One possible factor? I was in france in June. in fact all of Europe rides bikes. From young to old. Of the countries I visited France and Amsterdam rode them the most.
Everybody looked fit.
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Yes. But you can override it. You may get an asterisk. My accountant claims several of his clients have done this.
Good observation. Very relevant. Still times seem to have changed. I don’t care for all of the unproductive accusations and fighting. It seems counterproductive.
There are those who see glass as half empty and when they have one very closer to the eyes, and one very far, you see the problems much clearly on the one that is close to you and you get a more balanced view on the one that is far away.
Of course my view is biased. I strongly believe one of the biggest strength of USA is democracy. That’s a big weakness for China. How long Chinese citizens democratic aspirations can be suppressed? Will their path to democracy a simple, non-event or a very violent one? Don’t know answers to those questions. Democracy alone, at least for me, is a reason you go with USA any day, and every day.
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Whether you agree with Trump or not. He was our president elected through a democratic process. But from the point he was elected his opponents spent the next 4 years putting fictitious roadblocks in his way
Well, without going into details and get into partisan fights, all of that are within existing laws. I was furious with Obama for not fighting for his right to nominate the supreme court judge. My friend’s and family thought I was over-reacting, and they thought I had a low opinion of Hillary and American people. I told you so, doesn’t give you any comfort, especially when your worst fears plays out.
Did McConnell broke all existing traditions and norms? Absolutely, but was there a legal option available for him to do that? Yeah. So, I am still furious about what happened, but democracy is not always getting what you want. Progress is not a straight line, eventually we will make progress and as a nation, we would have learned our lessons and make it Iron clad next time.
That hope and my old bladder makes me wake-up early every day! 
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“Every claim so far has been proven absolutely false or at a minimum he was not convicted (which by the way in America we call that innocent until proven guilty).”
President Trump was found guilty in the United States Senate of inciting an insurrection. The vote was 57-43. This was reported extensively in the press, and is now on his permanent record.
Your definition of fictitious may vary.
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But if you think what is happening to him is fair and balanced and not retaliation by the other party. You are blind as a bat and it is not worth even discussing things with you.
OK this is getting really into partisan politics. Anyhow, just saying, Ideologically no one is polar opposite to Darth Vader, there are some laws he certainly broke, at least in my opinion. But no one was going after him.
Trump, before Presidency, during Presidency, after losing election, he is a walking criminal enterprise. He is a prime example for those who are arguing against Democracy and I use him also a prime example. Imagine, if we didn’t have democracy and can thrown out someone we don’t like through election.
Nothing beats democracy. So whatever your grievances are suck it up and be happy Berky is at least able to keep up with SP500.
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US health care cost: 19.7% of GDP, maternal mortality rate 23.8 per 100,000 births.
France health care cost: 11.1% of GDP, maternal mortality rate 8-12 per 100,000.
Any maternal mortality rate statistics that do not differentiate based on age cohorts is completely worthless, whether that comparison is between countries or between different dates.
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Healthcare and private education are the two businesses where free market fails
I don’t know, the whole Lasik eye surgery thing seemed to work out phenomenally well. Dramatically better technology combined with dramatically lower prices.
US health care cost: 19.7% of GDP, maternal mortality rate 23.8 per 100,000 births.
France health care cost: 11.1% of GDP, maternal mortality rate 8-12 per 100,000.
…
Any maternal mortality rate statistics that do not differentiate based on age cohorts is completely worthless,
whether that comparison is between countries or between different dates.
Well, two points—
No, it’s not meaningless.
The biggest factors the health of the mother, and the quality of care the mother receives.
Together those are a pretty good yardstick of how well the health of a population is being managed.
Age cohort issues are sideshow by comparison; the age profiles don’t differ enough to displace the big factors.
And in any case, this would suggest that a cohort-adjusted figure would give a larger difference, not a smaller one.
Meaning that the US is doing even worse than it first appears.
The average person giving birth in France is quite a bit older than the average in the US.
Maternal mortality rises with the age of the mother, except a small and (in this context) irrelevant J-tail for the very young.
All this is pretty obvious if you’d taken a moment to search before posting.
Jim
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President Trump was found guilty in the United States Senate of inciting an insurrection. The vote was 57-43. This was reported extensively in the press, and is now on his permanent record.
Unfortunately a majority does not a conviction make in a Senate trail of an impeachment. Still, I agree that a strong majority of the Senate, including 7 Republicans, voting to convict is a LONG way from the impeachment claims being ‘proven absolutely false’.
Impeachment is the Constitutional process by which we address wrong-doing by the President. Trump was impeached twice. Some people, like Gator, apparently, believe that was unfair persecution. Others believe he deserved it and should have been thrown out of office, but that result was prevented by partisan politics. Count me among that group.
At any rate, the process followed was Constitutional. Kingran aptly raised the issue of Garland’s Supreme Court nomination being left for dead by the Senate with many months left in Obama’s tenure. Grievously unfair, in the eyes of most of the nation, but legal under the Constitution, and now the Supreme Court is packed with right wing ideologues.
Politics is a nasty business, always has been. The partisan divide is quite bad now, but it has been before. Andrew Johnson was impeached and very nearly removed from office purely over political disagreements with Congress. We’ve had a Civil War!
Kingran is right that democracy is a huge underlying strength of the country. Okay, okay, it’s a representative republic, not a democracy, but still we were able to vote Trump out of office to correct course. And maybe we’ll vote Biden out of office to correct course again, even if I disagree with the ‘correction’.
There is more risk of the nation failing/revolution in a typical lifespan of 70-80 years than most people realize. We’ve had it happen or very nearly happen in the late 1700s and the mid-late 1800s. In the 1900s we ‘only’ had two world wars and multiple regional wars and thankfully avoided massive turmoil directly affecting the homeland. The 2000s are early … don’t think it can’t happen here, because it could indeed.
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I tend to agree that with healthcare there is a difference…
I don’t know, the whole Lasik eye surgery thing seemed to work out phenomenally well. Dramatically better technology combined with dramatically lower prices.
Lasik isn’t cancer or a newborn with a heart defect. What’s a life worth when you break it down to a cold hard number?
I had a good friend who was the #2 administrator at a concierge hospital. He mentioned there are three things that drive up costs substantially.
1. Insurance bureaucracy/red tape (he said it is insanely complex)
2. Lawsuits and associated need to cover oneself which has a very large impact on higher risk specialties
3. And on the harsh side per his words, peoples’ lives being extended when they probably really shouldn’t be. He said it is not uncommon to spend millions on a couple of months that the patient was going to end up in the same place regardless. And same thing on the beginning of life. He felt a little better on this side of things but said it’s pretty tough when yes the newborn made it but their future life was probably going to be a health nightmare.
I’m on the conservative side, but I do have to chuckle remembering back to the government death panels or government panels deciding what treatments you could or couldn’t have paranoia. Yes, we have something much better…corporate panels that do the same thing.
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I had a good friend who was the #2 administrator at a concierge hospital. He mentioned there are three things that drive up costs substantially.
1. Insurance bureaucracy/red tape (he said it is insanely complex)
2. Lawsuits and associated need to cover oneself which has a very large impact on higher risk specialties
3. And on the harsh side per his words, peoples’ lives being extended when they probably really shouldn’t be. He said it is not uncommon to spend millions on a couple of months that the patient was going to end up in the same place regardless. And same thing on the beginning of life. He felt a little better on this side of things but said it’s pretty tough when yes the newborn made it but their future life was probably going to be a health nightmare.
It seems to me these are the symptoms, not the cause. The cause is that they can get away with higher price, no incentives to find remedies or would go out of business.
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Okay, okay, it’s a representative republic, not a democracy, but still we were able to vote Trump out of office to correct course.
I think a more accurate description of the United States is that we are a republic which is a representative democracy. Being a republic and a democracy (representative, direct, etc.) are not mutually exclusive.
As for our former president (of whom I am no fan), he has had his day (and weeks and months) in court (state, federal, and supreme) and lost every case save one, which was moot as it didn’t change any votes.
As for the latest “raid”, I am more than happy to let the episode play out in the system and let the chips fall where they may. It appears to involves sensitive classified documents and Mr. Trump could have legally released the search warrant if it was to his advantage. As I said, I’ll wait for all the facts to come out, and they will, before making any final judgments.
Garland doesn’t strike me as a impulsive individual, but I can’t help but think that the Republicans own him being AG instead of a Supreme Court justice. What’s that word again? Oh ya, karma.
AW
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Okay, okay, it’s a representative republic, not a democracy, but still we were able to vote Trump out of office to correct course.
Polling has had majority of the people saying the country is in a wrong track for as long as I can remember. When has and will the course been corrected?
When has and will the course been corrected?
We muddle 2 steps forward, one step back, and typically every step in any direction is vociferously opposed.
The Affordable Care Act was reviled, but now that it’s part of the fabric of society, millions rely on it, nothing terrible has happened, and the number of uninsured dropped drastically. It’s made my own life a lot better.
Climate change has been building up higher and higher as a pressing threat, with relatively minor and/or unsuccessful attempts to address it. The recent bill passed by Senate is by far the biggest law passed addressing it so far.
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When has and will the course been corrected?
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…
The perfect union is a goal, not a destination. We, the people and the nation are, everyday, taking infinitesimal step.
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Here is the polling of wrong track from 1991:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/…
It doesn’t mean that the country made no progress when it’s in the wrong track.
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At the beginning of the 1945 cycle, after the war, the United States was the dominant financial, economic, and military power. Now they are much weaker in all these areas. They spend far more than they earn and finance it by borrowing and printing money. They suffer from internal conflicts between right-wing populists and left-wing populists, which has disrupted decision-making. And they have external conflicts with countries of comparable power, most notably China, which has increased the risk of wars. Measures of a country’s strength, which are good leading indicators of future well-being, such as educational levels, infrastructure quality, crime rates and many others, show that conditions have weakened and internal and external struggles have increased.
Clearly we were in a stronger position at the conclusion of World War II, nobody disputes that, but using it as a comparator is absurd. The rest of the planet was in rubble and ashes, and the US was untouched, not to mention that we assimilated the best forward technologies: jet engines from Britain, rocketry from Germans, etc.
To think that would go unchanged forever is a dream hardly worth the keypresses to argue it.
To address the other items: we printed and borrowed far more during World War II than we do today, we have suffered right-wing and left-wing populists since the beginning of the Republic (Huey Long, Andrew Jackson, George Wallace, William Jennings Bryan). And obviously we have had conflicts with country of comparable, sometimes even superior power and probably will again. For all our faults, we have a decently educated populace, vast infrastructure, and crime rates about average with countries across the world.
Nostalgia is a big business because as people age they look back through a happy gauze at earlier times, and it is universal that older people think the world is getting worse, always, in all ways. Sometimes it is, but usually not, as human progress inexorably improves the quality of life around the globe. Your old billionaire has a dour outlook and probably an ulcer. Tell him to chill.
Remind Mr. Dalit that barely a handful of countries have ever had the advantages the US had at any time in history. Rome, perhaps. Maybe Britain for a short time a few hundred years ago. It doesn’t last, it never lasts, it won’t this time either, but living your life that way is no way to live it, though. What’s that song? Don’t worry. Be happy.
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