Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
Well, as I wrote quite a few posts ago, our system here is different. Very different. But, there ain't such thing as a free lunch.
Here in my town, the price for gasoline - 95UNI - the kind that my 10 year old Skoda car takes is:
1.32 (Euros / liter) = 6.61418944 U.S. dollars / US gallon
The price is including standard 20% Value Added Tax that we pay for ALL goods here.
And my salary is fraction of what I would earn in my position in USA, or, for example [West  ]Germany.
So, I do not drive to work in blizzard. I take a bus ;-). Municipal transport is still surprisingly decent here.
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I'm not sure what sort of discretionary money you end up with after paying your bills. I have somewhat generous free cash flow which I can spend on my family's assorted hobbies. However, I "pay" for that with decaying public infrastructure, medical insecurity (unless me and mine continue to be generally healthy), and daily reminders from company management that I'm an unwanted leech sucking blood (milk?) from the innovating profit-creating executive teat.
I'm not convinced that being able to afford to buy a new ereader every year is worth rotting schools that continue to graduate near-illiterate students.