You are ignoring how economies of scale affect efficiency and pollution.
Because of their large scale, power plants achieve efficiency levels that are far above and pollution levels far below what could never be achieved in a tiny internal combustion engine, even when you account for the losses incurred by the transport of electricity.
Even when coal is used to generate electricity, electric cars are still on par with gasoline cars.
A charging infrastructure is far cheaper to build out that an CNG refueling infrastructure and the great thing about electric is that it doesn't matter what is being used to generate the power on the back-end.
In the mean time, while the limitations to battery technology are addressed, the most logical bridge is not some other fuel; it's hybrid and plugin hybrid cars which leverage existing gasoline infrastructure.
So what about people who buy that electric car and find out that their electric rate is going up?
When adjusted for inflation, electricity rates have been completely flat for the past several decades.
Not to mention that the electric car costs more per mile to drive over it's life and is less comfortable, less safe and limited in range.
The true cost of electric cars is higher than equivalent ICE cars right now when you take away subsidies, but battery costs have been plummeting at an alarming rate, which will bring parity in the next few years. You are simply wrong about safety and comfort. Range can an issue.
I'd advocate moving towards Natural Gas powered cars myself. It's cheap,
Natural gas is cheap, but it is subject to the same price fluctuations as other fossil fuels and it still puts a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere. No matter which fuel source you choose, nothing is efficient as an electric vehicle.
Our agricultural economy makes up barely 2% of the state's GDP. It's only a problem for the plantation owners and their quasi slave labor in the middle of the state. Unfortunately, those plantation owners give a shitload of money to state politicians in order to make sure production trumps sustainability.
California does not grow "most of the food in the country." California does grow most of the Artichokes, Strawberries and Almonds, but those are hardly staples like corn and wheat, which are not grown in California in any significant amount.
In CA, the disparity in property taxes is not why some public schools have more money than other public schools. While there are some problems with how it is implemented, in CA, school funding is mandated to be equal, regardless of the local property tax revenues.
The inequity comes in when you factor in private fundraising.
I don't think Apple plays that game. The discounts they give for volume purchases are close to zero.
The community college district I work for did a big ipad rollout with zero input from IT. The bulk discount we got on ipads was trivial; something like $10 per unit.
Our district is small compared to LAUSD and the kind of rollout was a little different, but the story sounds eerily similar.
Apple wines and dines administrators on their campus, promises them the world in order to get them to buy into the Apple ecosystem, which makes Microsoft's lock-in strategy from the late 1990s look tame by comparison.
I live down in Kings County, which affectionately call "Mississippi, CA."
Recently, the state passed the first groundwater regulation in CA's history, only to fuck it up by placing the job of regulation in the hands of local municipalities.
The problem with that?
Farmers hold the vast majority of political offices here.
You're not counting groundwater. Nut crops are so profitable that farmers can afford to drill million dollar wells to make up for their lack of surface water allocations and still make money.
California's groundwater is completely unregulated and at this moment, and our aquifers, which take thousands of years to build up, are being irreparably damaged.
1) Absolutely correct. There is nothing wrong with greywater. It's used where I live. But it's not nearly enough.
2) Too much. People here is the valley always bring up desalination as some magic bullet, not understanding how expensive desalinated water actually is.
Desalinated water costs about $1000 per acre foot (325,000 gallons) at the source. I don't know what the price would climb to given the energy required to move the volume of water farmers use, but I'm pretty sure it would be substantial.
Meanwhile, farmers are used to buying surface water sourced from the aqueducts and reservoirs at $150.00 per acre-foot.
There could be a hypothetical scenario where farmers would shell out the enormous price for desalinated water, but as soon as the rains returned and the inland surface water resources became available again, the desalination plants would have to be shuttered due to lack of demand.
Not sure where you're from, but I grew up in and live in the Central valley, and I'm not exactly a big fan of the Ag industry.
The water problem is mostly a nut (Almost, Pistachios, Walnuts) problem, which are cash crops. If the price of nuts spike, nobody is going to go hungry and nobody's grocery bill is going to skyrocket. Farmers are already fallowing almost all row crops due to the higher price of pumping water over surface water and the lower profit margins. Row crops are what people actually eat, yet prices are not spiking out of control. This is because, contrary to what people here in the valley actually think, the world and nation does not depend on California to eat. Our food markets are world markets. For a few months out of the year here, things like lettuce and tomatoes are very cheap, because they are in season. For the rest of the year, the prices are higher, but not unaffordable. We're talking $0.99/lb vs $1.99/lb for tomatoes two months out of the year.
There already are many large portions congressional districts with 50% unemployment. Normal unemployment for these districts is 25%, so this is only a recession for these areas. Most of the unemployed are exploited undocumented immigrants who are intentionally hired by crooked labor contractors who know exactly who they are hiring but pretend not to.
Ag makes up, at best, 2% of California's GDP, yet this relatively small industry spends big time money of politicians. As a result, Ag is severely under regulated and in my opinion, their volume/profit driven business models are doing more harm than good to our state.
What do you think those companies will do if you increase their taxes? Roll over and just fork it over even if it puts them in the red?
I'll say this in the nicest way possible.
You're a fucking idiot.
Corporate taxes cannot, by definition, put a business "in the red" as they are levied only on net profits after expenses. Personal taxes on the other hand are on all revenue minus whatever small deductions (usual only the standard deduction) are available. Until we tax corporations on their gross revenue, or only tax individuals on money left over after expenses, comparing them directly is disingenuous.
I didn't go on a rant. I explained where you are misinformed.
If I have no taxable income, or even better, no income at all, am I still liable for the penalty 'tax'?
No.
From the ACA Wiki article:
Under the mandatory coverage provision, individuals who are not covered by an acceptable insurance policy will be charged an annual penalty of $95, or up to 1% of income over the filing minimum,[115] whichever is greater; this will rise to a minimum of $695 ($2,085 for families),[116] or 2.5% of income over the filing minimum,[115] by 2016.[18][117] The penalty is prorated, meaning that if a person or family have coverage for part of the year they won't be liable if they lack coverage for less than a three-month period during the year.[118] Exemptions are permitted for religious reasons, members of health care sharing ministries, or for those for whom the least expensive policy would exceed 8% of their income.
"B" is an insurance company funded ploy to strip the states ability to regulate their own health insurance markets. What would happen is that health insurance companies would all operate from one or a handful of states with the least regulation.
Maybe in the long run it would force states to implement their own state based socialized medicine, but in the short run it would do nothing to help consumers.
How in the hell did this post end up at +5? It is a pile of uninformed nonsense.
Government at the state level have been forcing citizens to make certain purchases in the commercial market in order to participate in the economy decades. This includes things like auto insurance, disability insurance, pollution control devices. Massachusetts in particular has required individual citizens to purchase health insurance for years now.
The only novelty here was that the law was at the federal level, and contrary to your assertion, there is no threat of a fine or arrest. The Supreme Court's ruling specifically stated that the "fine" imposed by the Affordable Care Act was not a fine because it was a tax, and congress has the power to tax for any reason. Congress has a long history of imposing discriminatory taxes in order to encourage certain economic behavior. The penalty in the ACA is just one more example.
Just as you can opt out of many of the state level requirements by not participating in the economic activity that the various regulation affect, you also opt out of the federal requirements by choosing not to participate in the economy, or by simply choosing to pay the "fine".
The government's long-running attempts to mitigate the social problem of violence by regulating the supply of firearms is about to evaporate.
The goal of limiting access to guns is to curb gun violence, not violence in general. Non-gun-violence in general is unfortunate, but leads to death a fraction of the time gun violence does.
So I guess we'll get to see if the government responds by finally trying to deal with the actual cause of the social problem in question
Slashdot Mirror
You are ignoring how economies of scale affect efficiency and pollution.
Because of their large scale, power plants achieve efficiency levels that are far above and pollution levels far below what could never be achieved in a tiny internal combustion engine, even when you account for the losses incurred by the transport of electricity.
Even when coal is used to generate electricity, electric cars are still on par with gasoline cars.
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_ve...
A charging infrastructure is far cheaper to build out that an CNG refueling infrastructure and the great thing about electric is that it doesn't matter what is being used to generate the power on the back-end.
In the mean time, while the limitations to battery technology are addressed, the most logical bridge is not some other fuel; it's hybrid and plugin hybrid cars which leverage existing gasoline infrastructure.
Our solution by Food Service Solutions has a hard-coded superuser admin account with the username of "a" and the password of "a."
It's used by thousands of institutions.
You can't disable it.
So what about people who buy that electric car and find out that their electric rate is going up?
When adjusted for inflation, electricity rates have been completely flat for the past several decades.
Not to mention that the electric car costs more per mile to drive over it's life and is less comfortable, less safe and limited in range.
The true cost of electric cars is higher than equivalent ICE cars right now when you take away subsidies, but battery costs have been plummeting at an alarming rate, which will bring parity in the next few years. You are simply wrong about safety and comfort. Range can an issue.
I'd advocate moving towards Natural Gas powered cars myself. It's cheap,
Natural gas is cheap, but it is subject to the same price fluctuations as other fossil fuels and it still puts a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere. No matter which fuel source you choose, nothing is efficient as an electric vehicle.
Unfortunately, if you dump it straight back into the ocean without carefully dispersing it, it can end up killing all of sea life around it.
Our agricultural economy makes up barely 2% of the state's GDP. It's only a problem for the plantation owners and their quasi slave labor in the middle of the state. Unfortunately, those plantation owners give a shitload of money to state politicians in order to make sure production trumps sustainability.
I've read the most of the alfalfa grown in CA is actually shipped to China to feed Chinese cows.
California does not grow "most of the food in the country." California does grow most of the Artichokes, Strawberries and Almonds, but those are hardly staples like corn and wheat, which are not grown in California in any significant amount.
In CA, the disparity in property taxes is not why some public schools have more money than other public schools. While there are some problems with how it is implemented, in CA, school funding is mandated to be equal, regardless of the local property tax revenues.
The inequity comes in when you factor in private fundraising.
I don't think Apple plays that game. The discounts they give for volume purchases are close to zero.
The community college district I work for did a big ipad rollout with zero input from IT. The bulk discount we got on ipads was trivial; something like $10 per unit.
Our district is small compared to LAUSD and the kind of rollout was a little different, but the story sounds eerily similar.
Apple wines and dines administrators on their campus, promises them the world in order to get them to buy into the Apple ecosystem, which makes Microsoft's lock-in strategy from the late 1990s look tame by comparison.
Think people struggling with 6 /3/4 x 2 1/3 is depressing?
Drop a simple math problem that requires knowledge of order of operations (1+1+1+1+1+1x0+1) on facebook and watch as 90% of your friends get it wrong.
Flood irrigation with water from where? There is no surface water left.
Ground water? Do you believe in perpetual motion machines too?
Thank you.
I live down in Kings County, which affectionately call "Mississippi, CA."
Recently, the state passed the first groundwater regulation in CA's history, only to fuck it up by placing the job of regulation in the hands of local municipalities.
The problem with that?
Farmers hold the vast majority of political offices here.
You're not counting groundwater. Nut crops are so profitable that farmers can afford to drill million dollar wells to make up for their lack of surface water allocations and still make money.
California's groundwater is completely unregulated and at this moment, and our aquifers, which take thousands of years to build up, are being irreparably damaged.
Not having the contract renewed how people with contracts get fired.
1) Absolutely correct. There is nothing wrong with greywater. It's used where I live. But it's not nearly enough.
2) Too much. People here is the valley always bring up desalination as some magic bullet, not understanding how expensive desalinated water actually is.
Desalinated water costs about $1000 per acre foot (325,000 gallons) at the source. I don't know what the price would climb to given the energy required to move the volume of water farmers use, but I'm pretty sure it would be substantial.
Meanwhile, farmers are used to buying surface water sourced from the aqueducts and reservoirs at $150.00 per acre-foot.
There could be a hypothetical scenario where farmers would shell out the enormous price for desalinated water, but as soon as the rains returned and the inland surface water resources became available again, the desalination plants would have to be shuttered due to lack of demand.
Not sure where you're from, but I grew up in and live in the Central valley, and I'm not exactly a big fan of the Ag industry.
The water problem is mostly a nut (Almost, Pistachios, Walnuts) problem, which are cash crops. If the price of nuts spike, nobody is going to go hungry and nobody's grocery bill is going to skyrocket. Farmers are already fallowing almost all row crops due to the higher price of pumping water over surface water and the lower profit margins. Row crops are what people actually eat, yet prices are not spiking out of control. This is because, contrary to what people here in the valley actually think, the world and nation does not depend on California to eat. Our food markets are world markets. For a few months out of the year here, things like lettuce and tomatoes are very cheap, because they are in season. For the rest of the year, the prices are higher, but not unaffordable. We're talking $0.99/lb vs $1.99/lb for tomatoes two months out of the year.
There already are many large portions congressional districts with 50% unemployment. Normal unemployment for these districts is 25%, so this is only a recession for these areas. Most of the unemployed are exploited undocumented immigrants who are intentionally hired by crooked labor contractors who know exactly who they are hiring but pretend not to.
Ag makes up, at best, 2% of California's GDP, yet this relatively small industry spends big time money of politicians. As a result, Ag is severely under regulated and in my opinion, their volume/profit driven business models are doing more harm than good to our state.
Here is a site which refutes your claims and does cite courses. Enjoy.
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_ve...
What do you think those companies will do if you increase their taxes? Roll over and just fork it over even if it puts them in the red?
I'll say this in the nicest way possible.
You're a fucking idiot.
Corporate taxes cannot, by definition, put a business "in the red" as they are levied only on net profits after expenses. Personal taxes on the other hand are on all revenue minus whatever small deductions (usual only the standard deduction) are available. Until we tax corporations on their gross revenue, or only tax individuals on money left over after expenses, comparing them directly is disingenuous.
Sure, small-scale micro transactions can occur, but anything on a mass scale requires a certain level of central management.
Nobody is going to build a sneaker factory without a reasonable expectation of security and stability around the locale.
I didn't go on a rant. I explained where you are misinformed.
If I have no taxable income, or even better, no income at all, am I still liable for the penalty 'tax'?
No.
From the ACA Wiki article:
Under the mandatory coverage provision, individuals who are not covered by an acceptable insurance policy will be charged an annual penalty of $95, or up to 1% of income over the filing minimum,[115] whichever is greater; this will rise to a minimum of $695 ($2,085 for families),[116] or 2.5% of income over the filing minimum,[115] by 2016.[18][117] The penalty is prorated, meaning that if a person or family have coverage for part of the year they won't be liable if they lack coverage for less than a three-month period during the year.[118] Exemptions are permitted for religious reasons, members of health care sharing ministries, or for those for whom the least expensive policy would exceed 8% of their income.
"B" is an insurance company funded ploy to strip the states ability to regulate their own health insurance markets. What would happen is that health insurance companies would all operate from one or a handful of states with the least regulation.
Maybe in the long run it would force states to implement their own state based socialized medicine, but in the short run it would do nothing to help consumers.
don't have to pay the fine/tax/fine/tax?
Hey...It's a fine tax if you ask me!
How in the hell did this post end up at +5? It is a pile of uninformed nonsense.
Government at the state level have been forcing citizens to make certain purchases in the commercial market in order to participate in the economy decades. This includes things like auto insurance, disability insurance, pollution control devices. Massachusetts in particular has required individual citizens to purchase health insurance for years now.
The only novelty here was that the law was at the federal level, and contrary to your assertion, there is no threat of a fine or arrest. The Supreme Court's ruling specifically stated that the "fine" imposed by the Affordable Care Act was not a fine because it was a tax, and congress has the power to tax for any reason. Congress has a long history of imposing discriminatory taxes in order to encourage certain economic behavior. The penalty in the ACA is just one more example.
Just as you can opt out of many of the state level requirements by not participating in the economic activity that the various regulation affect, you also opt out of the federal requirements by choosing not to participate in the economy, or by simply choosing to pay the "fine".
The government's long-running attempts to mitigate the social problem of violence by regulating the supply of firearms is about to evaporate.
The goal of limiting access to guns is to curb gun violence, not violence in general. Non-gun-violence in general is unfortunate, but leads to death a fraction of the time gun violence does.
So I guess we'll get to see if the government responds by finally trying to deal with the actual cause of the social problem in question
I'm curious as to what you think that cause is.
Administrative salaries and unnecessary technology.