There's no free healthcare... Families are bankrupted by sickness in the family.
If anyone did the "lifting", it's the global markets with their conditional entry into the WTO. Almost all the conditions are still not met and reneged on.
The flamewar comments you posted to this thread have been so hellish, and you have broken the site guidelines so egregiously, that I've banned this account.
I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746593.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I recently spent 3 months in Tokyo and I have say, that the quality of life, service, food, consumer products, safety, air/noise pollution, are the best I've seen anywhere.
It's especially pleasing given that the prices are very low in comparison to other world-class cities. I did, however, witness prices rising during the time I was there.
It's hard to see how Tokyo might have been stagnating given the quality of life I witnessed. It saddens me to say this but, I'd visit Taiwan to see what economic stagnation looks like - it feels like time-traveling back to the 90's.
In the 90s, Taiwan was much poorer than Japan, but its per capita GDP is now at parity with Japan and likely passed it last quarter.
Occasionally, I’ll visit an area I knew from 15 years ago and it will feel like a completely different city. In particular, it’s shocking how much better the infrastructure and transportation has gotten. The cities have a lot more green areas interspersed into them also.
Taiwan's numbers looks good on paper (until you dig further), but the reality on the pavement, or lackthereof, is dire. The noise, air, visual pollution are as bad as it was from 30 years ago, maybe worse. Traffic is bad, and salary to cost of living is extreme.
Japan's numbers look bad. But its quality of life is one of the best in the world.
Has there been progress in infrastructure/housing in Taiwan? Sure, in small areas, such as new housing developments, where all the capital sits, extracting rent or sitting empty, contributing nothing.
We need to do better, raise our standards. Otherwise we're going to get left behind even further.
I would think fear of being blown up by mainland China at any moment is bad for capital investment... meanwhile you have a highly skilled and educated workforce vying to man the capital in the country. I would think that would make labor artificially weak.
IMO Taiwan needs world recognition and solid assurances their capital investments won't end up in the opium pipe of some CCP party man. Until then you'd have to be kind of insane to bet the farm providing jobs to Taiwan.
Taiwan offers a really easy "gold card" for Americans that I considered getting but I realized what they needed wasn't my labor but lots of foreigners from powerful allies living in the crosshairs to make sure allies will get really really pissed if they get blown up.
You folks ought to spend some time in Taiwan. I'm in Tokyo now, was in TW for a couple of years prior. Tokyo is extremely beautiful in comparison. (I'm Taiwanese Canadian)
I'd say practicing non-dualism à la Zen Buddhism helps a lot. In short it helps see through preconceived (or any form of) notions, such that one doesn't become attached, including to the notion of becoming unattached itself.
It points outs that the separation of our individual self from others can be seen as illusory, that we're all deeply connected. Sure my left arm is weaker than my right, but that doesn't make it "less important", and in fact thinking in such a way is preposterous. But might be useful in another context such as left/right balance for fitness.
I read somewhere that IMAP was a concern, but I see that almost everything is encrypted (Apple has description keys) in transit and on their servers. Some data is also end to end encrypted so Apple can not decrypt it (like passwords, health data, etc.).
I don’t remember everything at least being encrypted in transit and on their servers, perhaps that is relatively new?
I wonder why they don’t go all the way and have every5ing encrypted end to end.
