*income taxes are lower in America
I would argue that the overall tax burden to the government is not all that different. Income tax rates are higher in Europe, 37% in the US at my top tier and about 47% in Europe at the same top tier. However, the US has a lot of hidden taxes, and a whole lot of corporate parasitism which functions as a tax
Ten years ago, things might have been cheaper, but not any longer. I'm an American living in an expensive part of Europe, while also maintaining a place in a similarly expensive part of the US. I'm going to say Europe Here but I'm referring to our specific corner of Europe which has a huge range of costs. Similar for the US. Here are my actual numbers:
Electricity: Europe: 99€ US: $95
Internet: Europe: 26€ US: $62
mobile phone (per line): Europe: 17€ US: $40
grocery budget (monthly) family of two: Europe: 750€ US: $900
Health insurance monthly (private): Europe: 190€ US: $800 (partially subsidized by work, real price closer to $1200)
Car insurance monthly: Europe: 105€ US: $195
Petrol costs monthly: Europe: 225€ ~7€/gallon US: $250 ~$3.50/gallon
Oil change at car dealership: Europe: 70€ US: $95
US mortgage + tax + insurance (2 bedroom house): $1775
Europe rent + renter insurance: 1225€
Local mid range restaurant: Europe: 62€ US: $105
Dog grooming: Europe: 60€ US: $95
Vet visit: Europe: 60€ US: $150
Doctors visit (with insurance): Europe: 30€ US: $50
Diagnostic labs (with insurance): Europe: 30€ US: $150
The US has become shockingly expensive. Some of this is because we spend more to eat quality food when there, and we are in a bit of a touristy area. Both locations are in touristy areas though, so not entirely different. I might be in the minority but I don't see much difference in lifestyle between the two areas I frequent.
The fruits and vegetables are about the same price but taste much better in Europe.
The bread is far cheaper, more available and better in Europe.
The specialty products we like to eat are much cheaper in Europe. Eg, feta cheese, french butter and jam, etc.
The meat is about the same, maybe a bit cheaper in Europe. I don't taste much difference.
The most important differences for us are:
If we don't feel good we go the the emergency room in Europe. Yes we will wait a long time to be seen, but the cost last time was 175€. In the US, you will wait a day to see if you feel better, because you are going to wait just as long and the bill will be a minimum of $1200 with insurance.
We do not take the car out every day in Europe, because we can walk to a small grocery store, medical lab, print shop, bakery. We must take the car out for any trip in the US, and the distances are longer.
Customer service in Europe is sometimes not all that helpful, and they give that impression to you when talking to them. Customer service in the US seems very nice and accommodating, but they are equally unhelpful in most cases.
People you hire to do work for you seem to have far more variability in the US. They might be extraordinarily expensive, super cheap, might not show up, etc. In Europe, the prices seem to be on average cheaper than the US, and the workers on average a bit more reliable, but more laid back and less busy than in the US.
And finally, most importantly, any company you deal with in the US will constantly try to extract more and more from you. Every year, prices ratchet up, new charges are itemized, things previously included now cost extra, billing mistakes are created and they are never in your favor. In Europe our experience is that companies you deal with mostly maintain prices. To be fair, some of these are sanctioned monopolies, but the same is true in the US and somehow they do it anyway. This has been our experience with insurance, utilities, car maintenance, etc. The system wears you down in the US until you have no fight left.
Yeah but you are a person presumably, so there is accountability. The reason to use AI is to escape accountability
I suspect a lot of NYCs liabilities are in strong union-negotiated pensions for retired police, transit, sanitation workers. Hard to get out from under those without really hurting people. The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
Just create a black hole network at your house and connect all 'smart' appliances to that. Block all traffic at the router level. This prevents them trying to connect to open mesh networks and also provides the benefit of cataloging all the traffic
Missed out on one by a couple years through the citizenship by ancestry program:-/
It looked like they lost power in both engines, but hard to tell without audio. I was thinking bird strike, but couldn't see birds in the CCTV video. Looked to be a cloud of dust or something just on rotation.
You have made this assertion without any real evidence. The single study, if you are able to read more than the abstract, doesn't show the overall bite rate, the severity of bites, none of this. If you make an assertion that any reduction in dogs capable of doing harm, "dangerous" in the sense that a powerful car is dangerous, has no impact on the severity and frequency of injuries, this is not an evidence based assertion.
It is understandable to have an opinion about an issue, but it is dishonest to present it as evidence based if there is none.
The studies don't seem to show that. In you analogy, it's not stickers, it's faster cars. Would you expect that if faster cars were banned, those owners would drive slower cars equally as fast as faster cars keeping the rate of speeding tickets?
This is an extraordinary claim that requires definitive evidence. You can't just come to a conclusion that "ultimately the owner is responsible" without evidence.
It is an extraordinary claim that so called non dangerous breeds become more dangerous when so called dangerous breeds are restricted. I don't think you can compare bite rates across borders because access to care, statistic collection methodology, dog ownership culture, etc are all confounding factors.
But this study doesn't say anything at all about the dog bite rate does it? It takes 134 mammalian bite victims and reports the percentage that came from dogs. I could be convinced by a study that showed a rate of dog bites of 13/100000 before an effective bully breed restriction and a rate within statistical significance after the restriction was in place.
I can't really find clear (or free) statistics on this either way. However, it seems clear that any reduction in rate of ownership of dangerous breeds should reduce the overall bite rate. Is your hypothesis that by reducing ownership rate of a particular breed (bully breeds, in this case), other dangerous breeds:
Become more popular and continue to bite at the same rate
Do not increase in rate of ownership, yet bite more to keep the overall bite rate the same
?
If you mean #2, this is an extraordinary claim that doesn't stand without evidence. If you mean #1, maybe you have a point, but hard to evaluate without access to the stats. If you mean #1, do you think a restriction on all dangerous breeds would reduce the overall bite rate? (Coincidentally, France's restriction applies to all dangerous breeds)
Of course! On a house we could purchase in France, the property tax will be around $1300€. I pay $4000 in the US, up from $1800 in 2021.
The $4000 in the US surprisingly doesn't actually cover anything. My city charges my around $75 monthly for trash service. I also have a county solid waste fee to pay. Last year I replaced my air conditioning, and the county permit to do this was $500. I am lucky because some cities require an HVAC technician licensed in that city, which obviously charge a big premium. My electricity company, a monopoly in my area, charges $26 each month in state maintenance fund fees and delivery charges, separate from my electricity consumption. What are these?
My home insurance is also around $4000, and is required by my mortgage. There is unfortunately only one provider in my area, and they include policy disclaimers that they may not be able to pay claims at all, and that I can't sue them if they are insolvent. They raise their rate about 25% per year.
My car insurance also consistently raises rates by double digit percentages, but they do it quietly by simply "auto renewing" at the increased amount. This is without accidents or tickets, and a vehicle which is another year older.
VAT is 20% in France, but is included in the prices at the grocery store, and not included on essential food items. In my area in the US, we owe 7% sales tax on essential items.
Speaking of my grocery store in the US, it is essentially a monopoly and they charge outrageous prices for many things because they can. The nearest health clinic to my house in the US is owned by private equity, and a visit with some routine scans and lab work will precipitate an array of invoices from random medical billing offices all over the country, for seemingly random amounts.
As someone who has lived in a number of different countries as an expat over the years, the US is unique in the scale of the day to day extraction. Living in an apartment, from my experience, is far worse in the US. Things like COVID sanitization fee $500, mandatory parcel hold service, $29, mandatory trash concierge, $29, community utilities, $50, deposit insurance $299, etc etc etc. Everything is an unregulated opportunity to extract. You can sue for really egregious things and outright fraud, but it costs $75 to do that, plus you have to pay a private process server to start the lawsuit. Do you have time to do that for everything?
The true state of the way things are in America should be a warning for Europeans to avoid going down that path. Our federal income tax is lower in the US, but we have significant tax bills due at the many levels of government from neighborhood, municipality, county, and state. Maybe it is less than 10% of some people's income, but not most people.