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spdrun
ParticipantDepends — if it’s a good, proper crash, you could make 50, 100% or much more. Look at the value chart of Ford stock since Dec. 2008.
ParticipantWe may still have some room to fall, but I would say get in before QE4 starts.
GOP will delay these things before the election since they want Obama to look like a failed President. And all of these three things are very dependent on Congress.
So, looks like we’re in for a ride.
This being said, I don’t really trust Schiff – he called QE4 in August as the Fed was mulling raising rates. He seems like a perma-QE’er.
ParticipantYou can get the free WiFi thermostat, and put switches in parallel for manual extra heat/cool. Best of both worlds — you get a discount from the power company, and you can still control HVAC if you want to. Haha.
ParticipantAgreed. Toss the ACA into the sewer. Replace with a base level of public insurance. Done.
ParticipantBumemployment is a lagging indicator.
ParticipantNot so simple:
If everyone will be driven door to door with little walking and little cycling, we’ll end up with more obese cripples with bad knees at age 55, not healthier people. Policy should exist to encourage exercise and human mobility as part of urban design — it’s a lot easier to exercise when you have no choice vs going to the gym and running like a hamster on a bloody wheel.Policy should be towards better health care and urban design so that most people don’t have to live as long as cripples before they kick the bucket. People usually don’t end up crippled when they’re old if they’ve made good choices.
Blindness often comes from diabetes (due to inactivity), so do things like kidney and walking impairment. Which is a nice way to say losing limbs.
ParticipantYou’d be stupid not to. Who’s to say the lottery or the government will be solvent in 30 years? And a dollar now is probably worth 5x what it will be worth in 30 years (plus whatever you can earn with it), so better to get it now.
Put enough into property to garner an income of a million or two per year, inflation adjusted, do whatever you want with the rest.
ParticipantThat’s why we need a global power grid if solar is to really take off. Buy power from North Africa or Australia if the sun is not shining here.
Participantnjtosd: I hope to die before I’m gimped to that point — I’d consider that a life unworthy of living.
FlyerInHI: it’s funny, if he weren’t such a dumb twat about neighbors, he could live in San Diego. $140k cash makes a pretty nice downpayment and $300k can still buy a 2-bedroom. Maybe not right near the ocean, but within 10 miles…
ParticipantFact is that pedestrians need to be able to cross somewhere. Separation is good. Creating barriers to their crossing is not.
The systems where cars never stop for cross-traffic proposed by some people are idiotic, since they’ll pen pedestrians and cyclists into small areas. I’m not actually opposed to self-driving cars, but I think they should be short-distance and electric.
We should keep designing for walkability and invest heavily in electric transit that acts more like self-driving cars. Much easier and more efficient to power over longer distances since you need batteries, and it can be very frequent unlike current trains.
Walkability is mobility. If you can theoretically live your life within a few mile radius of a given point, then you’re mobile enough. Further mobility for recreational purposes is great, but it’s also great to live where you don’t HAVE to travel large distances for normal things.
This doesn’t have to be a city. Plenty of college towns in New England and the West Coast that are like that. I knew a lady who lived near Mt. Holyoke in MA without a car for about 30 years.
ParticipantThis says nothing about deaths and injuries from non-vehicular causes (i.e. falling on a sidewalk).
Not that I actually care that much about a 100% safe society. If we could achieve 0 deaths per year by cocooning everyone in self-driving cars from door to door, I’d still find the idea repulsive.
Basically, unless they can inteoperate with other modes of transportation and not make them less safe, they’re a non-starter in my book. If they move slowly and can route around bikes and work well with pedestrians, that’s great.
I don’t want the following scenario to take place…
You’d be trading car efficiency for walkability.
ParticipantHow to plan rail transportation? You build it to get people to the nearest 20 miles (or 50 miles in truly unpopulated areas). You make ubiquitous electric cars available (self-driving or self-drive) at the nodes to get people the last mile to their destination.
20-50 miles falls within the range requirements of even inexpensive electric cars, even in hot/cold weather where battery life is drastically reduced.
In more populated areas, you increase the density to 5 miles in exurbs, a mile in older-type suburbs, so on till you get to larger cities.
And you don’t run trains as we know them. You run smaller autonomous vehicles that can form trains and be flexible as far as routing. They don’t have to refuel/recharge, they don’t have batteries to degrade.
And you agree on a common electrical system rather than the mishmash we have in the US right now. 25,000 volts AC outside of city centers, 1000 or 600 volts DC in cities and underground.
ParticipantI haven’t heard of an epidemic of people dying in NYC by slipping and falling. Walking to the train is perfectly doable — most people where I grew up did it, and I didn’t hear of anyone dying. But there are fewer fats around NYC than in the rest of the US.
Icy sidewalks are why we have laws requiring sidewalk clearance. If sidewalks/bike lanes are not treated on par with streets for cleaning, you’re preferring cars over humans. Which is a problem in itself.
And you don’t carry the bags of groceries by hand. You either dump them in a backpack or use a folding cart.
No one dying here either. You just need proper tires for the bikes. Yep, they make little snow chains.
ParticipantYou can park about 20 bikes in the space where it takes to park one car. One to 1.5 hours’ of walking is healthy for every human. Call it a substitute for gym time.
Place like San Diego, with proper urban design, probably 3/4 of human transportation could be done by bike, or electrically augmented bike over 90% of the year.
The private car is comfortable, but it’s also a high standard of isolation and inefficiency.
Electric training bike in an SUV sounds like a recipe for motion sickness. I’d be ready to punch the designer of both in the throat after about 5 minutes.
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