Pidesco

The question of poor countries is a good one, as as far as I know construction costs for coal plants are still lower, but the question is neither here nor there, because the current issue are developed countries, which share the bulk of energy expenditures in the world, have the resources to move to cleaner energy, but either have dallied and taken their sweet time to get things going or, in the case of the US, have flat out refused to admit there is a problem to be addressed. When goals are set they are also always half measures.

I imagine overpopulation problems would be solved.

Intense lobbying from the oil industry?

While not making celebrities politicians is usually a good rule, the problems with Trump's "reign" went well beyond that.

Dental costs are not particularly more expensive in Sweden than most anywhere else. It's more or less the same price as in Portugal, and 25%, I believe, is covered if you are doing very expensive work. Also, dental work is free is if you are under 25. I think the idea is if everything important is taken care of when you are growing up, then ongoing costs are mitigated later in life. My stepdaughter needed extensive dental work, and it would have put us in the hole back in Portugal. Here it's completely free.

not everyone is confortable with mental health issues unfortunately, so many go unreported. there's still a stigma about it, that I'd wager is bigger among conservatives. It's also why women have higher percentages than men. The attitude still too often is "manly men don't talk or are affected by such inconsequential things as feelings."

Check the graphic they have stagnated already.

It was a joke. Culture is culture. People will do abhorrent/stupid stuff with no problem if their culture permits/glorifies it. See bullfighting in Spain and Portugal, blackface in the Netherlands, gun fetishism in the US.

Countries that had very low wages more recently are dubious examples. To take an example I'm more familiar with, Purchasing power in Portugal increased immensely following the end of the dictatorship in 1974, but it still increased relatively little given how very low purchasing power was to begin with. To take an extreme hypothetical if you begin with making 5 bucks a month and after a year you are making 20 bucks a month, your purchasing power increased 300%, but your purchasing power is still horrible. So people from the Baltic states have had excellent purchasing power increases since the end of the USSR, but they still would have better real wages in Sweden, where purchasing power has stagnated in recent years. A doctor in Lithuania makes a lot less money there than in Sweden. https://knoema.com/WBWDI2019Jan/world-development-indicators-wdi

Swedes treat whales very well. For myself, I can say that I, unfortunately, do not own any whales, but my single income family makes about the same money as my parent's double income family. The caveat is that I am Portuguese, and Portugal is a country with very low wages, although my parents had quite high wages by Portuguese standards. As for real wages and purchase power that is a global problem that nowadays affects pretty much every single developed country in the world. Social welfare policies are one of the methods to alleviate the problem. If you want to read more about it, the essential work is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.

Actually Norway appears to be saving money hand over fist. Also, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Germany if you want other examples. Actually, while some countries are better managed than others, the entirety of Western Europe has robust social welfare policies. Most of them do not have oil

Supply side economics, Reaganomics and the Laffer curve are not based on empirical evidence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-black-comedy-of-arthur-laffer

No.

It's what you did in the 50s. Americans, that is.

The problem isn't so much the spending, I guess, but the tax cuts. Decades of them.

I suspect that a significant percentage of current public debt in US came from bailing out big companies, tax cuts, especially corporate ones, and projects with low return on investment like the border wall. The first two go by and large into dividends to shareholders, which means it is money that will never reach the broad economy, thus not affecting growth or wealth creation significantly. Infrastructure projects help a bit more, but the border wall was a good example of a project where the money doesn't go back into society, like schools, roads, hospitals, or pretty much whatever. As in everything, it is not so much the amount you spend but how you spend it.

They really got a bum rap. I mean they did some terrible stuff with A Song of Ice and Fire, but it wasn't any worse than what Martin has put out. I mean the first book was middling, the second book was better, and then the third book was atrociously written. Everything I have read about the subsequent is that they have gotten worse and more bloated. I'd argue they were faithful to the original work. Worse and worse as it goes along is an apt description of both the series and the books. Also, the first season was certainly better than the first book.

As far as I know, that discrepancy between the housing prices' growth and real wage growth is the same across the vast majority of the developed world, especially in larger cities. I'd be surprised if the situation isn't by and large the same in Australia. It sure is throughout western Europe, at least. While the specifics of the phenomenon vary by region(here in Sweden dubious lending practices have had an effect, back in Portugal foreign speculators and very low wages did not help) the main cause for the phenomenon appears to be ever widening income inequality and eternally low interest rates. Just to say housing is a problem everywhere, so it wouldn't be a reason not to move to NZ.

https://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2021/03/17/tussauds-waxworks-in-san-antonio-removes-trump-figure-because-people-keep-punching-it

I did not know Wittgenstein was the philosopher of philosophy hipsters. Aristotle was indeed always wrong.

Actually the ecological impact of a new human roaming around for years is much bigger than that of a condom, so those kids are stupid.

Just name the telescope Star Citizen and declare the Kickstarter project complete.