The places I want to go are NEVER on the direct route between A and B. Oregon sunstones are more than 70 miles from the nearest gas station, and the last 30 miles are gravel. That's 140 miles of poor gas milage with no chance for a fill up.
Back roads to trail heads at Paulina Lake, into the Strawberry Mountains, or the fossil beds are even worse.
Once you get out of Mama's basement, there is a wonderful world out there to explore. Using MPG rather than some other fuel consumption measure makes those explorations just a little bit easier.
Quite apart from the random ad hominem, saying that we should use MPG because it's marginally more useful for a tiny share of total trips taken in the US, and only in those cases for the small portion of cars that don't have distance to empty available, and for the drivers of those cars who can't be bothered to fill up at a gas station before venturing out on a 150 mile round trip, just doesn't make sense. Somewhere, there might be someone who has once made a trip in a car where the odometer had been customized to read in rods, and the only local gas station had a software problem with the pumps, so they read in hogsheads for a day. That doesn't mean Grandpa Simpson was right.
Finally, using MPG doesn't really tell you anything for the purpose you're talking about. You care about RANGE, not fuel economy. If you're starting off on that 140 mile round trip without gas stations, and your gas gauge reads half full, and your car gets 25MPG, you could be in great shape (if you have a 20 gallon tank) or screwed (if you have a 12 gallon tank).
Visit Germany sometime. You'll see a LOT of 4 cylinder cars doing more than 120mph. The BMW 520d (4 cylinder Diesel) maxes out at about 140. Also gets (real world) about 40MPG.
Here's one easy solution to your problem - when the tank hits 1/3 full, stop at the next gas station. There are VERY VERY few places in the US where the direct route from A to Z is 100 miles long and doesn't pass a single gas station.
No, what I really care about is, "can I make it to the next fuel stop with what I have in the tank." Which is not a problem in most of Europe, but is very much a problem in large parts of the USA.
So, what you really want is range, not MPG? If that's the case, then you'd be indifferent between a car with the identical performance specs that gets 20MPG and has a 20 gallon tank, and one that gets 40MPG and has a 10 gallon tank. 400 mile range in both cases.
Because it's optically deceptive when talking about absolute numbers. Going from 30 to 35MPG is a 5MPG increase. Going from 10 to 15MPG is also a 5MPG increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 14%. In the second, by 33%. So, a 5MPG improvement in fuel economy means very different things depending on your starting position.
In contrast, if we use gallons per 100 miles, an absolute change of X means the same change in your bill, regardless of where you start.
Fundamentally, we're not interested in how far we can go on X gallons of gas, we're interested in how much gas it will take us to drive to our destination. GPM lets us compare that directly, while MPG doesn't.
What possible benefit is there to taxing fuel, other than to hand more money to the government to waste?
Oh, yeah, I forgot, it lets you force people into small cars they don't want, or force poor people onto buses.
Why do you hate the poor? What did they ever do to you?
The rationale for taxing fuel is to capture the externalities (pollution, climate, military costs) of using that fuel. The point about the regressiveness of the gas tax is valid, so we should raise the gas tax, but add a refundable credit to income taxes for it, to remove the regressiveness.
As I said, the numbers would vary based on drivers, but get a large enough sample, and you'd be able to iron out some of that, so that the results would be "here's what the model XYZ's typical buyer is getting." Would be a bit problematic for someone buying outside of a model's typical demographic (leadfoot buying a minivan, granny buying a Porsche), but would still be more useful than what we have now.
It's true, though. For most cars, fuel economy declines as speeds climb past 55-60mph (wind resistance being non-linear). You're trading off fuel for time - get there faster, but use more fuel. We should let people make that tradeoff for themselves, however. Just price fuel appropriately (including the externalities of climate, military expenditures, etc.), and let drivers decide.
Practically every card on the road today has a feature which calculates MPG (or L/100KM) historically. Just add a data field in the car's computer that keeps the historical number, even if the one on the dash is reset, and download it from a % of cars at their annual inspection. Won't help for new models, but will, over a couple of years, develop a very robust data set saying "the Ford Model XYZ tested at X MPG, but real world MPG are Y." Not flawless, naturally, since a different set of drivers for each vehicle will mean that the results aren't entirely because of the car (take the drivers of Buicks, and put them in Porsches, and they'll probably get better MPG than the average Porsche driver will), but will give a good indication to a person buying the Porsche (who's probably in the "Porsche driver" bucket anyway) of what he/she can actually expect.
Correct. Tower-based location became mandatory (minimum 95% of operating devices supporting it) in 2005, but GPS in phones won't be mandatory until 2018.
Actually, you can hotspot, but only on Android. One of Verizon's 700MHz licenses came with the stipulation that VZ has to allow any application to run. So, they can't ban the PDA Net application, which lets you run a hotspot on your Android phone. There presumably could be a comparable app for iPhone, but Apple hasn't allowed it through the app store. Don't know if there's a similar app for jailbroken iPhones, though.
Bottom line, you can definitely have a hotspot (for no extra charge) as part of your Verizon unlimited data plan, but only (AFAIK) if you have an Android phone. App costs $5 if I remember correctly.
Huh? You were the one who made the judgment that families don't need more than one television. I merely pointed out that, your opinion aside, the average family has three.
That assumes you have a HTPC. Many people don't. Also, it lets you put the content on any TV in the house, rather than just the one next to the HTPC (assuming you have one). Finally, it's very straightforward to use - pull up what you want on your iPad/iPhone/Android phone/Android tablet, tap the cast icon, and you're up and running.
In the articles you cite, it's clear, in a face-to-face transaction, unless there's evidence that the merchant failed to observe the security protocols (i.e. the signatures clearly don't match), the bank eats the cost. The article notes that the banks have been tightening up, and not cutting vendors as much slack as to whether they observed the security protocols or not. That said, it's clear from both articles that, in face-to-face transactions, the bank eats the majority of the costs of fraud. Not so in an online transaction.
As for your experience with photo ID, the employee should be in trouble, at least if it was Visa or MC. The merchant agreement prohibits requiring ID. You can ask for it, but if the customer doesn't want to provide it, you can't make it a condition of completing the transaction.
"Usually, however, it is the banks that get hurt the most."
Bottom line (and there are exceptions), merchants aren't on the hook if it's a face-to-face transaction. If it's an online transaction, the merchant usually does end up liable.
to how taxes were done right after WWII. 39% across the board for all companies. Close the loophole. If you have "a" presence in a given country, you pay taxes in that country
Except that's not how US taxes work - the US says, you pay US tax on ALL your corporate income. If Apple makes a phone in China and sells it in Germany, the US says that the profit on that sale is taxable. That's highly unusual (unique, actually) among major developed economies.
Actually, in the areas we're talking about, people would be much better off drinking Coke than water - the reduced risk from waterborne disease far outweighs the negatives from the sugar.
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The places I want to go are NEVER on the direct route between A and B. Oregon sunstones are more than 70 miles from the nearest gas station, and the last 30 miles are gravel. That's 140 miles of poor gas milage with no chance for a fill up.
Back roads to trail heads at Paulina Lake, into the Strawberry Mountains, or the fossil beds are even worse.
Once you get out of Mama's basement, there is a wonderful world out there to explore. Using MPG rather than some other fuel consumption measure makes those explorations just a little bit easier.
Quite apart from the random ad hominem, saying that we should use MPG because it's marginally more useful for a tiny share of total trips taken in the US, and only in those cases for the small portion of cars that don't have distance to empty available, and for the drivers of those cars who can't be bothered to fill up at a gas station before venturing out on a 150 mile round trip, just doesn't make sense. Somewhere, there might be someone who has once made a trip in a car where the odometer had been customized to read in rods, and the only local gas station had a software problem with the pumps, so they read in hogsheads for a day. That doesn't mean Grandpa Simpson was right.
Finally, using MPG doesn't really tell you anything for the purpose you're talking about. You care about RANGE, not fuel economy. If you're starting off on that 140 mile round trip without gas stations, and your gas gauge reads half full, and your car gets 25MPG, you could be in great shape (if you have a 20 gallon tank) or screwed (if you have a 12 gallon tank).
Visit Germany sometime. You'll see a LOT of 4 cylinder cars doing more than 120mph. The BMW 520d (4 cylinder Diesel) maxes out at about 140. Also gets (real world) about 40MPG.
Here's one easy solution to your problem - when the tank hits 1/3 full, stop at the next gas station. There are VERY VERY few places in the US where the direct route from A to Z is 100 miles long and doesn't pass a single gas station.
No, what I really care about is, "can I make it to the next fuel stop with what I have in the tank." Which is not a problem in most of Europe, but is very much a problem in large parts of the USA.
So, what you really want is range, not MPG? If that's the case, then you'd be indifferent between a car with the identical performance specs that gets 20MPG and has a 20 gallon tank, and one that gets 40MPG and has a 10 gallon tank. 400 mile range in both cases.
Because it's optically deceptive when talking about absolute numbers. Going from 30 to 35MPG is a 5MPG increase. Going from 10 to 15MPG is also a 5MPG increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 14%. In the second, by 33%. So, a 5MPG improvement in fuel economy means very different things depending on your starting position.
In contrast, if we use gallons per 100 miles, an absolute change of X means the same change in your bill, regardless of where you start.
Fundamentally, we're not interested in how far we can go on X gallons of gas, we're interested in how much gas it will take us to drive to our destination. GPM lets us compare that directly, while MPG doesn't.
What possible benefit is there to taxing fuel, other than to hand more money to the government to waste?
Oh, yeah, I forgot, it lets you force people into small cars they don't want, or force poor people onto buses.
Why do you hate the poor? What did they ever do to you?
The rationale for taxing fuel is to capture the externalities (pollution, climate, military costs) of using that fuel. The point about the regressiveness of the gas tax is valid, so we should raise the gas tax, but add a refundable credit to income taxes for it, to remove the regressiveness.
As I said, the numbers would vary based on drivers, but get a large enough sample, and you'd be able to iron out some of that, so that the results would be "here's what the model XYZ's typical buyer is getting." Would be a bit problematic for someone buying outside of a model's typical demographic (leadfoot buying a minivan, granny buying a Porsche), but would still be more useful than what we have now.
It's true, though. For most cars, fuel economy declines as speeds climb past 55-60mph (wind resistance being non-linear). You're trading off fuel for time - get there faster, but use more fuel. We should let people make that tradeoff for themselves, however. Just price fuel appropriately (including the externalities of climate, military expenditures, etc.), and let drivers decide.
Practically every card on the road today has a feature which calculates MPG (or L/100KM) historically. Just add a data field in the car's computer that keeps the historical number, even if the one on the dash is reset, and download it from a % of cars at their annual inspection. Won't help for new models, but will, over a couple of years, develop a very robust data set saying "the Ford Model XYZ tested at X MPG, but real world MPG are Y." Not flawless, naturally, since a different set of drivers for each vehicle will mean that the results aren't entirely because of the car (take the drivers of Buicks, and put them in Porsches, and they'll probably get better MPG than the average Porsche driver will), but will give a good indication to a person buying the Porsche (who's probably in the "Porsche driver" bucket anyway) of what he/she can actually expect.
If you're making $2/day (pretty typical for a small Indian farmer), then the difference between a $35 phone and a $100 phone is a month's wages.
Correct. Tower-based location became mandatory (minimum 95% of operating devices supporting it) in 2005, but GPS in phones won't be mandatory until 2018.
"Comcast and Time Warner together control most of the Internet services in the country."
Only for values of "most" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, you can hotspot, but only on Android. One of Verizon's 700MHz licenses came with the stipulation that VZ has to allow any application to run. So, they can't ban the PDA Net application, which lets you run a hotspot on your Android phone. There presumably could be a comparable app for iPhone, but Apple hasn't allowed it through the app store. Don't know if there's a similar app for jailbroken iPhones, though.
Bottom line, you can definitely have a hotspot (for no extra charge) as part of your Verizon unlimited data plan, but only (AFAIK) if you have an Android phone. App costs $5 if I remember correctly.
Oh, I get it now. Perhaps I should have said "US households have a mean of just below 3 televisions." The median, if I recall correctly, is three.
I'm very familiar with the Judgment of Solomon. Can you explain what it has to do with a family's choice about how many TV's to own?
Huh? You were the one who made the judgment that families don't need more than one television. I merely pointed out that, your opinion aside, the average family has three.
Some people have one TV and multiple computers, I think. It's strange. Families don't need multiple televisions.
Families don't need televisions at all. That said, the average US home has just shy of three TVs.
That assumes you have a HTPC. Many people don't. Also, it lets you put the content on any TV in the house, rather than just the one next to the HTPC (assuming you have one). Finally, it's very straightforward to use - pull up what you want on your iPad/iPhone/Android phone/Android tablet, tap the cast icon, and you're up and running.
To which Visa/MC will simply respond that they no longer want to do business with the merchant.
With the localcast app, you can play pretty much any video from your android device. Works great.
In the articles you cite, it's clear, in a face-to-face transaction, unless there's evidence that the merchant failed to observe the security protocols (i.e. the signatures clearly don't match), the bank eats the cost. The article notes that the banks have been tightening up, and not cutting vendors as much slack as to whether they observed the security protocols or not. That said, it's clear from both articles that, in face-to-face transactions, the bank eats the majority of the costs of fraud. Not so in an online transaction.
As for your experience with photo ID, the employee should be in trouble, at least if it was Visa or MC. The merchant agreement prohibits requiring ID. You can ask for it, but if the customer doesn't want to provide it, you can't make it a condition of completing the transaction.
Did you actually read that story?
"Usually, however, it is the banks that get hurt the most."
Bottom line (and there are exceptions), merchants aren't on the hook if it's a face-to-face transaction. If it's an online transaction, the merchant usually does end up liable.
to how taxes were done right after WWII. 39% across the board for all companies. Close the loophole. If you have "a" presence in a given country, you pay taxes in that country
Except that's not how US taxes work - the US says, you pay US tax on ALL your corporate income. If Apple makes a phone in China and sells it in Germany, the US says that the profit on that sale is taxable. That's highly unusual (unique, actually) among major developed economies.
European style is to sit at a table and be served by a waiter.
Ever been to an Italian espresso bar?
Actually, in the areas we're talking about, people would be much better off drinking Coke than water - the reduced risk from waterborne disease far outweighs the negatives from the sugar.