Since when does "what we have now" imply "what we'll have with the radical technology improvements that are presently occurring"? You do realize that not only are solar thermal prices dropping, but there have been some *major* advancements in the economics of photovoltaic systems. Silicon cells are typically profitable to sell at $4/W (and are currently selling at $5/W because of supply shortages). CIGS cells are profitable at $1/W. This is a major, major leap that'd make solar cheaper than coal almost everywhere in the world.
Let's look at Nanosolar as an example. Their first plant, when at full capacity, will make them one of the biggest solar producers in the world (430 MW/year if I recall correctly). But this is just their first plant. Selling cells that are profitable at $1/W at nearly $5/W means they'll be profiting hand over fist, which means that investors will fight for the chance to throw money at them. How long do you think it'll take them to scale up with essentially unlimited venture capital? I'm betting not very long. They built their current facility with $100M raised just a year and a half ago, and they've already delivered their first product. Given that most of that money had to go toward simply commercializing their laboratory-scale process, what sort of capacity do you think they could pull off with, say, the next $1B in cash? Dozens of GW/year? And Nanosolar is just one CIGS manufacturer among many. And there's CdTe, too. Unmet demand begs for a market solution. It's inevitable that it's going to be filled.
Longer term, here's a crazy new tech for you to chew on: nanoantenna solar cells. A completely different process than conventional cells, which use photons to knock electrons off a donor, these new cells are simply designed to receive solar energy in the same way that a larger antenna receives the several-orders-of-magnitude-longer wave radio signals. They should be able to be produced on a cheap reel-to-reel process like CIGS cells, yet they have the potential to be as much as 80% efficient, even receiving the infrared that the Earth emits at night.
Living in Alaska will teach you the following: that the Anchorage Bowl (the city and surrounding area) is packed. And getting more packed. And you can't go east because there are mountains there. You can't go south because there's water there. You can't go north because the military has it staked out. And you can't go west because there's water there.
Let's talk for a moment about "fairness". A person doing hot tar roofing earns $9 an hour. Tiger Woods earns $171 a minute for playing golf. Stephen Spielberg earns $632 a minute. Paris Hilton is set for life for doing absolutely nothing of value. Is that a fair rewarding of labor?
We live in a (mostly) free market economy, and that's generally a good thing. It means that we pay for goods what they're worth. It means we strive to reduce subsidy and get mad when we see it in some form or another. It tends to lead to optimal use of resources. All of this is great, except that it treats people just like another good. The hot tar worker is like sand, available on the cheap, while Tiger Woods and Spielberg are like gold. They're rare, so the market pays more for them, exponentially more, obscenely more. Wages in a free market economy are naturally distributed along an "L" curve. This isn't "fair" in terms of the amount of labor people put in (or even how "smart" they are, or how much risk they were willing to take), but the free market doesn't care about "fairness". It doesn't care about anything. To it, people are just goods.
Now, while wages may be distributed exponentially, human needs are not. A poor person, buying necessities, has no money left over for luxury. A wealthy person simply cannot buy enough necessities to even dent their luxury budget. And if they did buy necessities for other people, that would be "charitable giving". Our income tax is designed to approximate a tax on luxury; the poor, being unable to spend much on luxury, pay the lowest rate, while the wealthy, unable to spend a significant portion on necessity, pay a luxury rate. And if they give to charity, it's deductable.
Now, one might argue that a sales tax that directly taxes luxury would be more equitable than an income tax. I'd agree. The problems, however, come in the implementation. Is a $0.30 cent head of cabbage luxury? I doubt anyone would argue that. Okay -- how about a $1.50 pack of buttom mushrooms? A $5.00 pack of Shiitakes? A $60 pack of truffles? How about a beat-up 86 Olds? A 2001 Saturn? A 2007 Prius? A 2008 Lexus? When you look at the big picture, you can't classify the level of luxury based on the category of an object; it really just doesn't work. Sure, some things lend themselves better to luxury taxes -- groceries having no base level of taxation, jewelry having a high level, and so on -- but you can't capture the extreme level of variation within a given field. Hence, the income tax, having brackets for different income levels, fills in the gaps.
Taxing luxury spending higher than necessity spending is a lot more "fair" than treating people's labor the same way you'd treat a market price for sand versus gold. Flatting out the "L" curve is a lot more "fair" than leaving it in tact. Now, people working harder, taking risks, getting educated, and generally making themselves into the "gold" that the market wants *should* be rewarded. It's only "fair". But it's hard to say that, say, Bill Gates deserves tens of thousands of times the level of reward as a hot tar roofer; it's hard to call that "fairness".
As for the implications on the economy, people need rewards. Without reward, there's little incentive to improve, little incentive to work harder, little incentive to become that "gold" that the market wants. On the other hand, rewards several tens of thousands of times a hot tar roofer's wage distinctly are *not* required. Let's look at history. Anyone here know what our top income tax brackets were doing our nation's biggest boom time (the end of WWII to the late 1960s)? ~80-90%. We had this staggering level of taxation of the top rungs during this time, and yet the economy took off. Now, most of the credit to our boom belongs to the US being the main undamaged producer of goods after the war. But it's hard to argue that such taxation was some significant impediment. While I wouldn't argue for such extreme bracketting of taxation, in general, I feel the case for bracketted income taxes in terms of fairness is quite solid.
Person A: "If I were president, I'd give everyone in the US a magic carpet."
Person B: "Magic carpets don't exist. How do you propose to make them exist?"
Person A: "I'm not going to formulate a tick for tick plan to create magic carpets right now."
It's one thing to say you want something to happen. It's entirely different to have a realistic view on how it could be done. Not everything is possible. Not everything that is possible has an acceptable tradeoff in consequences associated with it.
Oil prices: Like most commodities, oil prices are largely driven by the laws of supply and demand. Unlike yesteryear when OPEC pretty much could determine supply at a whim, supply is so tight today that the power of OPEC has been greatly diminished (although their profits are greatly expanded). The US has some, but rather minimal, untapped pockets of oil, such as ANWR left. Any new tapping of oil resources won't take effect for years anyways. Another part is wars and occupations, both ongoing (Iraq) and potential (say, Iran). Also, random instabilitity and strikes can play havok with the markets (Nigeria, Colombia). On the demand side of the equation, you have China's quick but steady growth. Part of the present high prices are because the US is currently filling its strategic reserves.
So, what's your plan?
Housing slump: How do you think the Federal Government should raise home prices, many of whose values were greatly overinflated previously due to speculation?
Federal Banking Commission: What do you propose?
Scale back the size of the Federal Government and lower taxes accordingly: Here's a breakdown of the current budget for you:
Social Security: 582B (Mandatory) Defense: 429.6B Medicare: 367B (Mandatory) Other Mandatory: 318B (a whole bunch of tiny, popular things. A few punching bags are in this category, such as TANF/Food stamps, but they're only ~7B and ~12B, respectively, so not much left to cut there.) Interest on debt: 239B (Mandatory) Medicaid/SCHIP: 198B (Mandatory) "Global War on Terror": 70.0B (emergency supplemental) Health and Human Services: 69.1B Education: 56.0B Housing and Urban Development: 34.7B Veterans Affairs: 33.2B Homeland Security: 32.0B State and other Intl. Programs: 28.7B Energy: 22.8B (includes nuclear weapons) Agriculture: 19.6B Justice: 19.4B NASA: 16.2B Labor: 11.7B Treasury: 11.4B Transportation: 10.7B Interior: 10.3B Social Security Adminstration: 7.6B EPA: 7.5B Other Agencies: 6.5B Commerce: 5.6B National Science Foundation: 5.6B Judicial Branch: 5.3B Corps of Engineers: 4.7B Legislative Branch: 3.7B Border Security and Other Suppl.: 1.8B (emergency supplemental) Small Business Administration: 0.4B Executive Office: 0.3B Hurricane response: 0.2B (emergency supplemental)
Now, remember that we're operating in a defecit, and also remember that certain cuts (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) will essentially eliminate your chance at reelection (as well as your chances of actually getting them through even your own party, who cares about their reelection as well). Also remember that Social Security is also an income line item -- $873.4B currently (more in than out). All Mandatories are harder to get changed because they require a special bill; discretionary has to be reauthorized each year.
Have at it.
Get a kick-ass foreign relations team into the embassies and capitals to repair our good name.
And that would be different from the goals of every other president how?
I agree. I think the ballot should be as secret as you want it to be, no more. People should be able to at the very least check their *own* votes.
I know people who have argued that, well, if you can prove that you voted a certain way, people could buy your vote! But there are several problems with that.
1) You could already do the same -- I've never seen a polling place that prevents you from snapping a picture of your ballot with your cell phone. Even if there was an official ban, how would they know you were doing it behind the privacy screen unless they had a camera on you, which would be a much greater problem? 2) Our current system has a huge margin of error -- a couple percentage points, meaning in a national election, millions of votes. Is a slightly increased risk of vote buying really worth millions of disenfranchised voters? 3) Validation isn't really needed for vote buying. Half of Americans don't even vote in national elections, let alone little local ones. Their vote means almost nothing to them. Is one to believe that paying these sorts of people and taking them to the polls that they'll suddenly get a political opinion and vote for someone else, someone who's *not* giving them money? In large enough numbers to be relevant? 4) Even if all of this wasn't true, would it really be worth the risk to a candidate to run an operation in which people vote and then have to return to a campaign office to verify their vote? Or to have an online vote verification operation? Would it even be worth the time to that candidate to have people sit down and look at the votes to catch the few "cheats" that said they'd vote for the candidate but didn't?
It just seems like a complaint blown way out of proportion, and insignificant in comparison to the problems that we've had in voting.
1. $100/mo buys a LOT of electricity and heat for someone living in a small apartment or basement suite. So we're not talking about someone living in a cold, unlit cave.
Arlington, 3bdrm: Multiple people saying >$200/mo Vegas: 2bdrm, $150/mo 2bdrm house, location unknown, $60/mo Florida 2bdrm apt, 17 years ago: $60/mo. Adjusting for inflation, $100/mo 2bdrm apt, location unknown, $150-$200/mo 2bdrm, location unknown: $80/mo 2bdrm, location unknown: $75-$90/mo 2bdrm, NC, using central air (more efficient): $60/mo Boston, Unknown size: $40/mo Irving, TX, 2bdrm: $300-$450/mo (poorly insulated and sealed) "Average NYC apartment": $40/mo Boston: $55/mo
Summary: Insulation is more important to size, and the further south you live (to an extent) in the US, the worse your bill will be because you tend to be relying on inefficient (but cheap) window units and are dealing with a lot of summer heat. Let's pretend that this covers electricity *and* gas, not just electricity. Looks like the average is around $50/mo up north and perhaps $180/mo down south. Crummy housing with low rent tends to be smaller but also less well insulated and sealed, so let's stick with these numbers.
One says the average is 80-150 gal/day, the other says 220 gal/day. Looks like water's typically around 2 tenths of a penny per liter. Going with an average 150gal/day at that price, that's $1.20/day, or $36/mo. Let's say only $40 with sewage added in.
Overall summary: A person in a hellhole up north wouldn't have to skimp. A person in a hellhole down south would be way overbudget and have to skimp like crazy.
2. People making minimum wage rarely buy healthcare, especially if they're healthy, as is being assumed here. If they become seriously ill, they're just fucked. It's sad, but true.
Thank you for making my point for me as to why so many of the poor don't own cars. It can be a choice between your health and transportation.
3. Furniture, TVs, etc, can all be acquired at no cost for anyone who actually knows other people.
Great plan. Because the poor are famous for giving away furniture, right? Lots of free furniture opportunities in Compton, right? The poor spend all their time hobknobbing, right?
Yes, you can get free furniture. But it's an unreliable source. The poor make do with whatever they can get. If "whatever they can get" is nothing, then they make do with nothing. If "whatever they can get" is falling apart, then they make use of that, too. One insidious problem is that the less money you have, the more you need. For example, if you'
> * Make truckers obsolete Thanks for eliminating yet another not-so-technical job.
You were sarcastic, but I actually agree with that statement.
> * Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present Ever heard of a "School Bus"? Or car pooling?
Ever heard of "several times faster" and "no human time lost in the process"? As well as "there are places other than school"?
> * Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present Yeah, can't order your stuff online and get it delivered home... five years ago.
And what percent of stores in the US have rapid home delivery? And how much do they charge?
> * Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later) Yay for no more vatlet parking. By the way: walking those three mins from parking space to destination is the last bit of workout some americans seem to get.
I agree with "Yay for no more valet parking." It's not just about exercise, though; it's about revitalizing downtown areas in smaller cities (which many people avoid shopping in due to parking), about decreased urban area and reduced heat island effects (you can have fewer, more vertically stacked lots), and so on.
> * Greatly increase speeds (same) Because we aren't just using enough gas yet. Wind resistance makes up a large part of the used up energy and increases exponentially with higher speeds. > * Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment How exactly would that work? Cars with an automatic transmission tend to use at least as much if not more fuel as a decently driven stick. If they can't get something as simple as that right, I wouldn't bet on a way more complex system.
The article discussed autoconvoying. Convoys use far less fuel per vehicle than individual vehicles travelling alone, which lets one choose between much higher speeds or greatly reduced fuel consumption. In the future, vehicles could have their shapes optimized for convoying, improving the situation even more.
> * Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization Decrease costs of what? Cars? You have to be kidding me.
By reducing energy consumption, you reduce energy costs. By increasing speed, you increase the ability to go greater distances without economic and leisure time costs.
> * Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once) That's a seriously stupid idea. Parts of the U.S. infrastructure are falling apart because they were built quickly and cheaply. (And not supported enough, afterwards.)
It's basic engineering: components are built to the needed tolerances plus a given safety margin, no more. Building wasted capacity that will only be used once a year is just that: waste. If safety is your concern more than economics, then infrastructure that runs at a more constant capacity could instead be given wider safety margins than they presently have with the money saved on infrastructure that presently has surplus capacity that's rarely used.
> * No speeding tickets Most cars are able to somehow indicate their current speed to their driver. If the driver's too (stupid|lazy|distracted) to notice this indicated speed being greater than the allowed speed, he's a bad driver. Maybe, just maybe it's a bad idea to hand out licenses to every other 16 year old teen (c'mon, handing them a deadly weapon five years before they're considered mature enough to handle something as dangerous as alcohol?) and try doing it like the rest of the (OECD-) world. No driving under 18 and before taking lessons and completin
I actually agree with you. I disagree with the person I was responding to who was (and continued to) insist that the public transit system is pretty much all you need, insisting that people who can barely walk should be expected to be doing so, that people should be expected to trade 4 minute drives for one hour walks year-round and to carry dozens of pounds of potentially awkward goods with them, and so forth. Indeed, whenever it's *realistic* to do so, I take the bus. My partner takes the bus almost every day. And I loved Japan's public transit system. But due to fundamental limitations, it will never be able to outright replace individual transport, or even come close to doing so.
Japan's public transit system was pretty good, too. I found the inter-city transportation to be effective enough for general use. In-city transit, though, it still was insufficient for general use -- not enough travel that's "point A to point B" unless A and B are major stops. Rarely did busses come within a block or two of our hostels. Rather than try and make the timetables, we tended to rely more on Japan's excellent subway systems, which even only moderate sized cities often had. For us, since we were backpacking, Japan's public transit system was typically sufficient (apart from having to find a place to cram our backpacks). Japan not only had a good public system, but for private travel, they tended to use tiny little cars with funny brand names (like the "Alex", or the "Royal Saloon", or the "Today Humming"), which is rather environmentally and socially responsible of them (the little cars aspect, not the funny names aspect).
"Walking" and "busses" aren't a general purpose solution, but small commuter cars really should be a lot more widely used in the US than they are. A lot of people are too obsessed with the notion of, "Well, what about when I drive cross-country once a year with a bunch of things in my car", and don't think about the fact that with the money they saved buying a much smaller commuter car, they could easily rent a larger car (or pickup) to meet their needs a dozen times. Let alone the money that they save in gas. And this assumes that they're only a one-car household.
I suppose clarification would be helpful in this case. If we're talking about who uses transit the most, there are two distinct ways of looking at it: which group makes up the majority of the people using public transit, versus which group has the largest proportion of its members using public transit. Strictly speaking, yes, the able-bodied poor outnumber all other groups on transit. That's because they outnumber all other groups period. Nevertheless, the able-bodied poor are, for the most part, VASTLY better off financially than the elderly et al, and a much greater percentage of them own and drive cars than the elderly, the disabled, and children.
The healthy adult who works for minimum wage, 30 hours a week, could manage to afford a car, although it would be extremely difficult.
Are you freaking kidding me? That's $10k/year. After taxes, perhaps $8k/year. Let's say that they get all of those taxes back in government benefits and then some -- say, $11k/year. Let's say no kids, which would slaughter their income. Even if you assume they're living in a hellhole that costs only $300/mo, and that they can miraculously keep their combined utilities down to $100/mo (lights off most of the time, low thermostat in the winter, high in the summer, showers every other day, etc -- making the hellhole even more of a hellhole). That's $6,200. Let's say they can keep food costs down to a mere dollar per meal, so $90/mo, meaning there's $5,120 left. Let's say that their healthcare (which almost no minimum wage jobs provide) costs a mere $200/mo *after* copays (try to find a policy that provides a relevant amount of coverage that cheap just *ignoring* copays). That's $2,720/year left. Let's say that they have no TV, no entertainment, no phone, no furniture, no nothing -- they just lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling all evening until they fall asleep. There's $226/mo left. Let's say to keep clothing on their backs and shoes on their feet, they can get by on $6/mo, so $220. Let's say they can somehow pick up a car at a price of only $60/mo -- some old junker that they somehow got a payment plan on -- so $160 left. Well, even if the car is cheap, you need liability coverage at a bare minimum in all 50 states, typically a few tens of thousands of dollars worth in each category. Let's assume that the driver is female, has had a license for several years and no accidents, and is in their thirties. Let's give them fair credit to boot. Perhaps $80/mo, so $80 left. Let's say that they can manage to keep such a junker held together and running for only $20/mo. Hey -- if you make a whole bunch of ridiculously harsh assumptions, they can afford, what, 15 miles per day in gas?
Let's get real. There are no tricks to being poor. A lot of people assume that there must be some sort of trick to get by, but there isn't. You have no choice but to sacrifice a significant amount some combination of mobility, health, and comfort -- cramming lots of people into tiny apartments in bad neighborhoods, going without even basic things like phone service, using the "pray nothing goes wrong" health plan, and so on.
Preteens DO take public transit, even assuming that you discount school buses.
Not proportionally often in the US. Now, Japan, that's a different story. I once shared a bus with an entire class full of school kids on Sado
Excuse me but I pay a fortune to use the roads and should have the right to spend my normal 30-40 hours a week on the roads I paid for without inexpirienced idiots putting me in danger.
You know, you're right. You're right! You pay for it, you should be able to do whatever the heck you want with it. Speaking of that, I should go to an Air Force base and take a free ride on a jet fighter. Hey, I'm paying for it, right? Who cares what the "intent" of the program is. It's all about what "I want" to do with the program, right? Who cares whether the "intent" of the transportation budget is to move people and goods. If you want to use it for your own personal needs, screw the purpose of the transportation budget (moving people and goods), right?
The people who cause most accidents arnt truck drivers, taxis or couriers.
But they *do* cause accidents. Drunk drivers only cause ~40% of accidents. ~42,000 people die per year in auto accidents. Put 9-11, our troops lost in Iraq, and all of those sorts of things in perspective: 42,000 *per year*. Car accidents are the *leading cause of death* for people between ages 6 and 27. 394,000 large trucks were involved in crashes in 1999. 5,203 people died and 127,000 were injured. The economic damage of the accidents was a staggering $150 billion, just in 1999. Let's put that into perspective: Hurricane Katrina did only $81 billion.
This is not something trivial. You not only want the American public to pay for your entertainment, pay *huge amounts of money* for your entertainment, but you want to keep us in a system that injures half a million people a year, kills several tens of thousands per year, and does almost twice the economic damage as Hurricane Katrina each year. For your entertainment. Pardon me if I'm a wee bit hostile to the notion.
This line cracked me up -- since those four groups are the primary users of public transportation
Not around here. Around here, the primary users are the able-bodied poor.
Those are the groups that are the least likely to a) be capable of driving, and b) be able to afford the cost of owning, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a vehicle.
And, more importantly, walking several blocks to the nearest bus stop multiple times on each trip. I have a good friend with muscular dystrophy. She drives a car. The concept of her walking everywhere to catch busses, especially in winter, is almost laughably bad.
Healthy adults are the people who take transit the least, for the simple reason that they're the ones that can afford cars and have both the mental acumen and physical health necessary to operate them.
Tell that to gardeners, construction workers, factory workers, and all other "manual laborers". Tell them how wealthy they are. Go on. Because, at least around here, those are the sort of people you see on the bus. Them and students.
That's what an iPod and a book are for.
How nice for you that this is all you need to be unaware of everyone else around you.
Even the most obnoxious of the homeless insane wont try to talk to someone protected by such an overpowering barrier of leave-me-the-fuck-alone.
Funny, because I've had, on multiple occasions, homeless insane (or at least seemingly homeless and insane) people carry on one-sided conversations with me for my entire ride on the bus while I'm programming on my laptop the hole time, and I don't even ride it that often.
The grocery is that close, but you can't walk?
I don't know about you, but I don't exactly feel like needlessly losing 40 minutes of my day a twice a week and carrying back half a dozen bags of groceries weighing dozens of pounds total (sometimes more) in my arms. Or should I tow a little red wagon with me? Any more annoyances you'd like to pile onto my life for no particular reason?
that means your grocery store is at most 1.5 miles away. A reasonably healthy person can walk that in about 15 minutes.
It's actually 1.3 miles, 4 minutes drive, according to google
I'm sorry but 6 miles per hour is not a "walk". That's jogging. So, now what am I to picture -- you want me to jog with a dozen bags of groceries in my arm? What's next -- do you want me to juggle and play harmonica at the same time?
Anyone who's actually used public transportation at all (as opposed to the people who go around making up bullshit about how unsuited it is for everyone except healthy adults) knows that for short trips, it's usually easier to walk.
Um, excuse me, but I used to ride the bus daily. Don't lecture me about "anyone who's actually used public transportation".
Youths generally can't afford cars, so they depend on public transit.
I said the "young". As in children. As in "American parents don't typically want their kids riding alone on a bus and would rather just drop them off somewhere".
The elderly frequently can't afford cars and are often incapable of driving, so they depend on public transit.
If they're incapable of driving, I bet walking a dozen blocks with groceries in their arms is a blast, isn't it?
Not owning a car is a sign of being poor, not elderly.
The disabled are one of the lowest income groups in any society, especially American society with its disdain for social services. Do you really think that they can afford cars?
My friend Cathy has one. It's a junker probably worth less than a thousand dollars, but it drives just fine. It's fitted with hand controls so she can run it properly. Before she was able to get that car, she was part of a car co-op. Again, think for a second: person who can hardly walk, and you want her to *carry things* for *several blocks* each way to get to a bus stop? That's positively ludicrous.
Not to mention the fact that many disabilities directly prevent people from driving.
You really don't know anyone who's disabled, do you?
Are you so stupid as to call BS on me describing where I live? Want a map?
Grocery store on left. My neighborhood (specific address omitted) on right. Normally I'd take 6, not the back streets, though.
Where are you that the concept of a person living three miles away from a grocery store is so alien? As for busses, I have to go downtown (corner of Clinton and Washington), then catch another bus, then take that to the grocery store. And despite that my city has some of the best public transit in the state, it's still several blocks to the nearest bus stop, with one bus every hour during peak hours.
The only difference is the speed. It's still not the intent of our transportation budget. See the above list? Where are the bowling alleys, the video game systems, the parasailing, etc? Society has generally judged entertainment to be a *personal* mandate, not something that justifies taxing everybody for and implementing communally. There are exceptions, of course, mostly focused around children (say, community parks and pools) and for purposes that have very broad appeal, can't work in the small scale, and especially if they have a "conservation" aspect (such as national parks). But they're the exceptions, not the rule.
I enjoy driving not necessarily for speed thrills. Enjoyment can be had with interesting roads, beautiful vistas, mastering the art of double-clutching and downshifting, hearing the exhaust in a tunnel, listening to music, etc, etc.
Then you don't lose a darn thing, all except the double clutching and downshifting, which you can do to your heart's content elsewhere. What, you think this also involves blacking out your windows, destroying all tunnels, and ripping the music player from your car?
I know it seems crazy/insane/unbelievable, but some people would rather drive themselves rather than being transported by boring government controlled transport pods.
I know it seems crazy/insane/unbelievable, but the vast majority of people in this country don't want the government funding things with taxpayer dollars merely for the entertainment of "some people". Especially when doing so eliminates a laundry list of benefits to the country at large.
Rail, light rail, and busses simply are not general purpose solutions.
* Not door-to-door service. Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety), and the vast throngs of able-bodied people who, whether you think the reason is justified or not, simply don't want to walk a dozen blocks to make all of their connections every day because they:
* Have "better things to do" than spend an extra 5-10 minutes each way walking several blocks, or
* "Don't want to" walk several blocks
* Need to be transporting goods (dry cleaning, groceries, etc) long distances by hand. I'm in good shape, but even I'd hate to haul, say, a 40 pound bag of water softener salt plus a couple gallons of milk, a few quarts of juice, and all of the other stuff I might happen to pick up at a grocery store.
* Greatly increased travel time. I can drive to the grocery store in three minutes, but it'd take about an hour get there via bus -- at peak service times. Even if they 10xed funding to make busses run 10 times as often, it'd still take three times as long to get there. And this excludes the aforementioned time to walk to the bus stop. Busses, light rail, and rail are simply a poor fit for going from specifically point A to specifically point B. They do great on long stretches, but simply can't cater to the individual needs of their many passengers.
* Has economic penalties (greatly increased transit time is not free to an economy)
* Has leisure time penalties (as above)
* Lacks individualism (something Americans tend to prize)
* Lacks the ability to leave things of yours in a vehicle.
* Lacks the ability to maintain (or not maintain) the vehicle in the shape you find acceptable, or to modify it to your liking
* Lacks room for transporting goods -- both everyday goods (groceries, dry cleaning, etc) and non-everyday goods (a refrigerator, a desk, etc). Especially important on "goods" that aren't allowed to be transported in public transport -- pets, dangerous chemicals, etc.
* Requires a much greater degree of pre-planning for trips to get your route and timing down.
* Has serious time penalties if you miss a connection.
* Lateness (above) has serious economic and leisure-time penalties.
* Forces people to be in close proximity with other people (laugh if you want, but the hypochondriacs, agoraphobes, racists, and vast throngs of people who merely want to be left alone won't be laughing)
* Doesn't make use of our vast amount of existing infrastructure (only applies to rail and light rail, not busses)
The overwhelming majority simply won't vote for any candidate who would eliminate personal transportation for public, and any transportation proposal needs to deal with the reality that there are many, many reasons, both good and bad, that it's not a general purpose solution.
And a weather alert will teach it how to avoid ice ridges and tongues of snow? Or are you thinking that your car wakes you up with a bullhorn and assumes that you can go straight from "sound asleep" to "fit for driving in hazardous weather" right away? Or does your car pull over (assuming there's a shoulder) and let you get buried in snow?
And furthermore, since when are weather alerts that spatially precise? A few scattered storms move across the midwest, do they shut down the entire midwest's automated highway system because they can't tell which specific miles of road will be having problems?
Funny...I've got that right, right NOW....my tax dollars along with many others have paid for these roads out there, to be used for independent usage.
To get people and goods to a destination, not for "fun". They're not there to be a personal racetrack. If they were, we'd be widely building publicly financed racetracks for community use as well.
I don't think my street cruiser is really set up for a dirt track somewhere...
Then drive on a non-dirt track. Any other puzzlers you've got?
And if I'm driving safely according to the driving conditions, I'm not putting you or anyone in jeopardy.
Oh, but you are. Auto accidents are one of the leading causes of death in this country, especially for the young. Humans are simply unsafe behing the wheel, no matter how safe they think they're driving.
[quote]If this type thing is mandated....just one more step in controlling and homogenizing society.[/quote]
Mandated? You're the one trying to mandate that the roads my taxpayer dollars are funding get to be your personal racetrack. The federal and state government are not supposed to be funding personal entertainment. Here, let's look at the top dollar figures in the federal government. Tell me which of these, excepting your choice of "transportation" as your personal racetrack, is "fun":
Social security Defense Medicare Medicaid Interest Health and Human Services Administration Education VA Benefits Housing International Relations Transportation Science and energy Environment Community development World hunger Agriculture Job training
See lots of "fun" in there? See the budget for video game systems? For bowling alleys? Golf courses? Parasailing? No? That's right: tax dollars != entertainment dollars. Great -- you've been making use of something designed for another purpose (getting people and goods around) in a way that makes you happy. That's great for you. That doesn't change the fact that the taxation isn't designed for your entertainment. You're currently benefitting from a coincidence.
No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
I fully support your right to go have fun driving your vehicle if that's what floats your boat. You don't, however, have a fundamental right to use something constructed by lots of my taxpayer dollars (the public road system) as your personal playground and put me in unnecessary risk while on it. In such a future, if you wanted to drive for fun, you could easily go drive somewhere that's for people who want to drive for fun; however, our tax dollars weren't collected to build you a racetrack.
If the tech isn't to that point in 10 years, don't drive in the ice or go manual.
Good idea. Remind me of that when I fall asleep while my vehicle is driving itself cross-country in good weather and the weather a couple hundred miles up the highway hasn't turned bad yet.
* Make truckers obsolete
* Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
* Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
* Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
* Greatly increase throughput (autoconvoying, reduction of drag, traffic-aware route scheduling, reduction of human error)
* More green space for a given amount of throughput (same)
* Greatly increase speeds (same)
* Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment.
* Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization.
* Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
* No speeding tickets
* No drunk drivers
* No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
* Greater response time of vehicle and built-in system-aware hardware eases transition to new technologies, such as inductrac maglev roads, powered roads to recharge electric vehicles, or whatnot.
** Above technologies further increase speed, decrease energy consumption, boost economy, and decrease cost to consumers
* Greatly boost the economy (all of the above)
I hope that the chips aren't designed to only be aware of other cars. Because up here, we have this nasty stuff called snow. It gets plowed into ridges on the side of the road. Sometimes they jut out into the road, and if the tires on one side of your vehicle end up in it, it can send you skidding or pull you off the road. Also, sometimes you'll get a heavy snowfall, then it'll half melt and people will drive through, then it will freeze again, freezing the ridges formed by the tires into place -- i.e., you're on a veritable skating rink filled with obstacles trying to set you spinning. How's the chip going to handle that?
In general, I'm highly in favor of automating cars, since virtually all accidents are due to human error. But they need to be able to get a lower accident rate than human drivers, and up here, they better be able to tolerate winter driving conditions if they want to manage that.
Why do they need a new chip for this? There are already perfectly good navigation algorithms. They should license use of the Roomba's navigation system from iRobot and install that on cars. Sure, they'll need front bumper sensors and a cliff sensor, but that's pretty trivial.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when does "what we have now" imply "what we'll have with the radical technology improvements that are presently occurring"? You do realize that not only are solar thermal prices dropping, but there have been some *major* advancements in the economics of photovoltaic systems. Silicon cells are typically profitable to sell at $4/W (and are currently selling at $5/W because of supply shortages). CIGS cells are profitable at $1/W. This is a major, major leap that'd make solar cheaper than coal almost everywhere in the world.
Let's look at Nanosolar as an example. Their first plant, when at full capacity, will make them one of the biggest solar producers in the world (430 MW/year if I recall correctly). But this is just their first plant. Selling cells that are profitable at $1/W at nearly $5/W means they'll be profiting hand over fist, which means that investors will fight for the chance to throw money at them. How long do you think it'll take them to scale up with essentially unlimited venture capital? I'm betting not very long. They built their current facility with $100M raised just a year and a half ago, and they've already delivered their first product. Given that most of that money had to go toward simply commercializing their laboratory-scale process, what sort of capacity do you think they could pull off with, say, the next $1B in cash? Dozens of GW/year? And Nanosolar is just one CIGS manufacturer among many. And there's CdTe, too. Unmet demand begs for a market solution. It's inevitable that it's going to be filled.
Longer term, here's a crazy new tech for you to chew on: nanoantenna solar cells. A completely different process than conventional cells, which use photons to knock electrons off a donor, these new cells are simply designed to receive solar energy in the same way that a larger antenna receives the several-orders-of-magnitude-longer wave radio signals. They should be able to be produced on a cheap reel-to-reel process like CIGS cells, yet they have the potential to be as much as 80% efficient, even receiving the infrared that the Earth emits at night.
Living in Alaska will teach you the following: that the Anchorage Bowl (the city and surrounding area) is packed. And getting more packed. And you can't go east because there are mountains there. You can't go south because there's water there. You can't go north because the military has it staked out. And you can't go west because there's water there.
You just described virtually every city in Japan.
If we ever end up with instant runoff voting or similar, you're going on my list :)
Let's talk for a moment about "fairness". A person doing hot tar roofing earns $9 an hour. Tiger Woods earns $171 a minute for playing golf. Stephen Spielberg earns $632 a minute. Paris Hilton is set for life for doing absolutely nothing of value. Is that a fair rewarding of labor?
We live in a (mostly) free market economy, and that's generally a good thing. It means that we pay for goods what they're worth. It means we strive to reduce subsidy and get mad when we see it in some form or another. It tends to lead to optimal use of resources. All of this is great, except that it treats people just like another good. The hot tar worker is like sand, available on the cheap, while Tiger Woods and Spielberg are like gold. They're rare, so the market pays more for them, exponentially more, obscenely more. Wages in a free market economy are naturally distributed along an "L" curve. This isn't "fair" in terms of the amount of labor people put in (or even how "smart" they are, or how much risk they were willing to take), but the free market doesn't care about "fairness". It doesn't care about anything. To it, people are just goods.
Now, while wages may be distributed exponentially, human needs are not. A poor person, buying necessities, has no money left over for luxury. A wealthy person simply cannot buy enough necessities to even dent their luxury budget. And if they did buy necessities for other people, that would be "charitable giving". Our income tax is designed to approximate a tax on luxury; the poor, being unable to spend much on luxury, pay the lowest rate, while the wealthy, unable to spend a significant portion on necessity, pay a luxury rate. And if they give to charity, it's deductable.
Now, one might argue that a sales tax that directly taxes luxury would be more equitable than an income tax. I'd agree. The problems, however, come in the implementation. Is a $0.30 cent head of cabbage luxury? I doubt anyone would argue that. Okay -- how about a $1.50 pack of buttom mushrooms? A $5.00 pack of Shiitakes? A $60 pack of truffles? How about a beat-up 86 Olds? A 2001 Saturn? A 2007 Prius? A 2008 Lexus? When you look at the big picture, you can't classify the level of luxury based on the category of an object; it really just doesn't work. Sure, some things lend themselves better to luxury taxes -- groceries having no base level of taxation, jewelry having a high level, and so on -- but you can't capture the extreme level of variation within a given field. Hence, the income tax, having brackets for different income levels, fills in the gaps.
Taxing luxury spending higher than necessity spending is a lot more "fair" than treating people's labor the same way you'd treat a market price for sand versus gold. Flatting out the "L" curve is a lot more "fair" than leaving it in tact. Now, people working harder, taking risks, getting educated, and generally making themselves into the "gold" that the market wants *should* be rewarded. It's only "fair". But it's hard to say that, say, Bill Gates deserves tens of thousands of times the level of reward as a hot tar roofer; it's hard to call that "fairness".
As for the implications on the economy, people need rewards. Without reward, there's little incentive to improve, little incentive to work harder, little incentive to become that "gold" that the market wants. On the other hand, rewards several tens of thousands of times a hot tar roofer's wage distinctly are *not* required. Let's look at history. Anyone here know what our top income tax brackets were doing our nation's biggest boom time (the end of WWII to the late 1960s)? ~80-90%. We had this staggering level of taxation of the top rungs during this time, and yet the economy took off. Now, most of the credit to our boom belongs to the US being the main undamaged producer of goods after the war. But it's hard to argue that such taxation was some significant impediment. While I wouldn't argue for such extreme bracketting of taxation, in general, I feel the case for bracketted income taxes in terms of fairness is quite solid.
Person A: "If I were president, I'd give everyone in the US a magic carpet."
Person B: "Magic carpets don't exist. How do you propose to make them exist?"
Person A: "I'm not going to formulate a tick for tick plan to create magic carpets right now."
It's one thing to say you want something to happen. It's entirely different to have a realistic view on how it could be done. Not everything is possible. Not everything that is possible has an acceptable tradeoff in consequences associated with it.
And your proposals for doing these things are?
Oil prices: Like most commodities, oil prices are largely driven by the laws of supply and demand. Unlike yesteryear when OPEC pretty much could determine supply at a whim, supply is so tight today that the power of OPEC has been greatly diminished (although their profits are greatly expanded). The US has some, but rather minimal, untapped pockets of oil, such as ANWR left. Any new tapping of oil resources won't take effect for years anyways. Another part is wars and occupations, both ongoing (Iraq) and potential (say, Iran). Also, random instabilitity and strikes can play havok with the markets (Nigeria, Colombia). On the demand side of the equation, you have China's quick but steady growth. Part of the present high prices are because the US is currently filling its strategic reserves.
So, what's your plan?
Housing slump: How do you think the Federal Government should raise home prices, many of whose values were greatly overinflated previously due to speculation?
Federal Banking Commission: What do you propose?
Scale back the size of the Federal Government and lower taxes accordingly: Here's a breakdown of the current budget for you:
Social Security: 582B (Mandatory)
Defense: 429.6B
Medicare: 367B (Mandatory)
Other Mandatory: 318B (a whole bunch of tiny, popular things. A few punching bags are in this category, such as TANF/Food stamps, but they're only ~7B and ~12B, respectively, so not much left to cut there.)
Interest on debt: 239B (Mandatory)
Medicaid/SCHIP: 198B (Mandatory)
"Global War on Terror": 70.0B (emergency supplemental)
Health and Human Services: 69.1B
Education: 56.0B
Housing and Urban Development: 34.7B
Veterans Affairs: 33.2B
Homeland Security: 32.0B
State and other Intl. Programs: 28.7B
Energy: 22.8B (includes nuclear weapons)
Agriculture: 19.6B
Justice: 19.4B
NASA: 16.2B
Labor: 11.7B
Treasury: 11.4B
Transportation: 10.7B
Interior: 10.3B
Social Security Adminstration: 7.6B
EPA: 7.5B
Other Agencies: 6.5B
Commerce: 5.6B
National Science Foundation: 5.6B
Judicial Branch: 5.3B
Corps of Engineers: 4.7B
Legislative Branch: 3.7B
Border Security and Other Suppl.: 1.8B (emergency supplemental)
Small Business Administration: 0.4B
Executive Office: 0.3B
Hurricane response: 0.2B (emergency supplemental)
Now, remember that we're operating in a defecit, and also remember that certain cuts (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) will essentially eliminate your chance at reelection (as well as your chances of actually getting them through even your own party, who cares about their reelection as well). Also remember that Social Security is also an income line item -- $873.4B currently (more in than out). All Mandatories are harder to get changed because they require a special bill; discretionary has to be reauthorized each year.
Have at it.
Get a kick-ass foreign relations team into the embassies and capitals to repair our good name.
And that would be different from the goals of every other president how?
I agree. I think the ballot should be as secret as you want it to be, no more. People should be able to at the very least check their *own* votes.
I know people who have argued that, well, if you can prove that you voted a certain way, people could buy your vote! But there are several problems with that.
1) You could already do the same -- I've never seen a polling place that prevents you from snapping a picture of your ballot with your cell phone. Even if there was an official ban, how would they know you were doing it behind the privacy screen unless they had a camera on you, which would be a much greater problem?
2) Our current system has a huge margin of error -- a couple percentage points, meaning in a national election, millions of votes. Is a slightly increased risk of vote buying really worth millions of disenfranchised voters?
3) Validation isn't really needed for vote buying. Half of Americans don't even vote in national elections, let alone little local ones. Their vote means almost nothing to them. Is one to believe that paying these sorts of people and taking them to the polls that they'll suddenly get a political opinion and vote for someone else, someone who's *not* giving them money? In large enough numbers to be relevant?
4) Even if all of this wasn't true, would it really be worth the risk to a candidate to run an operation in which people vote and then have to return to a campaign office to verify their vote? Or to have an online vote verification operation? Would it even be worth the time to that candidate to have people sit down and look at the votes to catch the few "cheats" that said they'd vote for the candidate but didn't?
It just seems like a complaint blown way out of proportion, and insignificant in comparison to the problems that we've had in voting.
1. $100/mo buys a LOT of electricity and heat for someone living in a small apartment or basement suite. So we're not talking about someone living in a cold, unlit cave.
Let's get some datapoints with a google search.
http://www.homeabc.net/Other/2550-3-other.html
http://www.city-data.com/forum/dallas/116643-average-electricity-bill-3bdrm-apartment.html
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=23384
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1DC153EF932A05756C0A966958260
http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/sub/524170732.html
Arlington, 3bdrm: Multiple people saying >$200/mo
Vegas: 2bdrm, $150/mo
2bdrm house, location unknown, $60/mo
Florida 2bdrm apt, 17 years ago: $60/mo. Adjusting for inflation, $100/mo
2bdrm apt, location unknown, $150-$200/mo
2bdrm, location unknown: $80/mo
2bdrm, location unknown: $75-$90/mo
2bdrm, NC, using central air (more efficient): $60/mo
Boston, Unknown size: $40/mo
Irving, TX, 2bdrm: $300-$450/mo (poorly insulated and sealed)
"Average NYC apartment": $40/mo
Boston: $55/mo
Summary: Insulation is more important to size, and the further south you live (to an extent) in the US, the worse your bill will be because you tend to be relying on inefficient (but cheap) window units and are dealing with a lot of summer heat. Let's pretend that this covers electricity *and* gas, not just electricity. Looks like the average is around $50/mo up north and perhaps $180/mo down south. Crummy housing with low rent tends to be smaller but also less well insulated and sealed, so let's stick with these numbers.
Let's do the same for water:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5812161/Unclog-your-plumbing-budget-the.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3D71130F932A35754C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/JosephSabatelle.shtml
One says the average is 80-150 gal/day, the other says 220 gal/day. Looks like water's typically around 2 tenths of a penny per liter. Going with an average 150gal/day at that price, that's $1.20/day, or $36/mo. Let's say only $40 with sewage added in.
Overall summary: A person in a hellhole up north wouldn't have to skimp. A person in a hellhole down south would be way overbudget and have to skimp like crazy.
2. People making minimum wage rarely buy healthcare, especially if they're healthy, as is being assumed here. If they become seriously ill, they're just fucked. It's sad, but true.
Thank you for making my point for me as to why so many of the poor don't own cars. It can be a choice between your health and transportation.
3. Furniture, TVs, etc, can all be acquired at no cost for anyone who actually knows other people.
Great plan. Because the poor are famous for giving away furniture, right? Lots of free furniture opportunities in Compton, right? The poor spend all their time hobknobbing, right?
Yes, you can get free furniture. But it's an unreliable source. The poor make do with whatever they can get. If "whatever they can get" is nothing, then they make do with nothing. If "whatever they can get" is falling apart, then they make use of that, too. One insidious problem is that the less money you have, the more you need. For example, if you'
> * Make truckers obsolete
Thanks for eliminating yet another not-so-technical job.
You were sarcastic, but I actually agree with that statement.
> * Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
Ever heard of a "School Bus"? Or car pooling?
Ever heard of "several times faster" and "no human time lost in the process"? As well as "there are places other than school"?
> * Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
Yeah, can't order your stuff online and get it delivered home... five years ago.
And what percent of stores in the US have rapid home delivery? And how much do they charge?
> * Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
Yay for no more vatlet parking. By the way: walking those three mins from parking space to destination is the last bit of workout some americans seem to get.
I agree with "Yay for no more valet parking." It's not just about exercise, though; it's about revitalizing downtown areas in smaller cities (which many people avoid shopping in due to parking), about decreased urban area and reduced heat island effects (you can have fewer, more vertically stacked lots), and so on.
> * Greatly increase speeds (same)
Because we aren't just using enough gas yet. Wind resistance makes up a large part of the used up energy and increases exponentially with higher speeds.
> * Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment
How exactly would that work? Cars with an automatic transmission tend to use at least as much if not more fuel as a decently driven stick. If they can't get something as simple as that right, I wouldn't bet on a way more complex system.
The article discussed autoconvoying. Convoys use far less fuel per vehicle than individual vehicles travelling alone, which lets one choose between much higher speeds or greatly reduced fuel consumption. In the future, vehicles could have their shapes optimized for convoying, improving the situation even more.
> * Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization
Decrease costs of what? Cars? You have to be kidding me.
By reducing energy consumption, you reduce energy costs. By increasing speed, you increase the ability to go greater distances without economic and leisure time costs.
> * Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
That's a seriously stupid idea. Parts of the U.S. infrastructure are falling apart because they were built quickly and cheaply. (And not supported enough, afterwards.)
It's basic engineering: components are built to the needed tolerances plus a given safety margin, no more. Building wasted capacity that will only be used once a year is just that: waste. If safety is your concern more than economics, then infrastructure that runs at a more constant capacity could instead be given wider safety margins than they presently have with the money saved on infrastructure that presently has surplus capacity that's rarely used.
> * No speeding tickets
Most cars are able to somehow indicate their current speed to their driver. If the driver's too (stupid|lazy|distracted) to notice this indicated speed being greater than the allowed speed, he's a bad driver. Maybe, just maybe it's a bad idea to hand out licenses to every other 16 year old teen (c'mon, handing them a deadly weapon five years before they're considered mature enough to handle something as dangerous as alcohol?) and try doing it like the rest of the (OECD-) world. No driving under 18 and before taking lessons and completin
I actually agree with you. I disagree with the person I was responding to who was (and continued to) insist that the public transit system is pretty much all you need, insisting that people who can barely walk should be expected to be doing so, that people should be expected to trade 4 minute drives for one hour walks year-round and to carry dozens of pounds of potentially awkward goods with them, and so forth. Indeed, whenever it's *realistic* to do so, I take the bus. My partner takes the bus almost every day. And I loved Japan's public transit system. But due to fundamental limitations, it will never be able to outright replace individual transport, or even come close to doing so.
Japan's public transit system was pretty good, too. I found the inter-city transportation to be effective enough for general use. In-city transit, though, it still was insufficient for general use -- not enough travel that's "point A to point B" unless A and B are major stops. Rarely did busses come within a block or two of our hostels. Rather than try and make the timetables, we tended to rely more on Japan's excellent subway systems, which even only moderate sized cities often had. For us, since we were backpacking, Japan's public transit system was typically sufficient (apart from having to find a place to cram our backpacks). Japan not only had a good public system, but for private travel, they tended to use tiny little cars with funny brand names (like the "Alex", or the "Royal Saloon", or the "Today Humming"), which is rather environmentally and socially responsible of them (the little cars aspect, not the funny names aspect).
"Walking" and "busses" aren't a general purpose solution, but small commuter cars really should be a lot more widely used in the US than they are. A lot of people are too obsessed with the notion of, "Well, what about when I drive cross-country once a year with a bunch of things in my car", and don't think about the fact that with the money they saved buying a much smaller commuter car, they could easily rent a larger car (or pickup) to meet their needs a dozen times. Let alone the money that they save in gas. And this assumes that they're only a one-car household.
I suppose clarification would be helpful in this case. If we're talking about who uses transit the most, there are two distinct ways of looking at it: which group makes up the majority of the people using public transit, versus which group has the largest proportion of its members using public transit. Strictly speaking, yes, the able-bodied poor outnumber all other groups on transit. That's because they outnumber all other groups period. Nevertheless, the able-bodied poor are, for the most part, VASTLY better off financially than the elderly et al, and a much greater percentage of them own and drive cars than the elderly, the disabled, and children.
Oh really?
Only 12% of Americans are below the poverty line.
10.2% of the elderly are below the poverty line.
48% of the poor own a vehicle
8% of families on welfare own a vehicle
78% of the elderly own a vehicle
So no, you're just plain wrong.
The healthy adult who works for minimum wage, 30 hours a week, could manage to afford a car, although it would be extremely difficult.
Are you freaking kidding me? That's $10k/year. After taxes, perhaps $8k/year. Let's say that they get all of those taxes back in government benefits and then some -- say, $11k/year. Let's say no kids, which would slaughter their income. Even if you assume they're living in a hellhole that costs only $300/mo, and that they can miraculously keep their combined utilities down to $100/mo (lights off most of the time, low thermostat in the winter, high in the summer, showers every other day, etc -- making the hellhole even more of a hellhole). That's $6,200. Let's say they can keep food costs down to a mere dollar per meal, so $90/mo, meaning there's $5,120 left. Let's say that their healthcare (which almost no minimum wage jobs provide) costs a mere $200/mo *after* copays (try to find a policy that provides a relevant amount of coverage that cheap just *ignoring* copays). That's $2,720/year left. Let's say that they have no TV, no entertainment, no phone, no furniture, no nothing -- they just lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling all evening until they fall asleep. There's $226/mo left. Let's say to keep clothing on their backs and shoes on their feet, they can get by on $6/mo, so $220. Let's say they can somehow pick up a car at a price of only $60/mo -- some old junker that they somehow got a payment plan on -- so $160 left. Well, even if the car is cheap, you need liability coverage at a bare minimum in all 50 states, typically a few tens of thousands of dollars worth in each category. Let's assume that the driver is female, has had a license for several years and no accidents, and is in their thirties. Let's give them fair credit to boot. Perhaps $80/mo, so $80 left. Let's say that they can manage to keep such a junker held together and running for only $20/mo. Hey -- if you make a whole bunch of ridiculously harsh assumptions, they can afford, what, 15 miles per day in gas?
Let's get real. There are no tricks to being poor. A lot of people assume that there must be some sort of trick to get by, but there isn't. You have no choice but to sacrifice a significant amount some combination of mobility, health, and comfort -- cramming lots of people into tiny apartments in bad neighborhoods, going without even basic things like phone service, using the "pray nothing goes wrong" health plan, and so on.
Preteens DO take public transit, even assuming that you discount school buses.
Not proportionally often in the US. Now, Japan, that's a different story. I once shared a bus with an entire class full of school kids on Sado
Excuse me but I pay a fortune to use the roads and should have the right to spend my normal 30-40 hours a week on the roads I paid for without inexpirienced idiots putting me in danger.
You know, you're right. You're right! You pay for it, you should be able to do whatever the heck you want with it. Speaking of that, I should go to an Air Force base and take a free ride on a jet fighter. Hey, I'm paying for it, right? Who cares what the "intent" of the program is. It's all about what "I want" to do with the program, right? Who cares whether the "intent" of the transportation budget is to move people and goods. If you want to use it for your own personal needs, screw the purpose of the transportation budget (moving people and goods), right?
The people who cause most accidents arnt truck drivers, taxis or couriers.
But they *do* cause accidents. Drunk drivers only cause ~40% of accidents. ~42,000 people die per year in auto accidents. Put 9-11, our troops lost in Iraq, and all of those sorts of things in perspective: 42,000 *per year*. Car accidents are the *leading cause of death* for people between ages 6 and 27. 394,000 large trucks were involved in crashes in 1999. 5,203 people died and 127,000 were injured. The economic damage of the accidents was a staggering $150 billion, just in 1999. Let's put that into perspective: Hurricane Katrina did only $81 billion.
This is not something trivial. You not only want the American public to pay for your entertainment, pay *huge amounts of money* for your entertainment, but you want to keep us in a system that injures half a million people a year, kills several tens of thousands per year, and does almost twice the economic damage as Hurricane Katrina each year. For your entertainment. Pardon me if I'm a wee bit hostile to the notion.
This line cracked me up -- since those four groups are the primary users of public transportation
Not around here. Around here, the primary users are the able-bodied poor.
Those are the groups that are the least likely to a) be capable of driving, and b) be able to afford the cost of owning, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a vehicle.
And, more importantly, walking several blocks to the nearest bus stop multiple times on each trip. I have a good friend with muscular dystrophy. She drives a car. The concept of her walking everywhere to catch busses, especially in winter, is almost laughably bad.
Healthy adults are the people who take transit the least, for the simple reason that they're the ones that can afford cars and have both the mental acumen and physical health necessary to operate them.
Tell that to gardeners, construction workers, factory workers, and all other "manual laborers". Tell them how wealthy they are. Go on. Because, at least around here, those are the sort of people you see on the bus. Them and students.
That's what an iPod and a book are for.
How nice for you that this is all you need to be unaware of everyone else around you.
Even the most obnoxious of the homeless insane wont try to talk to someone protected by such an overpowering barrier of leave-me-the-fuck-alone.
Funny, because I've had, on multiple occasions, homeless insane (or at least seemingly homeless and insane) people carry on one-sided conversations with me for my entire ride on the bus while I'm programming on my laptop the hole time, and I don't even ride it that often.
The grocery is that close, but you can't walk?
I don't know about you, but I don't exactly feel like needlessly losing 40 minutes of my day a twice a week and carrying back half a dozen bags of groceries weighing dozens of pounds total (sometimes more) in my arms. Or should I tow a little red wagon with me? Any more annoyances you'd like to pile onto my life for no particular reason?
that means your grocery store is at most 1.5 miles away. A reasonably healthy person can walk that in about 15 minutes.
It's actually 1.3 miles, 4 minutes drive, according to google
I'm sorry but 6 miles per hour is not a "walk". That's jogging. So, now what am I to picture -- you want me to jog with a dozen bags of groceries in my arm? What's next -- do you want me to juggle and play harmonica at the same time?
Anyone who's actually used public transportation at all (as opposed to the people who go around making up bullshit about how unsuited it is for everyone except healthy adults) knows that for short trips, it's usually easier to walk.
Um, excuse me, but I used to ride the bus daily. Don't lecture me about "anyone who's actually used public transportation".
Youths generally can't afford cars, so they depend on public transit.
I said the "young". As in children. As in "American parents don't typically want their kids riding alone on a bus and would rather just drop them off somewhere".
The elderly frequently can't afford cars and are often incapable of driving, so they depend on public transit.
If they're incapable of driving, I bet walking a dozen blocks with groceries in their arms is a blast, isn't it?
Not owning a car is a sign of being poor, not elderly.
The disabled are one of the lowest income groups in any society, especially American society with its disdain for social services. Do you really think that they can afford cars?
My friend Cathy has one. It's a junker probably worth less than a thousand dollars, but it drives just fine. It's fitted with hand controls so she can run it properly. Before she was able to get that car, she was part of a car co-op. Again, think for a second: person who can hardly walk, and you want her to *carry things* for *several blocks* each way to get to a bus stop? That's positively ludicrous.
Not to mention the fact that many disabilities directly prevent people from driving.
You really don't know anyone who's disabled, do you?
Are you so stupid as to call BS on me describing where I live? Want a map?
Grocery store on left. My neighborhood (specific address omitted) on right. Normally I'd take 6, not the back streets, though.
Where are you that the concept of a person living three miles away from a grocery store is so alien? As for busses, I have to go downtown (corner of Clinton and Washington), then catch another bus, then take that to the grocery store. And despite that my city has some of the best public transit in the state, it's still several blocks to the nearest bus stop, with one bus every hour during peak hours.
It's just not a solution.
Um, what? How exactly are you picturing a vehicle convoying at 100+mph to be a "ripe target" in comparison to our current system?
How exactly is driving for fun equal to racing?
The only difference is the speed. It's still not the intent of our transportation budget. See the above list? Where are the bowling alleys, the video game systems, the parasailing, etc? Society has generally judged entertainment to be a *personal* mandate, not something that justifies taxing everybody for and implementing communally. There are exceptions, of course, mostly focused around children (say, community parks and pools) and for purposes that have very broad appeal, can't work in the small scale, and especially if they have a "conservation" aspect (such as national parks). But they're the exceptions, not the rule.
I enjoy driving not necessarily for speed thrills. Enjoyment can be had with interesting roads, beautiful vistas, mastering the art of double-clutching and downshifting, hearing the exhaust in a tunnel, listening to music, etc, etc.
Then you don't lose a darn thing, all except the double clutching and downshifting, which you can do to your heart's content elsewhere. What, you think this also involves blacking out your windows, destroying all tunnels, and ripping the music player from your car?
I know it seems crazy/insane/unbelievable, but some people would rather drive themselves rather than being transported by boring government controlled transport pods.
I know it seems crazy/insane/unbelievable, but the vast majority of people in this country don't want the government funding things with taxpayer dollars merely for the entertainment of "some people". Especially when doing so eliminates a laundry list of benefits to the country at large.
Rail, light rail, and busses simply are not general purpose solutions.
* Not door-to-door service. Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety), and the vast throngs of able-bodied people who, whether you think the reason is justified or not, simply don't want to walk a dozen blocks to make all of their connections every day because they:
* Have "better things to do" than spend an extra 5-10 minutes each way walking several blocks, or
* "Don't want to" walk several blocks
* Need to be transporting goods (dry cleaning, groceries, etc) long distances by hand. I'm in good shape, but even I'd hate to haul, say, a 40 pound bag of water softener salt plus a couple gallons of milk, a few quarts of juice, and all of the other stuff I might happen to pick up at a grocery store.
* Greatly increased travel time. I can drive to the grocery store in three minutes, but it'd take about an hour get there via bus -- at peak service times. Even if they 10xed funding to make busses run 10 times as often, it'd still take three times as long to get there. And this excludes the aforementioned time to walk to the bus stop. Busses, light rail, and rail are simply a poor fit for going from specifically point A to specifically point B. They do great on long stretches, but simply can't cater to the individual needs of their many passengers.
* Has economic penalties (greatly increased transit time is not free to an economy)
* Has leisure time penalties (as above)
* Lacks individualism (something Americans tend to prize)
* Lacks the ability to leave things of yours in a vehicle.
* Lacks the ability to maintain (or not maintain) the vehicle in the shape you find acceptable, or to modify it to your liking
* Lacks room for transporting goods -- both everyday goods (groceries, dry cleaning, etc) and non-everyday goods (a refrigerator, a desk, etc). Especially important on "goods" that aren't allowed to be transported in public transport -- pets, dangerous chemicals, etc.
* Requires a much greater degree of pre-planning for trips to get your route and timing down.
* Has serious time penalties if you miss a connection.
* Lateness (above) has serious economic and leisure-time penalties.
* Forces people to be in close proximity with other people (laugh if you want, but the hypochondriacs, agoraphobes, racists, and vast throngs of people who merely want to be left alone won't be laughing)
* Doesn't make use of our vast amount of existing infrastructure (only applies to rail and light rail, not busses)
The overwhelming majority simply won't vote for any candidate who would eliminate personal transportation for public, and any transportation proposal needs to deal with the reality that there are many, many reasons, both good and bad, that it's not a general purpose solution.
And a weather alert will teach it how to avoid ice ridges and tongues of snow? Or are you thinking that your car wakes you up with a bullhorn and assumes that you can go straight from "sound asleep" to "fit for driving in hazardous weather" right away? Or does your car pull over (assuming there's a shoulder) and let you get buried in snow?
And furthermore, since when are weather alerts that spatially precise? A few scattered storms move across the midwest, do they shut down the entire midwest's automated highway system because they can't tell which specific miles of road will be having problems?
Funny...I've got that right, right NOW....my tax dollars along with many others have paid for these roads out there, to be used for independent usage.
To get people and goods to a destination, not for "fun". They're not there to be a personal racetrack. If they were, we'd be widely building publicly financed racetracks for community use as well.
I don't think my street cruiser is really set up for a dirt track somewhere...
Then drive on a non-dirt track. Any other puzzlers you've got?
And if I'm driving safely according to the driving conditions, I'm not putting you or anyone in jeopardy.
Oh, but you are. Auto accidents are one of the leading causes of death in this country, especially for the young. Humans are simply unsafe behing the wheel, no matter how safe they think they're driving.
[quote]If this type thing is mandated....just one more step in controlling and homogenizing society.[/quote]
Mandated? You're the one trying to mandate that the roads my taxpayer dollars are funding get to be your personal racetrack. The federal and state government are not supposed to be funding personal entertainment. Here, let's look at the top dollar figures in the federal government. Tell me which of these, excepting your choice of "transportation" as your personal racetrack, is "fun":
Social security
Defense
Medicare
Medicaid
Interest
Health and Human Services
Administration
Education
VA Benefits
Housing
International Relations
Transportation
Science and energy
Environment
Community development
World hunger
Agriculture
Job training
See lots of "fun" in there? See the budget for video game systems? For bowling alleys? Golf courses? Parasailing? No? That's right: tax dollars != entertainment dollars. Great -- you've been making use of something designed for another purpose (getting people and goods around) in a way that makes you happy. That's great for you. That doesn't change the fact that the taxation isn't designed for your entertainment. You're currently benefitting from a coincidence.
You forgot....
No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
I fully support your right to go have fun driving your vehicle if that's what floats your boat. You don't, however, have a fundamental right to use something constructed by lots of my taxpayer dollars (the public road system) as your personal playground and put me in unnecessary risk while on it. In such a future, if you wanted to drive for fun, you could easily go drive somewhere that's for people who want to drive for fun; however, our tax dollars weren't collected to build you a racetrack.
If the tech isn't to that point in 10 years, don't drive in the ice or go manual.
Good idea. Remind me of that when I fall asleep while my vehicle is driving itself cross-country in good weather and the weather a couple hundred miles up the highway hasn't turned bad yet.
Ultimately, with a perfect system, it would:
* Make truckers obsolete
* Allow dropoff/pickup of children without you being present
* Allow pickup of groceries or other goods without you being present
* Make it so you don't need parking near your destination (vehicle can leave, park elsewhere, and return later)
* Greatly increase throughput (autoconvoying, reduction of drag, traffic-aware route scheduling, reduction of human error)
* More green space for a given amount of throughput (same)
* Greatly increase speeds (same)
* Greatly decrease fuel or energy consumed at a given speed (same), helping the environment.
* Decrease costs to consumers (as above) and thus opens up wider travel opportunities/deurbanization.
* Facilitate better integration of the vehicle and the road (example: bridges that know how much capacity they can support and vehicles that know how much they weigh so that they can be built lighter (and thus cheaper) while still being safe by never routing too much weight to be crossing a given bridge at once)
* No speeding tickets
* No drunk drivers
* No need to pay attention to the road -- but those who like to drive could still offroad, go to tracks, etc.
* Greater response time of vehicle and built-in system-aware hardware eases transition to new technologies, such as inductrac maglev roads, powered roads to recharge electric vehicles, or whatnot.
** Above technologies further increase speed, decrease energy consumption, boost economy, and decrease cost to consumers
* Greatly boost the economy (all of the above)
I hope that the chips aren't designed to only be aware of other cars. Because up here, we have this nasty stuff called snow. It gets plowed into ridges on the side of the road. Sometimes they jut out into the road, and if the tires on one side of your vehicle end up in it, it can send you skidding or pull you off the road. Also, sometimes you'll get a heavy snowfall, then it'll half melt and people will drive through, then it will freeze again, freezing the ridges formed by the tires into place -- i.e., you're on a veritable skating rink filled with obstacles trying to set you spinning. How's the chip going to handle that?
In general, I'm highly in favor of automating cars, since virtually all accidents are due to human error. But they need to be able to get a lower accident rate than human drivers, and up here, they better be able to tolerate winter driving conditions if they want to manage that.
Why do they need a new chip for this? There are already perfectly good navigation algorithms. They should license use of the Roomba's navigation system from iRobot and install that on cars. Sure, they'll need front bumper sensors and a cliff sensor, but that's pretty trivial.