Universal in what country? In the US I've had two MRIs in the last few years for non urgent things and both were scheduled within less than a week.

The hold up is usually almost entirely insurance related for most people. People in my family (including myself) have had non-emergency imaging done several times over the past few years. We've had experiences ranging from getting it done same day to taking over a month to get approval and scheduled. This is in DFW, where there's no shortage of MRI machines around.

Meanwhile there are imaging labs that can do walk-ins if you're willing to pay cash and they have the slack in their schedule, usually somewhat cheap compared to what they'll bill insurance (and if you have a HDHP, what you'll pay). They don't want those machines idle, a gap in the schedule is money they aren't making.

I was wondering why Americans purchased MRI gift cards.

> by any means necessary

This implies that they got rich by pillaging instead of countless people voluntarily giving them money in exchange for what they offered.

They got rich by cheating, stealing, and breaking the law. They were even convicted of it[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Your evidence is the most absurd "antitrust" lawsuit in history. What law did they break? Macs come with Safari and Android devices come with Chrome, where's the lawsuits?

> Have any of these economists ever tried to scrape by as an entry-level graphic designer/illustrator?

"Equip yourself with skills that other people are willing to pay for." –Thomas Sowell

The general thought works good until it doesn't.

It definitely always works. If your skills become obsolete then it's time to find new ones or stop working.

you don't need to bring up trump in a camera thread

It's an apt comparison, though ;)

the people with the highest compensation packages are by definition the least replaceable

That's not exactly true.

High compensation can be offset by the risk a position entails.

Example: CISOs are feeling a lot of pressure these days

> Definitely under appreciated and under paid, but I learned a ton about working for a living.

a lot of the discussion about wages ignores the value of experience; students pay to spend their days learning but it's somehow unfair for someone to get paid to learn job skills that transfer to other jobs

Experience doesn't put food on the table today.

neither does education, what's your point?

> extreme form of coffee hipsterism

I know a lot of coffee nerds and cold brew is disdained for not extracting enough flavors. This is just someone who never adapted to the world hoping the world will adapt to them.

> Papers don't establish ground truths in science > it doesn't shake the foundations of science

the comment doesn't say any of that, just that resources are wasted participating to these "conversations"

> I went to MIT, and to this day I wonder how much checking "Hispanic" helped me there and if I "deserved" to go.

the problem with aa is not about people getting in that didn't "deserve" it, it's people getting in who don't have the means to succeed; elite colleges brag about their diverse admissions but don't talk about people who go on to fail when they could've succeeded at less prestigious schools

if you succeeded then you deserved to get in.

If MIT rejected applicants with better profiles because of the URM checkbox, in some sense they didn't deserve to get in.

I'm technically 1/4 Hispanic, but not at all Hispanic in any real sense. I forgot to check the box when applying to top schools. My odds would've had a large boost just for claiming an identity that's had no relevance to any area of my life. I'd call that "undeserved."

> if MIT rejected applicants with better profiles because of the URM checkbox, in some sense they didn't deserve to get in

"better" is subjective and imo anyone who goes on to succeed at the school is as good as the next person; there are lots of other equally arbitrary decisions that go into college admissions

then you know it's not a great article.

I know you are not critically engaging with it.

You know how you think the world should work and you reject evidence in front of you. You do not liok for counter-evidence, or find faults in the evidence presented - you just reject it outright, like how flat earther rejects physics