USA government spending as a percent of GDP is on the lower side of developed nations (high 30s depending on the source). Our peers are Luxembourg and Norway, and we’re well below France and Germany. Granted that we are one of the few developed nations that don’t provide universal healthcare which biases us lower.
While I’d share your concerns about fiscal sustainability, we’re an outlier on tax receipts not spending.
I think the worrying part is the debt/GDP ratio where the US is among the top 10. Also there's a high amount of private/household debt.
I'm not from the US but I'm worried. The economic signs are worrying and a US that is overloaded with debt has been historically devastating for the global economy.
All the political uncertainty and questionable economic policies don't help that either.
An interesting outsider perspective is this clip of Steven Fry going to an Auburn game: https://youtu.be/FuPeGPwGKe8
Regarding the latter, it’s weird and certainly was exploitative when college athletes weren’t allowed to monetize through sponsorships and frankly still is exploitative.
I was more thinking that there's not a particularly natural overlap between sports and academic ability. You'd think that by tying the two together, you'd get both worse sporting and academic performance than if they were unrelated.
The US has a decidedly liberal viewpoint on education. Sports ability is in some sense an educational endeavor. The ancient Greeks called it "athletics".
So US educational institutions don't really have any hangup against treating sports any differently than they might treat a CS class.
They are a subject you have to study and train at...and sometimes sit in a theatre and have a class time about (watching scout footage or deconstructing plays, etc).
Sports are probably just as rigorous as anything else academically once you get to something approaching a division 1 level of play. The reason we don't recognize it is because we suck and are mostly casual about it on a forum like this (filled with sports failures like myself or sports non-participants). The people actually in these programs with D1 scholarships and whatnot I guarantee take it as seriously as you or I would take calculus.
I never meant to imply that athletics wasn't a serious pursuit. I agree that physical capability is part of being a well-rounded person. It's certainly common here (Aus) for schools and universities to have sports teams and to strongly encourage participation.
What I find strange in the US context is the emphasis on it as a (revenue generating!) spectator sport. I understand that amateur (for want of a better word) sports can be highly entertaining; what I don't understand is why you'd go to university teams to find the best amateurs. I've played and watched enough sport to know that it's common for academic and physical abilities to be not particularly well correlated, particularly at tails of the distributions.
Not really. You can’t major in playing sports, you can’t get credit for it, and i don’t know what you mean by “as rigorous as anything else academically”, but it’s probably not true. I didn’t play division 1 anything but I did play in college (no scholarship).
Nationally there’s FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who (despite a recent name change) are focused on campus free speech rights.
While I'm not all-in on the ecosystem, I'm pretty far. It's still terrible.
I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user.
My Nest devices are stuck in limbo between the Google Home and Nest apps; it's been like this for years.
Integrating new Google devices into Google Home tends to fail without helpful troubleshooting a few times before they succeed.
I refuse to upgrade my Nest Thermostat 1, even though it doesn't support needed features like the temperature sensors. I've also had to turn off all the learning because it decides I'm not home, and doesn't infer that I am home from my Google Wifi hubs.
> I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user
YouTube Music casts toy Google Home Mini. Are you trying to watch YouTube on your phone but have the audio come out the speakers?
Yes, I prefer YouTube and use it for background audio when I'm not listening to podcasts. YouTube Music is a product trying to kludge way too much into a single app to be good at any one thing. It's an okay music player, decent podcast tool, and back YouTube secondary/audio only augmentation.
Whenever I submit Google Home/Chromecast bugs/feature requests I include some snark in my sign-off like "I know you don't care about this product and it will be killed soon, but if I'm wrong please consider the suggestions above."
I expose my home assistant entities to Home so that I get voice commands using their speakers.
Stuff that you install in your house is generally expected to last a long time. Imagine centering your home around Google and having them unceremoniously kill it. I'm glad a vendor neutral open source project like Home Assistant exists.
Yes, it’s interesting but mostly a shift of concentration of earnings. Market weighted PE multiples are slightly elevated historically but not insane; forward PE even less so (taken with a grain of salt of course).
The only EV I’ve rented from Turo was the opposite experience. They gave me the car at 75%, they capped charging at 90% in settings, then they charged me for bringing it back at 70% (which was just past their threshold but considering I could only charge it to 90% that should be the baseline).
While I’d share your concerns about fiscal sustainability, we’re an outlier on tax receipts not spending.