For one thing, just displaying the latest number isn’t useful if you’re doing anything complicated. For another, many calculations involve using the same number over again multiple times. Some calculators have a memory entry, but many don’t. There’s a “C/CE” but there isn’t a backspace, so if you get one digit wrong, you have to start that entry over (and hope you chose the right option among C/CE/AC/CA/etc. If you accidentally hit the wrong operation key (multiply, divide, plus, minus) AFAIK there’s no way to clear the operation. A lot of common math operations involves parenthesized expressions, but if you’re using a basic calculator you have to instead enter things in an unnatural order. It’s pretty common to end up in a situation where the calculator is displaying B and you want to do A/B but you can only easily do B/A. Fancy calculators have a 1/X button to fix this, but if not you’re out of luck. Same with having B and wanting to do A-B but only being able to do B-A. You can fix that by multiplying by -1, but again, it’s a UI issue that you can’t just say “hold onto that number for a second because I want to enter another number and then use it”.

Calculators just have a bad user interface in general. It’s pretty amazing that the UI was established in 1970 and was never changed after that.

Or uses a serious calculator.

Looking at “Table 1”, the 2022 value for the US is 12,555 in PPP international dollars. 1/4 of that would be 3139. The only countries below 3200 are countries with a significantly lower development level than the US: Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Turkey, Slovakia, Chile, Hungary, Poland, Greece and so on.

US peer countries in terms of development would be countries like Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, UK, Japan, etc. Of those, only Japan and the UK are below 6278, which would be half the cost of the US system. Canada is close though at 6319. And some, like Germany and Switzerland are closer to 3/4 of the US costs.

I think it’s more fair to say that the US could have a much better healthcare system that also covered everybody in the country for half the cost if it switched to a Universal system. To be able to do it for 1/4 the cost, the US would have to have an economy like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc. Wages and costs would have to be significantly lower. To put it in perspective, as a Canadian if they think they’d have a functional healthcare system if the funding was cut in half. I can pretty much guarantee you they’d say no.

On one hand, bio power armor gives you an edge in mass and possibly strength. On the other hand, if the skeleton is moving, it’s animated by magic, and who knows what the limits of its magic are.

Also, while skin is “armor” of a sort, it’s pretty pathetic armor. What were some of the earliest knives used for? Cutting flesh, a.k.a. bio armor. What were some of those early knives made from? Bone.

And your bio armor: what is it protecting? Vulnerable blood vessels and organs inside the body. What vulnerabilities does a skeleton have? Probably none?

Then there’s tendons. Your knee bone’s connected to your thigh bone, as the song goes. How? Tendons. A skeleton lacks tendons, so theoretically it’s a lot easier to disconnect a skeleton’s bones from each-other. But, then again, magic.

Universal healthcare is much, much better than what the US has. Not only is it cheaper, but it’s just a better system, even if you’re relatively well off.

Having said that, I do wonder where they got the 5% and 20% figures from. The US system is very wasteful, but not 4x as bad as a Universal system.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022

True, it is bones.

Punches mostly hurt because of the mass of the fist and arm. If you’ve ever been punched by a kid you probably weren’t hurt. A skeleton weighs less than a 6-year-old, so there wouldn’t be much mass behind the punch.

But, then again, magic.

Sure, everything is gameable if you’re a billionaire, but it would require clever lawyers and involve some risk.

Hardly. Historically there has been a lot of cheating in elections. Look at Chicago up to the 1970s. Election fraud was common there.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1973/05/08/how-the-chicago-tribune-exposed-city-vote-fraud-in-1972-and-won-a-pulitzer-prize/

Nobody can prove that there’s less cheating in Chicago elections today than in the 1970s, but people trust that it’s more honest.

Obviously, the kinds of unrealized gains that are a problem aren’t $250k that someone uses for collateral on a mortgage for a house they plan to live in. The problems are the millions or billions in unrealized gains that someone might use to get a $10 million loan from the bank that they then use to lobby the government to open up new loopholes in the tax code.

Taxing wealth and/or unrealized gains is tricky to do right, but not doing it at all is even trickier. If you let the ultra rich just keep getting richer, they’ll continue to use that wealth to control the political process to make themselves richer and more powerful. Obscene levels of wealth inequality and democracy can’t coexist.

Can you prove that your vote was counted and that the number of votes for your candidate went up by one as a result? If you can’t prove it, then it’s based on trust.

But, if they tried to move to another country and renounce their US citizenship they’d have to pay an exit tax based on the entire value of their assets, including unrealized gains.

Right, but no way to verify who you voted for.

And, you have to trust that the website is telling you the truth. You have no way of verifying that it always gives the same answer to everybody. I guess someone could test that there’s some connection to their real ballot by intentionally screwing up their ballot. But, that doesn’t mean that there’s any way to prove that when it’s counted that the actual tally for the person / people you voted for are going up not down.

I think the best way I’ve seen to illustrate it is the stories of immortals earning incredible amounts of money every day who still can’t reach the wealth of Elon Musk.

Like, you’re an immortal born during the ice age 80,000 years ago. You are somehow making $5000 per day (or its equivalent in gold for the 79,700 years before dollars are invented, and you save all of it. You’re not as rich as Elon Musk.

The US has exit taxes, as do many countries. If you try to renounce your US citizenship, you can be taxed based on the value of unsold assets.

I hate that the US is one of the few countries in the world that has citizenship-based taxation. It’s awful and stupid. But, in theory, it does mean that an American couldn’t just avoid taxes by moving to another country.

people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate

Of course it should. If we’re expecting to live in a democracy, then people need to have equal voices. If you’re a billionaire you have a megaphone, as Elon Musk has shown. Democracy can’t work if some people have far more power than others.

That wouldn’t catch the people who are the real problem, billionaires, who report something like $1 per year in income.

When you have billions in shares, you can use that as collateral to borrow money from the bank, and then you just spend that money. That’s not “income” so it isn’t taxed.

What’s needed is a 90% tax on people reporting high incomes as a start. But, then you need to close loopholes. The carried interest loophole for a start, which would nail most of the hedge fund crowd. Then, tax unrealized gains when they’re in the tens of millions range. Then prevent billionaires from handing billions to their children tax free by preventing the “stepping up” of capital gains for their heirs.

First, I’m writing about a person who’s watching and doesn’t know if they can trust the system. My point is that there’s no alternative to trust in the system, the system is built on trust.

Second, if you’re inside the system, if you’re an election worker or a government authority, you can tell who voted. But, you can’t tell who that voter cast their votes for – at least in a functional democracy.

The authorities can, and should, have all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that all the votes are being handled safely and counted correctly. But, if the public doesn’t trust the authorities, there’s nothing that the authorities can realistically do to convince the public that everything is above board. You can’t “prove” that the system isn’t rigged.

Yes, and again, it’s all based on trust.