He is not the first one. The popular racket is simple, they scan for rich doctor files accidentally left online. Once they find something, they offer a "security service" for $###,###. Sure, they don't report their paying "clients" to government for medical records protection violation. It doesn't apply to non-clients. It is not kiddie game.
You can make this or that excuse why this or that country is not good comparison - of course they are different and statistics accounts for different things and they are not easily comparable. But as you should have noticed yourself in Zurich, they live better in Switzerland, have McDonalds with clients, have people working and earning more in McDonalds and it works out for them just fine. And they certainly don't care why pure students or non-students from US can't afford McDonalds, it is not their concern. Median income doesn't account for income inequality, it is just medium and wages in McDonalds is far below medium and ratio of how far below medium is different.
How can you loose McDonalds type jobs? Are they going to outsource them to China;) ? No way, you will still have people who will eat in whatever places will be available if not McDonalds.
Yes, 5 is enough to see what happens - McDonald or whatever just pays more and these countries are just fine. No end of the world, economy is not destroyed, McDonald type joints are still open and hire people.
And there is no point to talk about average income before taxes and before medical insurance when you speak about close to minimum wage workers. Income inequality is on higher end in the US among developed countries. E.g. medical insurance without significant deductibles/copayments/excuses/private insurance tricks is provided to minimal wage earners in most of these countries for small fraction of their wages if any, and quality of medical service is typically better than in the US (especially if you compare to Medicaid but not just Medicaid), and you are not forced into bankruptcy/homelessness/death in a ditch if you get long lasting illness.
This scaremongering makes zero sense, there are plenty of countries with higher income than USA and they don't starve from unemployment, rather the opposite. Few positions that can be replaced by robots will be replaced anyway, as robots are getting cheaper and it makes business sense. Somebody capable of working in robotics will get employment and move up the latter leaving low qualification position for others. There are plenty of low qualification positions that can't be replaced.
No copper is going to save you if somebody targets you specifically. Big or not so big brother can just install hardware or software bug inside your computer and you will never know.
This lame beta level software named "autopilot" do not qualify as self-driving car. It will happily disconnect at any moment when it gets confused just before crashing the car and let a driver to hold the bag of liability as if driver somehow was "in control".
You would have to become some artificial intelligence engineer or artist and then you should be able afford all the products. Next question would be what to do with new dumb underclass that will be unable to do any engineering or service work. I guess they will get some basic income or whatever increased benefits will be called them. The same as now, but at higher level. Nothing is going to change really so much.
Why should they? All the electronics engineers and component suppliers are in China, not US. You can't bring anything to empty place, you need to have whole ecosystem and it is long gone.
Yes I'm talking about power-to-gas. Yes, it is in its infancy as solar/wind share in the electric grid is low and so there is no so much demand. But it has all the _seasonal_ storage and pipeline network the world needs, you just need to add electrolizers and make minor modifications to natural gas network. All the batteries, pumped hydro are for expensive short term storage or short term grid balancing and is not a substitute for long term storage from summer till winter. Regular hydro is fine for that purpose when excess capacity is available, but its capacity is clearly not enough and you can't add much more.
Economy doesn't work for most technically possible pumped storage projects. That is the reason pumped storage capacity is tiny and irrelevant fraction of already existing natural gas storage (that can be used for mixed or pure hydrogen too) capacity.
Most Model S owners complain about extremely fast tire wear, especially those with bigger rims option. Face it, there is nothing environmentally friendly about electron guzzlers, the same as with gas guzzlers. Both are dirty polluting hogs, even if one hog has "green" advertising sticker on it.
It is very popular BS to compare Model S with Audi A8 or Mercedes S. Model S is no match other than price tag. You may compare it to BMW 5 or something like that at best.
It may be true for "dirty diesel" operating with emission controls on, but not for "clean diesel" (TM) that has emission controls legally (or not) disabled because outside temperature is lower than 18 C or just because some CEO pushed to meet unrealistic targets.
Germany residential rate averages 0.30 EUR/kWh, not 0.15. 0.15 EUR is industrial rate, it is something like 0.06 USD in the US. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
Burning hydrogen or derived synthetic methane is not most efficient way to use it. Though this is what it is done in pilot plants in Germany. Hydrogen can be injected into existing natural gas network without too much issues. Fuel cells generating electricity from hydrogen can achieve higher efficiency than gas burning power plants, although capital cost is a bit high for now.
You are conveniently ignoring fracking fossil product that is the reason coal is pushed out in the US. Coal creates around 40% world electricity production, and natural gas (another fossil fuel) around 20%. Nuclear doesn't qualify as "clean" either even if it doesn't emit much carbon dioxide after construction phase. Total coal burning is going to increase for foreseeable future, even if its share may drop a bit *. And Musk is not going to stop selling his electron guzzlers in China even if it is truly powered by coal.
Money can be much much better spend by adding more thermal insulation to your attic, and properly sealing ductwork, and pressure testing it. It pays off faster. After that you may to change windows to higher thermal resistance ones, and add thermal insulation on walls if you are in North. Then you may change your appliances to energy efficient ones. Then you may change your A/C or heat pump to more efficient/variable one if it is really old, and downsize it couple of times in the process whatever brainwashing A/C salesmen are going to tell you about set in stone "role of thumb" to calculate heating/cooling load by square footage only or entering random defaults into load calculator instead of real data.
Solar panels go to the very end of the list. After you reach them, you may find that you don't need that many of them. And that they may not pay off even with net-metering incentive depending on your location, utility rate, financing interest rate, extra insurance/engineering costs. After all, wide-scale solar projects are reaching 3 cnt/kWh in purchase agreements now, you need good luck competing them with your own grid-dependent rooftop solar.
It will be automakers problem to replace airbags anyway. It is highly unlikely an automaker would be forced into bankruptcy because of airbag replacement on some of their cars.
Emission control systems in cars are certainly not useless, at least in countries where are emission inspections and most cars are not clunkers. Single automaker is bigger entity that is easier to control compared to dozen power plants all over the place. Sure automakers may attempt to cheat as well like VW did but they get burned afterwards.
It is really nice to move exhaust out of the cities but imagining that fossil fuel burning plant is somewhat cleaner is delusional. It is dirtier, just that it is far away from you and you can't see and don't bother.
Nice talking point, but it doesn't always happen in practice. E.g. sulfur emissions from power plants are by order of magnitudes higher than in transport. Chinese coal plants may have scrubbers but they are all turned off for economy once Western media leaves the plant after one day show.
The honest truth is that nothing on Internet or phone or computer is private. You must be nuts to believe in some overhyped security illusion on inherently insecure interconnected devices.
Ironically, what Apple has achieved is that it will not be able to fix its security issues. The exploits are going to be sold to law enforcement agencies, or just anybody ready to pay around the world, for big money and kept secret. Maybe the times when such bugs were send to vendor for free for fixing are long gone anyway, but such cases make it even worse.
Maybe it is the case with Tesla, but there are or will be other cheaper electric cars. Or they may have a choice of buying $25 + $10k for gas over the life of the car, or $35 for electric and e.g. $5k for electricity if their rate is low. Even if they earn $40-$70k/year, it may be more reasonable to buy a new car instead trying luck with old clunker that may require spending much more time/money on maintenance. Sure you can lease, but it is one more restriction that slashes potential customer base. In short, the tax credit law is a really bad design, and can be used as an example of welfare for rich people toys.
It doesn't go by by at once, it is slashed in half for some time. Besides that this US income tax credit is fully useful for relatively rich people only anyway. You need to be due these $7,500 in income taxes in single year and can't rollover credit to next year. For that you need around $56,000 taxable household income. That is income after standard $12,600/household or bigger itemized deduction, $4,000/person exemption, and all other various deductions. Gross income may need to be closer to $100,000 in practice to get this $7,500 in full. Median household income in the US is just a bit above $50,000.
Yes, assume it is lie and all your data is very secure and nobody can access it, even using heavy rusty wrench. Keep recording all your interesting activity in the phone. That is exactly what we need;)
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He is not the first one. The popular racket is simple, they scan for rich doctor files accidentally left online. Once they find something, they offer a "security service" for $###,###. Sure, they don't report their paying "clients" to government for medical records protection violation. It doesn't apply to non-clients. It is not kiddie game.
You can make this or that excuse why this or that country is not good comparison - of course they are different and statistics accounts for different things and they are not easily comparable. But as you should have noticed yourself in Zurich, they live better in Switzerland, have McDonalds with clients, have people working and earning more in McDonalds and it works out for them just fine. And they certainly don't care why pure students or non-students from US can't afford McDonalds, it is not their concern. Median income doesn't account for income inequality, it is just medium and wages in McDonalds is far below medium and ratio of how far below medium is different.
How can you loose McDonalds type jobs? Are they going to outsource them to China ;) ? No way, you will still have people who will eat in whatever places will be available if not McDonalds.
Yes, 5 is enough to see what happens - McDonald or whatever just pays more and these countries are just fine. No end of the world, economy is not destroyed, McDonald type joints are still open and hire people.
And there is no point to talk about average income before taxes and before medical insurance when you speak about close to minimum wage workers. Income inequality is on higher end in the US among developed countries. E.g. medical insurance without significant deductibles/copayments/excuses/private insurance tricks is provided to minimal wage earners in most of these countries for small fraction of their wages if any, and quality of medical service is typically better than in the US (especially if you compare to Medicaid but not just Medicaid), and you are not forced into bankruptcy/homelessness/death in a ditch if you get long lasting illness.
This scaremongering makes zero sense, there are plenty of countries with higher income than USA and they don't starve from unemployment, rather the opposite.
Few positions that can be replaced by robots will be replaced anyway, as robots are getting cheaper and it makes business sense. Somebody capable of working in robotics will get employment and move up the latter leaving low qualification position for others. There are plenty of low qualification positions that can't be replaced.
No copper is going to save you if somebody targets you specifically. Big or not so big brother can just install hardware or software bug inside your computer and you will never know.
This lame beta level software named "autopilot" do not qualify as self-driving car. It will happily disconnect at any moment when it gets confused just before crashing the car and let a driver to hold the bag of liability as if driver somehow was "in control".
You would have to become some artificial intelligence engineer or artist and then you should be able afford all the products.
Next question would be what to do with new dumb underclass that will be unable to do any engineering or service work. I guess they will get some basic income or whatever increased benefits will be called them. The same as now, but at higher level. Nothing is going to change really so much.
Why should they? All the electronics engineers and component suppliers are in China, not US. You can't bring anything to empty place, you need to have whole ecosystem and it is long gone.
Yes I'm talking about power-to-gas. Yes, it is in its infancy as solar/wind share in the electric grid is low and so there is no so much demand. But it has all the _seasonal_ storage and pipeline network the world needs, you just need to add electrolizers and make minor modifications to natural gas network. All the batteries, pumped hydro are for expensive short term storage or short term grid balancing and is not a substitute for long term storage from summer till winter. Regular hydro is fine for that purpose when excess capacity is available, but its capacity is clearly not enough and you can't add much more.
Economy doesn't work for most technically possible pumped storage projects. That is the reason pumped storage capacity is tiny and irrelevant fraction of already existing natural gas storage (that can be used for mixed or pure hydrogen too) capacity.
Most Model S owners complain about extremely fast tire wear, especially those with bigger rims option.
Face it, there is nothing environmentally friendly about electron guzzlers, the same as with gas guzzlers. Both are dirty polluting hogs, even if one hog has "green" advertising sticker on it.
It is very popular BS to compare Model S with Audi A8 or Mercedes S. Model S is no match other than price tag. You may compare it to BMW 5 or something like that at best.
It may be true for "dirty diesel" operating with emission controls on, but not for "clean diesel" (TM) that has emission controls legally (or not) disabled because outside temperature is lower than 18 C or just because some CEO pushed to meet unrealistic targets.
Germany residential rate averages 0.30 EUR/kWh, not 0.15. 0.15 EUR is industrial rate, it is something like 0.06 USD in the US.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
Burning hydrogen or derived synthetic methane is not most efficient way to use it. Though this is what it is done in pilot plants in Germany. Hydrogen can be injected into existing natural gas network without too much issues. Fuel cells generating electricity from hydrogen can achieve higher efficiency than gas burning power plants, although capital cost is a bit high for now.
You are conveniently ignoring fracking fossil product that is the reason coal is pushed out in the US. Coal creates around 40% world electricity production, and natural gas (another fossil fuel) around 20%. Nuclear doesn't qualify as "clean" either even if it doesn't emit much carbon dioxide after construction phase. Total coal burning is going to increase for foreseeable future, even if its share may drop a bit *. And Musk is not going to stop selling his electron guzzlers in China even if it is truly powered by coal.
* http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a...
Money can be much much better spend by adding more thermal insulation to your attic, and properly sealing ductwork, and pressure testing it. It pays off faster.
After that you may to change windows to higher thermal resistance ones, and add thermal insulation on walls if you are in North.
Then you may change your appliances to energy efficient ones.
Then you may change your A/C or heat pump to more efficient/variable one if it is really old, and downsize it couple of times in the process whatever brainwashing A/C salesmen are going to tell you about set in stone "role of thumb" to calculate heating/cooling load by square footage only or entering random defaults into load calculator instead of real data.
Solar panels go to the very end of the list. After you reach them, you may find that you don't need that many of them. And that they may not pay off even with net-metering incentive depending on your location, utility rate, financing interest rate, extra insurance/engineering costs. After all, wide-scale solar projects are reaching 3 cnt/kWh in purchase agreements now, you need good luck competing them with your own grid-dependent rooftop solar.
What a great revolutionary you become when you burn all investor money and need to raise more :/
It will be automakers problem to replace airbags anyway. It is highly unlikely an automaker would be forced into bankruptcy because of airbag replacement on some of their cars.
Emission control systems in cars are certainly not useless, at least in countries where are emission inspections and most cars are not clunkers.
Single automaker is bigger entity that is easier to control compared to dozen power plants all over the place. Sure automakers may attempt to cheat as well like VW did but they get burned afterwards.
It is really nice to move exhaust out of the cities but imagining that fossil fuel burning plant is somewhat cleaner is delusional. It is dirtier, just that it is far away from you and you can't see and don't bother.
Nice talking point, but it doesn't always happen in practice. E.g. sulfur emissions from power plants are by order of magnitudes higher than in transport. Chinese coal plants may have scrubbers but they are all turned off for economy once Western media leaves the plant after one day show.
The honest truth is that nothing on Internet or phone or computer is private. You must be nuts to believe in some overhyped security illusion on inherently insecure interconnected devices.
Ironically, what Apple has achieved is that it will not be able to fix its security issues. The exploits are going to be sold to law enforcement agencies, or just anybody ready to pay around the world, for big money and kept secret. Maybe the times when such bugs were send to vendor for free for fixing are long gone anyway, but such cases make it even worse.
Maybe it is the case with Tesla, but there are or will be other cheaper electric cars. Or they may have a choice of buying $25 + $10k for gas over the life of the car, or $35 for electric and e.g. $5k for electricity if their rate is low. Even if they earn $40-$70k/year, it may be more reasonable to buy a new car instead trying luck with old clunker that may require spending much more time/money on maintenance.
Sure you can lease, but it is one more restriction that slashes potential customer base. In short, the tax credit law is a really bad design, and can be used as an example of welfare for rich people toys.
It doesn't go by by at once, it is slashed in half for some time.
Besides that this US income tax credit is fully useful for relatively rich people only anyway. You need to be due these $7,500 in income taxes in single year and can't rollover credit to next year. For that you need around $56,000 taxable household income. That is income after standard $12,600/household or bigger itemized deduction, $4,000/person exemption, and all other various deductions. Gross income may need to be closer to $100,000 in practice to get this $7,500 in full. Median household income in the US is just a bit above $50,000.
Yes, assume it is lie and all your data is very secure and nobody can access it, even using heavy rusty wrench. Keep recording all your interesting activity in the phone. That is exactly what we need ;)