The fed subsidizes the shit out of our fuel because the car industry is lobbying it to because the car industry knows that if Americans pay what the rest of the modern world does for gas, then chugga chugga choo choo motherfuckers, we’re finally building some goddamned trains.
That, or they won’t get to sell their huge, overly marked up trucks to middle class suburbanites anymore.
Either of those things would be good for everyone.
I’d also support regulation that bans modifying the ride height of a vehicle. All bumpers should align as a factory spec. We made 70s cars ugly because they required 5 mph bumpers, but we won’t tell Cletus he can’t make his truck bumper sit at neck level so that he doesn’t wipe out a family of four in a Toyota Corolla when he blows through a red light? Horseshit.
I’ll give you that caveat. My brother lives in the rural town where we grew up in the butthole of Oklahoma, and his water is so hard that they justified spending thousands of dollars on a whole home water softening system. My in laws pump their own water and it’s foul. I think they need to be filtering it. I think there’s something in their groundwater.
As for the water in the urban and suburban parts of Oklahoma City, it’s pretty hard to find truly bad tap water.
You wouldn’t find a terawatt in everyday usage, but a terawatt-hour is pretty commonplace when talking about the energy usage of entire populations.
This Reuters article states US power demand will climb to “4,027 billion kWh in 2022.” Yeah, just say 4 PWh. Or even 4,027 TWh. It’s a little more easily digested.
It’s already an incomprehensably high number. No matter which way you state it is going to fly over peoples heads.
And the entire electricity consumption of the planet is something like 25.5 petawatt-houts.
I graduated college in ‘14 and got my first professional job that August. I made $17.09 an hour and I was an 85% FTE. I was still in grad school at the time (never finished, whoops). That inflates to right about $22 today, if the BLS’ inflation numbers are to be trusted. Or about $39k at 85% FTE
My rent was $800 in uptown Oklahoma City.
Again, I was doing alright for a single guy with a bachelor’s degree at 22 with little work experience. I kept my bills and rent paid. I got to buy a PC component every once in a while. Sure, I wasn’t going on vacation every year, but I wasn’t starving.
But I was a long way away from hiring cleaners. I couldn’t really afford a therapist back then. Which I desperately needed more than I realized.
Oklahoma’s minimum wage still follows federal, but most places do start at $9 or $10 anymore. Still not nearly enough. And that’s really in the city. Out in the sticks, you’re making $7.25.
My mother seriously recommended I hire cleaners if I wasn’t able to always keep my place clean at a time in my life where I was super busy.
I made like $30k in 2014. I wasn’t poor by any stretch, but suggesting I hire cleaners was a clear indicator of how out of touch she was with the lower half of the middle class.
It got high enough to mess with the computer, but the car still worked fine after. The odometer would just disappear sometimes. That has since resolved itself. But I’m sure that some electrical gremlins will crawl out of the woodwork in the next few years. The water brought out a lot of odors hiding in the upholstery. It stank bad for a few months after, but it smells ok now. It does get a little fresh on hot humid days.
Here’s the poor Mustang parked across from me. I’m sure they weren’t having a good day after that.
I got on Safelite’s website immediately because I knew glass was going to be in short supply very soon. They came out a week later and threw a new one on. That was just over 300 bucks. Another great part of owning an old shitbox is how inexpensive parts are.
Aside from this, my wife got into an accident in it in 2015 and then I got rear ended twice in 2019. We still have the car. It keeps on trucking along. I do want to replace it with an Accord of the same vintage, but that’s because I want a cheap manual I can daily.