For the past 30 years my European accounts haven't offered any interest worth mentioning - and neither did my American ones.
7,990 karma · joined July 16, 2012
For Europeans that don't know: Most Americans have (at least) those two accounts, and those two cards. They usually spend from their checking account with their credit card, and save on the savings account. When they spend on their credit card, they sometimes "earn" points, depending on what agreement their bank has with the major retailers. Salary is inserted on the checking account. Some people still receive salary on old fashioned paper checks. Some people still pay in stores using paper checks. Almost everyone, has a lot of paper dollars in their wallet since there are plenty of places in which you need it. Now, on regular intervals, for example at the end of the month, Americans then transfer money from their savings account to their checking account if the salary is not enough to cover. If they forget, they pay high interests and fees. Generally speaking, it's a hassle to transfer money to people you know and fees are hefty. When you use your credit card, no pin code is usually needed. There are regularly issues with your credit card being abused.
In the three European countries I have lived in, people have one account, and one card. Depending on your agreement with the bank, it can dip into negative (in which case you pay some interest, but usually not much). If it dips below the agreed max, let's say minus EUR 5,000, then you can't withdraw more until you receive your salary or until you insert money otherwise. People have one card attached to that card. When the balance on the account is positive, it is essentially a debit card. When the balance on the account is negative, it's a credit card. Usually, no points are earned on any spending. In most of Europe, you use your pin code if you use your credit card. Where in America, you regularly spend time on the phone talking to robots and objecting to expenditures you didn't make, that's almost never the case in Europe. People transfer electronically without any fees from account to account. If you go out, and your friend pays dinner, you can transfer your half directly from your smart phone using just his phone number (so essentially just using the contacts on your phone). You don't need Apple or Google pay or similar. It's your bank's app. No fee is charged.
The dictatorship of Iran is disgusting and dangerous but the US trades with countries governed by equally disgusting and dangerous dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and China.
The US trade sanctions are imposed unilaterally and create mountains of troubles for US allies. Most of the world oppose the trade sanctions. Such sanctions rarely work anyways. It's a huge cost born not only by US companies but by companies in allied countries that have to obey US sanctions in order to avoid repercussions.
Even if they had names, would it even be worth mentioning what a bunch of hysterical 20-something year old developers are complaining about?
Yes, it's inconvenient for them that they bet on the wrong horse. But if they don't like the direction their company is taking, they can quit and find another job.
Do you know any other major industry, where people with little or no formal training can get in and up so fast? Where people in their early or mid twenties routinely make 6 figures? I don't.
The median salary is now above 100,000. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
That's roughly on par with chemical engineers but whereas (almost) all chemical engineers have at least a bachelor's degree, an increasing amount of software developers have no other training than online courses and still make salaries that would make other professionals with 4-5-10 years of education envious.
I love online courses, but try get a job as a chemical engineer (or any other engineering job) with just some online courses. As a software engineer that would only be an issue with some of the most sought after places, like Google.
Yes, I am sure there are a few thousand petroleum engineers in Texas and other niches that make more than software engineers, but generally, engineers make less.
- The founders are not sure they can raise money for the new idea and they might use the money left in the failed company.
- The failed company may have users that are useful to the new idea.
- The failed company may own the IPR necessary for the new idea.
- There is often transaction cost connected with starting all over and almost always time.
I also think it's a bit hard to say that he is "cursed" with his original nationality or "marked" for life. I don't know him but from his own page on the Niels Bohr Institute, he sure doesn't seem embarrassed or sad with his American background: http://nbia.nbi.ku.dk/members/jackson/ And why should he be.
I was simply asking why they call it the "Danish" 5 times in the article. I believe the answer is that they really want to stir up the idea of another Danish/Copenhagen school as opposed to the mainstream views in physics. That's it. And I doubt this little debacle will ever evolve into anything as important as the original Copenhagen school.
Now, I don't think it necessarily matters what nationality we identify with. To many people, nationality is a legal concept, not a matter of feelings. That view on nationality has the advantage of being clear. It's hard to know what people identify with. I am not even sure what I identify with anymore. A bit of different countries, I guess. Maybe none. As a legal concept, however, nationality becomes something that is objectively right or wrong.
As to who deserves the credit or blame (Denmark or the US), I have no idea. A huge part of what makes a great scientist is his upbringing, primary and secondary education. In this case, they guy got his entire formal education in the US, and spent several decades there before going to Denmark. Maybe it's not nation states that deserve credit. Did Argentina make Messi or did Spain? Or was is just genes and the fact that his family of football players? I don't know...
The only one of the so called Danish physicists quoted in the article is Andrew Jackson who is American. I believe this is the paper it all relates to: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04191 None of the authors are Danish, but most are related to the Niels Bohr Institute.
Andrew Jackson probably has a lot of Danish colleagues at the Niels Bohr Institute, which of course is in Copenhagen, and many of them might agree with him and some might have been involved in the study. He probably also lived in Denmark for many years and he might even have gotten Danish citizenship, family and he might even speak Danish. The same might apply to some of the other authors.
But you wouldn't call Einstein a Swiss, Austro-Hungarian or American physicist although he did most of his important work in those countries (and actually obtained both Austrian and American citizenship), would you?
I am aware of the Copenhagen school quantum physics/ the Copenhagen interpretation, and that the article might try to play on that old thing in the hopes that we might see a new Danish school in physics. But why?
On a side note, I doubt that you would ever find a growth rate in business or economy that truly followed a mathematical function.
Given that the amount of Teslas on the roads is growing exponentially these months, Tesla will probably have to grow the supercharger network too. Until recently, there were around 300,000 Teslas on the roads worldwide sharing some 11,000 charging points at 1,350 super charging stations. Soon there are twice as many Teslas on the roads. Next Christmas maybe close to 1 million Teslas in total. They will need to expand with new locations, more charging points per location and faster charging times.
Also, in 3-4 years there will be millions of old Teslas with today's "short" range that still will have to be serviced by super chargers.
Most importantly, many apartment dwellers, i.e. the younger buyers in the cities that will constitute a great deal of the core customer base for Model 3 and Model Y once prices drop to $35,000 or below, may find it more convenient to use super chargers in stead of charging at home. This is especially true, if charging times can be reduced a bit.
Going forward, Tesla can use the charging stations for all kind of things like promoting other products (solar tiles, powerwall batteries etc.) and even selling third party products, just like regular gas stations.
I have two takes on this: 1: The Danish tax authorities have been extremely careless in the administration of the rules. They didn't even check that the people owned the shares they claimed to own. Virtually all of it was approved by one employee with zero oversight. 2: Different international banks have either known what was happening, and willingly enabled it, or should have known. Money laundry rules oblige them to check when such giant sums flow in and out of such few accounts.
The ban follows form article 13 of the directive on privacy and electronic communications: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...
The ban is not 100 percent effective - I receive a robocall maybe once every year - but it's pretty efficient. From the numbers I read here, it's some 99.9 percent effective. I have lived in 3 different EU countries and it wasn't a big issue in any of them.
Different countries in the EU have implemented the ban differently. But generally, businesses that use robocalls are fined on a per call basis. So it is an issue that can be dealt with by regulation. Companies breaking the rules are fined and the risk of being reported is high so it's not a viable business model.
I still receive spam emails, which is the same and is also illegal, but - and I don't mean anything else than to state the fact - almost all spam I receive is from outside the EU, such as America, Russia, Africa or Asia.
Also, 30k is a decent wage for a young person with no dependants. It’s not enough if you have kids, not even in the midwest or deep south.
Comparing wages to the markets where Amazon sells its goods is interesting when talking competition.
And it only comes now, 20 years after the company's founding, after it has huge profits (and can deduct expenses like salaries in the profits before paying tax), after it has crushed all competitors with extremely low wages that were only possible because many employees received government handouts too (so subsidized wages), and after it de facto has secured itself a monopoly.
And many employees are still on temporary contracts.
It's too little and too late.
But yes, Google and Microsoft hired MBAs as CEOs when they ceased to innovate at the same rate as before and started to be just ordinary companies defending a monopoly.
I’d say proficiency in English and quite wealthy populations is what matters.
Could it be that these wars exposed how primitive guerrilla forces can bleed the mighty American military dry? It's not like the world has seen a very convincing show of force.
I for one worry that the bluff has been called and that every dictator in the world now knows that apart from the threat of nuclear war, the American military's capabilities are far more limited than some perhaps had thought. When relatively poor and simple battlegrounds such as Iraq or Afghanistan cause trouble one or two decades on, then what could America do against more advanced enemies or against more enemies?
This is to me the biggest worry: occupying two such relatively simple countries is a challenge. The Russians, the Chinese, Iran, heck even the tiny Syrian government, can now see that America had lots of trouble with what is currently nation No 54 and nation No 111 measured by GDP. Yes, I know that GDP does not equal military strength and that the US was officially not fighting the Afghan government. But in reality, the US was fighting primitive guerrilla forces in a primitive country. And the US didn't really come out impressing anyone with their strength.
Sending in troops in this godforsaken places means losing more lives.
Say we have proof that a target is a known terrorist and that no civilians are around. Would you still risk the lives of 10 soldiers to catch him. Or of 2,996 and just let him go?
I do agree that the Americans probably don't have much proof of terrorism or other wrongdoing for many of the targets, and that so far they have stricken several times where civilians were around.
In our world, we sometimes have to fight. Sometimes, it's better to kill the terrorists than to risk that they attack us or to risk our soldiers getting killed in an attempt of bringing them in.