home country in the time since you left? I guess so if you want their passport?

I got banned from the school computers one year back in high school for the “crime” of using portable apps off a flash drive! This was back when IE6 was the standard and I wanted to use Firefox. Maybe 2006? Sounds funny now in retrospect but it was pretty annoying at the time.

Nobody needs a private jet or a superyacht. They are hugely environmentally damaging and serve no purpose. These should be banned, yesterday. If you’re rich, congratulations, you can fly first class on a commercial flight. More than that, fuck you.

This is where those predictions markets get actually dangerous, not just in terms of financial stuff, but incentivising the committing of crimes in order to win bets. How long will it be before someone commits a violent crime in order to win their polymarket wager?

“synergize”

That’s the only way for comics or anything else because you can’t really expect users to research the whole ideological history of the author every time they see a funny picture and want to repost it.

I’m not sure I have a strong opinion either way on the censorship vs not supporting bigots debate, but, to the extent the community decides to ban any authors/artists, there needs to be a quick and concise list that posters can consult.

I suppose the main difference is philosophical, if it’s logical or fair to tax someone on unrealised gains. It problematic to me for a number of reasons. Mechanically, how and when do you assess that, and how can it be done fairly? Much more importantly though, is the political achievability, and I think you lose too many people off the bandwagon if you go down that route.

The same goal could be realised both more deterministically and in a way more palatable to the electorate by closing the loopholes you mention, thus forcing the realising of a gain (and a taxable event) as the only means of using one’s assets. In this way you don’t create a divisive wealth tax, rather you ensure that the existing taxes on capital are actually applied. This can be augmented by moving from a flat capital gains tax rate and instead taxing it progressively as income, another deterministic and more objectively fair approach.

I believe we could also implement a significantly higher inheritance tax rate, as it’s much easier to build consensus around punitive tax rates for wealth not personally generated. There are many people that will fight taxation of entrepreneurs, claiming they’ve earned their wealth. However, it’s much harder to argue that some rich guy’s descendants who did nothing more then be born deserve huge sums of money to do fuck all.

If you do both of those, you ensure that the very wealthy pay their fucking taxes, and that huge intergenerational wealth transfers instead become huge taxable events.

You know, I actually wonder what happens with citizenship once you become pope or one of the few top cardinals. Do you lose/renounce your original one and become a citizen of Vatican City?