Ice

By my math that'd be between 80 & 150km depending on the fuel economy (assuming going there & back again).

Doesn't really compare to the cost of employee time for traveling the same distance though.

One could argue that if euthanasia is legal, then there would be situations of: “Hey, granny is kinda taking too much resouces… maybe we should just pull the life support?” or “Okay my child has cancer and takes up too much of my money, and all this money would be wasted if the treatment fails, I’m gonna talk to the doctor and end this parasite once and for all”

Which is exactly why I'm in favour of euthanasia for humans on a moral level (people should be able to decide their own fate) but against it on a societal level (it will likely result in people getting pressured into "choosing" death.)

The harm of the people who are unable to choose death (a.k.a commit suicide) on their own suffering is a lesser evil compared to people who want to live being pressured into dying (in my view).

Yeah I do agree that there's a bit of an arbitrary hangup on age specifically, but that's simply because some sort of line has to be drawn to protect people who are incapable of protecting themselves.

There will always be people who are more or less mature (mentally). Some will never be mature enough to understand consent entirely, whilst others can be shockingly adult for their age.

If I were to design a system it'd probably be a sliding scale. Something like a 2 yr upward age gap 12-13, 3 yr 14-17 and then free for all from the age of majority. Even though I personally would find some relationships icky, at some point people have to be "adult" enough to be responsible for themselves.

In my country the age of consent is 15. Doesn't make dating teens socially acceptable for adults though.

Within Swedish politics there is essentially complete agreement that the union model of labour negotiation should remain. Companies like Tesla are certainly an issue, but comparatively easier to deal with. The larger threat to the union model actually comes from undeclared labour which is a huge, systemic problem.

It ends up being significantly cheaper for the employer (no taxes, benefits, regulation) and can (in the short term) be beneficial for the employee (higher wage, still cashing in unemployment benefits etc.) even if it is disruptive for the collective long term.

In some businesses such as salons for hair dressers or mani-pedi, as many as 40% of labour is undeclared. Restaurants, construction and transportation are also high up.

Oh for sure, there are lots of companies pushing the gig-economy self employment model.

Strictly speaking, gig workers aren't employed, but rather a contractor who is self-employed. This means that a lot of labour legislation doesn't really apply (which would include minimum wages).

It is in the pipeline of legislation however, and I know that some unions have started targeting gig employers with collective bargaining. Foodora for instance is covered by collective agreement since 2021.

ironically the majority of those are government employees and police

It's not ironic in the slightest. It's for government employees that the conflict of interest between what's best for the government (often low costs of labour) and employees (generous benefits and wages) becomes impossible to ignore.

Similar incentive structures do exist on a national economic level. For instance lower wages often provide a more competitive industrial basis internationally, even if that is not neccessarily beneficial for the individual employee.

Not much that I know of aside from a bunch of extra bureaucracy. Unions already perform polls on wages amongst members, and that information is generally available to the union members. Furthermore, there's often even information available about wages within an employer organization if it is large.

The main problem I see with legislated minimum wages is that it becomes a legitimate target for employers in a "take it or leave it" fashion.

Partly, but there is more to collective bargaining than that.

a) Indexed inflation levels tend to be underreported (exactly due to things like this)

b) it does not allow for over-time adjustment of real wage levels. As productivity increases, the real wage usually goes up. During periods of economic crisis you often see the largest wage increases in absolute terms, but a decrease in the real wage due to inflation. These negotiations are the toughest.

Nope.

I've been disappointed by oat milk every time I tried it. To me it just tastes bad. At this point I'd rather take the coffee black.

Soy milk tastes differently from milk, but is passable at least.

Compared to the massive increase of meat consumption in the population-dense developing world & other major influences on price such as improvements in the efficiency of meat production, the impact of the veg-movement is nigh negligible.

The price impact is rather on the side of restaurants & grocery chains in their logistics, now requiring a more diverse offering to be able to serve both the traditional clientele and veg-customers. Spreading the same demand over a larger range of products leads to a lower per-item throughput. Hence slightly lower efficiency, more waste & more overhead, which leads to marginally increased food prices overall in western countries.