Not if you slice it by spending as a percentage of GDP, in which case the US ranks above average among NATO members but does not especially stand out. Of total NATO military spending, about two thirds comes from the US mainly because of its large productive capacity. Most of the NATO members, especially in eastern and southern Europe, are simply not very rich countries. Indeed, those three I mentioned are all rich Nordic countries (the top 10 is rounded out by Israel and Gulf states).

If you want to reduce military reliance on the US, which you unequivocally should do, it will require either significant investments in defense or the acceptance of a significant reduction in military assets and preparedness for the EU as a whole.

It’s a fiction that European NATO members spend little and rely only on the US for defence. None but the US itself could realistically oppose a coalition of non-US NATO members. This is precisely why increased spending is necessary, to hedge against the uncertainty of an increasingly erratic and authoritarian US.

Of the top 10 countries in military spending per capita (as of 2023), three are European NATO members.

Israel has neither universal health care, nor free education.

Also, any of the extant universal health care systems are cheaper than the current US health care system, so it’s not like saving money elsewhere would enable the funding of universal health care in the US.

They generally are, in rich countries. In poorer countries with less developed infrastructure you can still commonly find them.

If you want to go to Europe, don’t apply for asylum. This has no chance of succeeding, even for people from war-torn countries with ongoing genocides it is difficult.

The easiest way is to apply for a study visa. There are many EU countries with very good education, very low requirements for admission, and very low (or even no) tuition fees, even for non-EU students. Once you have a degree, you are anchored and can find a job and get citizenship without too much difficulty.

The alternative is to apply for a job. In this case you need some marketable skill that is difficult to find among the locals.

Unfortunately, her case will almost surely be denied since the US has been designated a safe country by Dutch officials, and the trend in most of Europe, under pressure from racist voters and the surging popularity of fascism, is to make the already extremely strict asylum rules even stricter. In some cases (e.g. Denmark) refugee asylum has been all but abolished, in an egregious violation of treaties on assisting refugees (and preventing genocide).

The good news for people like Arc is that for US citizens it is overwhelmingly easier to obtain residency status legally in the EU in countries like the Netherlands, compared to getting a Green Card in the US. She probably should have figured that out before panicking and booking that flight.

After all this time, still no one has managed to convey Trump even a rudimentary understanding of what tariffs are, and what the EU is.

Unfortunately, many UK voters don’t realize they’re setting themselves on the same path in the next election. The UK has one of the most fragile democracies in Europe, and its system is ill-prepared for a fascist majority in the Commons. Farage may be less of a moron than Trump (a low bar), but his voters are cut from the same cloth as Trump’s.

USD counts for about 58% of global currency reserves. That’s the largest by far to be sure, but far from the only relevant one, and the ratio has been steadily trending downwards (though interestingly, it hasn’t been the euro it lost ground to).

Well, you do you, but I prefer to actually get work done when I’m at work. If I don’t like my work anymore (well, it’s not my hobby, but still not that bad), I’ll go work somewhere else.

I have a 35-hour week with flexible hours so I could put it in 3 days if I wished. That seems awful to me though, I can’t really focus on my work anymore after 6 hours. All a matter of perspective I guess.

I was walking through the canteen with some classmates. One of them stole a sugar cube intended for coffee from the canteen. A teacher, apparently feeling Biblical, punished the whole group with an hour of detention.

Is there any actual evidence that Science lacks money?

That more money would actually help scientists do more interesting stuff?

Yes, there is a pretty strong correlation between R&D spending and scientific output. Even so, spending is only in the low single digit percentages of the economy everywhere. Societies could easily decide to spend less on decadent luxury and more on science.

Right now, do scientists actually have money problems making it difficult to conduct ambitious research?

So science is a high-risk, high-reward numbers game. You try more things, hire more scientists, and more science will happen. Most research doesn’t lead anywhere, but the small fraction that does leads to things you could just never get without scientific research. Yes, there are many (such as yours truly) who could have continued to be scientists but take jobs in industry because positions as scientific researchers are extremely competitive and there is not enough money to hire all suitable candidates.

I’m not certain. I created a database to keep track of the number, but had to abandon the project due to the prohibitive cost of maintaining it.

By definition, everyone is opposed to illegal immigration, though they might differ in opinion about what immigration should be illegal.

Opposition to “illegal immigration” is practically always just a fig leaf for opposition to immigration. You can verify this easily by asking an opponent of “illegal immigration” whether they think legal immigration should become easier to reduce the incentives for illegal immigration. My counter for those who have answered in the affirmative is currently at zero.

They perhaps shouldn’t, at least not in these cases, but in practice they are either championed or condoned by an overwhelming majority of the population.

Sounds like violations of the constitution aren’t all that consequential then, doesn’t it?

Doesn’t the constitution also say something about things like attempting to overthrow the government, assisting foreign military forces in attacking domestic targets and taking bribes from foreign governments?

My story is similar to yours, though I just got a warning, not a ban.

The first warning was for “abusing the report function” after I reported a post defending Derek Chauvin. I stopped reporting to the admins after that, and over time grew increasingly uneasy with the direction of Reddit as a more and more fascist-friendly organization, and the willing and eager contribution of Reddit’s CEO to millions of Covid deaths left a sour taste (and a nasty cough).

I got the second warning about a week ago after I joked the US government should go into the White House and Melania’s lover’s residence to arrest them since Trump pardoned a drug dealer, by the same reasoning the US government used to abduct Maduro and his wife. This was “threatening violence.” That was the last straw, I quit Reddit after that.

It’s not even that I mind them erring on the side of caution, or in this case on the side of insanity, it’s the double standard that irks me the most. An obvious joke goes too far, but in certain subreddits (you know the ones) users can advocate ethnic cleansing, war crimes, etc. with reckless abandon.

A more equal society than the most equal to have ever existed (in modern times at least - some hunter-gatherer tribes are highly egalitarian)? No, I don’t think so, but the kind of issues Americans popularly hypothesize as reasons for low birth rates are just not relevant in these societies, and I don’t see lower inequality having much effect on the real reasons people have no or few children there.