Lemmy.zip instance admin

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I think the impact of wealth and access to nutrition and an environment that does not stunt development plays a major role here as well. A good example of this is height in Europe post-industrial revolution and improvements in medicine:

    Most notable being a 20cm increase in the Netherlands in just over 100 years as well as changes in places that industrialised quickly like China:

    Not to say that geography plays no role but it’s closer to 10cm gap than a 30cm one.




  • Government spending/revenue as percentage of GDP is the common proxy for government size. That said actual empirical evidence doesn’t lead to clear cut conclusions about the relationship between economic growth/outcomes and government spending. It’s very much dependent on the country, quality of government institutions and components of the expenditure.

    Intuitively, you can clearly see that if you had 2 identical countries where 50% of gov spending went to building schools, hospitals and roads in one and paying interest on national debt in the other then you would expect very different outcomes with the same government “size”.

    For the US, that metric has been close to 30% for the last several decades with spikes during crises like 2008 and 2020 (changes to money supply or “minting” is a component of government size but usually a temporary one). It’s been relatively stable outside of that since the 1970s. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to-gdp

    Relative to the rest of the world’s rich countries it’s on the lower end:

    In my view, it’s highly dependent on the quality of the government institutions and components of spending. People immediately think of inefficiency and bureaucracy when governments are brought up but there is empirical evidence to show that gov spending on things like education and infrastructure are usually “productive” in additional to contributing to factors that may not be properly captured by measures like GDP growth.

    In short, people reducing government spending/regulations as inherently bad/controlling are at least not being completely honest because it’s a very complicated discussion.






  • You’re already paying a car tax through income tax which goes to fund public roads that are predominantly worn out by private vehicles.

    Unfortunately, a lot of economic growth historically has been tied to increased fossil fuel usage so until we can decouple the two through cleaner energy sources, the only way to maintain living standards in rich countries is the continued reliance on fossil fuels, plastics etc.

    That is not to say that this is an issue that regular people need to address on an individual level but that the move toward a less poluted world involves a decreased dependence on poorer countries for the production of goods that exposes them to the majority of the health risks and harms associated with industrialization. This will most likely impact your way of life if you live in a rich country because you depend on these processes even if you’re locally poor yourself.

    There is a whole other discussion to be had about wealth inequality within countries and on a global scale and how neither you nor someone from a poor country should have to worry about being able to afford a dignified, healthy life.







  • Can’t go wrong with a used T series from Ebay that’s a couple years old. A quick search shows that you can get something like this for 320USD from a reputable seller:

    Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U 2.10 GHz with Radeon Graphics 16GB 256GB

    8GB is too little RAM these days otherwise I would also recommend the X13 model but those start at like 600USD for the 16GB models.