So technically, a yacht is any leisure vessel. ie not a working boat. In the UK, a yacht is usually a sailing boat though we also increasingly have motor yachts. In the USA though, a yacht is a large motor powered vessel. So, when an American says 'nobody needs a yacht' they generally mean one of those, rather than a sailboat. Not sure what context CrimsonCape was using.
> I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.
Selfishly I think my American healthcare is better than anything I ever had in the UK. I can see a doctor within 2 weeks even a specialist, I can actually get a sleep study, my doctor will actually listen to me rather than tell me I'm just getting old, go home and take an ibuprofen.
In terms of health outcomes, the UK generally has higher life expectancy and lower maternal mortality rates than the US - but that said, even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts.
The real focus and point of contention should be that the US healthcare system is exponentially more expensive per capita than any European model, but is worse for almost all health outcomes including the major litmus tests of life expectancy and infant mortality. In some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.
Americans average spend on inpatient and outpatient care was $8,353 per person vs $3,636 in peer countries - but this higher spending on providers is driven by higher prices rather than higher utilization of care. Pretty much all other insights in comparing the two systems can be extrapolated from that fact alone imo.
This is probably incredibly naive so apologies if so - are things like differing obesity or other health problem causing conditions accounted for when looking at overall outcomes of the system?
The higher cost makes perfect sense to me but calculating an apples
to apples comparison of health outcomes between potentially very different populations seems potentially very difficult? Again sorry it's probably a solved problem but figured I'd ask :)
The lower life expectancy in the US is almost entirely down to young people dying at a much higher rate than Europe due to car accidents, murder, and drug overdoses. It skews the averages pretty badly. If those individual risks don't apply to you then life expectancy is actually pretty decent.
There is a wide variance in the general healthiness of the population depending on where you live in the US, which does affect life expectancy. Where I live in the US my life expectancy is in the mid-80s despite the number of young people that die.
That's because mortality rates are only weakly correlated with healthcare quality. The US has much higher death rates in some young demographics, which skews the average, but those people didn't die due to lack of medical care.
You can have exceptional healthcare quality and relatively low life expectancy in the same population.
The Brown study I cited above concludes differently, and is strictly a longitudinal, retrospective cohort study involving adults 50 to 85 years of age.
Within that 50-85 cohort, among 73,838 adults (mean [±SD] age, 65±9.8 years), the participants in the top wealth quartiles in northern and western Europe and southern Europe appeared to be higher than that among the wealthiest Americans. Survival in the wealthiest U.S. quartile appeared to be similar to that in the poorest quartile in northern and western Europe.
This is likely very regional. As a single data point, raising the family in the Boston area for the last 25 years I do not recall not being able to see a doctor the same day for the regular scares, from ear pains and high fever to falling and later vomiting (is this a concussion?).
A few times when we needed to see specialists, we often saw them within 24 hours; occasionally longer but I would say with a median of 48-72 hours. Even things that are clearly not urgent (for dermatologist "hey, I have forgotten about skin checks for the last 2 years, can we do the next one now", for ENT "hey, my son is getting nosebleeds during high intensity sports; can you check if there is a specific blood vessel that is causing problems"?) always happened well within two weeks. Three caveats to this happy story:
1. This is Boston area with likely the highest concentration of medical practitioners of all kinds in the US. I had good insurance with a large network, decent out-of-network coverage and for most cases not needed a pre-approval to see a specialist.
2. Everyone is generally healthy and our "specialist needs" were likely well trodden paths with many available specialists.
3. Our usage of the doctors, as the kids became generally healthy teenagers and adults, dropped significantly in the last 5-7 years. I hear post-covid the situation is changing and I may be heavily skewing to the earlier period.
At least from what I can see, COVID and the changes in attitudes towards medical professionals are driving a lot of burnout and leaving the profession; and since then economic pressures are squeezing private practices out of existence and a lot of specialists end up working for private equity now.
I think you should also balance your take by asking people who recently lost their job what they think about their healthcare. I’m sure you’re aware of that, and my point is rhetorical, but that’s the trade off here, it isn’t only about what it looks like when things go right, you should also consider what happens when things go wrong. It’s also enlightening to see what happens many times when people “did everything right” and still got shafted by the US system. See: Sicko for instance https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEQ7acb0IE
I suspect the time it takes to see a specialist in the UK depends on how urgently the issue needs to be addressed. The real advantage you have is that you can be seen by a specialist within two weeks even for non-urgent stuff. That’s not to dismiss your need though. The definition of medical urgency and comfort don’t align well.
That's ridiculous. Nobody gets healthcare equivalent to a third world country unless they just don't try. (Think, an addict or mentally ill person, which is still not a good thing, but much smaller of a carve-out than you've represented)
If you cough up for private healthcare maybe, when it comes to the NHS if it's not going to kill you immediately it's more or less 'take a spot in the waiting list and God will sort it out' these days.
That's largely due to austerity effects and not the inherent model of UK healthcare. That's what happens when political appointees and ministers bully civil servants and doctors that the best minds all leave, while the government significantly cuts funding to the NHS while forcing it to move to AWS.
I'd take issue with your price point but agree with the sentiment
I've seen victorinox fibrox knives in Michelin Star kitchens, they get the job done and are very reasonably priced ($60 for a chef's knife).
Admittedly the knives I have at home are significantly more expensive largely because the knives I have at home are on display so I want something that looks good and I actually enjoy using them.
On one level it's a little silly but then on another level people spend thousands on art/sculptures which has no useful purpose.
When I was in school (in seventies), all boys at least tried to learn how to use and take care of all sharp tools and machines with one up to wood and metal lathe. When I was in school now as a teacher, scissors were the only somewhat sharp things kids were allowed to use. Risk tolerance is so low in our society nowadays, sense of responsibility of children is nonexistent etc.
A semester of machine shop taught me an immense amount, and based on my experience with a lot of techies, 95% more about how the world (and tools) work than 95% of the population.
I never tip before receiving the service. Always hit zero. It feels a bit weird to begin with but you get used to it and i've not been treated any differently. A tip is generally not required for coffee or to-go/counter service.
> In America, at least in restaurants, employers are allowed to pay a lower minimum wage to tipped employees. So tips are an essential part of a servers compensation and should not be considered optional.
This actually varies state by state. In Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington the minimum wage does not change tipped vs non-tipped. Also in other states if the pay after tips do not meet the state minimum wage the employer is required to make up this difference.
If you actually look at the data tipped employees make significantly more vs median income in countries with tipping than without.
> If you can't afford that, then you can't afford to eat out, choose a different option.
I think this works if we're talking about a full restaurant, If we're talking about a mostly empty restaurant then even a 5% tip is money that the server would have not otherwise had, pretty certain they'd choose more money over less.
i suppose we have come to expect 4 states:
- off: no power, no activity
- hibernate: no power, no activity session state saved to non-volatile storage
- sleep: Minimal power, RAM remains powered with the session state, can be resumed quickly
- on
now we essentially have sleep++ and no option to set it back to vanilla sleep.
Those are the states I expect, indeed, but lately I find them increasingly unreliable. I've had Windows unable to sleep, Linux crashing after hibernating, MacOS issues are addressed aplenty here.
I thought this was a solved issue. How are all OSs suddenly so bad at this? I only really trust on and off anymore.
You do have that option, it's just not the defaut.
For most people these days the primary device is their phone, and so that is the model that modern laptops are trying to follow, as that is what most users will expect.
> Thier max output is only 9.6kW so it can’t do a whole home backup and the car can only run in backup mode when the grid is out.
9.6kW should be enough to backup your entire house, that's 87A... Lots of people only have a 100A supply in general. Depending on your setup you may have to limit what you use at one time but even in a large house that will be more than enough for AC, lights and electronic devices.
9.6kW is 40A at 240V, and a 240V 100A single-phase residential service is 24kW.
Still, 9.6kW should be more than enough to run a fridge, lights, receptacles, sump pump, a 2-3 ton A/C unit, and a furnace fan. It would be challenging to impossible to back up a home with electric (resistive) furnace and electric (resistive) water heater with only 9.6kW.
That’s peak production, without battery storage the fluctuation during the year will likely be too much to keep the “lights on”. Would be cool to have a smart home that prioritizes the electricity supply to different systems based on how much is available.
> unless I can find a non-competing job that pays me at least 70% plus whatever pay bump I’d expect for career advancement.
This clearly depends on your role and industry. I can write code in a bunch of industries I've actually never had 2 jobs in the same industry. If I were an oil pipeline engineer it would be different.
