Which economy cars are you saying are comparable to a Volt? Have you driven a Volt?
Go drive a new Ford Focus SE with the appearance package, you might be shocked at what $20k gets you these days.
That is a heck of a fun little car that comes with a whole lot of stuff that can be purchased for about $20k. It also sips fuel to the point where you'll replace it before the Volt pays for itself.
Battery prices have been dropping like a rock for the last several years. Price parity should come very soon, and it will probably neatly coincide with the expiration of the federal tax subsidies.
When the Volt costs $20k without tax subsidies, call me.
I'll bet we won't see it for a very long time, and not "very soon".
The Volt and that small, economy, ICE vehicle aren't quite the same markets.
Nonsense, they are...
You clearly need to go drive some more cars, the $35k a Volt will cost you will buy a LOT of fun cars.
The Volt simply makes no economic sense, that 70k people have bought one doesn't make it so, it just means that not everyone buys cars due to what makes economic sense.
Well duh, most cars are purchased emotionally... Otherwise the Mustang would never sell:)
You could probably say that both sides want your money, just in different ways. But if you're concern about money colors your attitude about the science you're doing it backwards. You can't change the scientific reality and if scientists are even in the ballpark about the effects the reality of anthropogenic global warming is going to cost you a whole lot more than doing something to avoid it.
That is a reasonable statement, I suspect there is some truth to it (the money part).
Regarding the issue of science... I actually am concerned... I'm not convinced, but I'm not an expert so perhaps the problem is all the screaming on both sides.
I will agree that if they are right, we're screwed, and if they are wrong, then we'll end up with a cleaner environment, to a point... So it makes reasonable and logical sense to make efforts to cut back on CO2 and other pollution.
However, that leads into my next point...
As far as the cost to the average person it's maybe slightly more than they would spend on old existing technology but most of it would be money that's going to be spent anyway in building new power plants or maintenance of existing ones or fuel costs. The increment in spending isn't that great and things like solar and wind don't have ongoing fuel costs.
That might be true... or it might not... many people have views and opinions on that one...
I will say, base on the charts that I've seen and the numbers I've looked at, the changes required to do anything major to the CO2 levels would be massive and widespread...
It is really easy to say "well, if we all just cut back 20%, that would help". Yea, I guess it would, but it wouldn't lower CO2, it would just slow the rise. As we cut back, other people who were not previously emitting CO2 will start.
That is the core of the problem. Even if we roll out new technologies world-wide that are 50% "cleaner" than what we have now, it won't really solve the problem because there are 3 billion people in the world today who don't currently emit much CO2, but will start doing so this century.
And telling them, "sorry, you were late to the party, no good stuff for you" is simply not going to cut it.
Carbon 14 is not the isotope in the atmosphere that shows the increase is from burning fossil fuels. It's the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 13 that does that. Both C12 & C13 are stable isotopes of carbon. In fossil fuels there is more C12 relative to C13 compared to the atmosphere because being lighter C12 is preferred by photosynthesis. The ratio of C12 to C13 in the atmosphere has been increasing which supports the idea that the increase in CO2 is due to burning fossil fuels. Also the level of oxygen in the atmosphere has been dropping at a rate consistent with the uptake of oxygen due to the burning of fossil fuels.
You might well be right... I'm not enough of an expert to really know...
That being said, the average lay person hears both sides and shrugs their shoulders, and goes back to their day-to-day concerns...
The catch is, one side of the AGW debate wants their money, the other does not. Who do you think will win given that situation?
The amount of money that would have to be spent to make a difference in CO2 levels FAR exceeds what the average Joe and Jane Consumer will accept.
So the debate is mostly academic, it won't happen, instead we'll find out over the next 50 years what 1,000 PPB CO2 does...
I don't know about completely striping reproductive rights
I'm not suggesting that we "stripe" the rights from anyone, rather I'm suggesting that if someone is unable or unwilling to work... or simply doesn't WANT TO...
That's fine, they can have $3,000 a month for free from the government, the condition being that they may not have children.
If you have kids, then you can support them and don't need my money. If you don't have money, don't have kids.
There are way too many parents of 5+ kids who are broke.
So, if it costs too much they'll automate and you'll pay to support them anyway. Here's the thing - you can either find jobs for people and let them work (or force them to work, Kim Jong Il), you can support them (either in their homes or poorhouses or prisons), or you can let them die of starvation. You can manage the process or let it go on chaotically - that's about it. Which of these options are you going to choose?
I actually wouldn't object to paying to support them, if it came with the condition that they not reproduce.
The problem is the poor have more kids than the wealthy and they keep replicating themselves.
If your business requires paying wages that are so low that your workers can't make a living and to survive are still welfare and foodstamps (that my tax dollars pay for) despite working full time then your business plan is broken.
You assume those are the only two options...
Lets say the min wage was raised to $30/hr tomorrow...
Does this mean McDonald's is screwed? Does this mean that all current McDonald's workers get a GREAT PAY RAISE?
No, of course not... It suddenly would make sense to completely automate a McDonald's restaurant, you'd have one or two $30/hr managers and the rest would be robots.
Yes, yes, you say that people would be needed to service and maintain the robots. Yes, but most of the people losing their jobs aren't remotely qualified for that job and you won't need a million of them.
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I challenge you to look up the number of people who work in fast food in this country, imagine if half of them lost their jobs to robots tomorrow.
You are quite right. The savings in labor are then passed right along to the consumer who uses it to hire the worker doing some other task which cannot be robot automated as easily, such as, to give a trivial example, baby sitting.
The U6 unemployment rate would seem to indicate that there is a limit to this.
Because 135 billion alone in 1940 is 2.2 trillion to 2.3 trillion of today in constant dollar. Any CPI calculator will confirm that baring a few % +/-. The delta of 900 million is from federal programs which did NOT exists in 1940. From environmental protection, drug enforcement, NASA, EPA, etc...etc...
You didn't bother to read the whole thing...
The government didn't take in 135 billion in 1940, that is the INFLATION ADJUSTED NUMBER...
No, it won't. Prices of goods do not increase simply because the employees of commerce are more expensive. This will not increase the value of the product, thus increasing the price of the product will cause consumers to shop elsewhere. Supply and demand is the only thing that increases the prices of products.
Yes, it will...
The average cost of a hamburger has to go up as labor costs rise. This is no different to the cost of a hamburger going up because the cost of beef went up...
Now they may well sell fewer hamburgers as the price goes up and as they sell fewer of them, they'll need fewer employees...
Hi. Take a business or economics course. Stop making shit up about which you obviously have no business talking about.
I would give you the same advice...
If my labor costs nearly double, something has to give. If my profit margin was 10% before and is now -5% because of this increase, the price will either go up or I'll go out of business and everyone is out of work.
Not a Mustang or American Mussel Car guy, more of a European sports car kind of guy since I actually like to do something other than go straight.
Your knowledge of the Mustang is out of date, they have gotten a LOT better recently...
I drove the new 2015 Mustang GT a few months ago, what a much nicer car that has become, it is finally civil...
Still nose heavy, but for the price it is darn hard to beat. The EcoBoost is actually better balanced, but I'm such a V8 person I honestly wouldn't buy one. But if you want a slalom car, the EcoBoost is the one to get...
And this is why I hate the idea of self driving cars. It's an insane amount of complexity to make a car self-driving. For a fraction of that effort (although a lot more pain an initial expense) we could lay down rails through every suburb and have automated travel cars. It would require a fraction of the processing power; even with you account for all the sensors to prevent the cars from running over little kids and such.
That works if you're King and can demand that everyone turn in their existing vehicles at once.
The trick to self-driving cars is they have to be able to share the road with a lot of other things, from bicycles, to human-driven cars, to horses in some places.
Slashdot Mirror
Which economy cars are you saying are comparable to a Volt? Have you driven a Volt?
Go drive a new Ford Focus SE with the appearance package, you might be shocked at what $20k gets you these days.
That is a heck of a fun little car that comes with a whole lot of stuff that can be purchased for about $20k. It also sips fuel to the point where you'll replace it before the Volt pays for itself.
Why bother to have an interview if you're not going to answer any questions?
Exactly, she didn't actually say anything... She could have saved herself the trouble and just stayed home that day, same outcome...
Battery prices have been dropping like a rock for the last several years. Price parity should come very soon, and it will probably neatly coincide with the expiration of the federal tax subsidies.
When the Volt costs $20k without tax subsidies, call me.
I'll bet we won't see it for a very long time, and not "very soon".
The Volt and that small, economy, ICE vehicle aren't quite the same markets.
Nonsense, they are...
You clearly need to go drive some more cars, the $35k a Volt will cost you will buy a LOT of fun cars.
The Volt simply makes no economic sense, that 70k people have bought one doesn't make it so, it just means that not everyone buys cars due to what makes economic sense.
Well duh, most cars are purchased emotionally... Otherwise the Mustang would never sell :)
Elon Musk is one of very few Billionaires who DO NOT deny that climate change is occurring
True, but you must also consider that his current primary business depends on that happening...
So the fact that he believes in AGW means nothing, he profits from it.
You could probably say that both sides want your money, just in different ways. But if you're concern about money colors your attitude about the science you're doing it backwards. You can't change the scientific reality and if scientists are even in the ballpark about the effects the reality of anthropogenic global warming is going to cost you a whole lot more than doing something to avoid it.
That is a reasonable statement, I suspect there is some truth to it (the money part).
Regarding the issue of science... I actually am concerned... I'm not convinced, but I'm not an expert so perhaps the problem is all the screaming on both sides.
I will agree that if they are right, we're screwed, and if they are wrong, then we'll end up with a cleaner environment, to a point... So it makes reasonable and logical sense to make efforts to cut back on CO2 and other pollution.
However, that leads into my next point...
As far as the cost to the average person it's maybe slightly more than they would spend on old existing technology but most of it would be money that's going to be spent anyway in building new power plants or maintenance of existing ones or fuel costs. The increment in spending isn't that great and things like solar and wind don't have ongoing fuel costs.
That might be true... or it might not... many people have views and opinions on that one...
I will say, base on the charts that I've seen and the numbers I've looked at, the changes required to do anything major to the CO2 levels would be massive and widespread...
It is really easy to say "well, if we all just cut back 20%, that would help". Yea, I guess it would, but it wouldn't lower CO2, it would just slow the rise. As we cut back, other people who were not previously emitting CO2 will start.
That is the core of the problem. Even if we roll out new technologies world-wide that are 50% "cleaner" than what we have now, it won't really solve the problem because there are 3 billion people in the world today who don't currently emit much CO2, but will start doing so this century.
And telling them, "sorry, you were late to the party, no good stuff for you" is simply not going to cut it.
In short? I think we may be screwed...
Carbon 14 is not the isotope in the atmosphere that shows the increase is from burning fossil fuels. It's the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 13 that does that. Both C12 & C13 are stable isotopes of carbon. In fossil fuels there is more C12 relative to C13 compared to the atmosphere because being lighter C12 is preferred by photosynthesis. The ratio of C12 to C13 in the atmosphere has been increasing which supports the idea that the increase in CO2 is due to burning fossil fuels. Also the level of oxygen in the atmosphere has been dropping at a rate consistent with the uptake of oxygen due to the burning of fossil fuels.
You might well be right... I'm not enough of an expert to really know...
That being said, the average lay person hears both sides and shrugs their shoulders, and goes back to their day-to-day concerns...
The catch is, one side of the AGW debate wants their money, the other does not. Who do you think will win given that situation?
The amount of money that would have to be spent to make a difference in CO2 levels FAR exceeds what the average Joe and Jane Consumer will accept.
So the debate is mostly academic, it won't happen, instead we'll find out over the next 50 years what 1,000 PPB CO2 does...
I don't know about completely striping reproductive rights
I'm not suggesting that we "stripe" the rights from anyone, rather I'm suggesting that if someone is unable or unwilling to work... or simply doesn't WANT TO...
That's fine, they can have $3,000 a month for free from the government, the condition being that they may not have children.
If you have kids, then you can support them and don't need my money. If you don't have money, don't have kids.
There are way too many parents of 5+ kids who are broke.
Why do they waste money re-laying asphalt roads every few years?
Asphalt normally costs less to put down. For a city or town trying to balance the budget, that counts...
In the past few years, the cost has been getting closer, but it takes time to change.
That is one reason, the other is you can put asphalt down in day, a proper concrete road takes much longer to put in.
So, if it costs too much they'll automate and you'll pay to support them anyway. Here's the thing - you can either find jobs for people and let them work (or force them to work, Kim Jong Il), you can support them (either in their homes or poorhouses or prisons), or you can let them die of starvation. You can manage the process or let it go on chaotically - that's about it. Which of these options are you going to choose?
I actually wouldn't object to paying to support them, if it came with the condition that they not reproduce.
The problem is the poor have more kids than the wealthy and they keep replicating themselves.
It won't end well.
You forgot the option where the poor become a large and dissatisfied enough class that they force a change in the system, violently or not.
That works, right up until the government figures out how to build battle droids...
Laugh all you want, if they actually had millions of them, your "poor violent uprising" wouldn't get 10 feet.
How about I give you a third option? Stop being so greedy and expecting more than 20% profit. You can do that, right?
If you're happy with 10% profit, by all means, start a business and run that existing business out of business by undercutting them.
Or are you all talk?
If your business requires paying wages that are so low that your workers can't make a living and to survive are still welfare and foodstamps (that my tax dollars pay for) despite working full time then your business plan is broken.
You assume those are the only two options...
Lets say the min wage was raised to $30/hr tomorrow...
Does this mean McDonald's is screwed? Does this mean that all current McDonald's workers get a GREAT PAY RAISE?
No, of course not... It suddenly would make sense to completely automate a McDonald's restaurant, you'd have one or two $30/hr managers and the rest would be robots.
Yes, yes, you say that people would be needed to service and maintain the robots. Yes, but most of the people losing their jobs aren't remotely qualified for that job and you won't need a million of them.
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I challenge you to look up the number of people who work in fast food in this country, imagine if half of them lost their jobs to robots tomorrow.
What would they all do?
You are quite right. The savings in labor are then passed right along to the consumer who uses it to hire the worker doing some other task which cannot be robot automated as easily, such as, to give a trivial example, baby sitting.
The U6 unemployment rate would seem to indicate that there is a limit to this.
Not all workers are suited to all possible jobs.
The only way this could be a more blatant "Conservative" Propaganda site is if they named it Hitler Youth Life
The irony is that you seem to not know what the actual name of the Nazi party really was:
We called them the Nazi Party in English, but their actual abbreviation was "NSDAP"
What does that stand for in German?
National Socialist German Workers' Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Read up, you might learn something...
Australia has a minimum wage of around $17USD/hour (around $20AUD) which increases 20% if you are a casual. Our poor people do well.
Yes, and everything COSTS TOO DAMM MUCH MONEY THERE...
My wife is from Australia, she would like to move there but the prices are NUTS!
Everything is about twice the price it is in the US, no thanks...
You know how everyone whines about big corporates making too much money; well this is the best way to redistribute that wealth.
Nonsense, they just raise their prices...
Because 135 billion alone in 1940 is 2.2 trillion to 2.3 trillion of today in constant dollar. Any CPI calculator will confirm that baring a few % +/-. The delta of 900 million is from federal programs which did NOT exists in 1940. From environmental protection, drug enforcement, NASA, EPA, etc...etc...
You didn't bother to read the whole thing...
The government didn't take in 135 billion in 1940, that is the INFLATION ADJUSTED NUMBER...
No, it won't. Prices of goods do not increase simply because the employees of commerce are more expensive. This will not increase the value of the product, thus increasing the price of the product will cause consumers to shop elsewhere. Supply and demand is the only thing that increases the prices of products.
Yes, it will...
The average cost of a hamburger has to go up as labor costs rise. This is no different to the cost of a hamburger going up because the cost of beef went up...
Now they may well sell fewer hamburgers as the price goes up and as they sell fewer of them, they'll need fewer employees...
Hi. Take a business or economics course. Stop making shit up about which you obviously have no business talking about.
I would give you the same advice...
If my labor costs nearly double, something has to give. If my profit margin was 10% before and is now -5% because of this increase, the price will either go up or I'll go out of business and everyone is out of work.
It is amazingly simple...
There should be no jobs that don't allow for the worker to be self-sufficient.
So... You'd rather they be unemployed?
If I have work to do that is worth $10/hr to me to have done, but not $15/hr, I shouldn't have the option to offer $10/hr?
It should be $15/hr, or nothing?
Because they represent the people who make the system actually work?
Sure, but that doesn't answer the question...
Their "wants" are not in the public self-interest, they are only in their own self interest.
They directly benefit from NOT improving the train system...
And frankly, if we automate the trains, then they won't be needed at all...
* Time Compliance Technical Order - at least that's what the USAF used to call it. Dunno what they call it nowadays in the civilian world.
The FAA calls them ADs, or Airworthiness Directives... You must comply with them for the aircraft's Airworthiness Certificate to remain valid.
An Emergency AD can be issued that takes effect right away, which is how the FAA often will "ground planes until they are fixed".
Not a Mustang or American Mussel Car guy, more of a European sports car kind of guy since I actually like to do something other than go straight.
Your knowledge of the Mustang is out of date, they have gotten a LOT better recently...
I drove the new 2015 Mustang GT a few months ago, what a much nicer car that has become, it is finally civil...
Still nose heavy, but for the price it is darn hard to beat. The EcoBoost is actually better balanced, but I'm such a V8 person I honestly wouldn't buy one. But if you want a slalom car, the EcoBoost is the one to get...
And this is why I hate the idea of self driving cars. It's an insane amount of complexity to make a car self-driving. For a fraction of that effort (although a lot more pain an initial expense) we could lay down rails through every suburb and have automated travel cars. It would require a fraction of the processing power; even with you account for all the sensors to prevent the cars from running over little kids and such.
That works if you're King and can demand that everyone turn in their existing vehicles at once.
The trick to self-driving cars is they have to be able to share the road with a lot of other things, from bicycles, to human-driven cars, to horses in some places.
The train engineers union dont want that.
Stupid question...
Why do we care what the train engineers union wants or doesn't want?
Why do they get any say?
I wouldn't mind that. People still keep horses and use them they are just aren't a common mode of transport.
Yep, you'll still be able to have your V8 powered Mustang Convertible...
You just won't be able to drive it on the interstate... The track might be your only option...