Slashdot Mirror

Hmmm, trying to find Missouri on the per capita spending on welfare list. Oh, there it is at #37. No surprise the New England dominates the top of the list considering their political drift.

Power, on the other hand... they have it, but it costs an arm and a leg. Literally.

Where did you get that impression? I pay 5.9c/kWh off peak and 10.7 on peak (60% of my usage was offpeak, only 25% of my usage is peak).

This site http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices.html shows the average US citizen pays a lot more than that.

Alaska balances their budget by taking more federal dollars than the other states. They are the number one recipient of federal pork.

Actually, the "Balance of Payments" among the states shows a nice trend; with a few exceptions (such as Texas), the more Federal funds a state RECEIVES, the "redder" (aka Republican-leaning) it is.

Probably not a 'cause/effect' issue; it's likely that states with high populations tend to be high producers, and those high populations also tend Democratic.

However, it's also tragic that the states which tend to scream "small government" the loudest also tend to be the ones that benefit the most from its size, and would scream even louder if those funds were reduced.

In this state's case, a lot of things led to poor money situation, but two stand out: 1) when times were good, they didn't allow themselves a 'rainy day fund' and mandated that any surpluses had to be spent out. 2) Net taxes paid OUT to the federal gov. are staggering, and California is the gross highest - in 2001, their "balance of payments" figure was 58 BILLION dollars.

Because even while the economy sputters the Federal, State, and local, governments are expanding. Where is the sense in that? Why shouldn't people complain? Better yet, the pay of government jobs keeps going up faster than inflation in many areas and exceeding the private sector as well.

Take a look at this chart, http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/governmentemployment.html

Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much? We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.

So we have this big slow down, with many private sector jobs lost, yet government keeps growing. http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=41780

We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them. We cannot keep expanding a segment of the work force which only consumes wealth. We will either have to tax everyone to the limit of sanity or accept the fact that government isn't here to wait on us for our every need.

People here decry government surveillance on one hand and cheer new government jobs because the later is giving them something. Hey, I got news for you, both are the same thing. They are imposing into your life by restricting your rights or restricting how much of your work you can take reward from, by that last I mean : How much they are willing to let you keep to spend as you see fit.

Which is still a tiny number.

But if you have a multifamily residence like an apartment building, one floor of a building may well have 10 apartments, increasing those numbers tenfold again, to $5.60. Or more if we include kitchen water. Let alone washing machines, dishwashers, etc., which double it again to $11.20. So we're now talking about something three hundred times the numbers you got. Still small but getting there. I agree, that, assuming 30% efficiency, we're still only at less than $4 per year.

Well, now we get to your next point, price per kilowatt/hour. As of over a year ago, some people were already paying nearly twice your estimate. Would you consider it valid that prices have gone up a bit since then? Looking at my bill, unless I'm reading it wrong, these bastards are charging me 30 cents per kw/h and just recently announced that they'll be raising rates again soon. Taking this into account, our little dealie will be generating $12 worth of power per year. I'm not even beginning to get into what these numbers would look like at European or Japanese power prices.

Now if we assume that it costs $100, it starts looking pricy but possible. If it gets down to $50, it's a no-brainer, especially if power rates keep going up, which looks likely to me.

As for your last point, even ignoring the case of apartment buildings (I lived for over thirty years in an apartment that was about a hundred and thirty feet above ground level) the original poster said that his "3rd-floor shower drains all the way to below ground-level". I assumed a height of 9 feet per floor, giving me 18 feet right there. I then added more based on local homes here, which usually drain to a pipe below the basement floor, with a 6.5 foot basement height, 1 foot for joists, and a few more to get below the pad. Is 27 feet not close enough to 30 for you? Given how many homes have more than 8 feet, floor to floor, including joists, I was being conservative. I would say that not only "anyone", but actually quite a few people have at least 30 feet of drop, if not more.

None of which, btw, addresses that I was never talking about toilets in the first place. Quite the contrary.

So, having gone through all of that, does this make more sense to you now?

Electricity doesn't have the insane levels of taxes gasolene and diesel do (this is the primary reason it costs a fortune to fill up at the pump.)

Really? You mean the rise from $2 to $3 per gallon in the past few years has been all tax?

Average gas taxes per state, 2004: linky

Highest on list: 37.80 cents per gallon, Hawaii
Average: 22.94 cents per gallon

How about a little math with your FUD?

Average gas price, as of today: $2.90
Average gas tax, 2004: 22.94 cents

Let's be very generous, and assume average tax as risen to 29 cents per gallon. (Probably a wild overestimate, given the current political climate)

That makes a 10% markup. Hardly the "primary reason it costs a fortune to fill up at the pump" considering that the average price of gas has risen from $1.87 in 2004. (That would be a $1.03 rise for the math impaired...)

You're a citizen of North Dakota. Your state is a bunch of upper midwestern welfare sucking shitbags that would collapse into dust bowl without federal subsidies. In 2001 NoDak paid 3.288 billion dollars in taxes to the federal government and received 6.169 billion in federal spending. The facts and figures are here. That's a 2.881 billion dollar deficit in your balance of payments with the federal government.

Now, I'd be perfectly happy to end some of the wasteful spending that we sent to states such as yours and use it for something else, as an example we could shitcan farm subsidies, which would save a lot of money, start charging market rates for water delivered from federal water projects, which would raise a lot of money, start charging market rates for ranchers who graze their cattle on federal lands, start charging market rates for oil, gas and mineral leases on federal lands, end rural telecommunications subsidies, which would save money on my phone bills, require that 95 percent of all federal gasoline tax revenues stay in the state they're raised in instead of the current 90 percent figure, which would be a good deal for the blue states and wouldn't really hurt you because you don't mind driving on gravel roads.

I'm a citizen of the United States who lives in Seattle, Washington, and I hate you fucking red state welfare parasites.

Do you think that the only thing that students are using their laptops for is to type up reports in Word? There is a LOT more that goes on in schools with Student Laptop Programs than just composition, though increasing writing is an important part of improving student achievement.
A number of recent studies have shown that 1:1 laptop ratios can have a very positive effect on student achievement rates (as well as increasing student engagement, reducing drop-out rates and school truancy...)

If you implement right (plan it fully, have professional development ready for teachers, fully communicate to students AND parents what appropriate use is for the machine - e.g. no games, no IM, etc. - and enforce it), laptops can positively impact schools.

Sources:
Detroit Free Press
New York Times
Montana Associated Technology Roundtables
Public Policy Institute: Laptop for Every Student?