The US being different is no excuse - this is really just a shortsighted retelling of American Exceptionalism.
Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size.
It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.
In the mountains around Trondheim, Norway, you run into free range chicken farms (and sheep roaming the mountain top). Signs warn you that chickens are about and I think them getting hit is a real concern if you are maximizing chicken freedom.
That said, these aren't busy roads. The more traffic, the more barriers to keep the animals from getting hit.
It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them?
It is more akin to watching television from a different culture. I am American, live in Norway, with my Norwegian spouse. We wind up watching British television from time to time. We find the jokes funny, but we both realize that we are missing references to people and places - but understand the gist of the jokes.
The difference between shakespear and modern times is even larger - you don't always know they are jokes because you don't realize they are referencing anything. Still enjoyable, but a different story without as much comedy.
> It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone explains it to them?
You had a great teacher. I learned something today :P
But I think that affirms the GP's point. The jokes needed explanation, which is what you'd expect when the audience is from a different culture and don't understand them natively.
My apologies if I didn't make that clear - my "yes" was to the question "Do you think anyone explains it to them?"
And yep, she was a very good English teacher. It was a more fun class than the other English classes I had through the years. Composition was a pain, but that the teacher was a stickler for everything it helped with my writing and communication skills today. English lit from Beowulf to Pope was a slog. Ancient was ok (mostly Ancient Greek which got into more philosophy rather than word choice because it was a translation). Modern literature was only enjoyable because of Thoreau - I think that was also where I read Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead ... the other plays weren't as memorable.
Aside on that - read The Necklace (in English) in one of those classes... I'm fairly sure that was senior year. In college I took French to finish out my foreign language requirement and the final exam was reading comprehension for La Parure in French. I knew the story and so was able to quickly skim for vocabulary rather than needing to read every page.
All in all, looking back it was good, but as with most school classes, they weren't classes that I enjoyed going to at the time.
Sexual and and current affairs references are the hardest to get - euphemisms change, for example In spite of this I do get a lot. Some are pretty obvious ("your tongue in my tail", for example) I am sure I miss many. Some productions try harder to make things obvious than others. Then there is all the stuff you do get so the comedies are still pretty funny overall.
I think Your TV analogy is probably pretty accurate. Kids also do not get a lot of sexual references in TV comedy too!
Indiana has sometimes required that for decades, though I think they finally adjusted the law a little after online purchases became popular.
Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax.
That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess.
And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.
Yeah, most states that have sales taxes have "use taxes" to cover this case and the case of a wholesale item (no tax) being used in house. It gets enforced primarily in retrospect and on big ticket items that the state does see, like a vehicle purchase.
Heh. Indiana charged sales tax at when you registered the vehicle the first time unless you had paperwork proving otherwise.
Very common for a private sale to put the price cheap, but not free - $200 charged sales tax on $200 and a free car was charged on the estimated value.
Some places sell their cardboard scrap. I'm guessing that places with the right sorts of metal scrap get paid for their waste.
And folks have to pay for much of the rest. Some of the issue with dumping waste in a business's trash is that the business pays directly for waste removal in many places, unlike a lot of private folks, which pay through taxes.
This is the current state of things. What has changed is the sort of service that they need to pay for. Instead of destruction, they'd be paying for recycling or resale. Like now, they have the option of donation or reduced prices.
What do you do when folks in expensive places can't eat while folks in low-cost areas are able to live better?
$100 had different spending power in different places. I can buy more beer in Prague than in Indianapolis. I'll buy even less in Oslo. You often get variance within a country too: A gallon of milk (and a lot of other food) is generally cheaper in Indiana than Hawaii.
I'm with you in spirit - we should tax wealthy people - but not in a way that can tax folks that already are struggling. We just don't have global cooperation like that nor are things starting on equal ground to do that sort of simple taxation. But another comment has already touched on that.
If you want AAA games, you are going to have a safe game. You get the same with movies - Bigger budgets cause safer behavior with less risk taking. You wind up with a pretty game, a somewhat safe story (that they think will sell) and gameplay they think is just good enough to keep you going.
It isn't that the other games are bad, though. It isn't like we are talking "handheld camcorder student-written movie" vs "polished hollywood blockbuster" but more.... Beautiful painting by a mostly unknown artist vs beautiful large, publically displayed and privatly funded artist. Big budgets get you more assistance and more/better tools and more space and more human help and more connections.
It is probably important to remember that a large portion of a blockbuster's budget is advertising. Advertising is often 50-100% of the production budget and I'm guessing AAA games have similar advertising budgets. I'm not sure how a large advertising budget gives you better products, though it might get you more folks if your game is online.
Of course, I'm guessing if you limit your search to FPS games, your experience might be a different.
I live in Norway, have residence and stuff. I can travel freely through most of europe without much hassle - but I can only travel 90 days out of 180 days - then you gotta go out of the area (or back to your home country if it is inside), stay out or home for 90 days, and then start anew. The closest border to me - one to Sweden - has no real security. A customs office because there is border shopping in the area and I know they very occasionally stop folks. A crossing an slightly inconvenient distance north just has signs.
On the other hand, I live in Norway. Bits like healthcare and a good safety net makes things nicer. I'm from the US originally. This nice stuff could be adapted for the US if folks would put their energy into helping others rather than spite.
Mismanagement of resources is bad no matter what system is used. Just because some under one sort of ideology and corrupt leaders failed doesn't mean that folks can't take the bits that were good, adapt and improve them, and see good results.
Norway is a petro-state that managed to amass a national wealth fund. Cherish what you have. Understand that it doesn't necessarily translate to every community.
Americans pay more for worse outcomes, so this is clearly a political/priorities issue, not an issue with wealth.
Other counterexamples are the other European countries with the same safety net which are not petro states (they do have colonial wealth though).
A lot of this was possible because of high corporate taxes and high marginal taxes on high incomes, so in theory this model could apply in most places.
Not all european countries have colonial wealth. There is universal healthcare in croatia and that nation started from scratch essentially 30 years ago and isn’t really a very strong economy today either.
If this is your take, you've missed the point. I said there is no reason good bits can't be adapted to one's society. it isn't that one system will work for everywhere or that it'll even look the same. Some things are unique to Norway, but other things definitely are pretty widespread.
You see this with healthcare in different places: Details change and sometimes it is lacking, but lots of places offer healthcare to its citizens that is low-cost to free when you need it. There is a lot of variation in what countries can do. Some places are poor but still manage to a point. Some places just refuse, like the US - heck, the US has oil and could have funded things for its citizens and keeps bragging about being rich, but they aren't gonna use it for the immediate welfare of its citizens.
Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size.
It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.
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