Apple failed to predict the demand for Mac Studios. Many other companies in its supply chain likely failed to predict that Apple would come back asking for more. There is no excess stock for some key components or the spare capacity to make them on demand. Apple would have to scour them from the market, likely paying much higher prices than it will pay for scheduled deliveries.

But once there were public lawns in cities, people found practical uses for them. Many popular ball games are still played on surfaces that resemble a lawn.

That same distinction makes sense for private lawns. Do you have a decorative garden, because your lot is larger than what you actually need? Or is the lawn a practical surface for open spaces you occasionally use?

Finnish people traditionally respected bears but were not afraid of them. Historical records mostly tell of two kinds of bear attacks. Either children / old people herding cattle in the forest accidentally got too close to a bear cub, or adult men were hunting bears and something went wrong.

Another ~$0.5 trillion is from higher interest payments.

A large fraction of the budget consists of wages and actual spending. Inflation is 25–30% since 2020.

Then there is healthcare spending, which can be expected to grow faster than inflation, as the population is growing older.

The US is basically running into the same issues as European welfare states. While government spending remains qualitatively the same, demographic changes make it grow faster than tax revenue. Those who couldn't maintain a balanced budget in the past are finding the situation particularly difficult. In some sense, the situation is even worse in the US. Healthcare (old age spending) is particularly expensive, while individuals have greater responsibility for childhood expenses.

Now, if you have an indefinite lease, the landlord can't increase the rent, unless the basis for the increase is already in the agreement. Typically the rent is tied to a measure of inflation, and the landlord chooses once a year if they should make the increase.

Many things in the society depend on volunteer work. Open source software is unusual due to the scale of it. In other parts of the society, when many people depend on the work of a few, some corporate or government bureaucrat will usually assume responsibility. But in open source software, the few are often still volunteers without any formal responsibilities.

My impression is that Reform and the Greens are the only mainstream parties with an actual opinion on immigration. The other parties approach immigration from a more technocratic perspective. They form policies based on expected outcomes, regardless of what the people with opinions think about that kind of immigration. (Except to the extent those opinions influence the outcomes.)

As long as people keep voting Tories, Labour, or Lib Dems, they are effectively saying that immigration is not that important issue after all.

The electorate repeatedly asked for those policies by voting the parties that enacted them. If they had other opinions, they didn't express them in any way that actually matters.

That's a feature of first-past-the-post elections. The system deliberately prioritizes regional representation over public opinion. If you want a parliament that prioritizes public opinion, you need a different electoral system.

China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days.

Finland has given the initial permit for three nuclear reactors in the past 25 years. One was eventually built after massive delays and cost overruns. Another was canceled, because the company chosen to build it first proved to be incompetent and later also politically undesirable. As for the third reactor, the company that got the permit determined that it makes more sense to invest the money in something else.