Saturday, September 26, 2009
to the 9s
On 9/9/09, you just know that any guy with a 9 inch member was virtually guaranteed to get laid. Which doesn't make it too different from most days.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Atlanta floods
So Atlanta is rather wet right now. I was told the flooding was so bad that parts of the 6 flags roller coasters were underwater. Am I the only person who thinks that's kind of cool?
Sunday, September 6, 2009
CARS: A Summary
The 'Cash for Clunkers' program was a success. But some trite objections need to be put to bed, so let's do that here.
1. Cash For Clunkers (CFC) put money overseas, when we should be focusing on creating jobs here in America.
The most traded in vehicle was a Ford Explorer, while the most purchased was a Toyota. That alone, in the minds of some conservatives justifies labeling this as a bad program. If we're appealing to the idea that we should keep jobs in America, it would be beneficial to prove that the purchase of a car like a Toyota also means that Americans aren't getting some of the benefits. But wait, many foreign cars are assembled here, which means that Americans ARE getting the benefit.
2. CFC hurts the poor.
We have here, the first time in recorded history that any conservative has given the remotest damn about the poor.[1]
The argument goes something like 'CFC took a lot of cheap cars (that were still perfectly good) off the road.[2] By raising the value of fuel-inefficient cars to 4500 dollars, we've created incentives to take those cars off the road, and out of the market. Now the poor will have to pay comparatively more to get a car.'
Er... Sort of. CFC removed roughly 690,000 cars from the used car pool. Strictly speaking, that's not that many when you consider that there are roughly 260,000,000 cars on the road today.[3] With roughly one quarter of one percent of cars off the road, there are still plenty of good used cars out there. Except now, they're the ones that cost less to fill up at the pump. Wait, that last bit almost sounds good to the poor.
3. CFC was wasteful.
Look at this car! It's beautiful! It's only got some ridiculously low number of miles on it and the big bad government is making me destroy it.
Boo freaking hoo.
Imagine for a second that some rich eccentric billionaire comes in and offers to buy your car. He's paying cash and he's going to destroy the car. Well, that is his right. If the car means that much to you, why don't YOU pay the 4500 and get the car that you so badly think needs to be saved?[4] Well, I like it but not THAT much is not a valid answer. Put up or shut up. That's how the market works.
Waste happens. We rarely use everything to its fullest. Whether we're obligated to give that which we're not using to someone who can use it more is a dilemma that is not easily solved. [5] Though it seems characteristically unconservative to mandate that we should.
4. We'd be so much better off giving the money to companies, so that they can research eco-friendly technology.
Does anyone remember the piss-poor abomination of a hybrid that Chrysler made out of their SUVs? How much do you think that one cost to research, design, retool, etc.[6] CFC worked immediately. It produced guaranteed results, or would you rather the government gambled 3 billion on the off chance that Chrysler or GM would actually build a small car that some sane person would want to buy?
5. CFC only produced insignificant gains for the environment when you factor in (some thing that doesn't necessarily matter).
Here's one of those times when it hurts your argument when the car being scrapped is in good shape. Assume that the car ran fine and had another 60,000 miles of useful life. Average car being turned in was getting about 15 mpg.[7] (4,000 gallons of fuel burned at 19.4 lbs CO2 per gallon) So we have 77,600 lbs CO2 that car would have produced before being scrapped. The average car bought under CFC received about 25mpg. That makes 46,700 lbs co2 over that same 60,000 miles. So we have just over 15 tons CO2 saved, just by trading in one car.[8]
How else could 15.4 tons of CO2 be saved? Let's set the avg. MPG of all cars on the road in the US at 23 mpg.[9] Each car on the road is responsible for .0012 lbs of CO2, which equates to .000006 gallons of fuel as well. For reference, it would take roughly 220 of those to equal a teaspoon. Now, all the cars in the nation combined would each have to use 4.14[10] less gallons of fuel to cover the savings in CO2 done over 60,000 miles by all 690,000 cars crushed by the CFC program.
Okay, that criticism is valid. But let's be honest here: As far as government is concerned, spending 3 billion to get almost meaningless gains is cheap!
-------------------------------------------------
1. To be fair, market conditions have done tremendous work to help the poor. As costs for basic products fall, the poor are able to get more bang for their buck. But Conservatives can't really claim 'the inevitable decrease in prices as manufacturing techniques improve' as something they were singlehandedly behind. Keep in mind that these conditions happened despite government interaction in the free market.
2. Claim #3 (these cars are so nice) indicates that these cars were worth a lot closer to the 4500 threshold. If you can afford a 4500 car, you may be poor, but not necessarily that poor. Which set of 'the poor' do you think we need to focus on more?
3. And there is a reason that I use all the zeroes
4. The fact that the government is the billionaire in this example is moot. $3 billion dollars (3,000,000,000) over three hundred million Americans (300,000,000) means that on average, you're paying a measly 10 bucks for the privilege of having the government do this. Trust me, every other billionaire has taken more than $10 from you this year, in some form or another.
5. The answer is generally 'its nice if we do, but we are not morally obligated'.
6. Given the overall shoddiness of the idea, it only LOOKS like it cost them about 5 bucks to come up with that one.
7. I select these numbers for convenience. Avg trade in mpg was 15.4, but the real estimate that matters s in the amount of CO2 the car would have produced)
8. But what of the environmental cost of dismantling the car? What of it indeed. This model only looks at what happened because of CFC. Without CFC, the old car would have been driven 60,000 miles then scrapped. Either way, the car is scrapped, so that harm happens no matter what. And the harm caused by running the engine to destruction is negligible over those 60,000 miles.
9. rationale: during the 90s, CAFE standards were 27.5 mpg for cars, and 20.7 for trucks (minivans and SUVs included) The car-truck ratio in the country was about 50-50 when you realize that minivans and SUVs count as light trucks. I set it lower, to make this calculation more unfair to CFC.
10. of course, discussion of significant digits has gone right out the window at this point.
1. Cash For Clunkers (CFC) put money overseas, when we should be focusing on creating jobs here in America.
The most traded in vehicle was a Ford Explorer, while the most purchased was a Toyota. That alone, in the minds of some conservatives justifies labeling this as a bad program. If we're appealing to the idea that we should keep jobs in America, it would be beneficial to prove that the purchase of a car like a Toyota also means that Americans aren't getting some of the benefits. But wait, many foreign cars are assembled here, which means that Americans ARE getting the benefit.
2. CFC hurts the poor.
We have here, the first time in recorded history that any conservative has given the remotest damn about the poor.[1]
The argument goes something like 'CFC took a lot of cheap cars (that were still perfectly good) off the road.[2] By raising the value of fuel-inefficient cars to 4500 dollars, we've created incentives to take those cars off the road, and out of the market. Now the poor will have to pay comparatively more to get a car.'
Er... Sort of. CFC removed roughly 690,000 cars from the used car pool. Strictly speaking, that's not that many when you consider that there are roughly 260,000,000 cars on the road today.[3] With roughly one quarter of one percent of cars off the road, there are still plenty of good used cars out there. Except now, they're the ones that cost less to fill up at the pump. Wait, that last bit almost sounds good to the poor.
3. CFC was wasteful.
Look at this car! It's beautiful! It's only got some ridiculously low number of miles on it and the big bad government is making me destroy it.
Boo freaking hoo.
Imagine for a second that some rich eccentric billionaire comes in and offers to buy your car. He's paying cash and he's going to destroy the car. Well, that is his right. If the car means that much to you, why don't YOU pay the 4500 and get the car that you so badly think needs to be saved?[4] Well, I like it but not THAT much is not a valid answer. Put up or shut up. That's how the market works.
Waste happens. We rarely use everything to its fullest. Whether we're obligated to give that which we're not using to someone who can use it more is a dilemma that is not easily solved. [5] Though it seems characteristically unconservative to mandate that we should.
4. We'd be so much better off giving the money to companies, so that they can research eco-friendly technology.
Does anyone remember the piss-poor abomination of a hybrid that Chrysler made out of their SUVs? How much do you think that one cost to research, design, retool, etc.[6] CFC worked immediately. It produced guaranteed results, or would you rather the government gambled 3 billion on the off chance that Chrysler or GM would actually build a small car that some sane person would want to buy?
5. CFC only produced insignificant gains for the environment when you factor in (some thing that doesn't necessarily matter).
Here's one of those times when it hurts your argument when the car being scrapped is in good shape. Assume that the car ran fine and had another 60,000 miles of useful life. Average car being turned in was getting about 15 mpg.[7] (4,000 gallons of fuel burned at 19.4 lbs CO2 per gallon) So we have 77,600 lbs CO2 that car would have produced before being scrapped. The average car bought under CFC received about 25mpg. That makes 46,700 lbs co2 over that same 60,000 miles. So we have just over 15 tons CO2 saved, just by trading in one car.[8]
How else could 15.4 tons of CO2 be saved? Let's set the avg. MPG of all cars on the road in the US at 23 mpg.[9] Each car on the road is responsible for .0012 lbs of CO2, which equates to .000006 gallons of fuel as well. For reference, it would take roughly 220 of those to equal a teaspoon. Now, all the cars in the nation combined would each have to use 4.14[10] less gallons of fuel to cover the savings in CO2 done over 60,000 miles by all 690,000 cars crushed by the CFC program.
Okay, that criticism is valid. But let's be honest here: As far as government is concerned, spending 3 billion to get almost meaningless gains is cheap!
-------------------------------------------------
1. To be fair, market conditions have done tremendous work to help the poor. As costs for basic products fall, the poor are able to get more bang for their buck. But Conservatives can't really claim 'the inevitable decrease in prices as manufacturing techniques improve' as something they were singlehandedly behind. Keep in mind that these conditions happened despite government interaction in the free market.
2. Claim #3 (these cars are so nice) indicates that these cars were worth a lot closer to the 4500 threshold. If you can afford a 4500 car, you may be poor, but not necessarily that poor. Which set of 'the poor' do you think we need to focus on more?
3. And there is a reason that I use all the zeroes
4. The fact that the government is the billionaire in this example is moot. $3 billion dollars (3,000,000,000) over three hundred million Americans (300,000,000) means that on average, you're paying a measly 10 bucks for the privilege of having the government do this. Trust me, every other billionaire has taken more than $10 from you this year, in some form or another.
5. The answer is generally 'its nice if we do, but we are not morally obligated'.
6. Given the overall shoddiness of the idea, it only LOOKS like it cost them about 5 bucks to come up with that one.
7. I select these numbers for convenience. Avg trade in mpg was 15.4, but the real estimate that matters s in the amount of CO2 the car would have produced)
8. But what of the environmental cost of dismantling the car? What of it indeed. This model only looks at what happened because of CFC. Without CFC, the old car would have been driven 60,000 miles then scrapped. Either way, the car is scrapped, so that harm happens no matter what. And the harm caused by running the engine to destruction is negligible over those 60,000 miles.
9. rationale: during the 90s, CAFE standards were 27.5 mpg for cars, and 20.7 for trucks (minivans and SUVs included) The car-truck ratio in the country was about 50-50 when you realize that minivans and SUVs count as light trucks. I set it lower, to make this calculation more unfair to CFC.
10. of course, discussion of significant digits has gone right out the window at this point.
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