the German welfare system (healthcare included) is taxing the living hell out of the working families. It's insane. I'm pretty sure that like anything else, there is a ton of beaurocracy in Germany that loves to "list" prices. Unfortunately, in the beaurocracy side of it, the US is in a worse state. Hopefully this is the beginning of free market competition in the healthcare sector.
yes. that's an amazing piece of research. this article really opened my eyes. after studying that article it's much clearer how healthcare can and should be reformed.
I just went through some of the posted reports. There is one that caught my eye. Someone developed a "bidding" portal to reduce cost. Quite intriguing:
maybe they should increase the 'streets' budget (and not just have 1 company get all the contracts) and then clean up that gigantic pile of trash that the city is. never seen a more filthy city than Philadelphia
Buddhism does not really fit the (Western) context of a "religion" anyways - probably that's why. That is especially true for the more ancient forms of Buddhism - which the author of this book subscribes to.
...my experience (originally from Germany, in the US since 2005) as well. It's a question of mentality. While in the US a vast number of people want to create their own business or already did when they are quite young, running a business or starting one is a herculian task in Germany. And you get punished when you fail. And you get taxed to death when you don't. Running a company can easily become a social stigma too. Even if starting your company happens to be easier now then it was 10 years ago, still the majority of people are rather focused on finding a secure position in a larger company with lots of benefits then "creating" something "new".
Numerous reasons I guess for why that came to be (I don't think it was like that in the 50s/60s) - maybe as society ages there is less of a "drive" for radical innovation and a risk-averse mentality becomes mainstream. Either way, before I came to the US I had heard about "the difference in mentality" but I could not believe how "different" it really was and how much of an impact that meant on a daily basis: the biggest eye-opener was the completely different attitude towards things that needed to be changed and people just "did it".
Please note that Silicon Valley is not normal for the USA. Boston, for example, has a disturbingly "German-sounding" attitude towards computing, "Oh, yes, we have tech companies here, but the Real Deal of Boston is the universities and biomedical firms."
