You'd probably also need to offer a lot of new jobs to railroad employees. The railroads, especially on the East coast of the U.S., transport coal as one of their primary customers. As coal is killed off, it also takes freight rail with it.
I've discussed this at length with people before.... but there are many reasons your statements aren't quite accurate.
1. The costs of many of the cheaper solar panels in use absolutely did NOT take into account all of the associated costs of producing them! One of the problems the industry has struggled with are all the cheap Asian panels on the market, often sold at below cost, thanks to government subsidies from China. They were willing to fund these losses at the government level, to help destroy the competition and gain a secure foothold selling them in places like America.
2. As far as I've seen? Solar panels do stand up pretty well to the weather. But they won't work in the normal configuration, supplying AC power back onto the grid to earn your credits on your electric bill, unless you have expensive inverters attached to them. My installation has 2 inverters -- one for a set of panels on my roof, and a second one for a set of panels on my detached garage roof. The inverters generally only get a warranty for about half the length the panels are warrantied, and they're more likely than the panels themselves to have a failure.
3. I've never heard of these banks you speak of, who would allow a person to take out a larger home loan if they felt the person might use less electricity thanks to solar panels (or anything else)? That would be risky on a lender's part, especially not having any guarantee the new homeowner wouldn't just use additional power, knowing some of their bill was supplemented by solar.
4. As for battery technology? I looked into that, but it's really too costly to make much sense in many situations. When the financials work out on it? It's usually only because that person's utility company decided to arbitrarily give discounted electric rates for power used at night ("off peak"). If you're able to time-shift your power consumption via battery storage, while making the power during the peak period when the sun is out -- that saves you money. But again, that's just an artificial construct the power company decided to put in place. My power company bills the same amount for my electricity, no matter when I use it. I'd hate to invest a lot of money in battery storage for PV solar on a home, only to find the power company decided to change the billing around shortly after that and eliminated the only reason it made financial sense!
As an overall thing? I can see how solar does pay for itself in the sunniest parts of the country. Nevada, California or Hawaii? Yeah... probably a good investment. In much of the country though? You'll really not even do better than possibly breaking even on them. Here in Maryland, for example? A solar system installation similar to what I've got (a 7.64Kw sized setup) will typically cost a person around $34,000 to install. You can shave 30% off of that with a Federal tax credit, for now -- but that's still money you only get back a year after you have to buy the thing. But ok -- you're at $23,800 after said credit. Most people don't have that kind of money just lying around to pay up-front, so now you're looking at some kind of loan to cover that $23,800. Interest on that is going to chip away at the monthly electric bill savings the system makes, until you've got the thing paid off. Meanwhile, given our power rates out here? I'd say at BEST (only a few summer months out of each year), my panels make enough energy to shave about $100 per month off the bill. In months like December or January, it's likely the panels will generate as little as maybe 800 watts of power total on a snowy or rainy/overcast day. Enough of those, and you're looking at a month where the panels only saved you $20-30.
The people out here who brag that their solar panels make their monthly power bills 0 are usually living on farmland where they put rows and rows of panels up on metal frames or poles, taking up a big chunk of land. Not only did that probably cost them FAR more money than they'll ever recoup -- but it means they
You only have to spend a little time perusing the web forums designed for Mac enthusiasts (macrumors, etc.) to see that plenty of "Mac faithful" users are getting irritated with the high prices and lack of really innovative changes coming from Apple in recent years.
Of course, the problem is -- choosing to use a computer, or entire "ecosystem" of devices that aren't part of the "Microsoft Windows world" meant a pretty big investment. You have all the software products you've grown familiar with and have data saved in their, sometimes proprietary, formats. You have the prospect of buying some of that over again if you switch back to another OS platform. You also have the headaches that come with trying to resell all of the Apple gear that you're getting rid of.
So it's not really so shocking that people already invested in Macs will grudgingly put up with things like $700 for a new Mac Mini that used to cost more like $400, or even the prospect of having to shell out over $3,000 for the high-end Macbook Pro 15" with the new Vega video chipset in it.
If your home is already automated with a bunch of control devices that use Apple HomeKit, and you use Apple Airplay to stream music to speakers around your place, and you have a lot of purchased movie or video content in iTunes that you watch directly off an AppleTV set top box? It's better to upgrade that one machine that needs it, even at these inflated prices, than to tear it all out and start over from ground zero!
Even in our workplace, almost all of the creative professionals and sales staff are using Mac laptops. We really disliked the value proposition of going with new Macbook Pro 13" laptops instead of the good old Macbook Airs that we'd issued as kind of a standard since back in 2011-2012. But what can you do? In the big picture, these folks work on client projects that are often $1 million each. If they feel like they do better work on a $2,700 Mac than on a $1500 Microsoft Surface Pro - you buy them the Mac. In some cases, one of these people can use their computer to do something in one DAY that more than justifies the entire cost of the machine.
I've been using Macs since 1999 or 2000 consistently, over here. And it's obvious to me that the company just isn't the same, post Steve Jobs. But then, Apple was his baby. He clearly felt it more important to him than even his own family. You can't just appoint somebody as the new CEO and expect they have the same passion for it. It'll be the same situation if Elon Musk dies and they pick some outside guy from another auto-maker to run Tesla.....
What Apple does have is a pretty nice foundation for its products, between using the iOS platform or the Mac OS X platform. It also has enough of a presence in the smartphone market that it will probably always own a significant chunk of it, barring some utter and complete screw-up. If they price things so high that sales decline more than the price increases net them, they'll make adjustments. But I think they're definitely trying to see how much margin they can add before that happens.
I've owned a number of vehicles with keyfobs, and in almost every case, they didn't transmit anything until you pressed a button on them to unlock or lock a door, a trunk, or perhaps sound the horn repeatedly as a "panic" function.
That was true even for cars like my Hyundai Genesis Coupe that had "push to start". The fob might have transmitted something to tell the car it was present, so push to start was ok to start the engine. But you couldn't unlock the doors just by walking up to it. Come to think of it, my Cadillac CTS Coupe used to be the same way. It had push to start, but the fob didn't unlock anything until a button was pressed to send that signal.
I actually used to have a Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 convertible (2005 model) where the keyfob would even stop unlocking the doors if a button on it was pushed too many times while outside the range where the car could act on the command. It must have used some kind of 2 way handshake when you pressed the lock or unlock button. When it would stop working (which happened occasionally because I'd accidentally press buttons on it when it was in my jeans pocket with the rest of my keychain), I had to put the key in the ignition, turn it to the "on" position, and double press a button on it, and then turn the car back off. That would pair it back up.
People were doing a lot of moving when the economy went sour, but that was just the reaction to being unable to stay gainfully employed at the pay-rate you expected to receive.
I knew people working in construction, for example, who had to move wherever the job opportunities were -- because all of a sudden, they found themselves unable to find steady work doing home repairs or renovations. The fact they lived in a big city, full of homes, suddenly stopped guaranteeing jobs for them. They had to resort to "storm chasing", moving wherever a natural disaster happened, to be sure they were kept busy.
Even in I.T., I had to move our family from the midwest in order to advance my career. My home town just didn't have enough good-paying corporate I.T. jobs in it. Several large businesses shut down or restructured. leaving a lot of I.T. people out of work and creating more competition for the jobs that remained. And the smaller places were struggling to stay profitable, so couldn't give pay raises.
When the economy improved, it put a stop to the need to pack up and move around. IMO, that's a good thing. People shouldn't even be buying homes with 30 year mortgages when they're expecting they'll have to resell them and move within only a few years. A home is meant to be a long-term investment. Why wouldn't everybody rent if there was no expectation of staying put in one place for the long haul?
A lot of people are saying the decline is because "people don't want to pay $1000+ for the latest phone!". I'd say that's far less of an issue than the fact that the market is finally saturated with really good cellphones!
For many years, you had a situation where the people with enough money would always buy the latest and greatest phone, and typically hand down their old one to another family member, trade it in, or sell it online (eBay, Craigslist, etc.) at a big discount. The thing is? When cellphones were still getting major new features and significant upgrades at a fast pace, that meant the new phones really were significantly better than the ones they were letting go of. The "churn" helped a lot of people get their hands on a name brand, legitimate "top tier" smartphone, who couldn't otherwise afford or cost-justify one. But they still had a phone that was inferior to the "new stuff", and within a year or so? They, too, were looking to upgrade.
I think we're at a point now where the people who spent the money for the "best" phones are happy to get another year or two of use from them. They're not so quick to let go of them. And the last generation of phones that other people are carrying around are "good enough". Sure, the new ones are nicer -- but they're not missing features they can't live without.
Especially with the phones sold via contracts where you pay it off in monthly installments? Anyone with a decent full-time job can technically afford to buy a new one, even at $1000+. The point is, they don't WANT to have that chunk coming out of each paycheck when the only thing they're getting for it is a couple of new camera special f/x or "an even brighter, more colorful display than you last one that already looks amazing".
I'm one of those people who used to upgrade iPhones with pretty much every new revision. Maybe not on day 1? But within 3-6 months or so, I usually found a buyer for my existing phone and kicked in the difference to get the new model. It was always worth it, for things like the phone adding a new cellular band it supported for LTE data with my provider, or the Touch ID feature, or the phone gaining a second camera lens for telephoto -- not to mention faster CPUs and often more memory in the devices.
But now, my iPhone X really has everything covered. I can't see how there's almost anything compelling about upgrading to the new phones over this one? The X is plenty fast enough. (The big argument for needing more CPU or GPU power on the iPhones, at this point, seems to be for people using virtual reality or AR-heavy apps -- which I don't do much of with my phone at this time.) I've already got the Face ID feature, and having it work a second or two faster is "nice to have" but not enough to spend much money to get it. I'm even told my battery life is probably a bit better on my X than what I'd get if I upgraded it.
I'm sure I'd like a cellphone with 5G data support, when that's actually rolled out in a substantial way. But I think that's probably the next "upgrade driver" for me, and perhaps many others.
I'm sorry, but the traditional word processor design hasn't "gotten dusty" at all. It's been a pretty established framework for decades because writers need an application that works that way!
This push to make everything "collaborative" with chat clients and ability for a whole group to add sidebar notes to everything creates a big distraction. A good document needs to be focused on by the person writing it. It can be reviewed after that, and marked up as needed with suggested corrections. But the editor doing the proofreading should ALSO be doing that by him/herself, while he/she can give it the undivided attention it deserves.
I remember when a lot of people considered it a "feature" when a word processor would take over the whole screen with almost nothing but the text being typed. Writers appreciated that lack of distraction or temptation to click around on menus to try out various features, rather than concentrating on the work at hand.
I find that even doing regular computer support or troubleshooting, the multiple IM client options just raise my stress levels and make things take twice as long to get completed. People keep barging in, asking for updates on where you're at with something, or for some information on why X or Y is down. I can't see how it would benefit anyone trying to write some technical documentation or anything else, having a whole group constantly interacting and suggesting things while you're trying to concentrate?
I used to work in this capacity, as have several of my good friends. I've also been on the other side of it -- in charge of calling in outside consultants when it was deemed necessary, and managing their time and our budget for paying them for the work they did.
The first thing you have to understand with Windows 10 is, it's a "moving target". Maybe in another year or two, it will be less so? But as it stands currently, it's Microsoft's grand experiment in offering people a modern operating system that pretty much requires a constant high-speed Internet connection and is subject to minor or major changes at any time. There are still some things in Windows 10 that are so inconsistent and confusing, I'd be surprised if they don't receive a major change in a future update -- like the "vintage" Control Panel co-existing with the new "Settings" menu, accessed by clicking the gear icon.
Even if you're the type Microsoft hopes you are, who will just "go with the flow" as they re-think parts of the OS? The challenge of all of this is that their updates are large and often slow to install. So it feels like you can barely keep up with all of it sometimes, and your PC seems like it's forever downloading and applying one thing or another.
Someone with knowledge of how everything works can take some steps to force your Windows systems on your network NOT to do the upgrades as they're released. But frankly, that just delays the inevitable. At some point, something you need will either just plain not be there in your version of Win 10, or will refuse to work properly with it anymore. And then you may have multiple, huge updates to go through to get it current.
Where I work in I.T. today, we practically force all of the users to do all the updates as they're released. (Systems are set to automatically download them in the background and to apply them at 1AM each day one is pending.) If your computers are part of a Windows Domain, you can control this centrally from your server with group policies.
If your consultants can't or won't get something like this set up for you? You need to find new people. The idea of a "warranty" on their work is just marketing B.S. In computers and I.T., the only constant is change. So I guess they think you'll like the idea that for 3 years, they'll redo something specific they did if updates and changes break it? But.... in practice, it rarely works like that. When things break, it's usually because YOU decided to switch something around voluntarily. Perhaps your old scanner broke and you bought a new one that was on sale at the office supply store? Well, maybe it turns out the driver for the new one no longer plays nicely with your financial software that was originally set up to let you scan in checks or invoices? Nobody will fix the NEW scanner back up for you at no charge, as "warranty" work, since you changed the hardware around.
Those of us with solar panels on our roofs in states that offer "SREC" credits should already be used to this....
Once promised as a great way to make your solar panels pay for themselves, SRECs are now practically worthless in every state with the program, except for maybe Washington DC. (That's only true there because a lot of people can't put solar panels up since they rent or live in multi-level properties where they don't own rights to put things on the roof. And another big segment of DC is too poor to be able to afford them, regardless of subsidies. It's pretty rare in DC to own a property with a lot of square footage, where you can generate a lot of power from panels, too.)
As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't need a government tax credit to justify your purchase of a vehicle. Everyone I've met who purchased a new Tesla, for example, could afford the car without that credit and would, indeed, have purchased it anyway. The rest of us who own them waited to get a deal on an older, used one, which didn't qualify for the credit in the first place.
You might have SOME argument that the credit is more attractive to the middle class customer who considers a car like a Chevy Volt / Bolt or a Nissan Leaf. But even then, I think a lot of those buyers are only buying them because they're on an "environmentally friendly" kick, trying to prove they leave a small carbon footprint. IMO, that's financially foolish of them - but who am I to tell others how to spend their money? Again, if you're honestly buying because you're trying to come out ahead with cost savings on gasoline, you'd be a lot further ahead of the game to buy a used one.
You know? One thing I've come to realize over the years is that because the most important sex organ in the body is the brain, fetishes tend to span practically anything you could imagine.
Societal norms and peer pressure tend to keep a lot of them in check. (In general, folks are never very comfortable when they're stuck being in proximity to others who think and act too differently from what they're used to.)
But yes, they're always going to seek outlets for their "special interests" -- and I think it's a good and healthy thing to provide people with those outlets.
It's interesting to me how certain fetish interests have gotten enough mainstream exposure so it's more socially acceptable to provide gatherings for them, while the rest are still hidden away. (If your thing is BDSM, for example? Most of that has become "trendy" enough that even back in the 1990's, most major cities had at least one nightclub with a "fetish night" with that as the theme.)
I'd never advocate government sponsoring anything like Tumblr. The less government spends my tax money on "projects du jour", the better off I am. But this recent legislation that cracks down on all of this has gone way overboard.
And yeah, I fail to see much attraction to using Tumblr for the G and PG rated content? Truth is, they're "yet another photo/video gallery" service otherwise. SnapChat, Instagram, etc. All performing the same functionality for people, more or less. Tumblr got a foothold BECAUSE they were known not to censor your content much.
As others said already on here, many of the people who live in rural areas are interested in satellite television, at least until the day comes when they're all able to get broadband fiber or cable. Judging by the lack of interest in the monopolies in the U.S. to roll out service to new areas, I'd say satellite still provides a viable alternative for people for a LONG time.
AT&T is probably just not so interested in hanging onto the DirecTV service in its long-term plans. That hardly means satellite TV is dead, though. It just indicates they'll sell it off to somebody else. Right now, people still have Dish Network as an alternative option, even if DirecTV went offline tomorrow.
If the cable providers don't stop with the greed about capping monthly bandwidth usage, too? People will find it more economical to keep a cheap satellite subscription vs. chewing through their data allotment with nothing but streaming.
But in any case, satellite TV has the mobility advantage. You can slap a dish on your RV and roam around the country, and always have TV service wherever you go. That doesn't work with cable TV and is only spotty with an LTE cellular service.
I'm a homeowner in Maryland too, but as I understand things? The increased taxes are set up in advance. So even though they "only go up every 3 years", they're based on a planned increase in the 3 year period before the new rate is charged.
I have friends who worked for lenders, directly responsible for contacting the right appraisers and ensuring the appraisals were done properly and on-time, so as not to hold up loans in progress.
The concept might be good, but in practice? The whole thing seems like a sham to me.
The loan officers do their best to hand-pick the appraisers for given loans, to make sure they go through at the valuations they need to see. The law says, of course, that they're not allowed to do that. But the OWNERS of many of the lending institutions know that things have to work that way, for them to maximize profits and prevent a lot of angry customers who want to buy a property, but get turned down.
So what happens? The lenders opt to use specific software packages that automatically assign appraisers for loans entered into the system. But the software database still needs to be filled with the appraisers it's supposed to assign. Guess who gets to choose who gets put into the database when it's all configured?
Unlike actual inspectors, the appraisers don't even have to really take a close look at much of anything. They have to bring some photos back to the bank and give a guesstimate of the value based on comparable properties. In most cases, they're only required to do a "head and shoulders" look at the attic of a given home, for example. They're not required to climb up into an attic beyond that point.
Often times, the appraisers are even told they can't get hired to do appraisals for given lenders unless they charge below a certain price. If that is below the going rate for an appraisal in that zip code, you can be sure the appraiser is going to do only the bare minimum necessary....
I hope they're really successful with high performance video chipsets. Right now, I'd welcome additional competition in that space, no matter who is doing it. The current situation is pretty ridiculous -- where every single person on the planet interested in 3D gaming or design/CAD/CAM or animation/rendering work is stuck with what one of only two vendors have to offer them.
Every time people come up with a new reason to buy fast video cards (like crypto-mining the latest e-coin), there's a massive shortage of available cards across the entire industry.
And it's not terribly difficult to pinpoint the downsides of going the nVidia route, or conversely, going with AMD. A third vendor could figure out how to address those negatives so their offering covers all of the bases.
I agree with you. Most people are primarily concerned with what's cheapest when they need it. They're not so worried about a long-term environmental cost that's more of an abstract and may not even noticeably affect them during the rest of their lifetime.
BUT, people are also generally smart enough to know that "you get what you pay for", and will pay a bit more for a superior option,if it's still in their price range.
Government intervention is, IMO, your worst possible way to try to change behavior. Your lighting example is a great one. Yes, government started MANDATING people buy CFL's instead of traditional incandescent bulbs. So what happened? Everyone started using those ugly "squiggly" looking bulbs in their fixtures at motels, offices and homes -- and quickly discovered they were burning up and failing in anything enclosed. They also found out they're an environmental hazard if you drop and shatter one, and most took an annoyingly long time to come up to their full brightness once turned on. The overall disgust at how inferior those products were, despite their ONE good quality (using less energy) drove people to start voluntarily switching to new LED lighting technology. That interest and demand, in turn, brought costs WAY down and competition ensured the quality generally went up. Last year, I replaced every single bulb in my house with an LED version, because it was a trivial expense and gave me pleasant lighting that saves me money on my electric bills, and saves hassle changing bulbs that burn out.)
So government 0, free market demand 1.
When you start talking about home heating systems, you're getting into a problem where more efficient options are VASTLY more expensive. I'm struggling with this now myself. My house has a pair of electric heat pumps for the upstairs and downstairs floors. My winter electric bills are AWFUL. But still, replacing these with geothermal heat pumps that would stop them from using the electric heating elements (aux heat) whenever it gets too cold would cost me well over $50,000. That money pays a whole lot of utility bills....
How can it be addressed? I think it just takes time and R&D. Have we reached the plateau where no more cost savings or improvements can be invented to HVAC systems? Nah! I have faith they'll come along. But the current solutions only save a person money if they buy them for a "forever home" they're never going to move out of, and the break-even point comes close to the point where the systems are wearing out and in need of another replacement.
The conclusion that this problem is one "that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle" tells me all I need to know about the political views of the original poster.
That said? Yeah, we have some looming problems for future retirees when it comes to finances. But the people who are already nearly 30 years old and "have nothing saved for retirement" still need to look in the mirror to find who to blame. I can guarantee you (because I work with a lot of these people myself), a lot of younger people were never taught much of anything about finances and investing. Many have no idea how to balance a checkbook, and rely on regularly logging in to their bank's web site to determine how much money they've got in their account(s). They couldn't challenge their bank about an error if they had to. They just blindly trust and accept that the bank is keeping a proper record of their transactions. They've been offered 401Ks but opted out, saying they "didn't trust that the money would really be there by the time they retire anyway" or other such excuses.
The fact that many people are struggling to find and keep good paying jobs obviously doesn't help either. But the fact is, it's a lot easier to have money taken out of your paycheck, pre-tax, before you ever see it. The bellyaching about not being able to afford to let them take even 3% or 4% out for a retirement account is just FUD. If you're living SO close to the edge that 3% of your income, pre-tax, will make the difference between you surviving and not? You have bigger problems and need to re-evaluate your life choices and needs.
Personally, as a libertarian who leans financially conservative on most issues? I think it's the liberal Democrats who I'm most afraid to see trying to "fix retirement problems". They're notorious for the persistent belief that any problem can be addressed by pointing the finger at someone else with more resources, and demanding they give some of theirs up towards the goal.
When you look at how the existing Social Security system is set up? It's not even really a designated "pot" that funds go into. That's why so many other political plans involve dipping into money that was supposedly earmarked for people's retirement. Even SSI comes out of Social Security. That's a potential problem because disability payments are doled out to a lot of people who never worked long enough to contribute anything meaningful IN to the system first. And our legislation allows for practically anything imaginable to count as a disability, if you can get the right doctor to sign off on it. I once dated a girl, briefly, who was in her 20's and I discovered was collecting disability payments. I couldn't imagine why, until I found out she claimed she had "back problems" that prevented her from ever being able to hold a job. It turns out, it was some kind of issue where occasionally (maybe once a month at most?) she'd find she couldn't get up out of bed in the morning... basically paralyzed for a while. A few hours later, it would get better and she could get up and move around again. A legitimate medical problem? Yeah, but IMO, hardly one that would keep you from being a productive member of society. Especially with all the teleworking opportunities around today, it's a better time than ever in history to find employment despite a limitation like that! A tenant in my father's apartment, a while back, was collecting disability payments because he claimed his previous cocaine addiction qualified him. You could even collect it for being too overweight, if you wanted to go that route.... How much more money would be there to ensure Social Security could pay people fairly in their retirement if it wasn't drained off by these other things?
But it IS a political issue, as soon as we start talking about legislation mandating behaviors!
The true "denialists" aren't that relevant, if the science is solid enough to prove them wrong. You'll never get everyone to accept almost anything. We still have a Flat Earth Society and a number of people refuse to accept the theory of evolution.
What DOES matter is what you propose to do about the issue. If you want to research machines that could efficiently extract excess CO2 from the air? That's VERY different than trying to implement "carbon taxes" or imposing Federal regulations demanding a halt to the use of a particular fossil fuel (like coal).
Just because researchers come to a consensus that the planet's climate is slowly increasing in temperature doesn't mean they need to become political - advocating taxation and regulation. If our technological advances are what got us into this mess, they can get us back out too. People will always go with the options that cost them the least money, and give them the most benefit. Improve cleaner energy alternatives so they're cheaper and better, and people will gladly stop burning oil, natural gas and coal!
I think I have a bit of a clue.... Nobody is saying visiting Antarctica is "much like a trip to Mars". We're saying that right now, it's probably one of the most inhospitable places a person can travel to -- and yet many people have chosen to do it anyway.
Any serious attempt at a Mars mission would presumably include transporting up some basic building blocks to take a decent stab at living there for a period of time. On the plus side, you don't have to worry about wild animals attacking you on Mars or getting stung or bitten by insects carrying nasty diseases.
At least in the early stages, I think you'd probably try to establish a domed, climate-controlled "research station" of sorts, which would shelter you from some of the worst parts of trying to live on Mars.
Already, there are restaurants in places like New York City that won't accept cash. They demand debit cards, credit cards or something like Apple or Android Pay, only. Their reasoning is an interest in reducing crime. (You won't get very far trying to wave a gun at them and demanding all the cash in the register.) I'm sure, secondarily, there's the advantage of fewer errors from employees making incorrect change or accidentally accepting counterfeit bills. And obviously, it saves some of the hassle of making sure you have enough change in the register, so you don't run out of $1's or quarters or what have you.
But most definitely, all of these cashless payment options trade the convenience for ability to track your purchasing habits. And if you're in the habit of buying relatively expensive goods, second-hand, it means the risk that government will start using that information at tax time to challenge your returns and any requests for refunds. "You state, here, that you only earned $X,XXX this year, Mr. Jones -- yet we see where somehow, you managed to spend X% of your total income on performance parts for your truck and new computers from sellers on Craigslist. That math seems a bit questionable, so we've decided to do a full audit. Remember, if you made that money on the side selling illegal drugs, you still owe the state and Federal tax on the proceeds."
I don't think any explorer, ever, just came to a new land for the first time and lived an immediate life of comfort.
The point is, somebody has to be first to attempt to colonize a new land (or world in the case of Mars), and that's a task certain people find a VERY rewarding challenge
And yes - a few people enjoy spending time in places with very harsh conditions, where there aren't many other human beings around. My dad was friends with a teacher who took a sabbatical leave to visit Antarctica and live in one of those research facilities for a year or so. He came back with some amazing photos and stories, and didn't regret it a bit. (Not saying he'd be eager to do it again or to move there permanently... but it's something not many people have experienced, so I can see the attraction.)
To be honest, some of the best keyboards I've used were made by Dell. But they also make a lot of them I don't think much of. My favorites were some of their older ones that came bundled with older Dimension desktops. Look like they'd be mechanical but aren't.... They just have full range key travel and a well-built frame around them.
As others already pointed out, comparisons between pay today and in 1997 will be skewed because the late 90's was when investors were foolishing throwing money at every tech startup with a flashy name, creating an unsustainable tech bubble that burst a few years later on. You also had all of the Y2K crisis fears emerging, so again, a one-time panic mode that caused a flurry of spending to update major systems or do rewrites on older code.
I mean... I was working in I.T. as a PC "support specialist" for a metal finishing business in the midwest at that time, and I had friends who never even held a corporate I.T. job before, but who did a lot of freelance web page design for spare cash who ran off to California to get high paying jobs with companies like Excite. Fast-forwarding a few years? They came back to the midwest, unable to make it with the high cost of living and lack of available jobs..... (But hey, I guess they had a good run there for a short time.)
I propose someone compare pay between now and a more reasonable time in the past, after I.T. settled down a bit..... Maybe 2004? Then see how it compares.
I mean, are banks actually running across a regular problem where they go to refill an ATM machine and verify all the transactions, and discover somebody emptied out a few hundred or thousand bucks that they can't account for?
Seeing the attitude they seem to take with credit card fraud (just cancel the card, refund the fraudulent transactions and move on)... I guess nothing would surprise me. But I have to think the number of folks with the expertise to pull these hacks off who ALSO would risk jail time to do them is really small, vs. the number of common criminals who try the brute force methods we see on the TV news all the time. (Attach tow hook to machine and try to yank it out of the wall with a big truck, etc.)
I've never applied for a job with any of these mega tech giants, and I'm not sure if I ever will. If you're one of the people working in tech who ran to the opportunity to work for Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, Oracle, IBM or one of the other big ones -- you should have known your employment was just a cog in a giant corporate machine. To them, you're only another line item on a payroll spreadsheet unless you're SO exceptionally good, you rose in the ranks to some sort of upper management position.
The plus side has been better pay and benefits packages than smaller companies can afford to hand out. But there's a lot to be said for working for small businesses that really value your skills and opinions.
I think the cries to unionize I.T. are foolish. Sure, you can go that route if enough people at one of these tech giants really want to do it. But doing so still won't give you leverage to determine where they plunk down the next corporate HQ. Meanwhile, union I.T. workers would just cement that idea that they're disposable as individuals. They're just there to show up in large numbers, under a collective banner, as "Here to push some code around for you guys!"
If you feel a sense of guilt over what a company like Amazon is doing -- maybe you should go work elsewhere, instead? Computers all work the same way, no matter which company they're located at.
In all honestly, I think there's at least some crossover.... but the biggest reason the game makers don't have more piracy than they do is the trend towards multi-player games requiring server-side logins.
It does no good to pirate a game if it doesn't include a valid login ID to do much more than play through a few tutorial missions.
DRM is garbage, any way you look at it, though because it punishes EVERYONE who pays for the program. They've got to deal with the additional restrictions and hassles the DRM imposes as thanks for being s paying customer, supporting the game.
I've always said that piracy is a fool's errand to try to eradicate. The people who pirate games are the SAME audience who may buy your games. The vast majority of gamers are people who don't have unlimited incomes, and they can only budget so much of what they earn for entertainment expenses. The game makers need to simply accept that piracy happens, and it's part of the industry. With so many forms of entertainment competing for a person's limited dollars to spend -- only a handful of items will make the cut as the ones a person chooses to purchase. Whether they wind up pirating hundreds of other titles, or they choose not to pirate a single one changes nothing about your profits. They purchased as much as they were willing to purchase, either way.
In some cases, a game developer really may have bad luck and find they didn't make much at all on a game, despite 99% of the people playing it pirating it. That's unfortunate, but probably has more to do with a failure to market it successfully to people, or failure to produce something that rose above the competition released in the same time frame. It's not about "all those dirty software pirates preventing me from making a living". It's relatively easy to write something good enough that people will take out 10 minutes to download it for free and then spend some time playing it. It's much more difficult to write something SO good, it stands out in a sea of other options (including movies released on DVD, new novels that are published, and all sorts of other forms of entertainment people might choose to enjoy instead of playing your game).
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You'd probably also need to offer a lot of new jobs to railroad employees. The railroads, especially on the East coast of the U.S., transport coal as one of their primary customers. As coal is killed off, it also takes freight rail with it.
I've discussed this at length with people before .... but there are many reasons your statements aren't quite accurate.
1. The costs of many of the cheaper solar panels in use absolutely did NOT take into account all of the associated costs of producing them! One of the problems the industry has struggled with are all the cheap Asian panels on the market, often sold at below cost, thanks to government subsidies from China. They were willing to fund these losses at the government level, to help destroy the competition and gain a secure foothold selling them in places like America.
2. As far as I've seen? Solar panels do stand up pretty well to the weather. But they won't work in the normal configuration, supplying AC power back onto the grid to earn your credits on your electric bill, unless you have expensive inverters attached to them. My installation has 2 inverters -- one for a set of panels on my roof, and a second one for a set of panels on my detached garage roof. The inverters generally only get a warranty for about half the length the panels are warrantied, and they're more likely than the panels themselves to have a failure.
3. I've never heard of these banks you speak of, who would allow a person to take out a larger home loan if they felt the person might use less electricity thanks to solar panels (or anything else)? That would be risky on a lender's part, especially not having any guarantee the new homeowner wouldn't just use additional power, knowing some of their bill was supplemented by solar.
4. As for battery technology? I looked into that, but it's really too costly to make much sense in many situations. When the financials work out on it? It's usually only because that person's utility company decided to arbitrarily give discounted electric rates for power used at night ("off peak"). If you're able to time-shift your power consumption via battery storage, while making the power during the peak period when the sun is out -- that saves you money. But again, that's just an artificial construct the power company decided to put in place. My power company bills the same amount for my electricity, no matter when I use it. I'd hate to invest a lot of money in battery storage for PV solar on a home, only to find the power company decided to change the billing around shortly after that and eliminated the only reason it made financial sense!
As an overall thing? I can see how solar does pay for itself in the sunniest parts of the country. Nevada, California or Hawaii? Yeah ... probably a good investment. In much of the country though? You'll really not even do better than possibly breaking even on them. Here in Maryland, for example? A solar system installation similar to what I've got (a 7.64Kw sized setup) will typically cost a person around $34,000 to install. You can shave 30% off of that with a Federal tax credit, for now -- but that's still money you only get back a year after you have to buy the thing. But ok -- you're at $23,800 after said credit. Most people don't have that kind of money just lying around to pay up-front, so now you're looking at some kind of loan to cover that $23,800. Interest on that is going to chip away at the monthly electric bill savings the system makes, until you've got the thing paid off. Meanwhile, given our power rates out here? I'd say at BEST (only a few summer months out of each year), my panels make enough energy to shave about $100 per month off the bill. In months like December or January, it's likely the panels will generate as little as maybe 800 watts of power total on a snowy or rainy/overcast day. Enough of those, and you're looking at a month where the panels only saved you $20-30.
The people out here who brag that their solar panels make their monthly power bills 0 are usually living on farmland where they put rows and rows of panels up on metal frames or poles, taking up a big chunk of land. Not only did that probably cost them FAR more money than they'll ever recoup -- but it means they
You only have to spend a little time perusing the web forums designed for Mac enthusiasts (macrumors, etc.) to see that plenty of "Mac faithful" users are getting irritated with the high prices and lack of really innovative changes coming from Apple in recent years.
Of course, the problem is -- choosing to use a computer, or entire "ecosystem" of devices that aren't part of the "Microsoft Windows world" meant a pretty big investment. You have all the software products you've grown familiar with and have data saved in their, sometimes proprietary, formats. You have the prospect of buying some of that over again if you switch back to another OS platform. You also have the headaches that come with trying to resell all of the Apple gear that you're getting rid of.
So it's not really so shocking that people already invested in Macs will grudgingly put up with things like $700 for a new Mac Mini that used to cost more like $400, or even the prospect of having to shell out over $3,000 for the high-end Macbook Pro 15" with the new Vega video chipset in it.
If your home is already automated with a bunch of control devices that use Apple HomeKit, and you use Apple Airplay to stream music to speakers around your place, and you have a lot of purchased movie or video content in iTunes that you watch directly off an AppleTV set top box? It's better to upgrade that one machine that needs it, even at these inflated prices, than to tear it all out and start over from ground zero!
Even in our workplace, almost all of the creative professionals and sales staff are using Mac laptops. We really disliked the value proposition of going with new Macbook Pro 13" laptops instead of the good old Macbook Airs that we'd issued as kind of a standard since back in 2011-2012. But what can you do? In the big picture, these folks work on client projects that are often $1 million each. If they feel like they do better work on a $2,700 Mac than on a $1500 Microsoft Surface Pro - you buy them the Mac. In some cases, one of these people can use their computer to do something in one DAY that more than justifies the entire cost of the machine.
I've been using Macs since 1999 or 2000 consistently, over here. And it's obvious to me that the company just isn't the same, post Steve Jobs. But then, Apple was his baby. He clearly felt it more important to him than even his own family. You can't just appoint somebody as the new CEO and expect they have the same passion for it. It'll be the same situation if Elon Musk dies and they pick some outside guy from another auto-maker to run Tesla.....
What Apple does have is a pretty nice foundation for its products, between using the iOS platform or the Mac OS X platform. It also has enough of a presence in the smartphone market that it will probably always own a significant chunk of it, barring some utter and complete screw-up. If they price things so high that sales decline more than the price increases net them, they'll make adjustments. But I think they're definitely trying to see how much margin they can add before that happens.
I've owned a number of vehicles with keyfobs, and in almost every case, they didn't transmit anything until you pressed a button on them to unlock or lock a door, a trunk, or perhaps sound the horn repeatedly as a "panic" function.
That was true even for cars like my Hyundai Genesis Coupe that had "push to start". The fob might have transmitted something to tell the car it was present, so push to start was ok to start the engine. But you couldn't unlock the doors just by walking up to it. Come to think of it, my Cadillac CTS Coupe used to be the same way. It had push to start, but the fob didn't unlock anything until a button was pressed to send that signal.
I actually used to have a Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 convertible (2005 model) where the keyfob would even stop unlocking the doors if a button on it was pushed too many times while outside the range where the car could act on the command. It must have used some kind of 2 way handshake when you pressed the lock or unlock button. When it would stop working (which happened occasionally because I'd accidentally press buttons on it when it was in my jeans pocket with the rest of my keychain), I had to put the key in the ignition, turn it to the "on" position, and double press a button on it, and then turn the car back off. That would pair it back up.
People were doing a lot of moving when the economy went sour, but that was just the reaction to being unable to stay gainfully employed at the pay-rate you expected to receive.
I knew people working in construction, for example, who had to move wherever the job opportunities were -- because all of a sudden, they found themselves unable to find steady work doing home repairs or renovations. The fact they lived in a big city, full of homes, suddenly stopped guaranteeing jobs for them. They had to resort to "storm chasing", moving wherever a natural disaster happened, to be sure they were kept busy.
Even in I.T., I had to move our family from the midwest in order to advance my career. My home town just didn't have enough good-paying corporate I.T. jobs in it. Several large businesses shut down or restructured. leaving a lot of I.T. people out of work and creating more competition for the jobs that remained. And the smaller places were struggling to stay profitable, so couldn't give pay raises.
When the economy improved, it put a stop to the need to pack up and move around. IMO, that's a good thing. People shouldn't even be buying homes with 30 year mortgages when they're expecting they'll have to resell them and move within only a few years. A home is meant to be a long-term investment. Why wouldn't everybody rent if there was no expectation of staying put in one place for the long haul?
A lot of people are saying the decline is because "people don't want to pay $1000+ for the latest phone!". I'd say that's far less of an issue than the fact that the market is finally saturated with really good cellphones!
For many years, you had a situation where the people with enough money would always buy the latest and greatest phone, and typically hand down their old one to another family member, trade it in, or sell it online (eBay, Craigslist, etc.) at a big discount. The thing is? When cellphones were still getting major new features and significant upgrades at a fast pace, that meant the new phones really were significantly better than the ones they were letting go of. The "churn" helped a lot of people get their hands on a name brand, legitimate "top tier" smartphone, who couldn't otherwise afford or cost-justify one. But they still had a phone that was inferior to the "new stuff", and within a year or so? They, too, were looking to upgrade.
I think we're at a point now where the people who spent the money for the "best" phones are happy to get another year or two of use from them. They're not so quick to let go of them. And the last generation of phones that other people are carrying around are "good enough". Sure, the new ones are nicer -- but they're not missing features they can't live without.
Especially with the phones sold via contracts where you pay it off in monthly installments? Anyone with a decent full-time job can technically afford to buy a new one, even at $1000+. The point is, they don't WANT to have that chunk coming out of each paycheck when the only thing they're getting for it is a couple of new camera special f/x or "an even brighter, more colorful display than you last one that already looks amazing".
I'm one of those people who used to upgrade iPhones with pretty much every new revision. Maybe not on day 1? But within 3-6 months or so, I usually found a buyer for my existing phone and kicked in the difference to get the new model. It was always worth it, for things like the phone adding a new cellular band it supported for LTE data with my provider, or the Touch ID feature, or the phone gaining a second camera lens for telephoto -- not to mention faster CPUs and often more memory in the devices.
But now, my iPhone X really has everything covered. I can't see how there's almost anything compelling about upgrading to the new phones over this one? The X is plenty fast enough. (The big argument for needing more CPU or GPU power on the iPhones, at this point, seems to be for people using virtual reality or AR-heavy apps -- which I don't do much of with my phone at this time.) I've already got the Face ID feature, and having it work a second or two faster is "nice to have" but not enough to spend much money to get it. I'm even told my battery life is probably a bit better on my X than what I'd get if I upgraded it.
I'm sure I'd like a cellphone with 5G data support, when that's actually rolled out in a substantial way. But I think that's probably the next "upgrade driver" for me, and perhaps many others.
I'm sorry, but the traditional word processor design hasn't "gotten dusty" at all. It's been a pretty established framework for decades because writers need an application that works that way!
This push to make everything "collaborative" with chat clients and ability for a whole group to add sidebar notes to everything creates a big distraction. A good document needs to be focused on by the person writing it. It can be reviewed after that, and marked up as needed with suggested corrections. But the editor doing the proofreading should ALSO be doing that by him/herself, while he/she can give it the undivided attention it deserves.
I remember when a lot of people considered it a "feature" when a word processor would take over the whole screen with almost nothing but the text being typed. Writers appreciated that lack of distraction or temptation to click around on menus to try out various features, rather than concentrating on the work at hand.
I find that even doing regular computer support or troubleshooting, the multiple IM client options just raise my stress levels and make things take twice as long to get completed. People keep barging in, asking for updates on where you're at with something, or for some information on why X or Y is down. I can't see how it would benefit anyone trying to write some technical documentation or anything else, having a whole group constantly interacting and suggesting things while you're trying to concentrate?
But if the original poster is still following it?
I used to work in this capacity, as have several of my good friends. I've also been on the other side of it -- in charge of calling in outside consultants when it was deemed necessary, and managing their time and our budget for paying them for the work they did.
The first thing you have to understand with Windows 10 is, it's a "moving target". Maybe in another year or two, it will be less so? But as it stands currently, it's Microsoft's grand experiment in offering people a modern operating system that pretty much requires a constant high-speed Internet connection and is subject to minor or major changes at any time. There are still some things in Windows 10 that are so inconsistent and confusing, I'd be surprised if they don't receive a major change in a future update -- like the "vintage" Control Panel co-existing with the new "Settings" menu, accessed by clicking the gear icon.
Even if you're the type Microsoft hopes you are, who will just "go with the flow" as they re-think parts of the OS? The challenge of all of this is that their updates are large and often slow to install. So it feels like you can barely keep up with all of it sometimes, and your PC seems like it's forever downloading and applying one thing or another.
Someone with knowledge of how everything works can take some steps to force your Windows systems on your network NOT to do the upgrades as they're released. But frankly, that just delays the inevitable. At some point, something you need will either just plain not be there in your version of Win 10, or will refuse to work properly with it anymore. And then you may have multiple, huge updates to go through to get it current.
Where I work in I.T. today, we practically force all of the users to do all the updates as they're released. (Systems are set to automatically download them in the background and to apply them at 1AM each day one is pending.) If your computers are part of a Windows Domain, you can control this centrally from your server with group policies.
If your consultants can't or won't get something like this set up for you? You need to find new people. The idea of a "warranty" on their work is just marketing B.S. In computers and I.T., the only constant is change. So I guess they think you'll like the idea that for 3 years, they'll redo something specific they did if updates and changes break it? But .... in practice, it rarely works like that. When things break, it's usually because YOU decided to switch something around voluntarily. Perhaps your old scanner broke and you bought a new one that was on sale at the office supply store? Well, maybe it turns out the driver for the new one no longer plays nicely with your financial software that was originally set up to let you scan in checks or invoices? Nobody will fix the NEW scanner back up for you at no charge, as "warranty" work, since you changed the hardware around.
Those of us with solar panels on our roofs in states that offer "SREC" credits should already be used to this....
Once promised as a great way to make your solar panels pay for themselves, SRECs are now practically worthless in every state with the program, except for maybe Washington DC. (That's only true there because a lot of people can't put solar panels up since they rent or live in multi-level properties where they don't own rights to put things on the roof. And another big segment of DC is too poor to be able to afford them, regardless of subsidies. It's pretty rare in DC to own a property with a lot of square footage, where you can generate a lot of power from panels, too.)
As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't need a government tax credit to justify your purchase of a vehicle. Everyone I've met who purchased a new Tesla, for example, could afford the car without that credit and would, indeed, have purchased it anyway. The rest of us who own them waited to get a deal on an older, used one, which didn't qualify for the credit in the first place.
You might have SOME argument that the credit is more attractive to the middle class customer who considers a car like a Chevy Volt / Bolt or a Nissan Leaf. But even then, I think a lot of those buyers are only buying them because they're on an "environmentally friendly" kick, trying to prove they leave a small carbon footprint. IMO, that's financially foolish of them - but who am I to tell others how to spend their money? Again, if you're honestly buying because you're trying to come out ahead with cost savings on gasoline, you'd be a lot further ahead of the game to buy a used one.
You know? One thing I've come to realize over the years is that because the most important sex organ in the body is the brain, fetishes tend to span practically anything you could imagine.
Societal norms and peer pressure tend to keep a lot of them in check. (In general, folks are never very comfortable when they're stuck being in proximity to others who think and act too differently from what they're used to.)
But yes, they're always going to seek outlets for their "special interests" -- and I think it's a good and healthy thing to provide people with those outlets.
It's interesting to me how certain fetish interests have gotten enough mainstream exposure so it's more socially acceptable to provide gatherings for them, while the rest are still hidden away. (If your thing is BDSM, for example? Most of that has become "trendy" enough that even back in the 1990's, most major cities had at least one nightclub with a "fetish night" with that as the theme.)
I'd never advocate government sponsoring anything like Tumblr. The less government spends my tax money on "projects du jour", the better off I am. But this recent legislation that cracks down on all of this has gone way overboard.
And yeah, I fail to see much attraction to using Tumblr for the G and PG rated content? Truth is, they're "yet another photo/video gallery" service otherwise. SnapChat, Instagram, etc. All performing the same functionality for people, more or less. Tumblr got a foothold BECAUSE they were known not to censor your content much.
As others said already on here, many of the people who live in rural areas are interested in satellite television, at least until the day comes when they're all able to get broadband fiber or cable. Judging by the lack of interest in the monopolies in the U.S. to roll out service to new areas, I'd say satellite still provides a viable alternative for people for a LONG time.
AT&T is probably just not so interested in hanging onto the DirecTV service in its long-term plans. That hardly means satellite TV is dead, though. It just indicates they'll sell it off to somebody else. Right now, people still have Dish Network as an alternative option, even if DirecTV went offline tomorrow.
If the cable providers don't stop with the greed about capping monthly bandwidth usage, too? People will find it more economical to keep a cheap satellite subscription vs. chewing through their data allotment with nothing but streaming.
But in any case, satellite TV has the mobility advantage. You can slap a dish on your RV and roam around the country, and always have TV service wherever you go. That doesn't work with cable TV and is only spotty with an LTE cellular service.
I'm a homeowner in Maryland too, but as I understand things? The increased taxes are set up in advance. So even though they "only go up every 3 years", they're based on a planned increase in the 3 year period before the new rate is charged.
I have friends who worked for lenders, directly responsible for contacting the right appraisers and ensuring the appraisals were done properly and on-time, so as not to hold up loans in progress.
The concept might be good, but in practice? The whole thing seems like a sham to me.
The loan officers do their best to hand-pick the appraisers for given loans, to make sure they go through at the valuations they need to see. The law says, of course, that they're not allowed to do that. But the OWNERS of many of the lending institutions know that things have to work that way, for them to maximize profits and prevent a lot of angry customers who want to buy a property, but get turned down.
So what happens? The lenders opt to use specific software packages that automatically assign appraisers for loans entered into the system. But the software database still needs to be filled with the appraisers it's supposed to assign. Guess who gets to choose who gets put into the database when it's all configured?
Unlike actual inspectors, the appraisers don't even have to really take a close look at much of anything. They have to bring some photos back to the bank and give a guesstimate of the value based on comparable properties. In most cases, they're only required to do a "head and shoulders" look at the attic of a given home, for example. They're not required to climb up into an attic beyond that point.
Often times, the appraisers are even told they can't get hired to do appraisals for given lenders unless they charge below a certain price. If that is below the going rate for an appraisal in that zip code, you can be sure the appraiser is going to do only the bare minimum necessary ....
I hope they're really successful with high performance video chipsets. Right now, I'd welcome additional competition in that space, no matter who is doing it.
The current situation is pretty ridiculous -- where every single person on the planet interested in 3D gaming or design/CAD/CAM or animation/rendering work is stuck with what one of only two vendors have to offer them.
Every time people come up with a new reason to buy fast video cards (like crypto-mining the latest e-coin), there's a massive shortage of available cards across the entire industry.
And it's not terribly difficult to pinpoint the downsides of going the nVidia route, or conversely, going with AMD. A third vendor could figure out how to address those negatives so their offering covers all of the bases.
I agree with you. Most people are primarily concerned with what's cheapest when they need it. They're not so worried about a long-term environmental cost that's more of an abstract and may not even noticeably affect them during the rest of their lifetime.
BUT, people are also generally smart enough to know that "you get what you pay for", and will pay a bit more for a superior option,if it's still in their price range.
Government intervention is, IMO, your worst possible way to try to change behavior. Your lighting example is a great one. Yes, government started MANDATING people buy CFL's instead of traditional incandescent bulbs. So what happened? Everyone started using those ugly "squiggly" looking bulbs in their fixtures at motels, offices and homes -- and quickly discovered they were burning up and failing in anything enclosed. They also found out they're an environmental hazard if you drop and shatter one, and most took an annoyingly long time to come up to their full brightness once turned on. The overall disgust at how inferior those products were, despite their ONE good quality (using less energy) drove people to start voluntarily switching to new LED lighting technology. That interest and demand, in turn, brought costs WAY down and competition ensured the quality generally went up. Last year, I replaced every single bulb in my house with an LED version, because it was a trivial expense and gave me pleasant lighting that saves me money on my electric bills, and saves hassle changing bulbs that burn out.)
So government 0, free market demand 1.
When you start talking about home heating systems, you're getting into a problem where more efficient options are VASTLY more expensive. I'm struggling with this now myself. My house has a pair of electric heat pumps for the upstairs and downstairs floors. My winter electric bills are AWFUL. But still, replacing these with geothermal heat pumps that would stop them from using the electric heating elements (aux heat) whenever it gets too cold would cost me well over $50,000. That money pays a whole lot of utility bills ....
How can it be addressed? I think it just takes time and R&D. Have we reached the plateau where no more cost savings or improvements can be invented to HVAC systems? Nah! I have faith they'll come along. But the current solutions only save a person money if they buy them for a "forever home" they're never going to move out of, and the break-even point comes close to the point where the systems are wearing out and in need of another replacement.
The conclusion that this problem is one "that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle" tells me all I need to know about the political views of the original poster.
That said? Yeah, we have some looming problems for future retirees when it comes to finances. But the people who are already nearly 30 years old and "have nothing saved for retirement" still need to look in the mirror to find who to blame. I can guarantee you (because I work with a lot of these people myself), a lot of younger people were never taught much of anything about finances and investing. Many have no idea how to balance a checkbook, and rely on regularly logging in to their bank's web site to determine how much money they've got in their account(s). They couldn't challenge their bank about an error if they had to. They just blindly trust and accept that the bank is keeping a proper record of their transactions. They've been offered 401Ks but opted out, saying they "didn't trust that the money would really be there by the time they retire anyway" or other such excuses.
The fact that many people are struggling to find and keep good paying jobs obviously doesn't help either. But the fact is, it's a lot easier to have money taken out of your paycheck, pre-tax, before you ever see it. The bellyaching about not being able to afford to let them take even 3% or 4% out for a retirement account is just FUD. If you're living SO close to the edge that 3% of your income, pre-tax, will make the difference between you surviving and not? You have bigger problems and need to re-evaluate your life choices and needs.
Personally, as a libertarian who leans financially conservative on most issues? I think it's the liberal Democrats who I'm most afraid to see trying to "fix retirement problems". They're notorious for the persistent belief that any problem can be addressed by pointing the finger at someone else with more resources, and demanding they give some of theirs up towards the goal.
When you look at how the existing Social Security system is set up? It's not even really a designated "pot" that funds go into. That's why so many other political plans involve dipping into money that was supposedly earmarked for people's retirement. Even SSI comes out of Social Security. That's a potential problem because disability payments are doled out to a lot of people who never worked long enough to contribute anything meaningful IN to the system first. And our legislation allows for practically anything imaginable to count as a disability, if you can get the right doctor to sign off on it. I once dated a girl, briefly, who was in her 20's and I discovered was collecting disability payments. I couldn't imagine why, until I found out she claimed she had "back problems" that prevented her from ever being able to hold a job. It turns out, it was some kind of issue where occasionally (maybe once a month at most?) she'd find she couldn't get up out of bed in the morning ... basically paralyzed for a while. A few hours later, it would get better and she could get up and move around again. A legitimate medical problem? Yeah, but IMO, hardly one that would keep you from being a productive member of society. Especially with all the teleworking opportunities around today, it's a better time than ever in history to find employment despite a limitation like that! A tenant in my father's apartment, a while back, was collecting disability payments because he claimed his previous cocaine addiction qualified him. You could even collect it for being too overweight, if you wanted to go that route .... How much more money would be there to ensure Social Security could pay people fairly in their retirement if it wasn't drained off by these other things?
But it IS a political issue, as soon as we start talking about legislation mandating behaviors!
The true "denialists" aren't that relevant, if the science is solid enough to prove them wrong. You'll never get everyone to accept almost anything. We still have a Flat Earth Society and a number of people refuse to accept the theory of evolution.
What DOES matter is what you propose to do about the issue. If you want to research machines that could efficiently extract excess CO2 from the air? That's VERY different than trying to implement "carbon taxes" or imposing Federal regulations demanding a halt to the use of a particular fossil fuel (like coal).
Just because researchers come to a consensus that the planet's climate is slowly increasing in temperature doesn't mean they need to become political - advocating taxation and regulation. If our technological advances are what got us into this mess, they can get us back out too. People will always go with the options that cost them the least money, and give them the most benefit. Improve cleaner energy alternatives so they're cheaper and better, and people will gladly stop burning oil, natural gas and coal!
I think I have a bit of a clue.... Nobody is saying visiting Antarctica is "much like a trip to Mars". We're saying that right now, it's probably one of the most inhospitable places a person can travel to -- and yet many people have chosen to do it anyway.
Any serious attempt at a Mars mission would presumably include transporting up some basic building blocks to take a decent stab at living there for a period of time. On the plus side, you don't have to worry about wild animals attacking you on Mars or getting stung or bitten by insects carrying nasty diseases.
At least in the early stages, I think you'd probably try to establish a domed, climate-controlled "research station" of sorts, which would shelter you from some of the worst parts of trying to live on Mars.
Already, there are restaurants in places like New York City that won't accept cash. They demand debit cards, credit cards or something like Apple or Android Pay, only. Their reasoning is an interest in reducing crime. (You won't get very far trying to wave a gun at them and demanding all the cash in the register.) I'm sure, secondarily, there's the advantage of fewer errors from employees making incorrect change or accidentally accepting counterfeit bills. And obviously, it saves some of the hassle of making sure you have enough change in the register, so you don't run out of $1's or quarters or what have you.
But most definitely, all of these cashless payment options trade the convenience for ability to track your purchasing habits. And if you're in the habit of buying relatively expensive goods, second-hand, it means the risk that government will start using that information at tax time to challenge your returns and any requests for refunds. "You state, here, that you only earned $X,XXX this year, Mr. Jones -- yet we see where somehow, you managed to spend X% of your total income on performance parts for your truck and new computers from sellers on Craigslist. That math seems a bit questionable, so we've decided to do a full audit. Remember, if you made that money on the side selling illegal drugs, you still owe the state and Federal tax on the proceeds."
I don't think any explorer, ever, just came to a new land for the first time and lived an immediate life of comfort.
The point is, somebody has to be first to attempt to colonize a new land (or world in the case of Mars), and that's a task certain people find a VERY rewarding challenge
And yes - a few people enjoy spending time in places with very harsh conditions, where there aren't many other human beings around. My dad was friends with a teacher who took a sabbatical leave to visit Antarctica and live in one of those research facilities for a year or so. He came back with some amazing photos and stories, and didn't regret it a bit. (Not saying he'd be eager to do it again or to move there permanently ... but it's something not many people have experienced, so I can see the attraction.)
To be honest, some of the best keyboards I've used were made by Dell. But they also make a lot of them I don't think much of. My favorites were some of their older ones that came bundled with older Dimension desktops. Look like they'd be mechanical but aren't .... They just have full range key travel and a well-built frame around them.
As others already pointed out, comparisons between pay today and in 1997 will be skewed because the late 90's was when investors were foolishing throwing money at every tech startup with a flashy name, creating an unsustainable tech bubble that burst a few years later on. You also had all of the Y2K crisis fears emerging, so again, a one-time panic mode that caused a flurry of spending to update major systems or do rewrites on older code.
I mean ... I was working in I.T. as a PC "support specialist" for a metal finishing business in the midwest at that time, and I had friends who never even held a corporate I.T. job before, but who did a lot of freelance web page design for spare cash who ran off to California to get high paying jobs with companies like Excite.
Fast-forwarding a few years? They came back to the midwest, unable to make it with the high cost of living and lack of available jobs..... (But hey, I guess they had a good run there for a short time.)
I propose someone compare pay between now and a more reasonable time in the past, after I.T. settled down a bit ..... Maybe 2004? Then see how it compares.
I mean, are banks actually running across a regular problem where they go to refill an ATM machine and verify all the transactions, and discover somebody emptied out a few hundred or thousand bucks that they can't account for?
Seeing the attitude they seem to take with credit card fraud (just cancel the card, refund the fraudulent transactions and move on) ... I guess nothing would surprise me. But I have to think the number of folks with the expertise to pull these hacks off who ALSO would risk jail time to do them is really small, vs. the number of common criminals who try the brute force methods we see on the TV news all the time. (Attach tow hook to machine and try to yank it out of the wall with a big truck, etc.)
I've never applied for a job with any of these mega tech giants, and I'm not sure if I ever will. If you're one of the people working in tech who ran to the opportunity to work for Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, Oracle, IBM or one of the other big ones -- you should have known your employment was just a cog in a giant corporate machine. To them, you're only another line item on a payroll spreadsheet unless you're SO exceptionally good, you rose in the ranks to some sort of upper management position.
The plus side has been better pay and benefits packages than smaller companies can afford to hand out. But there's a lot to be said for working for small businesses that really value your skills and opinions.
I think the cries to unionize I.T. are foolish. Sure, you can go that route if enough people at one of these tech giants really want to do it. But doing so still won't give you leverage to determine where they plunk down the next corporate HQ. Meanwhile, union I.T. workers would just cement that idea that they're disposable as individuals. They're just there to show up in large numbers, under a collective banner, as "Here to push some code around for you guys!"
If you feel a sense of guilt over what a company like Amazon is doing -- maybe you should go work elsewhere, instead? Computers all work the same way, no matter which company they're located at.
In all honestly, I think there's at least some crossover.... but the biggest reason the game makers don't have more piracy than they do is the trend towards multi-player games requiring server-side logins.
It does no good to pirate a game if it doesn't include a valid login ID to do much more than play through a few tutorial missions.
DRM is garbage, any way you look at it, though because it punishes EVERYONE who pays for the program. They've got to deal with the additional restrictions and hassles the DRM imposes as thanks for being s paying customer, supporting the game.
I've always said that piracy is a fool's errand to try to eradicate. The people who pirate games are the SAME audience who may buy your games. The vast majority of gamers are people who don't have unlimited incomes, and they can only budget so much of what they earn for entertainment expenses. The game makers need to simply accept that piracy happens, and it's part of the industry. With so many forms of entertainment competing for a person's limited dollars to spend -- only a handful of items will make the cut as the ones a person chooses to purchase. Whether they wind up pirating hundreds of other titles, or they choose not to pirate a single one changes nothing about your profits. They purchased as much as they were willing to purchase, either way.
In some cases, a game developer really may have bad luck and find they didn't make much at all on a game, despite 99% of the people playing it pirating it. That's unfortunate, but probably has more to do with a failure to market it successfully to people, or failure to produce something that rose above the competition released in the same time frame. It's not about "all those dirty software pirates preventing me from making a living". It's relatively easy to write something good enough that people will take out 10 minutes to download it for free and then spend some time playing it. It's much more difficult to write something SO good, it stands out in a sea of other options (including movies released on DVD, new novels that are published, and all sorts of other forms of entertainment people might choose to enjoy instead of playing your game).