I fail to see how, 20 years later, a new Hummer being 1000 lb heavier is progress. There's these things called advances in material technology. And for vehicles that are being designed and forced on us "in the name" sustainability, vehicle weight should be a priority.

And I realize that some EVs weigh less than comparable ICEs, but the list is very short. It's basically the Model 3...and nothing else.

I'm in favor of higher road use/gas taxes across the board, TBH. The roads are underfunded as it is. Of course we know that govt's love raiding transportation funds for other purposes...so hard to win these days :bonk:

I will speak for everyone else that already knows this: no one is forcing a Hummer EV on you, but the Hummer EV is miles ahead of the H2 even if it wasn't an EV, in size and features, so the weight of the Hummer isn't the best apples to apples comparison that someone made for EVs vs ICEs.

I am not really for "flat" taxes (fixed dollar amounts) because I believe in a more progressive tax system, and as a percentage of someone's income/wealth, "flat" or use/consumption taxes are actually regressive. Yes, the rich and wealthy pay a lot more taxes, but not as a percentage of their income. Add to that the idea that the average person contributes far higher of a percentage of their income to live and less to savings or for excess, and it is clear that taxes on use/consumption isn't as fair as it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCGbAv8YPw

It looks to me that OEM's are committed to evs regardless of political wranglings, gas prices etc. Imo they can't wait to shut down those engine plants

OEMs have the same logic with CUVs. Not everyone wants/needs them, but that's what they're shoving down our throats.

ftfy

No. It only sells because it's what the manufactures what to push. Therefore it will sell. You start flooding the market with one thing and limit another, of course it will sell more

It's progress in the same way the original Tesla Roadster was progress. It's an expensive car that will help forge the way for everyday cars while GM gets it's battery plant up and running.

GM also offers a couple of other very good EVs if you prefer something smaller, with more coming.

Yep. I'm actually tempted by the Hummer EV, but would not, in a milllion years, have bought any version of the original Hummer/H2/H3. In fact, I would say the new Hummer EV is a hell of deal when you look at it feature for feature over the Hummer ICE.

Actually there are plenty of choices that will accomplish the same mission
as CUVs, but that seems to be the new family car of choice.

CUVs are the new large coupe/station wagon/minivan and they will run their course. Even in the EV space we are seeing alternatives starting to pop up.

Only if you cash it out. And only if the sell price is higher than the price you paid for it.

If you sell anywhere from 1 day to 365 days after receiving it, it is taxed under your personal income tax brackets (ordinary income), progressive brackets up to 37%.

After 1 year, it is taxed as long term gains, 0/15/20%, usually 15% or lower for most... except Elon. And other people with more than $500k worth of capital gains.

But if you have a good accountant, you'd have one massive year of loss and spread it out over the next few, and cash out other long term gains over the same period for a net 0% tax liability. This is how people with a lot of money avoid taxes, by 1) selling it after at least 1 year, and 2) pair it up with losses to make the taxable amount from proceeds to be as low as possible.

https://www.investopedia.com/article...-tax-rates.asp

Current status for EVs (I hope we see further improvements soon):
Avg US EV: 125 gCO2e/MJ
Gas US avg: 88 gCO2e/MJ
California EV: 60 gCO2e/MJ
E85: 54 gCO2e/MJ

Hah, I was just using as an example, mostly because that information just dropped the other day. I have no purpose for owning a truck currently, but in near future may need one for towing a race car. Also currently blessed with being in a WFH position, so I have no use for an EV to DD (the only thing they're currently good for). Perhaps that will change one day.

I agree with you in principle about taxes on certain things and how they can be regressive. However driving an automobile isn't regressive in the sense that higher energy costs are essentially a regressive tax. Automobile ownership and use isn't mandatory for most of the country. Electricity is.

Overall though, totally agree in restructuring being needed to get the rich to shoulder their fair load.

It's an interesting video, but there are a couple of things they conveniently left out.

First, they point out how payroll taxes reduce salaries, but don't mention how corporate income taxes are really embedded taxes in goods and services we purchase, thus basically serving as an extension of the sales tax.

Second, they leave out the reason why payroll taxes are capped. The reason is because the benefit is capped. This is to avoid having to pay "rich people" a higher social security payout once they reach retirement age. That's OK since they should be able to save and take care of themselves, but they shouldn't have to pay a higher tax then the benefit they receive since this is not a government funding program but a defined benefit.

Medicare is like other healthcare insurance, you pay based on the cost of the service you receive, not based on your ability to pay.

Where did you source this? Is this average use based on where electricity is generated from; ie, coal, oil, natural gas, etc? Is this End-Of-Product and/or End-Of-Life carbon footprint considering the differences in producing an ICE vs EV, or in the production and refining of ethanol vs petrol?

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/22/110752...rbon-footprint

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JVTv...line-chart.png

This chart makes me wonder, does "Efficient Corn Ethanol" get you drunk faster too?

Convenient for them because it would have taken more work to add them in, or convenient because you believe those points would contradict their argument?

Your first point would have been a good point for them to add because that would make the tax on goods and the hidden price increase on goods that much more regressive. There is the reality that corporations are in a far more powerful position than consumers when it comes to passing the buck to the consumer. In some cases, the consumer has no choice, which is why we pay huge prices here for pharmaceuticals, or why the US doesn't tax many business like oil companies because those companies will just pass the price to the consumer. Unfortunately, this means the US needs to find ways of raising taxes from other places, and it means consumers often have a false idea about the true cost of products. For instance, we heavily subsidize farming industries, which for instance gives us cheaper corn. Cheap corn is used to cheaply fatten livestock or to make high fructose corn syrup, which is why the true cost of beef or a soda would be higher. I actually don't know by how much, but more. Interestingly, we have taxes on soda and subsidies for corn sugar lol But going back to the point, the corporations don't have an endless ability for most products to pass the buck to consumers. Eventually consumers would stop buying the product or find an alternative, so there would be a balance or bell curve maximum that we could impart on corporations, and it would be product specific.

Your second point is a good add-on to explain the situation, but it doesn't really change the fact that it is a regressive tax. Moreover, I can't pass my Social Security to just anyone when I die like how I could will my savings. Since income is proportional to life expectancy, where there is a 15 year difference in life expectancy between the top 1% and bottom 1%, those who are the poorest are least likely to pass on their wealth to their next generation and family. This is essentially a regressive wealth/inheritance/estate tax. Don't get me wrong; Social Security overall is better than having a system where people are not guaranteed an income when they retire.

I'm not really sure what your point is about medicare, but consider this: if the difference in life expectancy between the poorest 1% and the richest 1% is 15 years for men, and the average life expectancy is 72.6, and for most people collecting Medicare doesn't start until roughly 65, then doesn't it seem like the poor are paying into a program they may never use more often than those with more money, who are more likely to live longer to use the program? Isn't this also regressive?

A little of both, but more the former than the latter. It would have changed the final numbers a bit, but not enough to matter to those on either side of the fence. It's just inconsistent.

Not sure I agree its a regressive tax because it's technically not a tax but a "buy in" with an expected payment at the end based on how much you pay in over the years, but I agree with your other points, including I'm glad it's there as a safety net, although I do think it gives many a false sense of security and they don't plan appropriately because of it, even when that is an option.

No, at least not to me. It's a fixed percentage payroll tax. If you earn less, you pay less. If you earn more you pay more (in $ amount). There is no max as there is with Social Security. A person at the top of the income chain pays more for the same benefit, all else being equal. Of course, neither Medicare nor SS are a "prepaid" plan. People paying now are paying not for themselves but for people currently in the plan, it's all sort of moot.

The unity is gCO2e/MJ, which means lifecycle carbon intensity.

I really thibk that EV will be good in a short future, and will eventually buy one. I like how it drives (cannot mention the platforms).

PS: let me go back and find again the source. And it always changes based on the assumptions.

"If you earn less, you pay less" can still be regressive, depending on how you look at it.

In a progressive system, as income goes up people should have to pay a higher percentage, but the video illustrates that in our system, when accounting for all taxes, we have more of a flat taxation system. In a flat system, those with higher incomes and wealth still pay more, but not as a percentage, which is bad. In fact, when we account for other things, I wouldn't be surprised if our tax system is more regressive than flat.

When it comes to Medicare, we all pay the same percentage, which isn't progressive, so it is bad. If we all used the services the same then that would be a flat tax, but we don't. The more money someone makes, the longer their life expectancy is, so the more likely they are to use Medicare's services. They are more likely to get a heart transplant, a heart bypass, a stent or two, several colonoscopies, that breast cancer surgery, those hip replacements, etc. Yes, the rich pay more into the system, so it seems fine that they would get to use it more, but this isn't progressive.

When it comes to Social Security, the more you make, the more you get. It is based on how much a person contributed to their Social Security. Not everyone receives Social Security. If a person didn't work enough then they don't get anything. If someone worked a minimum of 11 years and contributed the smallest amount then they would be entitled to the minimum distribution of $41.90/month. If they worked 30 or more years then they get at least $872.50/month. The maximum distribution is $3,895/month, which is like saving $623,200 and cashing out the 7.5% in yearly interest/dividends. The regressive part of Social Security is that it is a flat tax (fixed percentage), but the ones who are receiving the highest percentage back are the ones who live the longest, which are the those who earn more.

That's an opinion not a fact. It depends on whether you believe everyone should pull their own weight, versus believing in wealth redistribution. Again, the portions that make it appear flat are the portions where, such as social security, the contribution is capped so the withdrawl can also be capped.

You keep harping on the "rich live longer, so they should pay more". Statistically, as a group, they do live longer but that is not necessarily because they outlive their less fortunate counterparts. Are you looking at life expectancy at the age of, say 50 or at the point where they start paying payroll taxes, or overall life expectancy? Life expectancy is skewed by, for example by infant mortality rates which may be where the real inequity lies.

As far as dollar amounts, yes Social Security is based on the amount of your contribution. Why shouldn't it be? That is also why the contribution is capped, so someone like a professional baseball player who had millions of dollars and would have contributed a huge amount of money to the program if there was no limit would now receive 100s of thousands of dollars a year as part of the benefit. (I use a baseball player because their earnings are through salary and not like someone like Musk or Gates where most of it is capital gains).

Well, as I said in another thread, income and wealth inequality isn't a problem under a certain set of conditions. I posted a video discussing the income and wealth inequality in the Netherlands, which is one of the highest on the index (in the world). The video does discuss how the index is slightly skewed due to how the Netherlands allows people to take out home loans at a greater value than the value of the home, so more of the country holds higher debt. But the Netherlands manage their income and wealth inequality by meeting a set of conditions. These conditions are the following:

--People need to have a certain standard of living that provides at minimum the basic needs such as food, water, shelter, healthcare, leisure, etc.
--Money can't be/influence politics.
--There has to be strong anti-trust laws, or said differently, money can't influence the market.
--There has to be good social mobility.

The US lacks all of these things. As such is the case, wealth begets wealth. People are exploited for labor, and we work some of the longest hours and highest number of weeks in a year with around the fewest amount of vacations in the modern world because we lack unions and other things. We lack universal healthcare here and suffer for it, including, a lower life expectancy, with over 30k dying from lack of access to healthcare, higher premiums/drug costs despite the life expectancy and lower health, etc. There are high levels of poverty. There are high levels of homelessness. Money is influencing all types of laws that make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Money is manipulating the market, where we have poor anti-trust laws, and we have corporations destroying competition and manipulating the market. Corporate taxes are low, competition is low, oligopolies are everywhere, etc. The rich manipulate the market by shorting stocks. Small businesses get the short end of the stick. Social mobility is terrible here.

Going back to what you said, about it being my opinion. In some ways, it isn't a subjective opinion to say one way is better than another. We may not know or we may know, but even if we don't know, that doesn't mean it is subjective. There may be an objective "better" or an objective "bad/worse" that we just haven't uncovered. We have metrics from other countries that we can compare to the US, and these metrics don't paint a good picture for the US. Besides that fact, we inherently understand that we couldn't live in a world that is perfectly fair, right?

Say we lived in a world where corporations paid their workers a fair share of the profits, so the guy making $50k per year actually got a fair share of the profits. Instead of a CEO paying themselves $25 million, maybe the $50k workers took home $175k, and the CEO made $350k. We don't live in that world, but even if we did live in that world, lets say we still had those who accumulated more wealth and had high incomes. Say the government made tax flat--not a percentage--but an absolute flat amount. Say everyone had to pay the same amount, which would be fair. How much would that be? The US collected $2.8 trillion in income tax at the federal, state and local level. That is equivalent to every man, woman and child paying $8,500. That doesn't sound bad, but a family of five (husband, wife and three kids) would need to spend $42,700 just on income tax (maybe this would be a good population control method). Hopefully in this fair system, we would also have fair income like I mentioned above because that is equivalent to the household bringing in around $175k per year by today's progressive taxation system, but if not then that family of five who makes $75k now is probably living on the remaining $25k, and the really poor, well, they would be sucked dry from taxation, but it would be fair.

Huge amount of income and wealth inequality without protections from predatory behavior and exploitation inevitably results in social instability. We know this through history. It is bad. Having a strong progressive taxation system is a key component along with the conditions mentioned above.

By every metric, the rich live longer at every stage of life--yes, infancy too, but also, everywhere else. This just looked at 40+ without considering infant mortality:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866586/

I'm not saying a cap doesn't make sense. A cap makes sense because a rich person is far less likely to need Social Security. In fact, the Amish don't pay Social Security (unless they work for non-Amish) because it is against their customs and beliefs to not provide for elders. I'm saying the system claims to be progressive, but it isn't even flat; it is slightly regressive. As I stated above, there are objective measurements for a healthy society, and regressive taxation causes social instability.

https://www.nber.org/digest/may00/so...tribute-income

I thought this clip is weird. I found the lack of noise to be a little surreal.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwHu9xPsE3U

Yea, it gives the impression they are just taking a stroll down the runway rather than a quick race.

I would imagine it's similar to riding a LIM (linear induction motor) roller coaster. You go from a standing start to some huge speed very quickly with nearly no noise normally associated with a roller coaster.

Volcano (Kings Dominion, Virginia, now retired) was my favorite. You went from ground level, through two launch segments to get up to speed and did a straight vertical lift to over 200ft through a "volcano" to come out the top in an inverted position.

Volcano was amazing!



And reminds me of a weird story....


I was with a group of people and got paired with a random-to-me person to ride in the front row. We get up there and it turns out he's too big to fit on the ride. The harness that comes down wouldn't fit even with the belt extender they had... it was still fun riding the front alone but I felt bad for that dude for waiting for nothing.

Completely off-subject, but I worked a Kings Dominion in the early 80s, including a year on the construction crew for the Grizzly. One of my "claims to fame" is I bolted down all of the original wheel track. I was also the first person to ride in the rear seat (during a test run). They made us stop riding it when the entire crew decided to ride it standing up holding on to the lap bar using our safety straps.

Many years later I had the joy of taking my kids there so they could ride the ride Dad built.

At the end of the ride, just as you are about to go into the brake house, if you look up there is a silver circle on the outside front facia. That is a flattened throwaway ash tray with a star in the middle of it that came from the employee lunch room. I had tacked it up there near the end of the construction in 1983. It was still there the last time I went to the park in about 12 years ago. Don't know if its still there but I have spotted it in some YouTube videos of the ride posted since then.

My middle son (who is about 5'4" as an adult) had a similar experience at KD. He had just gotten tall enough for most rides. He was in line behind a guy who had to have been just shy of 7" tall and thin as a rail. They both got turned away, one for being one inch to short and the other for being several inches too tall for the ride.

Where was goldilocks when you need her LOL




I haven't been in a few years but now I want to go back just to see!

I've always had this image of some maintenance guy having to fabricate a replacement for it every few years because they think it's part of the ride design. There were a few others the crew scattered around the coaster, but most are in hidden places. I was never that subtle.

Did anyone calculate the amount of energy (KW) that the state uses in the form of gas and diesel that will have to come from the electric grid? We know that California has a great over abundance of electricity right know and an overbuilt distribution system that can handle several times the requirement of today.

Solar is great at night when charging is needed, winds usually drop at night. We charge during the day and drive at night. That will work.

I am waiting to see how this is sold.

I think they are planning to make electricity using mushrooms and distribute it with fairy dust. Because any plans to build the necessary generating plants and distribution systems needed to be started at least five years ago. We know how helpful the regulatory agencies are for permits to build projects of that magnitude.

Reposting:

https://youtu.be/7dfyG6FXsUU

Good video, and good real world experience. His driving style on the road pretty much matches mine when solo. I only stop to fuel, which in the FRS is about half his frequency.

So, in the 86, in 1000 highway miles, assuming I start full, I'd have to refuel twice, for about 20 minutes. If you throw in a couple of quick rest stop breaks we would probably be up to an hour. Some "rest stop" breaks might be early fueling breaks so overall it probably works out to an hour either way.

So, in the end, it took him about 2 hours longer than it would have taken me (if you extend his trip to the full 1,000 miles). Not awful, but not insignificant either.

BTW, I realy enjoy his videos, but (and this applies to all similar videos) I don't get why this had to be filmed in a car. There was nothing the car added to the video and frankly I found it distracting.

2 hours is gargantuan when added over time across multiple trips.

I prefer filming in the car, it adds entertainment and likely aids to the success of many of his videos. You can only stare at a white board with magic numbers for so long.

Agreed, and it would likely be worse for shorter trips, at least mathematically. I can make a 300 mile without refueling easily in my FRS, and a 450 mile one in my Suburban. I've made both of those with maybe one or two 5 minute rest stops along the way. Both would require at least one, if not two recharging stops.

True, but he could have shown video clips from the 1,000 mile trip the entire time to at least made it directly relevant rather than a random drive through the same backwoods at his home he uses in other videos.

Long haul trips I do assume there to be no benefit to the consumer, only detriment so far. City driving and to work/grocery/etc, the benefits of EV in its current state is okay, and presumably this would be where it would make the largest impact anyway. No more idling ICEs, instead we now have idling EVs, yay city emissions.

I agree, and that's where I've come to the conclusion it works for me. I basically own a separate DD and long-haul vehicle now. On occasion I'll take a 300 to 500 mile trip in the FRS but it is usually because it is a day or overnight trip. Anything longer than that I take our Suburban because I'm likely hauling more than will fit in the FRS.

So, an EV for daily use and an ICE for weekend/long haul trips works great for me now.

I'm in the same place mentally, but not financially lol. If I could and had the need (currently don't), I would have an EV solely for driving to work and doing fairly minor city tasks. Anything for really driving, the ICE comes out.

I am in the motions of trying to get a beater second car. After losing my 86 in busy daily driving, I don't feel like taking that risk again. An EV would be a great DD beater, just need those prices to come on down.

Ideal future garage:

EV DD
ICE weekend/leisure
Mega beater winter salt eater, ICE or EV idc.

Not exactly beater territory, but with Chevy trying to dump the last of their 2021 Bolts, I've seen them in the low to mid 20's and as low as 16 or 17K used on Carvana.

Your future garage looks like it will match mine except we'll keep one additional car for MomHawk, and don't need the winter beater. So:

DD EV
ICE traveling car/truck
EV or ICE MomHawk car (she will only drive a "real" Mustang though so she may just keep her '05)

Yeah, a bit out of reach as a beater for now, but they'll get there one day. I'm looking at 3 cars best case scenario, present time line though is I get another ICE this year and save my CTR and self from heart ache. DD ICE to be replaced by EV at unforeseeable future, 3rd car up in the air, based on current offerings want either a twin or another CTR; would be EXTREMELY interested in an EV S20*0.

If the new $12,500 EV Tax Credit gets passed, it will definitely increase my interest, as long as the OEMs don't increase their price to account for it.