New ICE Vehicles Banned in California by 2035

[Irace86.2.0]

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

In a flat system, those with higher incomes and wealth still pay more, but not as a percentage, which is bad.

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.

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

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.

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).

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

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).

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:

First, life expectancy increased continuously with income. There was no dividing line above or below which higher income was not associated with higher life expectancy. Between the top 1% and bottom 1% of the income distribution, life expectancy differed by 15 years for men and 10 years for women (Box).

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.

...The authors find that Social Security is actually slightly regressive, with an effective progression measure of 0.998.

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

[Captain Snooze]

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

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

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

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.

[Wally86]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

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.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Wally86

Volcano was amazing! .

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.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Wally86

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.

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.

[Wally86]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

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

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

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.

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

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Wally86

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.

[ls1ac]

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.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by ls1ac

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:

[Irace86.2.0]

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

1000 miles in a day...

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.