Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's about priorities. Swiss defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 0.675%. US defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.2%. I just picked a simple example, but you will find similar disparities across the board.
And part of US Defense spending helps defend countries like Switzerland. Maybe we still spend too much, but we also "defend" a lot more countries than ourselves, and a lot more territory than Switzerland.
Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
201–210 of 362 posts
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cheapest 4g flatrate subscription in CH is 25€/m. Average is 60-70€/m
I don't understand how the more expensive providers can still have customers. Same network, same conditions, different label on the box, 3x the price, at a price point where it should matter to most people...
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#203I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day. In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.
>so, so foreign as a Canadian Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe. High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.
* https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-rankings
And consistently in the Top 10 for happiest:
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#205I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get…
> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am... Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi... You can't tell me we can't do better.
We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#208I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…
The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great t…
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amtrak has never turned a profit. Ever. They have never even broken even.
Is this the metric we should be grading everything on? My kid hasn’t either but I love her nonetheless.
Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
The passenger modal share for rail in CH is 21%: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... For the US it is 0.3%. Given that CH is land-locked, it's not surprising that freight modal share is 46%, because it has to get inland from a port in some way: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... This is higher than the US, but give that 127M Americans (40%) live in counties…
Not everyone living along a coast has an appropriate coast to establish a harbor sufficient for shipping. If you live in big sur you still get your crap from china delivered inland from the port of Los Angeles.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Panamax_ports#Pacific_...
And from any of those it's probably not that far to any major population centre.
Compare to Switzerland, which has precisely zero ports, and so of course needs rail (and trucks) to get things delivered.