Electric cars

Not MY kind of "BIG"...

I'm not a fan of SUV's, though I recently rented a Cadillac SUV in Riverside (IIRC, Escalade)... VERY nice ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Hi Jim, But really, how often do you actually need a 5 passenger vehicle with a weeks worth of luggage? Once a year? Twice a year? Unless you are a big family, or a family that does a lot of soccer/baseball/football or other sports with the kids, you don't really need that bus all the time. It would be much more economic to just rent that monstrosity when you actually need it, rather than be paying for its gas and upkeep throughout the year.

That is why the small, electric commuter that can seat two people and hold a weeks worth of groceries is usually more than sufficient.

Charlie

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today.

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today.

But---- if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you would have received $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle.

It's called the 401-Keg.

Cheers! Rich

And this is different from the repugnocons how, exactly?

Thanks, Rich

I should clarify: 'big' meaning 'longer and wider' for more crush zone, not 'top heavy and fat.'

Lovins agrees and makes the same points you do about the SUVs' illusion of safety.

It's an illusion to think an unskilled driver in a top-heavy tank is protected. They aren't, and it makes them a menace to the rest of us.

Cheers, James Arthur

...

The polls lie by asking loaded questions.

Hope This Helps! Rich

No! No! No! NOT a "sales" tax - that punishes the merchant.

Make it a "PURCHASE" tax, or outgo tax, or expenditure tax; the BUYER pays the tax.

Of course, the rich would fight that tooth and nail - under the current system, the rich just hire squadrons of lawyers to evade the current taxes.

Buy a $100.00 suit, pay $10.00 purchase tax. Buy a $2,000.00 suit, pay $200.00 purchase tax. Buy a $40,000,000.00 corporate jet, pay $4,000,000.00 purchase tax.

Of course, there would be no purchase tax on grocery store food, anything medical, or used stuff (thrift shop clothes, yard sale stuff, etc.)

That would be not only fair, but it should please the "liberals", because that would be a way to "soak the rich".

But it seems that common sense is a dying breed these days. Sigh.

Thanks, Rich

The market itself is the most ruthless, brutal regulator there is. If people don't like your crap, they won't buy it.

Harry Browne was aware of this in 1973:

Cheers! Rich

On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:08:33 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: ...

But trying to do that by mandate is just more excessive government.

Mother nature will automagically put a stop to exponential (or maybe asymptotic) growth.

Cheers! Rich

Well, lithium batteries do better in the cold than other technologies, but are still effected. And electric cabin heat would really drain a pack fast, you would probably find some sort of heat pump arrangement for heating and cooling.

It would also become common for employers and cities to have charging stations in the parking lots. Some of that charge could be used for 'battery warmers' just like you have engine warmers today for cold climes.

Charlie

"Bob Eld" skrev i meddelelsen news:mlMfl.11239$ snipped-for-privacy@flpi148.ffdc.sbc.com...

Being the only industrialised country still owning an intact manufacturing had everything to do with it.

No, and neither will "massive federal spending" - but it will kill the USD (which is kind-of a plan, assuming one can transfer all the debt to the FED/Treasury before the wogs smell the ruse)!

EVERY place has those costs. The difference is how much the costs are and who pays them.

I think it would be more reasonable to double the tax on groceries and medical because people need more incentive to consume sh^H^Hstuff that isn't essential, and people need more incentive to stop being poor-- it's way to easy to be poor these days. Call it a "tax on poverty". Buy a cheap-ass $100 suit and pay $20 tax. Buy a decent $2,000 suit and it's tax free!

Remember, whatever you tax you get LESS of!

Do the Chinese have all those costs?

If the population of the USA (or Canada) has to pay X dollars to keep their beloved government running, they can pay it as sales tax, or they can let their (former) employers pay it for them. In the first case, they have jobs, so can afford the taxes.

And in the first case, domestic and imported goods are being taxed equally.

The more employment I generate, the more I pay in unemployment taxes. The more I invest in productive assets, the more I have to pay the fed+state+city governments. Does that make any sense to anybody?

John

As people's incomes increase, their birth rates decline. That is probably the only practical, or at least humane, population limit.

John

The BUYER pays sales taxes. The equivalent tax on a merchant is a VAT. The difference between the two taxes is who pays.

That sort of thinking put a *lot* of people out of work in the Carter days.

Now you're back to your dreaded government making win/lose decisions. I thought you didn't like the government making such decisions.

I always knew you were a weenie.

Certainly a lack of it in your neighborhood.

the

it

Well, since they have the services in one way or another they have the costs (health care and other taxes) and they have payroll taxes and user fees. Someone is paying them.

If there's an added employment tax that would eliminate (or greatly reduce) the need to pay for health care insurance for your employees, that increased tax might benefit you greatly if it reduced your overall costs. That's why businesses like the car companies would not mind universal health care at all.

As far as China goes, I think an engineer netting 5 whatevers per whatever was actually costing around 8 gross, which doesn't sound all that different. The lower paid assembly line workers get food and accomodation supplied by the company, as well as health care (I understand that the biggest footwear factory has their own hospital with a staff of 150). I'm sure the standards of all those items are not very high, but they're better than rural standards.

Sure. I guess you could argue that taxing captive businesses does little harm (for example, gambling houses and car washes). It's just yet another hidden tax.

True. Of course if the workers have to pay more total tax they'll want more net money but that's another story.

At least the medicinal variety of leech eventually gets sated and drops off!

It makes perfect sense--you can't tax the unproductive, because they're...unproductive. Govmn't has to take their money from those who have it, and while it's still in their hand (or before).

They've got no choice but to tax the stuff that works to support the stuff that doesn't.

Kind of anti-optimal from a stimulus/job-creating point of view.

James Arthur

Only in the US. You are on the way to re-inventing value added tax, which is remarkably popular in Europe at the moment. You haven't got to the bit about being able to claim back the value-added-tax on the stuff you bought when you sold it on to someone else who paid value- added-tax on what they bought, but that's the nice thing about re- inventing the wheel - you do have to go through the lump roller stage.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen