China wants to ban gas powered cars.

Every change has costs associated with it. The world is embracing policies that lower carbon output. We'll be left behind if we don't design and build the technology the world wants. Both in profits and prestige.

Personally I favor policies that tax the operation of private automobiles and use this money to fund public transport.

I'm glad handicapped people are such a daily burden to you. It shows you care.

What's so great about public transport? I for one love the freedom a private vehicle brings (well three of them technically though I inherited two) .

Interesting that you set such a low level for yourself. Slightly.

Glad nothing like that will ever be implemented where I'm at. I shouldn't have to pay another tax just because more people choose their car over public transit. That would also be the attitude of every commuter who travels more than 15 minutes to get to work every day.

It is nice to have both options especially in densely populated areas where the need to transport large amounts of people quickly and efficiently is great.

Freedom of choice is not a highly regarded thing in China and Europe is not that far behind. If electric is so much better, it will sell itself and not need to be forced.

Peat harvesting is pretty cool too.

Today, a friend of mine said he wants his son to grow up and work for McDonald's. He wants his son to be the guy that repairs the robots that replaced the people demanding $15 per hour.

Whatever happened to that proposal by Wendy's to replace their people in American franchise taking orders with people working in call centers in India? The person you talked to through the drive up speaker taking your order would be in India and transmit your order back to the restaurant to be filled.

The robots are coming regardless of the $15 minimum wage.

Technological advancement driving down the cost of robots combined with capitalism (ie profit valued over employment) leads to automation, no matter what labor costs are. Moore's Law always wins. Anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant of how business works or are being intentionally disingenuous.

When I moved to North Carolina it seemed self checkout was everywhere. I wasn't used to it coming from Washington. At first I was a little perplexed, WA had a significantly higher minimum wage, why no self checkout compared to NC where almost every place had self checkout? My first thought was maybe it was b/c WA grocery stores were unionized, but looking into it nope. That wasn't it.

Turns out I was focusing on the wrong aspect. Differential labor costs weren't the driver, capital costs were. I was living on the edge of sprawl in NC. The reason the NC grocery stores had self checkout was b/c they were new. Saving a few bucks on labor isn't worth the capital to replace (still functional) registers even in high labor cost areas.

However if you are building from scratch or remodeling or upgrading anyway the capital costs are low enough that even in low wage areas it's worth going automated.
Now, I'm not saying that marginally higher labor costs have zero impact. Just that compared to capital costs they are playing around the margins.

I don't know, never heard of it. But since you seem to have, why not use what you remember to look it up and then share with the class?

Except, you know, that global climate crisis you keep desperately trying to ignore.

Trump Administration to Driverless Car Makers: Go Nuts!

California already has safty standards for driverless cars and has for years because the feds refused to act for so long. As the largest car market in the nation it is going to end up forcing them all to comply anyway.

Cool, I assume you are also then in favour of all roads being made into toll roads where people pay in proportion to how much space their form of transport takes up?

because you don't live in a densely populated area where you have efficient public transportation, so of course a car seems better.
Now as for freedom: registration, maintenance, insurance, gas, hours of frustration in heavy traffic with dip-shit drivers, parking fees where applicable, etc.etc. that doesn't sound very free to me!
Granted the truth is the US is largely car-dependent by nature because of "urban sprawl" with clear divisions between residential and commercial areas. Thus we have huge sprawling subdivisions with thousands of residents but the nearest store of any kind is miles away with no sidewalks to even safely walk to said stores if we so chose. One reason among many why we have so many fat fuckers who are one Burger King Whopper with large (but of course!) fries & soda away from a heart attack or diabetic amputation. Don't even get me started on giving Americans enough rope to hang ourselves in almost every avenue of living.

You don't like birds Anna? They kill large birds of prey including Bald Eagles you know.

They've already paid to have the roads put in and maintained. Why should they have to pay again?

Public transport at busy times needs less road resources per person, so by your logic why should they be paying taxes to subsidize single occupant vehicles?

Fuck you and go fuck yourself, how 'bout that?

Renewables are here to stay. Get used to it.

Case closed.

yes, yes they do; up to 328,000 per year...

...windows (the glass kind, not MS) kill about 988,000,000 per year.

...but the winners by far are cats. 4,000,000,000 (that's billions) per year.

As the caretaker of 4 cats and 5 birds (we used to have 6: our living room wall killed one) I'm conflicted. Banning windows seems the obvious solution.

Ayup. Trump likes to tout the "windfarms kill birds" line when railing against the ones they want to build next to his Scottish golf course, conveniently ignoring that his own many, many phallus substitutes tower hotels kill far more.

Birds are stupid.

You don't get it at all.

Both roads and public transport are built and maintained by tax dollars regardless of who uses them. You're wanting to go an extra step and tax them one more time. That is what I and most people are against.

I've thought this would be a good idea for a long time. Especially if you could do it automatically with something that amounts to a bar code reader on the license plates.

Of course at least where I live locals could avoid such readers by using various back roads.

Who built the back roads?

I was thinking of country roads mainly. Though there is an extensive network of logging roads which meant they were built by Weyerhaeuser. There are also a number of private roads that are easily accessible.

I'm really asking, I just don't know who built your country roads.