It's not government controlled, it's a set of rules on when information can be made public. There's a big difference - the news still has all its knowledge, it just has to sit on them for a bit as a general concept. During that time, the "facts" can be made clear, and then when things are reported, the likelihood of reporting facts increases. After all, reporting a "fact" that's not an actual fact should be considered libelous at the least. It's just that the press has been protected overly much from the effects of reporting those things under the guise of reporting details as they best knew them at the time. Those details aren't necessary except from a gossip or salacious point of view to appeal to those aspects.
I don't see a downside. There's still reports of people being arrested and for what base reason, but the names et al are withheld until actual charges occur. It seems to very much fall in line with the original concept of innocent until proven guilty.
AP, LA Times, and that's about it when I get news off of Facebook. Otherwise, I go to the main websites. I can't believe anyone would get their news off Facebook unless they follow the major media there and use Facebook to catch current stories.
It's lazy and easy... and it doesn't matter if someone reads more than a headine on facebook... See information enough times and people start to believe it. (that's why advertising works).
Seems like some simple rules could be implemented based on whether the reporting causes harm or not. For instance, I've long held that reporting a suspect's name or anything else identifying them prior to conviction is wrong. Much like the Duke Lacrosse fake rape case, we should practice what we preach on innocent until proven guilty. Once proven, then report the details. It might make DAs and the like focus on their job instead of the press as well. It would seem that such restrictions would slow down the need to be the first to report some crime, as the salacious details could and should be absent.
I also believe that if you inject editorial statements into a story, then it's an editorial about some event, not news. There should be a clear separation of "news" from "editorials".
Would it be enough to change our news from the National Enquirer back to some form of fact based reporting? I'd hope so.
You are correct that there are two broad political groups that have the opinion you do about fake news. The antifa group on the left, which compromises maybe 0.0001% of those on the left, and the entire set of Trump supporters, which comprise about 83% of the Republican party. Hmm, lets just say there's a few nutjobs on the left, which 99% of the population will agree with, and then there's the Republicans....
Too bad that this side you describe is running the news media and Facebook/Google these days. Being one sided indeed isn't a concern if you're on the "right" side.
You must be trolling. Various news media, FB, and Google are run by different people, and the "right" side appears to be the source of all the fake news of late.
That's an awful lot of words to simply say "I think I'll continue making myself look stupid, rather than accept that it's possible for more than one person to have a point in a discussion", you could've saved yourself an awful lot of time.
Apparently you have reading comprehension challenges?
You're still making way too many assumptions to possibly be able to reach the conclusion you have.
I only made a single assumption - that he's solely and directly in charge of 30+ TVCs with no TVC group leaders. Which was implied in his post. I questioned whether he had any FTEs. I doubted he had any FTEs based on personal experiences. This was merely a tangential question/opinion with little immediate bearing to the core topic. Had he responded, it would have served as a reinforcement or softening point to the TVC topic.
I tried using short sentences throughout with a single point per sentence for clarity to aid in your apparent reading comprehension challenges. Tip: resorting to insults doesn't help your argument nor mean you're "winning". It does indicate that you have no arguments to offer.
Your claimed experience and hence appeal to authority doesn't mask over the fact your argument is fundamentally broken by way of the fact that you're effectively arguing consultancies couldn't work like that (even though they do; it's your assumptions that are the problem) because no one could manage 30 people and succeed, and yet that in abusive companies someone somehow can manage 30 people and succeed.
I stated no one can manage 30 TVCs and succeed. There's a major difference there. At least, if the TVCs are really TVCs and not being abused. Which was the point of my post on this topic. I've run and been part of teams of employees, TVCs and mixed teams on both sides. I can tell you what does and does not work in general. I will also note here there's almost always exceptions to absolute statements. Your one off experience to the contrary is just that - an exception (provided it's true in the first place) Perhaps you'd be happier if I'd qualified my statement as "It's highly unlikely anyone would succeed with a generic set of cobbled together 30 unrelated contractors on a project"? That is what's implied.
If you can't see how broken your argument is, then I don't know what to tell you. You're creating a false argument because you don't want to be wrong on the internet, a common problem for sure, and I get that, there's some weird primal thing that goes on in a lot of people's brains where they'd rather make themselves look stupid with a clearly nonsensical argument as you have here, rather than admit they didn't consider something before jumping to a conclusion.
I couldn't give a rats fuck if I'm shown wrong or not on the internet. In fact, I've been wrong on occasion. On slashdot. Everyone is. Today it's you.
However, you should realise that here I wasn't even saying you were wrong - merely making the point that there are scenarios in which the GP might actually not be a negative actor in society for using that many temporary employees. That there are legitimate scenarios for the situation he describes as well as the negative scenarios you describe; there is scope for both of you to have valid points, and for neither of you to be wrong. Sometimes it's possible to add to someone else's point without being at odds with them, a novel concept I know.
If you'll check another follow up post, you'll see I said exactly this:
If a project came along and needed testing done, I had to be able to spin up a team of 5-10 people within a couple of weeks. Hiring contractors or using some of the big contracting houses (on/off/near shore) was what we did.
That is a valid use of TVCs - short term, well-defined task that needs people that you don't have in house. Perfect.
If however you insist that no one could ever have a positive reason for having 30 temporary employees, then you're just going to continue making yourself look stupid, which is a shame, because it detracts from your point about abusive companies, which is also a good point, it's just not necessarily the only possibility.
You'll see above there are some valid reasons. It's just that the common reason many of us have encountered isn't this one. A red flag for abuse of TVCs is when layoffs hit TVCs first. That's a blatant indicator that you're using TVCs as employees.
No need to be defensive, I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong, I just know I'm not in this case because I've also worked with consultancies that operate in this way, and they're doing just fine, in fact, they're some of the biggest consultancies in the world with double digit or high single digit (8%/9%) profit growth every year since their creation. Whatever you may wish to believe, that's not "in for failure", that's a successful consultancy by any objective measure.
This isn't odd at all, and "temporary" is a relative term. I used to work for one of the largest US banks. I managed testing teams, and at one time had more than 30 contractors that made up bout 90% of my team. That was the way it worked there. At one point, there were contractors that had been there 5+ years, then the rules changed. You got 2 years, then you could come back after 6 months off. At least how it worked for me, I was in a testing organization and we worked on lots of different projects.
What you're describing there is the root of the laws against abusing TVC workers. Anyone in a job for 5+ years is, for all intents and purposes, FTE. I'd make the argument that 2 years is FTE. That you're willing to hold to the rules and dump them for 6 months until you can get another 2 years out of them only indicates how badly that particular company is violating the spirit of the law.
If a project came along and needed testing done, I had to be able to spin up a team of 5-10 people within a couple of weeks. Hiring contractors or using some of the big contracting houses (on/off/near shore) was what we did.
That is a valid use of TVCs - short term, well-defined task that needs people that you don't have in house. Perfect.
When there were budget cuts, usually once or twice a year, contractors were the first to go.
And this occurrence is a red flag that you're incorrectly using TVCs. You hired them for a temporary job indicating said job was funded for a limited time. They should go when the work is completed. If you're using them as employees, that's the only way this happens.
Although if they were with one of the contracting places, they usually just went to another project in the bank or sat on the bench until a new spot opened up. If you had someone you wanted to bring on full time, it was very hard to do because that is how their company kept their value at the bank.
It was a model that worked reasonably well, but was a lot of work to manage. I had a core team of employees and as long as there was funding available from the project, I could always spin up teams to do the work.
As for not being able to hire a TVC from their company, that's just the way it is - they are there to do a job, not take a FTE position. So no, you should be assessing them from a consultancy. This all goes back to abuse of the TVC system that many companies do. Honestly, it should be 18 months and you can't use them again for 2 years if you require them anywhere but their existing office location. Just my personal opinion.
Considering that I have worked at a couple of consultancies as well as at several Fortune 100 companies, I can tell you that if you're running your projects the way you describe, you're already in for failure. You hire a group of consultants with its own team leader. The leader handles managing his team, you manage the project. That's the only way you're going to have any success with 30 consultants under 1 FTE manager.
The more common scenario for what was described is abuse of the TVC by using them as employees without keeping them as employees. In the case of Google in TFS, I don't see how they can justify that many TVCs.
Why on earth do you manage 30+ TVCs? Do you manage 30+ employees? If not, why not? TVCs are meant to fill temporary holes. It certainly sounds like your company (assuming you're only managing 30+ TVCs which I find likely) is dodging various labor laws and the costs and obligations associated with FTEs. Which merely implies that the laws and regulations aren't properly set up to promote employment.
Not really - recall how long Intel held onto the Netburst architecture when they were getting their asses handed to them daily? The only reason they're still around was because of their deep pockets and virtual market monopoly. It looks like the Netburst cycle is playing out again.
And the purely gasoline-powered vehicles used as trade-ins aren't being destroyed or removed from the road. They're being resold. Tesla isn't a Cash-for-Clunkers deal where people with gross-polluting vehicles trade them in for a major subsidy on a significantly less polluting vehicle.
This part is true, but you need to look at what Model 3s are replacing - they're replacing new Accords, Lexus, BMWs, Audis, etc. In essence, they're cutting new ICE vehicle demand. It's a filter down effect that in 10-15 years will result in a majority EV vehicles on the roads, especially given that VW group, Mercedes, BMW, and others are all bringing multiple EV lines to market in the next few years only increasing the EV / ICE ratio on new cars.
At some point, that 10 year useful life for the majority of cars will result in an inversion of vehicle types, and it will only increase more rapidly once the threshold hits where gas stations either convert or close and ICE vehicles become more and more problematic to fuel and maintain as supplies become harder to obtain.
I say all this as an ICE owner, but I see the writing on the wall. I've already looked into EVs and just wasn't comfortable committing yet for a primary vehicle due to my not infrequent longer trips. For a secondary vehicle I'd have no qualms at this point. As soon as rapid charging battery tech becomes common enough where I need to go, then it's no longer a question. I also foresee something big happening in battery tech in the near future that will vastly improve EVs with dry non-flammable electrolytes coming into commercial use. At that point it will no longer be a question of if your next car will be an EV.
You forgot all the subsidies that were required for cars to get to where they were in the first place, and those that are inherently still in the system supporting a mature industry.
That's actually a pretty interesting response. I don't think you've proved anything, since people who buy new cars are by definition not exactly on on struggle street.
So perhaps the demographic is 'people who have second, third or fourth cars that are worth trading in' buy a new subsidized replacement at an overall cost to the USA taxpayer of $4 billion.
If you don't regard them as rich, fine.
I don't regard them as rich. I do regard them as taxpayers, so who is more appropriate to give incentives to?
Ponder that one a moment in the context of what you're asking people to sign on to in this situation.
This post will likely be highly unpopular with some and downvoted. Such is truth these days.
This article reminds me of the previous article and position that fat people are fat because they can't help it. This seems to argue that not being a straight A student is better for you. Trust me, a motivated straight A student will shine over an unmotivated C student any day of the week. The same with a healthy motivated individual over a soda and shake consuming obese individual that whines over how unfair life is because they're fat.
Don't get me wrong, their are straight A students that are as dumb as any D student but happen to have a near photographic memory and so do well on tests. There are D students that are super creative and/or able to manage others well. But these people are exceptions, not the rule.
You can be affluent and live pay check to pay check. You still have an abundance of property or other material goods. Note the definition - it's not "and". You don't have to be Gates or Buffet to be affluent.
Now, if you wanted to say financially independent or wealthy and being better than financially independent, I think that's a different word.
I personally am somewhere live somewhere between the "ok" to "well-off" category. Not affluent, but only because I like to know I'm not living off of SS when I turn 70 because I burned through everything prior to then. I guarantee you both our financial situations put us in the affluent category by many other's definitions based off what I've seen of your postings to date.
There's nothing magical about 24fps. It was just the point that ancient tech finally got to a "good enough" frame rate as compared to slower or more judder prone rates. Much like railway gauges, the standards were set long before current technology and optimization techniques could touch them.
BTW, 4K and 120 fps video sharpness can be "fixed" by filters and aperture settings at shooting, or post processing of the source. You can mimic anything with higher fidelity sources, but low fidelity will always be lossy compared to higher fidelity sources as you can't create data.
Single digit megabits per second is all you need for standard-definition video streaming
SD tv, which no one today would find acceptable on screens larger than 30".
You just went totally obtuse and ignored the very first fucking sentence they stated.
I took Gr8Apes's comment to mean "There is no longer significant demand for standard-definition video streaming. On the displays common in 2018, it's high definition or no sale."
You were exactly correct. No one today would find SD signals acceptable on the average display in 2018. The minimum requirements for download speeds are significantly higher for acceptable video today. Hell, even acceptable audio for a reasonable portion of the population takes 1Mbps (DDII).
Single digit megabits per second is all you need for standard-definition video streaming, so long as the monthly cap isn't also oppressive. A decade and a half ago, the warez scene was using DivX (MPEG-4 Part 2 + MP3 in AVI) to transcode a 97-minute movie to fill one 700 MB CD at an average rate of 1 Mbps. Nowadays, WebM (VP9 + Opus in MKV) achieves comparable picture quality at an even lower rate.
On the other hand, you probably won't see acceptable streaming performance with 768 kbps DSL, or 1.5 Mbps DSL with multiple TVs.
What you miss is that those 1Mbps videos had an equivalent picture quality of SD tv, which no one today would find acceptable on screens larger than 30". You won't get acceptable streaming performance for any modern HDTV with less than a min 5Mbps continuous stream. I'd argue higher, but many seem satisfied by things I'd turn off.
SS should be considered as a monthly bonus that might pay your medicare insurance, maybe. I basically don't consider it at all, nor the tiny pension I have coming, and basically work off the basis that everything will be paid for out of my own funds. This allows me to plan appropriately and drives my current budget to a sustainable level. BTW, if you want any sort of lifestyle in retirement at all, you should definitely be aware that you're going to be paying for additional health insurance, otherwise any incident at all will drive you to 0 wealth in a hurry.
Median household income in the US is around $44K per year. Given that most people manage to get by just fine obviously that is more than enough to provide for a family.
No - maybe if one is living in their parent's basement with their family in Buttfuck, Potatohoe. Have a look at the consumer debt figures,rates and trends sometime. People are financing their way of life with debt.
Where I live (Metro-Atlanta), a one room cheap apartment is $1,200/mo. Then there are car payments - one USED reliable car (5-10 years old/~$15,000) is going to be about $400/mo financed over 5 years. Then there is insurance: $100-$150/mo or more of you're a shitty driver.
AND I'm assuming that the job has health and dental and vision insurance so I won't count that (Add $300+/mo for that)
Take home pay after tax: 1,692.31/mo; less above: -57.69.(-$359.69/mo with insurance)
So, food clothing and other things would have to purchased with a credit card.
Now, add kids to that.
You're out of your mind. You can get a brand spanking new Toyota under $16K. You can get an apartment for under $700 a month in Atlanta Georgia, but it won't be a premium nice place to reside. Then again, if money is a constraint, you won't be living in the Hamptons nor driving a Rolls. And I think that's where most people go wrong. At less than $700/month, you can save $6K / year for a downpayment on a condo or house as compared to that $1200/month apartment, so in 5 years, you can move out of that apartment and into your own place. No matter what your income, you need to live below it to get ahead. That may mean no tv, no phone, etc for a while until you get to where you want to be.
To be perfectly honest, the "unemployment" numbers are all bullshit. What you really should look at are employment numbers. Those tell a different tale. One that shows declining participation in the workforce since the 70s, IIRC, which means fewer people working over time. That number is also more meaningful in other ways, because it indicates productivity and tax base. You can slice that data in a number of ways to see who is getting jobs, who is working at what level, and then correlate it to the population numbers at large to see patterns of inclusion, wealth, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not government controlled, it's a set of rules on when information can be made public. There's a big difference - the news still has all its knowledge, it just has to sit on them for a bit as a general concept. During that time, the "facts" can be made clear, and then when things are reported, the likelihood of reporting facts increases. After all, reporting a "fact" that's not an actual fact should be considered libelous at the least. It's just that the press has been protected overly much from the effects of reporting those things under the guise of reporting details as they best knew them at the time. Those details aren't necessary except from a gossip or salacious point of view to appeal to those aspects.
I don't see a downside. There's still reports of people being arrested and for what base reason, but the names et al are withheld until actual charges occur. It seems to very much fall in line with the original concept of innocent until proven guilty.
AP, LA Times, and that's about it when I get news off of Facebook. Otherwise, I go to the main websites. I can't believe anyone would get their news off Facebook unless they follow the major media there and use Facebook to catch current stories.
It's lazy and easy... and it doesn't matter if someone reads more than a headine on facebook... See information enough times and people start to believe it. (that's why advertising works).
I tell you three times true
Seems like some simple rules could be implemented based on whether the reporting causes harm or not. For instance, I've long held that reporting a suspect's name or anything else identifying them prior to conviction is wrong. Much like the Duke Lacrosse fake rape case, we should practice what we preach on innocent until proven guilty. Once proven, then report the details. It might make DAs and the like focus on their job instead of the press as well. It would seem that such restrictions would slow down the need to be the first to report some crime, as the salacious details could and should be absent.
I also believe that if you inject editorial statements into a story, then it's an editorial about some event, not news. There should be a clear separation of "news" from "editorials".
Would it be enough to change our news from the National Enquirer back to some form of fact based reporting? I'd hope so.
You are correct that there are two broad political groups that have the opinion you do about fake news. The antifa group on the left, which compromises maybe 0.0001% of those on the left, and the entire set of Trump supporters, which comprise about 83% of the Republican party. Hmm, lets just say there's a few nutjobs on the left, which 99% of the population will agree with, and then there's the Republicans....
Too bad that this side you describe is running the news media and Facebook/Google these days. Being one sided indeed isn't a concern if you're on the "right" side.
You must be trolling. Various news media, FB, and Google are run by different people, and the "right" side appears to be the source of all the fake news of late.
That's an awful lot of words to simply say "I think I'll continue making myself look stupid, rather than accept that it's possible for more than one person to have a point in a discussion", you could've saved yourself an awful lot of time.
Apparently you have reading comprehension challenges?
You're still making way too many assumptions to possibly be able to reach the conclusion you have.
I only made a single assumption - that he's solely and directly in charge of 30+ TVCs with no TVC group leaders. Which was implied in his post. I questioned whether he had any FTEs. I doubted he had any FTEs based on personal experiences. This was merely a tangential question/opinion with little immediate bearing to the core topic. Had he responded, it would have served as a reinforcement or softening point to the TVC topic.
I tried using short sentences throughout with a single point per sentence for clarity to aid in your apparent reading comprehension challenges. Tip: resorting to insults doesn't help your argument nor mean you're "winning". It does indicate that you have no arguments to offer.
Your claimed experience and hence appeal to authority doesn't mask over the fact your argument is fundamentally broken by way of the fact that you're effectively arguing consultancies couldn't work like that (even though they do; it's your assumptions that are the problem) because no one could manage 30 people and succeed, and yet that in abusive companies someone somehow can manage 30 people and succeed.
I stated no one can manage 30 TVCs and succeed. There's a major difference there. At least, if the TVCs are really TVCs and not being abused. Which was the point of my post on this topic. I've run and been part of teams of employees, TVCs and mixed teams on both sides. I can tell you what does and does not work in general. I will also note here there's almost always exceptions to absolute statements. Your one off experience to the contrary is just that - an exception (provided it's true in the first place) Perhaps you'd be happier if I'd qualified my statement as "It's highly unlikely anyone would succeed with a generic set of cobbled together 30 unrelated contractors on a project"? That is what's implied.
If you can't see how broken your argument is, then I don't know what to tell you. You're creating a false argument because you don't want to be wrong on the internet, a common problem for sure, and I get that, there's some weird primal thing that goes on in a lot of people's brains where they'd rather make themselves look stupid with a clearly nonsensical argument as you have here, rather than admit they didn't consider something before jumping to a conclusion.
I couldn't give a rats fuck if I'm shown wrong or not on the internet. In fact, I've been wrong on occasion. On slashdot. Everyone is. Today it's you.
However, you should realise that here I wasn't even saying you were wrong - merely making the point that there are scenarios in which the GP might actually not be a negative actor in society for using that many temporary employees. That there are legitimate scenarios for the situation he describes as well as the negative scenarios you describe; there is scope for both of you to have valid points, and for neither of you to be wrong. Sometimes it's possible to add to someone else's point without being at odds with them, a novel concept I know.
If you'll check another follow up post, you'll see I said exactly this:
If however you insist that no one could ever have a positive reason for having 30 temporary employees, then you're just going to continue making yourself look stupid, which is a shame, because it detracts from your point about abusive companies, which is also a good point, it's just not necessarily the only possibility.
You'll see above there are some valid reasons. It's just that the common reason many of us have encountered isn't this one. A red flag for abuse of TVCs is when layoffs hit TVCs first. That's a blatant indicator that you're using TVCs as employees.
No need to be defensive, I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong, I just know I'm not in this case because I've also worked with consultancies that operate in this way, and they're doing just fine, in fact, they're some of the biggest consultancies in the world with double digit or high single digit (8%/9%) profit growth every year since their creation. Whatever you may wish to believe, that's not "in for failure", that's a successful consultancy by any objective measure.
Yo
This isn't odd at all, and "temporary" is a relative term. I used to work for one of the largest US banks. I managed testing teams, and at one time had more than 30 contractors that made up bout 90% of my team. That was the way it worked there. At one point, there were contractors that had been there 5+ years, then the rules changed. You got 2 years, then you could come back after 6 months off. At least how it worked for me, I was in a testing organization and we worked on lots of different projects.
What you're describing there is the root of the laws against abusing TVC workers. Anyone in a job for 5+ years is, for all intents and purposes, FTE. I'd make the argument that 2 years is FTE. That you're willing to hold to the rules and dump them for 6 months until you can get another 2 years out of them only indicates how badly that particular company is violating the spirit of the law.
If a project came along and needed testing done, I had to be able to spin up a team of 5-10 people within a couple of weeks. Hiring contractors or using some of the big contracting houses (on/off/near shore) was what we did.
That is a valid use of TVCs - short term, well-defined task that needs people that you don't have in house. Perfect.
When there were budget cuts, usually once or twice a year, contractors were the first to go.
And this occurrence is a red flag that you're incorrectly using TVCs. You hired them for a temporary job indicating said job was funded for a limited time. They should go when the work is completed. If you're using them as employees, that's the only way this happens.
Although if they were with one of the contracting places, they usually just went to another project in the bank or sat on the bench until a new spot opened up. If you had someone you wanted to bring on full time, it was very hard to do because that is how their company kept their value at the bank.
It was a model that worked reasonably well, but was a lot of work to manage. I had a core team of employees and as long as there was funding available from the project, I could always spin up teams to do the work.
As for not being able to hire a TVC from their company, that's just the way it is - they are there to do a job, not take a FTE position. So no, you should be assessing them from a consultancy. This all goes back to abuse of the TVC system that many companies do. Honestly, it should be 18 months and you can't use them again for 2 years if you require them anywhere but their existing office location. Just my personal opinion.
Considering that I have worked at a couple of consultancies as well as at several Fortune 100 companies, I can tell you that if you're running your projects the way you describe, you're already in for failure. You hire a group of consultants with its own team leader. The leader handles managing his team, you manage the project. That's the only way you're going to have any success with 30 consultants under 1 FTE manager.
The more common scenario for what was described is abuse of the TVC by using them as employees without keeping them as employees. In the case of Google in TFS, I don't see how they can justify that many TVCs.
I manage 30+ of what the article calls "TVCs"
Why on earth do you manage 30+ TVCs? Do you manage 30+ employees? If not, why not? TVCs are meant to fill temporary holes. It certainly sounds like your company (assuming you're only managing 30+ TVCs which I find likely) is dodging various labor laws and the costs and obligations associated with FTEs. Which merely implies that the laws and regulations aren't properly set up to promote employment.
Not really - recall how long Intel held onto the Netburst architecture when they were getting their asses handed to them daily? The only reason they're still around was because of their deep pockets and virtual market monopoly. It looks like the Netburst cycle is playing out again.
And the purely gasoline-powered vehicles used as trade-ins aren't being destroyed or removed from the road. They're being resold. Tesla isn't a Cash-for-Clunkers deal where people with gross-polluting vehicles trade them in for a major subsidy on a significantly less polluting vehicle.
This part is true, but you need to look at what Model 3s are replacing - they're replacing new Accords, Lexus, BMWs, Audis, etc. In essence, they're cutting new ICE vehicle demand. It's a filter down effect that in 10-15 years will result in a majority EV vehicles on the roads, especially given that VW group, Mercedes, BMW, and others are all bringing multiple EV lines to market in the next few years only increasing the EV / ICE ratio on new cars.
At some point, that 10 year useful life for the majority of cars will result in an inversion of vehicle types, and it will only increase more rapidly once the threshold hits where gas stations either convert or close and ICE vehicles become more and more problematic to fuel and maintain as supplies become harder to obtain.
I say all this as an ICE owner, but I see the writing on the wall. I've already looked into EVs and just wasn't comfortable committing yet for a primary vehicle due to my not infrequent longer trips. For a secondary vehicle I'd have no qualms at this point. As soon as rapid charging battery tech becomes common enough where I need to go, then it's no longer a question. I also foresee something big happening in battery tech in the near future that will vastly improve EVs with dry non-flammable electrolytes coming into commercial use. At that point it will no longer be a question of if your next car will be an EV.
You forgot all the subsidies that were required for cars to get to where they were in the first place, and those that are inherently still in the system supporting a mature industry.
That's actually a pretty interesting response. I don't think you've proved anything, since people who buy new cars are by definition not exactly on on struggle street.
So perhaps the demographic is 'people who have second, third or fourth cars that are worth trading in' buy a new subsidized replacement at an overall cost to the USA taxpayer of $4 billion .
If you don't regard them as rich, fine.
I don't regard them as rich. I do regard them as taxpayers, so who is more appropriate to give incentives to?
Ponder that one a moment in the context of what you're asking people to sign on to in this situation.
This post will likely be highly unpopular with some and downvoted. Such is truth these days.
This article reminds me of the previous article and position that fat people are fat because they can't help it. This seems to argue that not being a straight A student is better for you. Trust me, a motivated straight A student will shine over an unmotivated C student any day of the week. The same with a healthy motivated individual over a soda and shake consuming obese individual that whines over how unfair life is because they're fat.
Don't get me wrong, their are straight A students that are as dumb as any D student but happen to have a near photographic memory and so do well on tests. There are D students that are super creative and/or able to manage others well. But these people are exceptions, not the rule.
You can be affluent and live pay check to pay check. You still have an abundance of property or other material goods. Note the definition - it's not "and". You don't have to be Gates or Buffet to be affluent.
Now, if you wanted to say financially independent or wealthy and being better than financially independent, I think that's a different word.
I personally am somewhere live somewhere between the "ok" to "well-off" category. Not affluent, but only because I like to know I'm not living off of SS when I turn 70 because I burned through everything prior to then. I guarantee you both our financial situations put us in the affluent category by many other's definitions based off what I've seen of your postings to date.
You realize that puts them in the top 20 or even 10 percent? There's tons and tons of folks that can't do that, even after 20 years.
Sorry, but they are today's version of affluent.
There's nothing magical about 24fps. It was just the point that ancient tech finally got to a "good enough" frame rate as compared to slower or more judder prone rates. Much like railway gauges, the standards were set long before current technology and optimization techniques could touch them.
BTW, 4K and 120 fps video sharpness can be "fixed" by filters and aperture settings at shooting, or post processing of the source. You can mimic anything with higher fidelity sources, but low fidelity will always be lossy compared to higher fidelity sources as you can't create data.
Apparently you've got an axe to grind. Go do that.
Single digit megabits per second is all you need for standard-definition video streaming
SD tv, which no one today would find acceptable on screens larger than 30".
You just went totally obtuse and ignored the very first fucking sentence they stated.
I took Gr8Apes's comment to mean "There is no longer significant demand for standard-definition video streaming. On the displays common in 2018, it's high definition or no sale."
You were exactly correct. No one today would find SD signals acceptable on the average display in 2018. The minimum requirements for download speeds are significantly higher for acceptable video today. Hell, even acceptable audio for a reasonable portion of the population takes 1Mbps (DDII).
Single digit megabits per second is all you need for standard-definition video streaming, so long as the monthly cap isn't also oppressive. A decade and a half ago, the warez scene was using DivX (MPEG-4 Part 2 + MP3 in AVI) to transcode a 97-minute movie to fill one 700 MB CD at an average rate of 1 Mbps. Nowadays, WebM (VP9 + Opus in MKV) achieves comparable picture quality at an even lower rate.
On the other hand, you probably won't see acceptable streaming performance with 768 kbps DSL, or 1.5 Mbps DSL with multiple TVs.
What you miss is that those 1Mbps videos had an equivalent picture quality of SD tv, which no one today would find acceptable on screens larger than 30". You won't get acceptable streaming performance for any modern HDTV with less than a min 5Mbps continuous stream. I'd argue higher, but many seem satisfied by things I'd turn off.
SS should be considered as a monthly bonus that might pay your medicare insurance, maybe. I basically don't consider it at all, nor the tiny pension I have coming, and basically work off the basis that everything will be paid for out of my own funds. This allows me to plan appropriately and drives my current budget to a sustainable level. BTW, if you want any sort of lifestyle in retirement at all, you should definitely be aware that you're going to be paying for additional health insurance, otherwise any incident at all will drive you to 0 wealth in a hurry.
Median household income in the US is around $44K per year. Given that most people manage to get by just fine obviously that is more than enough to provide for a family.
No - maybe if one is living in their parent's basement with their family in Buttfuck, Potatohoe. Have a look at the consumer debt figures,rates and trends sometime. People are financing their way of life with debt.
Where I live (Metro-Atlanta), a one room cheap apartment is $1,200/mo. Then there are car payments - one USED reliable car (5-10 years old/~$15,000) is going to be about $400/mo financed over 5 years. Then there is insurance: $100-$150/mo or more of you're a shitty driver. AND I'm assuming that the job has health and dental and vision insurance so I won't count that (Add $300+/mo for that)
Take home pay after tax: 1,692.31/mo; less above: -57.69.(-$359.69/mo with insurance)
So, food clothing and other things would have to purchased with a credit card.
Now, add kids to that.
You're out of your mind. You can get a brand spanking new Toyota under $16K. You can get an apartment for under $700 a month in Atlanta Georgia, but it won't be a premium nice place to reside. Then again, if money is a constraint, you won't be living in the Hamptons nor driving a Rolls. And I think that's where most people go wrong. At less than $700/month, you can save $6K / year for a downpayment on a condo or house as compared to that $1200/month apartment, so in 5 years, you can move out of that apartment and into your own place. No matter what your income, you need to live below it to get ahead. That may mean no tv, no phone, etc for a while until you get to where you want to be.
To be perfectly honest, the "unemployment" numbers are all bullshit. What you really should look at are employment numbers. Those tell a different tale. One that shows declining participation in the workforce since the 70s, IIRC, which means fewer people working over time. That number is also more meaningful in other ways, because it indicates productivity and tax base. You can slice that data in a number of ways to see who is getting jobs, who is working at what level, and then correlate it to the population numbers at large to see patterns of inclusion, wealth, etc.
Sure we can, I mean there's at least 30% of us in the US that aren't members of either major party, nor any party at all.