Basically every welfare state in Europe relies on a VAT, a sort of sales tax. A broader tax base rises more revenue with less deadweight loss and tax avoidance. The progressivity of the system is on the spending side.

I’d like to hear Peter Greenaway’s answer to this question.

Most of the pop culture they cover even today is “western” broadly speaking.

Kudos for the graph. When I tried to look up infectious diseases generally a lowered trend was reported, but that study’s data ended before the spikes seen here. On the other hand, this is just for measles and I am still interested in all vaccine-preventable diseases.

Regular taxes can apply to all rich people.

Doing some quick googling, this study has data on deaths from infectious disease up to about five years ago. I’d like more recent years, but that covers about half of this decade. It says that vaccine-preventable disease death rates have declined since 1980. 

Are outbreaks more common than they used to be?

Do you mean that diseases are more common? That’s not at all clear to me.

My understanding is that anti-vaxxers haven’t actually become more common in recent years. The internet just tells us more about them.

I don’t recall anyone getting horribly murdered in Midnight Cowboy.

Hailee Steinfeld was better casting to play a child because she actually was one.

I believe the character as described in the novel resembles Redford more, but Nichols and Buck Henry decided to go in a rather different direction.

It seems strange that the embedded clip doesn’t start at the beginning.

I just remember seeing a couch, as she’d already mentioned leaving the couch when they move to another house.

He is indeed the multiple murderer with the highest ratio of movies inspired to murder victims.

he’s been pursuing humanitarian work since leaving the HBO series

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this band, but I am interested in King Crimson covers.

Gerard Butler isn’t even an American! He’s Scottish! They barely even speak English!

I don’t think mere replacement of an actress is sufficient to show anything about the character. Julianne Moore replaced Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, and she’s unquestionably the lead of Silence of the Lambs and about as solidly written a protagonist as you’re going to get in any thriller. I haven’t seen any of…

That was my interpretation.