I was recently trying to understand Elon Musk's wealth, and come up with similar comparison: For example, he could make millionaire's of every single person in Seattle, and still have hundreds billions of dollars of wealth left over. Truly mind boggling.

This makes me think an interesting metric would be total SAT points per 100k population.

If only 2% of Kansas students are taking the SAT, that's kind of shocking, actually. But maybe the state University there doesn't require it?

The problem isn't that there are old people, is that there's currently a glut of old people, which puts real strain on the system. Being old is expensive for governments. Not only do older people not typically pay nearly as much in taxes, they also require more resources to support.

So many of today's problems come down to the simple demographic fact: there's a lot of baby boomers, and they're getting old.

1. Merchants need to be allowed to add card processing fees on top of any transaction, and it should be possible to do this very easily. If not this, then any receipt should be required to include card processing fees.

2. Merchants should be allowed to pick and choose which cards they accept without penalty.

Those two simple changes would add competitive pressure back into the payment processing market, and quickly cause fees to lower.

You live in Canada, which already has better options than the U.S., though the sittuation is getting better in the U.S.

For example, Interac is free for most people and very easy to use.

Debit payments often cost merchants less than 10 cents per tap. The local gelato place only takes debit or cash; if you don't have either, they're happy to accept an Interac payment, and do so more often than you'd think.

Part of the problem is that the incentives are misaligned. People want their points systems. Merchants want customers, but they also want lower transaction fees. Most customers have debit cards that would be much cheaper for merchants, but choose to use their credit cards, because they want the "rewards."

While the 3% or so that a bank charges might seem low, if you look at this from a low-margin business, that 3% may actually be much higher percentage of their net profit.

Regulation concerning rewards systems could go a long way towards shifting the system to be much less costly for businesses.

There's not much hope of real change here; Canadian banks are very profitable, and are a cornerstone of our economy. It's very unlikely that politicians will do anything to risk that.

And there certainly is consent, given voters can choose to elect people who will change the system, or not.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds exactly how almost all income taxes work.

> 5$ for Netflix and other paying 50$ to watch the same shows with no change in service offering.

Counterpoint -- you pay taxes to get the full benefits that a stable society provides, which includes your ability to make any income at all. The more income you earn, the more benefit you're literally getting.

> you’re young and single, you will be punished

Don't worry, it's impossible to stay young and single forever.

What does this mean? Do you mean the congenital aspects of a disorder?