Can't we just spar based on the reviews?
Reminded of this in Harpo Speaks:
Life in the streets was a tremendous obstacle course for an undersized kid like me. The toughest obstacles were kids of other nationalities. The upper East Side was subdivided into Jewish blocks (the smallest area), Irish blocks, and German blocks, with a couple of Independent Italian states thrown in for good measure.
If you were caught trying to sneak through a foreign block, the first thing the Irishers or Germans would ask was, "Hey, kid! What Streeter?" I learned it saved time and trouble to tell the trough. I was a 93rd Streeter, I would confess.
Yeah? What block 93rd Streeter?"
"Ninety-third between Third and Lex." That pinned me down. I was a Jew.
I thought that this seemed like an odd choice, but thought, well, I saw the movie, so I can pretend even if I don't actually read the book.
A few minutes later when I checked to see if there were any comments yet, I realized it was "Sort" not "Short".
1.1: If by "review", you mean "snippet of the review posted in the OP", I'm in.
I feel like I'm missing some syllables.
You're a new Target line of clothing.
I have various thoughts on this. I'll go with the first one. Growing up, my area was not at all diverse in terms of race (unless you figure Irish vs. German as a racial difference, which nearly all assholes do), religion (unless you count Methodist vs. Catholic as a schism), or political viewpoint. That hasn't changed, but going back it seems to me that the professional/business-owner class has shrunk. The number of lawyers and doctors in town has dropped by quite a bit, the retail sector is now mostly chains owned by corporations, and fewer people now own wealthy-farmer amounts of land. I think this process is behind a lot of what empowered the racist wing of the Republican Party to seize total control. The people who would have said "this guy being in Congress is a threat to my income" have moved to the cities and become Democrats.
"The Big Sort" was published in 2008. Are there updates available of the data sets it consulted, or the ones the Hoover Institution reviewers consulted? I think there has been a lot of change in the last ten years. Also, one thing I would suspect is that the 2008 election (the last one discussed in the book) was an outlier in that Obama was (for a host of reasons) less polarizing than he was in 2012, and of course much less polarizing than Trump is. There's a whole literature about the Obama-Trump voters, a small but real part of the electorate.
I may live in a weird neighborhood, but almost all of the "bowling alone" stuff in the Hoover review doesn't apply there. It's leafy, suburban, UMC, but I don't think it's anywhere near unique.
Hmm, published in 2008, but before the election. I guess it used 2008 data but obviously not 2008 election data. The Hoover review is from 2012, and it uses 2008 data extensively. Even so, we have become much more polarized since the book and the reviews were written.
12: The book proved to be prophetic. We should have read it 8 years ago. Now it's too late!
That's what she said, for values of she that are "Hannah Arendt".
Nope, happy to read something on a related
topic but not Richard Florida junk l-science-sociology.
MY candidate would be Lindert and Williamson, Unequal Gains, but that's just because I'm trying to relentlessly promote that book. Did you know that America was on a per capita basis richer than England by as early as 1700, while at the same time remaining stunningly (relatively) egalitarian in incone distribution -- even when you include slaves? Or that the real rise in US inequality wasn't during the gilded age, but 1800-1860? Or that the US has been richer than Europe/England for essentially all of its history except for disruption caused by the Revolution and Civil War? Or that there's little US evidence for Piketty's r>g theory of inequality, but a fair amount that there are no general laws, but changes in financialization of the economy, urbanization and absence of education are factors? That book is my crankish enthusiasm du jour.
It isn't actually by Florida, it's by Bishop. Who is clearly not very smart, and much of the book would indeed be shredded. I think the shredding process would produce good discussions.
17: Isn't that lower inequality just because "stealing land from the natives" is a very reproducible strategy?
And selling its produce to Caribbean sugar plantations! Brave New World, motherfucker!
Yes, sort of, to both (ie availability of land and high incomes through, in part, exports). Also the US deurbanized over the colonial period as people went from trading outpost cities into the countryside to start farms, which also lessened inequality (while also substantially cutting into the importance of exports).
It's short, low-density, and sheds light on a lot of things
Like San Francisco housing, amirite?
19. Until you run out of one or the other.
Lessened inequality and raised incomes?
Houses glow in San Francisco?
Something that expensive always glitters.
24 - On a per capita basis compared to Western Europe, yes, ie before you had modern economic growth this was a very good strategy.
23 - then you get to be probably the first country with modern economic growth, unless you're the South where you don't.
They may have missed out on economic growth, but at least they didn't have to let everybody vote.
24: Interesting. Do they do any comparison to other agrarian frontiers? Medieval Europe, China?
What about those who blessed the rains down in Africa?
Anyway, who's up for writing summaries? The book is in four sections, so I figure four posts.
Rather presumptuous of them, I always thought.
Truth. In Africa, the rain blesses you. If it isn't busy.
"The Big Sort" was published in 2008. Are there updates available of the data sets it consulted, or the ones the Hoover Institution reviewers consulted?
If the book group happens I'd participate; I haven't read The Big Sort and I'd be curious to do so, but I'd also be curious if there's anything more recent which would be better.
Anyhow I can bash the "Big Sort" idea without putting any work into reading anything. The Big Sort" as a thesis seems either false or unenlightening. It seems very unlikely to me that people are *intentionally* moving places in significant numbers *for the purpose* of being with people with similar political beliefs (I'm not saying it never happens, but as a significant mass trend it seems extremely unlikely to be significant). It may well be that other forces of geographic demography in the USA are pushing people to move in ways that happen to align with partisan preference, at least to some extent (eg sorting highly educated people and poor, uneducated ethnic minorities into cities where the two groups happen to have similar partisan preferences). But if that's true the "big sort" thesis isn't very interesting -- what's interesting are (a) the underlying trends driving that and (b) the forces that allow a political coalition between poor minorities and highly-educated rich people, two groups whose interests and outlook are very different. The "big sort" concept doesn't help much there.
And, as a side note, the key fact of US geographic demography is that we used to be a highly mobile society until as late as 2000 and are now much less so. That is something super important! But lower geographic mobility is (maybe) the opposite of a "big sort" and is (at a minimum) tangential to ot as a concept.
37.2: I think that may have to do with the fact that wages aren't high enough, except in a few fields, to make mobility reasonable. Leaving your small town so you can make $2/hour more in a distant city isn't worth the risk of leaving your support network the way that leaving to make $10/hour more would be.
If you live in a country with something like mandatory sick leave and subsidized child care, you can move to take the better job. If you don't, you'd better live no further away then grandma is willing to drive.
37 last: Any speculations as to why? Being stuck with an underwater mortgage would be one explanation for reduced mobility, but would kick in after the housing bubble ~2008. What was going on around 2000 to reduce mobility?
Looking at my own past, in the 90s (not counting college) I was 5 years in one location and 3 years in another. Post 2000, it's 2.5 years, 8 years and 7 (so far) years.
39 - I think* there's decent evidence that wage divergence is still pretty high, but it's not high enough to account for cost of living discrepancies, ie you can in fact earn more in the Bay Area doing many, many things but not nearly enough to make it worth it when you factor in housing.
*ie I vaguely remember seeing something online.
40 and 42 also seem important.
Is 37.2 really true? Looking at the census data it doesn't look like a super dramatic change. Increased some in the 90's and early 00's, and has come back down since then and is a little lower than historical. But nothing as dramatic as 37.2.
That's certainly true for me. In a certain sense, my job is here because nobody will pay me enough to do it on the coasts. But I'm thinking of people with less technical jobs. If the oil fields of North Dakota start offering $30/hour, all kinds of mobility happens. But for somebody in the service sector to move from here to go from $10/hour in our Wendy's to $12/hour somewhere else doesn't make sense.
Although it's not like we had sick leave and mandatory child care in the 1960s, it's that the costs of both have gone way up, so you can't expect your paycheck to make up for not having grandma around (or maybe the cost of an extra room in the house for grandma), so you stay where you grew up.
Grandma moved to an 55+ community in Arizona and now writes Club for Growth fan fiction in her spare time.
37: I certainly look at different towns and say. That's too Republican. I wouldn't move there. But the next town over May got be fine, so it wouldn't be reflected in major migration patterns. Certainly I look at whether a municipality is willing to pay for public services I value.
48: in the 60's there were more stat-at-Home Moms. My father-in-law worked for a big corporation that moved him all over Canada, to NJ and Stockholm. My MIL's teaching credential from BC was good in Montreal but had to be done over when she got to Ontario. She was home with the kids and wound up doing supply teaching but never got a good permanent contract.
If they had needed both incomes, those moves would not have been feasible.
*ie I vaguely remember seeing something online.
Yglesias had something about that.
This chart shows that until 1990 or so, both skilled and unskilled workers could improve their standard of living, even considering housing costs, by moving to a high-income state. But the net gains for unskilled workers began to diminish sharply, and by 2010 a typical low-skill household was actually worse off in a high-income state due to the even higher housing costs.
Traditionally, in other words, both lawyers and janitors earned more in the New York City area than they did in the Deep South. Today, "lawyers continue to earn much more in the New York area in both nominal terms and net of housing costs, but janitors now earn less in the New York area after subtracting housing."
Census tables. It looks to me like a steadier decline but increasing inflection after about 2000. Average by decade of number of people moved in the past year:
1940s: 19.5% (date only late 40s) any move, 2.9% changed states
50s: 20.3% / 3.3%
60s: 19.6% / 3.4%
70s: 18.2% / 3.2%
80s: 18.9% / 2.9%
90s: 16.6% / 2.7%
00s: 13.5% / 2.2%
10s: 11.5% / 1.6%
Maybe also the slow filling-out of the suburbs is a factor?
. Leaving your small town so you can make $2/hour more in a distant city isn't worth the risk of leaving your support network . . .
I also remember seeing something recently about that, but I can't find it quickly.
I think the problem is that I was looking at absolute numbers instead of percents and so population growth was hiding the pattern.
It could have been me here. I've been saying it for a while, with no real empirical support but I think I'm right.
The rise of social media and decline of working-age mobility make the thesis useless now, even it was valid in 2008.
That said, political considerations were a significant factor in my deciding which Montana city to move to in 2009. I'm sure that puts me way out on the tail of a distribution.
It could have been me here. I've been saying it for a while, with no real empirical support but I think I'm right.
It could have been you, but I have a memory of reading an article about it. I remember it talking about the groups in which people's reputation extends and that (in the era of linkedin) for many young professionals that it's tied to a specific geographical area, but for other people it is, and is a significant barrier to moving.
no real empirical support but I think I'm right
New mouseover text?
Or the masthead of a scientific journal.
58.2: You need to be careful about that in Montana, but not as careful as you need to be in Idaho.
52 gets it right. This sort of sorting must increase as women enter the workforce. People who are comfortable with the wife not working are comfortable moving to a place where only one of them can find a job, in other words they don't need to live in a big city.
This really hits me personally. I am most happy in a small city, like Allentown, Toledo, Erie, Rochester, Hartford, Portland ME. But it's just so risky to move there and worry about one person needing to find another job, let alone two people.
It's a miracle when any company in the "start-up incubator" in any of these places can upgrade to having more than 20 employees while staying put. How can they recruit someone who wasn't one of the founders? Even relying on graduates of the local colleges, who want to stay local, means putting people in a perilous situation.
Allentown can always draw Billy Joel fans. But, while Toledo is absurd, Cleveland should be able to find jobs for people's spouses.
64: One of my reasons for moving to my current job/city is that Cleveland couldn't find a job for my SO.
I could just blame the lousy academic job market, but it feels better somehow to blame Cleveland.
Two academics is hard almost everywhere.
You can't blame the Cavs for everything.
The serial killers are the main problem with Cleveland.
Even one academic is often a pain in the ass.
Right. But the pain isn't additive. It's multiplicative.
Baltimore has a higher murder rate than Cleveland, but AFAIK fewer serial killers.
More violent but less creepy.
The two-body problem as an explanation for declining labor monility is interesting. Seems like it plausibly both accounts for some of the overall decline in mobility *and* makes the biggest cities with the worst housing problems more attractive at the expense of smaller places (ie if you move to NYC you gotta figure that both spouses can do something, but it may not be worth it bc housing costs) which would put a limit in options.
These guys think that two-income couples explain about 35% of the decline, no idea how reliable they are:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e70b/765e2858f4524bd99e979651ea667faed962.pdf
68: That's the problem with changing the environment. Now that the river doesn't set on fire anymore, serial killers don't have any natural predators to keep them in check.
As part of the dealt with the NFL when they created the Ravens, Cleveland retained the history, records, and legacy of the Browns. Nobody read the fine print to see that said legacy included serial killing.
Anyway, I still say move a cabinet department, or the bulk of it, to some mid-sized city.
Cleveland was on the whole a pretty nice place to live and the low cost of living, especially considering the amenities available, was great. I was always surprised that they didn't do better at attracting companies. Is the Drew Carey connection just a deal breaker for people?
I think it's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's just a stupid idea.
Have they figured out which King of Rock 'n' Roll is buried under the pyramid, or are archeologists still concerned about boogie woogie curses?
The chamber lies empty, waiting for John Tesh to start his journey to the underworld.
I can't read this article until next month, but apparently my neighborhood is becoming too fancy for me. You can just see the bar in the bottom left.
I figured out how to read it. I also noticed the Orthodox Jewish people moving to Greenfield. There's always been a synagogue there, but now you see people walking to the (nicer) synagogues in Squirrel Hill. This issue isn't so much that the $300,000 houses are now $500,000 houses, but that the $150,000 houses aren't there any more. Except in Greenfield.
Is the Drew Carey connection just a deal breaker for people?
I listened to the WTF podcast interview with him. Did anyone know that he's a Buddhist?
He looks like Buddha, if you don't even see race or stupid glasses.
Anyway, it seems to me that out-of-towners wander into Pittsburgh, look at the price of the houses, ask which neighborhood has the best schools, and then they go drive up the price of houses in the fancier part of Squirrel Hill. If they're from New York or New Jersey, they don't bother to get new license plates so that everybody is warned about how aggressively they will drive.
I should add that I'm not a qualified anthropologist.
Ok, based on this thread I think the book will be worth doing. I'll send in a summary of chapters 1-3 on Wednesday 6/6. The contents:
Introduction
Part I
1. THE AGE OF POLITICAL SEGREGATION
2. THE POLITICS OF MIGRATION
3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE TRIBE
Part II
4. CULTURE SHIFT
5. THE BEGINNING OF DIVISION
6. THE ECONOMICS OF THE BIG SORT
Part III
7. RELIGION
8. ADVERTISING
9. LIFESTYLE
Part IV
10. CHOOSING A SIDE
11. THE BIG SORT CAMPAIGN
12. TO MARRY YOUR ENEMIES
I missed this thread earlier today, but if we're going to read something from about 10 years ago, I vote for Gelman's Red State, Blue State, Rich Stat, Poor State.
I will summarize chapter 12, but I won't read the book.
To develop crushes on your enemies, marry them before the eyes of your god[s], and hear the lamentations of your children.
Why not just marry anybody you want and then make them your enemy later?
If you can't be with the one you loath, loath the one you're with.
I got the free copy of The Big Sort from the local library. I'm going to see how annoyed I am after I read the first chapter.
Technically we can't know that until I give it back.
96: Don't joke about that kind of thing in the presence of librarian!
97: I meant to write "librarians", but maybe I should have written "Librarian" (my superhero identity)
Apparently his anger cuts sharply, in matters of deepest consequence.
Do not meddle in the affairs of librarians, for they are subtle and quick to 'sssshhh'.
Stop imposing your elitist values on them.
Why did I drink the whole bottle on a weeknight?
I got kind of angry and frustrated today. Although the classes turned out well. And the wine was good, despite being Australian and having a stupid label.
58: I don't know. Political/social considerations were a factor when we bought here, and it's a factor keeping us in a small city instead of moving out to the country. (That and the possibility of snow making it impossible to get to work.)
Years ago. One of my sisters is in Shaler and the other is maybe in Friendship -- or one of those neighborhoods that recently went all hipster.
Did you leave for political/social considerations?
I promise I probably won't be offended by your answer as long as it is "No."
Anecdotally, it feels like Heebieville is in the midst of a major resorting - I constantly hear stories of conservative people moving to neighboring cities and commuting in, and of people moving in who want a smaller town than Austin but can't stand to live somewhere horribly rightwing. In 2016 we were 50-50 split; time will tell.
People feel that Austin city limits?
True story: My son's music class is learning "I Bless the Rains in Africa."
Which, I guess, isn't any different from when our music teacher made us learn Beach Boys songs. Still.
So long as none of them were "Kokomo."
No. It was "In my room" and the one about the T bird.
Solipsism is still preferable to Kokomo.
It was in that horrible Tom Cruise movie.
No one else seems interested in The Beach Boys, solipsism, or Kokomo. Maybe we should talk about Kokomo, Indiana and its role in The Big Sort.
I predict a self-selected group will read and discuss this and that their posts will get more detailed over time while others will form only vague opinions on it. Eventually, the discussants will break away to form a new community named, in self-referential irony, Unsorted.
I just linked this article in the other thread, but it definitely touches on sorting: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
I didn't read it, but it reminded me of the "We are the 99%, but not the 90%" crack.
Anyway, I blame the modern hyper-competitive Tiger-mom parenting on the Big Sort. If only UMC parents were really able to directly see just how many bug-fuck stupid people there are, they would worry less that little Liam will be unemployable if he gets 3.8 instead of 4.0.
But will be able to get a very particular skill set?
Maybe I will JUST NOT SIGN up for a reading group!
I started reading the article. I guess I'm not the 9.9% anyway. Stupid lack of focus and ambition.
Household wealth is kind of a crude measure anyway. They should think of a way to adjust for age. A 29-year-old with $1.2 million is rich while a 65-year-old with that amount (unless they also have a pension) isn't particularly well off unless they are healthy enough to work until 70.
125, 126: I read that, and got stuck on the stats, which threw me a bit. (And it is exactly "Don't say 'we are the 99%,' that's bullshit. The top 10% are the oppressors with their necks on the foot of the poor, not just the 1%")
Usually, the 99% conversation is about income, but this article was using a wealth cutoff, and said that the wealth cutoff for top 10% was 1.2 million in net worth. And that sounds oddly high to me. Like, I'm right around the 10% line on income -- low six figures. And I would not expect someone with my income to have a net worth anywhere close to that. I can't quite figure out why the cutoffs don't match up.
And the text of the article sounds like it's talking about people richer than the very-low-six figures income, too -- the text sounds like it it's talking about people with more than $1.2 million in wealth, but doesn't sound nearly so plausible talking about someone who makes $114K. Anyway, it threw me a bit.
132: Yeah, that sort of thing exactly.
I figure everybody with a low six figure income should have that much money because housing costs are only like $1,000/month everywhere I've ever lived.
And I've lived in five places, so, statistically, I must be right.
Of course, it can cut both ways. Like, I'm right about the 10% cutoff for income, and I'm not there for wealth, but I think I'm unusually wealthy for someone of my income because I got lucky in an expensive housing market -- bought a fairly cheap apartment and had it go up in value a lot (and then walked away with it in the divorce because I wasn't going to argue with Tim if he said it was mine). Expensive housing markets give as well as taking away.
Here's a potential theoretical basis for sorting independent of financial self-interest, a complement to the materialistic dynamic described in 125.
137: I don't know how they count retirement funds, but if, as I suspect, a pension isn't counted as part of wealth but a 401k is, then everybody who has a pension will be less wealthy, but more financially secure, then everybody who has the same amount contributed to a 401k.
Of maybe not more secure. I remember that a local gas utility had a nice pension and then it got bought out by Enron.
LB pointed me to this thread. Doesn't that article clearly show that the 0.1% are directly taking wealth from the 90%?
As for the income/net worth distribution misalignment, LB I think you live somewhere unusually expensive. And these distributions have different peaks at different ages, e.g. older people with large amounts of wealth but moderate fixed incomes skew things.
Yeah, the graph looked as if the 9.9% were pretty much holding steady, with the 0.1% getting richer and everyone else getting poorer.
I probably won't read the book because I haven't joined the reading groups so far, but I'm more tempted than usual to do so just so that I can comment authoritatively on the Hoover review. I see one or two interesting points and about a dozen problems with it.
Funny how ads work. I followed the link in 101, and now I have ads for that and similar products when I read 125.
Still reading through the article in 125. It's long. I agree with it so far. The closest thing I have to a deep thought about it is that it's annoying to have two separate measures of class, wealth and income. Wealth is thrown off by family farmers and retirees who own their homes outright, income is thrown off by small business owners of other types and people who are just middle-class in ridiculously high cost-of-living places. It would be nice if someone settled once and for all which one correlates more closely with problems for society, or good outcomes for the individual, or what things one is a good measure of that the other isn't.
Maybe you only have to suborn find a compromise deal with 10% of the population to tip the political balance and enact wealth-concentrating policies.
Cyrus, would expected income (`expected' in both the statistical and the emotional sense) suit you?
My flip reaction to the article in 125 is that it's propaganda for the 0.1%, with the intent of breaking solidarity between anyone with a college degree and the rest of the country by implying that reducing inequality can only happen by making your (9.9 percenter's) life much worse.
But I'd have to go back and pick it apart to figure out why I think that exactly.
"The middle class guy is stealing your cookie!"
148 is pretty much how I took the article and much of the Republican campaign activity before they settled on racism.
Or, more because the Atlantic's audience is the professional middle class: "If you have a cookie, it's because you stole it from the poor. Anyone talking about reducing inequality wants your cookie."
Like, this:
But she does not yet seem to know that the source of my anxiety is the idea of shelling out for a $12,000 "base package" of college-counseling services whose chief purpose is apparently to reduce my anxiety. Determined to get something out of this trial counseling session, I push for recommendations on summer activities. We leave with a tip on a 10-day "cultural tour" of France for high schoolers. In the college-application business, that's what's known as an "enrichment experience." When we get home, I look it up. The price of enrichment: $11,000 for the 10 days.
You'd need to be well, well into that top 10% before spending 12K on a college consultant was something you were likely at all to do. That's not low-six-figure incomes, that's mid-six-figure incomes.
The amazing thing about that article is that it is very insightful while using the word "aristocracy" to mean "bourgeoisie". 10% of the population is an "aristocracy"? It defies the meaning of the word. Comparing today's college-educated work force to people who went to Yale 100 years ago? Those people were the aristocracy. People who went to college at all 100 years ago, that was the bourgeoisie.
Yes! I was figuring that it would just sound like quibbling if I say it, but he's really not talking about the aristocracy. The gentry at most.
Did I ever mention the time I had just left Dachu and ran into a group of American high school students on that kind of trip? We were on a train and they were conversing cheerfully in English and the teacher pointed at the seat next to me and said "Frei?" Because I am a multilingual wonder, I replied with 'Da'. The students sat across the aisle. After a few minutes the teacher turns toward me and emits this long stream of German until I replied with, "I'm from Nebraska."
The gentry at most.
I feel sort of like lower-scale gentry or well-educated yeomanry.
People who spend $12,000 on a "college counseling service" that mainly serves to reduce anxiety and recommend other things that also cost $11,000? That sounds like the real aristocracy, not this 9.9%. Does the author think that someone merely in the 90th percentile of wealth would seriously contemplate doing that?
I'm pretty sure I know people in the 90% who have done that.
The other thing that made me react to this as propaganda was the weird amount of blaming language that wasn't backed up with anything:
We have left the 90 percent in the dust--and we've been quietly tossing down roadblocks behind us to make sure that they never catch up. [LB: What roadblocks is he talking about that have been tossed by high-income professionals particularly? Like, inequality is a roadblock, but this language attributes the cause of inequality to intentional action by the 9.9% in a way the article doesn't back up.]...
Throughout history, moreover, one social group above all others has assumed responsibility for maintaining and defending these walls. Its members used to be called aristocrats. Now we're the 9.9 percent. The main difference is that we have figured out how to use the pretense of being part of the middle as one of our strategies for remaining on top. [LB: That final sentence -- does the article explain how using the "pretense of being part of the middle" perpetuates inequality? I don't see any backup for this either.]...
None of which is to suggest that individuals are wrong to seek a suitable partner and make a beautiful family. People should--and presumably always will--pursue happiness in this way. It's one of the delusions of our meritocratic class, however, to assume that if our actions are individually blameless, then the sum of our actions will be good for society. We may have studied Shakespeare on the way to law school, but we have little sense for the tragic possibilities of life. The fact of the matter is that we have silently and collectively opted for inequality, and this is what inequality does. It turns marriage into a luxury good, and a stable family life into a privilege that the moneyed elite can pass along to their children. How do we think that's going to work out? [LB: Here, again, the article blames the 9.9% for being more maritally fortunate than the poor, without identifying what they're doing that injures the poor. Inequality causes problems, but there's no backup for the argument that it's the upper-middle-class rather than the very rich that are causing inequality.]
As I said in the other thread: their own data shows that the average 0.1%er has 300 times the wealth of the average 90%er, while the average 9.9% has 9 times. If you're going to have capitalism, you're going to have inequality, and less than 10x inequality over something accumulated over a lifetime is surprisingly low.
So come the fuck on. This is propaganda where the rich are trying to convince the professional class that their class interest lies with the rich. (And vote Republican, I guess.) Fuck 'em.
I mean, there are definitely policies that would reduce inequality in a way that the 9.9% would perceive as a direct injury, but are still a good idea (my hobbyhorse is school desegregation/inequality), but there's plenty of other stuff. But there are also inequality-reducing policies that would directly benefit the 9.9%.
This is propaganda where the rich are trying to convince the professional class that their class interest lies with the rich.
Oh, I thought it was trying to convince everyone else that the professional class = the real bad guys, no solidarity to be found there.
That's what it looks like, but it's in The Atlantic. Who other than the professional class reads it? I think the message has to be "Poor people rightfully hate you and want your stuff, cling to the rich for protection."
"And don't pretend that you make any political decisions on a moral basis. You, personally, are immiserating the poor purposefully and intentionally. Pretending to be anything but a rapacious predator is hypocrisy, so own up and stab some poor people some more."
146: Expected income in the statistical sense, sure, depending on how it's defined. In the emotional sense, not really. I'm annoyed by the dance between metrics based on wealth and income, but at least they're quantifiable.
147: I can see what you're saying, it outlines a lot of ways the top 9.9 percent benefits from the same policies that benefit the top 0.1 percent, but for lack of a better way to put it I think its tone is too critical and cynical about that to be any good as propaganda for the 0.1 percent or the status quo. This paragraph, for example, doesn't look to me like it's meant to engender sympathy for the 9.9 percent or the policies that benefit them:
There is a page in the book of American political thought--Grandfather knew it by heart--that says we must choose between government and freedom. But if you read it twice, you'll see that what it really offers is a choice between government you can see and government you can't. Aristocrats always prefer the invisible kind of government. It leaves them free to exercise their privileges. We in the 9.9 percent have mastered the art of getting the government to work for us even while complaining loudly that it's working for those other people.
152/153: Fair point. "Bourgeoisie" would be more accurate and have the same connotations. Too bad it's a more obscure term. And to think the Atlantic tries to cater to an educated clientele.
164: The professional class has achieved self-hatred.
At first I thought 162/163, but then I thought 164. LB said it better than I could.
Or, self-awareness. Which is more or less the same thing.
165: I'm not about to feel guilty enough about my privilege to read the article clear through, but you could certainly make the case that plenty of 9.9%ers need to be reminded that society and the economy have been structured to benefit them and that this has imposed real costs on others.
I'm looking at you Butler County.
The ad is written in flawless, 21st-century business-speak, but what it is really seeking is a governess--that exquisitely contradictory figure in Victorian literature who is both indistinguishable in all outward respects from the upper class and yet emphatically not a member of it.
Just like he doesn't know what an aristocracy is, he doesn't know what a governess is. She's supposed to be a gentlewoman -- definitely a member of the upper class. Jane Eyre's aunt was rich, and she inherits money at the end of the book: she's situationally poor for most of it, but she's a member of the gentry. Jane Fairfax in Emma is going to go be a governess because it's the only job she can get as a gentlewoman. Poor? Sure. Treated as a social inferior? Usually. But roughly supposed to be equal in class terms to the family employing her.
And that passage in the article is weird. It's an implausibly ambitious advertisement for a nanny; someone who met the standards for that would be a member of the social class that the article is calling the 9.9%, and could get a job with a better salary and more potential for advancement. So... either the person who published the ad is delusional, and isn't going to get any bites, or is seriously rich enough to pay a salary that'd be attractive to someone whose alternative was grad school and a professional career. At which point, what does this say about the 9.9%?
Oh, it's definitely true that the 9.9%ers (of which I'm surely one) receive an unfair advantage from the structure of society. Our takeaway should be: we have education and cultural norms that make it harder for the vampires of the 0.1% to expropriate our wealth. But it's perilous; as a class we might be ok we can't rely on it individually. We should work to increase the well-being of the 90%, if not out of general principle then in our children's interest.
I read just far enough to reassure myself that I'm solidly in the 90%. I'm just waiting for you guys to fix all this stuff.
Right. It's not that the 9.9% aren't doing well for themselves and could stand to have some of their inequality-derived advantages taken away: we certainly could. But framing it as if they've got exactly the same interests as the very wealthy is screwy.
I didn't get the 'cling to the rich' vibe in the least. I think the much stronger message was 'the trajectory is unsustainable, and if you don't do something about inequality, your children/grandchildren are going to lose everything.'
I think both the 9.9% framing and use of the term aristocracy are inaccurate shorthand, because we (UMC professionals, anyway) don't really have a convenient term for this. Sure, there are those Marxian words, but people not grounded in theory aren't clear enough about what they mean, and about how the distinctions to work, to use them rather than our recently adopted percenter framing.
The numerical thing is also misleading because of regional differences. Obviously, 2 million in net wealth is way different if you live in Omaha than if you live in Boston. So are the 10 or 1 percent income figures.
I thought a governess was a trial wife.
I thought it was pretty clear.
• The 0.1% are getting richer.
• The rest of the top 10% are not getting richer but they are establishing themselves in the top 10%, with less mobility than in Canada or in the America of the past. This means you, Atlantic Monthly reader.
• The lower 90% are getting poorer.
• There is mobility between levels of the lower 90% but not between the lower 90% and top 10%.
• This situation represents things getting worse.
Whatever you take away from it for who you should identify with, or what you should be afraid of, is in the eye of the beholder.
Can we just start a class war and see how things shake out?
175: Did the nitpicking I did in 159 click for you at all? The very blaming language, in the absence of any argument that would make it justified? That's what made me think of it as pushing UMC people away from engagement with inequality: "People who think inequality is a problem think that you, personally, are a bad person whose actions are the cause of the misery of the poor. If you're going to do anything about inequality, it's going to involve owning up to the fact that you're to blame, you did it, you're bad."
180 -- I saw the hand-wavey blamery, and was wondering when it was going to be something specific, rather than inertia. And it never really did: those of us more or less born to the 9.9 stay in it by doing our own 9.9er thing, like going to law school, but mostly aren't twirling mustaches etc. As a class, we're bad voters on things like zoning, union movement, the welfare state, even if you and maybe even me are not bad voters on those issues.
I didn't feel like I was being individually blamed for inequality so much, as noted, as encouraged to see self-interest in dealing with it.
ISTM that what it's really about is capital, including social and cultural capital along with wealth.
I took a big voluntary wealth hit nearly 10 years ago, but don't feel nearly as impoverished as I should, on account of getting a bit of a bump socially and culturally.
I'm every bit as delusional about this, though, as the people who think they can hire the super nanny for what they are actually willing to pay.
Oh, hey, there's a take in Slate that sees exactly the problems that I do.
182: I think that's misleading about 'as a class'. That is, assuming we agree on good and bad, which we basically do, people vote better as they have more education, and worse as they have more money, which is a little complicated because more education gets you more money. But your most liberal voter is a broke teacher with a graduate degree, and your least is a small-business owner with a lot of wealth and not much education (all, super roughly). So, the highly educated meritocratic class being identified and shamed in that article? Really isn't all that politically terrible as a class. The politically terrible part of it is the richest end of it, and the wealthy but not terribly educated meritocratic end of it.
Lumping that all together seems damagingly confused.
Oh, hey, there's a take in Slate that sees exactly the problems that I do.
It always makes me nervous when I can do that.
Anyway, to bump: readers? NickS? Cyrus? I won't proceed without at least 3 writers total.
178.2 I think the article was clear enough, as every 9.9er knows, that while the aggregate stats on downward mobility look ok, and a matter of fact, individually, any one of us can take a huge downward slide with the wrong kind of bad luck.
Anyone who's a professional employee and over 50 has to know that a change in management, a consolidation, some market change, and you're out with little chance of getting a comparable gig.
OK, I can hear the violins from here, as folks think of the tragedy that is dropping from the 95th to the 75th percentile.
That's where Michael Douglas shoots everyone, right?
184 That's why I think using wealth or income as the sole measures of class send people down the wrong conceptual path.
• The lower 90% are getting poorer.
No. The lower 90% have a smaller share in the total wealth of the country. That's a bad thing, but it's not the same thing.
Not to discount the effects of relative wealth accumulation (relative effects are huge), but it really isn't the same thing at all as getting absolutely poorer. The overwhelming bulk of the 90% is getting (way, way, way too slowly, but still, and especially given overall growth) less poor, and moderately richer. And at this point I feel like the pendulum of misunderstanding has shifted such that people are more likely to falsely think everyone is worse off than than they are, instead of the past consensus of people falsely thinking they are better off than they are.
188/189: It's even more tiny-violin tragic if you imagine it's a sequel to Wall Street.
That only works inside square brackets.
Given what has happened with wages, I don't see how 191 is possible, unless it's just a lag until the older people die that had time to accumulate housing wealth die off.
Like this: 195 [citation needed]
191. Not sure if this what RH means, but even with stagnant wages post-1980 or so, a median earner today is better off in a bunch of ways than in 1980-- your cheap car will run 100k miles, generic prescription meds and indifferent healthcare still translates into better care today, larger fraction of kids go to college.
Can't afford to live in Seattle or Boston anymore though. And of course, if your town has declined and you haven't moved, you're worse off.
I haven't read the Atlantic article, but the discussion (Both pro and con) reminds me of the conversation about _Dream Horders_, with the note that the book seems better thought out. For example: http://crookedtimber.org/2017/12/04/dream-hoarders/
Reeves doesn't think we should ignore the 1% but that undue focus on the 1% takes the pressure off the rest of the roughly 20% who benefit most from America's upside-down tax/benefit system. I'm not convinced that 20% is exactly the right number: highly selective education, for example, accounts for maybe 5% of the cohort, not 20% of it. But somewhere between 5% and 20% have their wagons hitched to highly inegalitarian features of the tax/benefit system.
The thesis is just this: that it is not (only) the 1% but the behavior of, and the policies that entrench the advantages of, the non-super-wealthy upper middle class that block social mobility in America. Among the behaviours: Annette Lareau style parenting; advocacy for our own children in public schools (at the expense of other children); fundraising for our children's athletic teams or orchestras or choirs or schools; lobbying within the rare socio-economically integrated schools some of our kids attend to make sure our own children avoid the bad teachers; and purchasing homes in large lot-zoned neighbourhoods.
186: I'm still interested. I probably won't have time to look at the book in the next week or two, but that should probably fit with your timeline. I'm willing to tentatively sign up for part II and I'll call for help if if looks like I can't make it.
191. 197 - "Poorer" is complicated because you have to look at (at least) both income and wealth. And you have to adjust your nominal numbers for either based on some estimate of a baseline, which in turn means making choices about what basket of goods you think is relevant, which in turn means you can if you're not careful massively understate the value of cheap new technology.
AIUI median wealth grew in absolute terms slowly but consistently through 2008, and then fell a lot, and has since recovered but much more slowly than aggregate wealth.
This is a good graph of changes in median household income. At most you can say that (a) incomes have grown way too slowly and (b) the median income is not poorer in absolute terms.
https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=MEFAINUSA672N&utm_source=series_page&utm_medium=related_content&utm_term=related_resources&utm_campaign=alfred
I think there is evidence that people in the bottom quintile of the distribution in the US have in fact gotten absolutely poorer (in inflation-adjusted income) since about 2000. That's terrible but not the same thing as the 90% getting poorer over time. Somebody else can spend the time looking up graphs.
|~
Another school shooting. Why is this happening so often these days?
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Shooters are increasingly sorting themselves into places where they can kill children.
Anyhow, I don't want 201 to be mistaken for Pollyanna-ism. If you're a country and what you can say is "our median citizen is not in absolute terms poorer but moderately richer than they were 50 years ago" that's not nothing but in the modern world it's not something to start blowing yourself over either. And that's especially true when the very very top saw absolutely phenomenal absolute gains and there was tons of overall economic growth. And it feels worse when rates of growth have slowed. That's very bad! I just think that the idea that (most) people in the US are absolutely poorer than they were 25 or 50 yrs ago is wrong.
This graph is pretty easy to follow, and gives a sense of the range of different discount measures.
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/data/41/412b4efc1a9530dcc23de962cea61fb4.gif
If you're a country and what you can say is "our median citizen is not in absolute terms poorer but moderately richer than they were 50 years ago" that's not nothing but in the modern world it's not something to start blowing yourself over either. And that's especially true when the very very top saw absolutely phenomenal absolute gains and there was tons of overall economic growth. And it feels worse when rates of growth have slowed. That's very bad! I just think that the idea that (most) people in the US are absolutely poorer than they were 25 or 50 yrs ago is wrong.
We had a related discussion about income in this thread. I ended up defending a position almost exactly the same as that quoted bit (and, in comment 39 LB linked to data about the segments of the income range who have fallen in real terms).
202: Because people selling guns have successfully linked the concept of "liberty" with "having the ability to kill anybody who crosses you" and the 9.9%, who should be able to control the culture by virtue of being the people who make most cultural widgets, failed to counter this.
205: Those all show a decline in median income over the past 20 years.
208: It claims to be a chart of growth, not of income relative to a baseline. (I'm assuming it's correctly labeled, and that they're only 0% the first year because the author didn't bother grabbing data for the year before.)
Maybe on topic: Is this* even legal?
* For non-clickers, THIS is "writing a living trust that says you get nothing unless you marry a white person".
Sorry, that can't be right. Otherwise that PCE measure is way too high.
I can't make sense of it except as anchored to a baseline either.
I checked the book out of the library, and reading the first couple of pages I'm fascinated. It's interesting _because_ I've read so many other, more recent, pieces about the way in which ideological splits have become more important aspects of identity (and the country has become more ideologically polarized) that it's interesting to be reminded of what that conversation looked like 10-12 years ago.
I haven't read far enough to get a sense of what data he's using, nor have I read the critique yet, but it looks like an interesting book to talk about _particularly_ if some parts of it hold up better than others.
213 was a comment by me. I didn't show up with a gun to a school shooting site.
210: Christ, what an asshole.
Why wouldn't it be legal, though?
I don't know? You can't make a housing covenant that says you can't sell to black people.
Obviously, while he's still alive he can do whatever asshole thing he wants to with his money. I was thinking it wouldn't be legal after he died for a court to enforce the "It's a nice day for a white-person wedding" provision.
True. Maybe I thought differently of this because it isn't an open market transaction. But I may be wrong. Presumably some conditions would be illegal or unenforceable. What if you had to assassinate a United States Senator to claim it?
According to the internet, you can't have a will conditioning the bequest on somebody never marrying or marrying a person of a certain race, or doing something illegal, or practicing a certain religion. Also, apparently if the court decides you wrote a will just to troll your family, the court can refuse to enforce it. I don't know if a living trust is different.
So, as I read the law, you can condition a bequest on your heirs being willing to piss on somebody's grave as long as it isn't the grave of somebody that some of them like or in a state where pissing on graves is illegal.
Looking forward to the forthcoming wave of inheritances conditioned on pissing on Trump's grave.
You can, apparently, condition a bequest on somebody getting married by a certain age even though you can't condition it on them not getting married. This is because being married serves the public interest, I assume because of economic stimulus, and being single is just pure selfishness in the eyes of the law.
Ok. Whoever wants to sign up, please email the linked address.
This looks quite promising, but I'm not going to participate because my internet access is going to be spotty at best in June.
The notorious British strike season.
The notorious "last chance to rent a holiday apartment before schools tip out and you have to remortgage your house to get a shed season."
I haven't read through the thread and aggregated who signed up for what. Has someone done this upthread or (sigh) should I do it?
People are (sigh) mailing me.
I would totally read something except I'm already watching a purse for somebody I'm not even related to so I'm already over-burdened with charity.
Maybe if you propped the book against the purse?
I'm just concerned with the implication that I'm the most trustworthy person in the room.
204 et al.
ISTM that one effect of the 1% getting massively richer, even if everyone else gets slightly richer, is that where it used to be expensive but possible for the non-rich to live in NYC, SF, Boston, etc., those cities are now increasingly out of the range of even the "9.9%" and certainly the 90%. Also, the lower reaches of the "9.9%" are feeling that pricing out more than the upper reaches, and so on. (Somehow I hate the "9.9%" tag, not sure why.)
This isn't exactly true? There are middleclass and poor people in NY? It's very hard for someone who isn't very affluent to live here and feel comfortably middle class, but if you look at the whole city, it's not anything like uniformly rich.
But I don't have a meaningful point to make with that, just sort of noting it. SF, I don't know, and the literal city limits are smaller there so maybe SF is all rich.
Three readers signed up. Need one more.
221: I know someone who has a trust that's conditioned on them not getting married. (It's phrased as "until they get married", but the effect is exactly the same.)
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OT Bleg:
I remember reading a quotation somewhere which said something like "common sense" or "conventional wisdom" was usually based on the ideas of some philosopher - even if the source was now forgotten. I read this in the context of someone saying that we should never discount the power of ideas to change the world.
Does anyone know where I might have read that?
Thanks
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"Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back"
242: Yes! I thought it might be Keynes. Which book is that from?
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, ch. 24, p. 383 (1935)
Also quoted in Touched by a T-Rex.
154 is hilarious and reminds me of my terrible trip as an overaged foreign student traveling from Berlin to Prague for a weekend excursion. Long story, but: bus full of loud American students screaming at the driver to stop at McDonald's in Dresden -- yep -- which he DID. It took roughly a million years to serve all the little hamburglars, and I sat on the bus conversing gloomily in German with some Eastern European exchange students. Apropos of a fresh round of McDonalds-related hooting, one of them turned to me and said in English, "I don't know what to tell you about your country." I was just pissed because I had given my own lunch to one of my countrymen to shut them up.
Never feed an American. They'll never leave.
There were a couple of times when I was riding trains in Europe where I jumped into conversations among Americans in English who maybe didn't realize that in large parts of western Europe pretty much everyone can understand what they're saying.
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Fuck fucking Dulles and the DC 'metro'.
>
Because it was named after a secretary of state, Dulles only works as well as the current State Department.
237: "maybe SF is all rich"
I read that just 15% of households can afford a median-price home. Is a family bringing in $250k/yr rich if they can't afford a median-priced home?
Does the Metro purport to go to Dulles these days? It didn't use to.
For values of "yes" that include a bus and an unbuilt station.
I answered based on signs I saw when I was last in D.C. (summer 2016). Then I remembered it was unlikely to be done one time, so I googled.
In America, metro lines - like constitutions and party systems - require multiple attempts.
Anyway, I thought Pompeo was supposed to be bringing the State Department back to "competent but evil" status.
The last time I went to DC, the Silver Line didn't make it all the way to Dulles but it was an improvement over the previous time I went to Dulles.
The last time I flew to Dulles, National wasn't called Reagan National yet because Reagan was still president.
Oliver North was still saying bullshit about guns.
re: 260
It still doesn't. And then when you get on the Silver Line -- after the bus -- it goes about 4 stops and then you get turfed off in the arse end of nowhere, and you have to wait 30 minutes or so for the next Orange train.
It's a fucking embarrassment. Last time I was here, I had a 3hr wait in the customs queue. Not the first queue (to get passport checked by a machine), or the second queue, for someone to look at me a bit and ask some questions. The third queue, where some moustachioed functionary looked at a bit of paper, generated by one of the previous two queues. First couple of queues took an hour or so. Third queue was multiple hours.
This time, though, it still took me .... 3.5 hours from the time I got to passport control to the time I got to downtown DC. I have gone from London to fucking Manchester in less time.
Almost as if America has an ambiguous relationship with its role in globalized society.
I've said this before, but the US is amazingly third world, for a rich country. Not just the infrastructure, but all the paying obeisance stuff. I travel for work quite a lot. Mostly in Europe, but once or twice a year to the US. And there's always something where I stop and go, 'WTF?'.
266 is very far from an original observation, obviously.
It's not plagiarism if you repeat yourself. What do you mean by "paying obeisance"?
I mean sure it sucks and is embarassing for the US as a country but if you take public transportation to a US airport on a business trip you have only yourself to blame. I don't think there's a single one where it's a more convenient option and only a few (Boston, SF I guess now though I haven't tried it) where it's not insanely inconvenient. Just take a cab or Uber or whatever and expense it! Why isn't this in books for European business travelers.
Maybe you've been misled by transit ideologies on places like Unfogged but the reality is that except in very specific circumstances no one in the US uses public transit unless they can't afford something else. And the only place where that's not true *on a scale accessible to a foreign visitor who doesn't want to spend a lot of time figuring stuff out* is the NYC subway (nb -- not for airport transit, though)9. I am pro building more public transit but if you're visiting from the UK just don't do it, ever! It's like looking for good Tex-Mex in Rome or whatever, just don't bother.
DC Metro is decent from National, if you don't have to transfer anyway.* But I don't think cross-Atlantic flights have many non-Dulles options.
In terms of places I've gone recently, Atlanta was surprisingly easy on their version of a metro. Bay Area airports have gotten better but it only makes a difference if your destination is already on the line.
Pittsburgh on the public bus was not great but it certainly saved a lot of money.
*Any late night transfer on almost any US public transit is going to involve long waits unless you're lucky.
Seattle and Philadelphia also have pretty good transit access from the airport. But it's definitely still the norm for American cities to not.
I sometimes take public transportation to or from the airport, even on business trips. On Philly I'd take the train, for example. Always taking a taxi is a sign of weakness.
In many ways, the US is a broken country. Public services work better in Italy, and that country is run by the mob. Italy managed to build high speed trains, for christ's sake, even though, as Wikipedia says "The Italian high-speed rail projects suffered from a number of cost overruns and delays. Corruption and unethical behaviour played a key role."
At the same time, the US is the technology frontier, and has been since at least WW2. It's very mysterious. Is it an accident? Is it related? Or has the US just gotten away with it until now, and now the brokenness is catching up with it? Fuck if I know.
*on a scale accessible to a foreign visitor who doesn't want to spend a lot of time figuring stuff out*
So, a foreign visitor who knows how to use Google Maps?
I mean sure it sucks and is embarassing for the US as a country but if you take public transportation to a US airport on a business trip you have only yourself to blame.
This is true. When I got through customs in Houston (a shorter journey than ttaM's in DC though equally unnecessarily convoluted; the bit of paper thing still baffles me) I instinctively looked around for the signs saying "Trains" or "Buses" or whatever and they just weren't there. Instead, I was besieged by little dodgy furtive men muttering "Taxi, brother? Taxi?"
Note to Houstonians: advanced countries do not welcome their visitors at major international airports with crowds of little dodgy furtive men muttering "Taxi, brother? Taxi?"
On the other hand, Bruce de Mesquita, in the very good Dictator's Handbook, notes that there is a statistically significant correlation between the democraticness of a country's government and the bendiness of the road from the capital to the airport. The more democratic, the more bendy.
272: Biggest economy, by virtue of geography, plus biggest MI/R&D complex from 1940 on? I'm thinking coincidence, in short.
Maybe you've been misled by transit ideologies on places like Unfogged but the reality is that except in very specific circumstances no one in the US uses public transit unless they can't afford something else.
About maybe 1/4 of the people I work with take the bus to work and could afford something else. I guess I don't know for certain that my co-workers don't have large debts to the mob or something. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, today I got out of bed at 6:00 (which is much earlier than usual because of a thing) and got to my desk by 7:00 having taken the bus (and walked). That hour including showering, breakfast, and getting a Pokemon on three gyms.
TBH, I'm just waiting for electric scooters to appear.
I don't know about ttaM's, but my employer's expenses policy requires us to use public transport from airports if it's available.
We don't have that requirement, but mostly nobody will pay for me travel anyway.
When we had a conference in Seattle, three of us from here went. One colleague and I took the train from the airport into downtown and the other took a taxi. He didn't even think to look if there was transit.
275: Hmm. Thinking of the M4 out to Heathrow, by that metric the UK is a totalitarian state. What does Mesquita know that we don't?
269: I have never really believed that anyone - as in, actual living breathing physical human individuals - makes decisions about transport in the way American media routinely says they do. Until...a little while ago I had an interesting conversation with colleagues in Barcelona and their friend, a Texan from one of those posh-Hispanic ranching families.
Who mentioned that he told his mother that his apartment in Barca was fantastic! He could walk everywhere and if he needed to get somewhere on the other side of the city he could take their excellent metro! And...she freaked out and told him to "stop behaving like an illegal immigrant".
The majestic Texan, astride his horse, cutting out the ordinary Hispanic families so that only the poshest ones are on his ranch.
272. At the same time, the US is the technology frontier, and has been since at least WW2. It's very mysterious. Is it an accident?
It's related. The US was a first mover on a lot of things, but is terrible at upgrading those things as technology moves on. It's one reason why internet speeds are lower than in a lot of former poor countries (South Korea comes to mind here).
You can indeed get to the airport by subway in Boston, but it's painful and usually requires a minimum of one line change, usually two, plus a bus once you are there. The trains don't actually go to the terminals: epic fail. On the other hand, Boston had a subway before anyone but London. We (or more accurately you suckers who don't live in Boston -- thanks, Tip O'Neil) paid billions to build the "Big Dig." Now we (you) are paying (smaller) billions to extend our Green Line to the north, which we were required to undertake due to the laws that enabled the Big Dig. (Extending the Green Line is a good idea, mind, just expensive.) Thanks!
Getting from Reagan National to downtown or Arlington is indeed pretty easy by metro. You can't get to Georgetown, though. I think one thing that distinguishes genuinely useful metro systems from not-good ones is that the useful ones (NYC, London, Beijing) are not hub-and-spoke but closer to a grid overlay. DC and Boston are hub-and-spoke and have their pluses, but just can't get you everywhere you want to go.
186, 230, 231: yeah, sure, sign me up for either part 3 or part 4 if they aren't already taken. I should participate for once. It would be good for me.
The US was a first mover on a lot of things, but is terrible at upgrading those things as technology moves on.
Boy, that sounds familiar from over here.
You mean the canal tunnels that you can't even stand up in so the bargeman has to lie flat on the boat and "walk" along the walls?
Boston had a subway before anyone but London.
...Budapest, Glasgow and Chicago.
Musk's The Boring Company seems to be the epitome of this attitude. I don't know how much cheaper/better if at all its boring machines are, but I love* that as far as he's concerned, the purpose of digging tunnels under cities is not to facilitate high capacity rapid mass transit, but to but individual rich people's cars on rocket sleds.
*hate
You mean the canal tunnels that you can't even stand up in so the bargeman has to lie flat on the boat and "walk" along the walls?
I was literally just rereading "Hornblower and the Atropos".
Fact: the UK already had several hundred miles of railway a decade before the invention of the locomotive.
You mean the canal tunnels that you can't even stand up in so the bargeman has to lie flat on the boat and "walk" along the walls?
There's one of them not far from my parents.
I assume all canals require legging over there.
285: Great! Please mail the address in 225.
Anyway, it's maybe strange to think of railway without a locomotive, but it's probably even harder to figure out how somebody would think to invent the locomotive without there already having existed some considerable rail network.
You people need stop calling it Regan National. Its fucking Washington National. It was named Regan by the colonizers.
re: 279
Mine isn't quite as strict, but there's certainly an expectation not to use unnecessary cabs. And since I am here on a non-profit making thing -- doing academic/library conference stuff* -- the general expectation is that I'll keep costs down.
It doesn't help that my boss is also on this trip, and I know he took the bus/train (albeit at a more convenient time of the day as we had different flights).
* which is certainly related to my core commercial role, but most of what I'm doing this week is not for renumeration workshops and training for non-profit organisations, so there's no-one footing the bill, it's sort of pro-bono (-ish).
Its interesting to compare our transit perspectives. I thought Boston was great, although the bus/tram is a bit weird. The Pittsburgh airport shuttle takes twice as long as a taxi but costs 1/20th as much so I'll usually go with it if I'm not leaving my car at the airport. But 3.5 hours is unconsciousable--next time, save time by flying into Pittsburgh and driving to DC.
America has a large number of innovation free riders who don't want good government or services because they got theirs. That we've propospered in spite of them is testament to our bountiful resources (including isolation).
Also, 298. It's a $70 taxi ride from the airport to my house, which is just ridiculous.
except in very specific circumstances no one in the US uses public transit unless they can't afford something else
Maybe not too far off, but in my downtown Chicago office, every person on my team takes the train (I'm on a train right now) and probably 90% of people at the company do the same. Between the El and commuter rail, the coverage is really quite solid.
I hadn't been to Chicago (except the airports) much in the past 15 years until recently. I was surprised by all the regional rail.
Not that it looks like new rail. I just didn't remember or notice there was so much of it.
Oh, and I think half of my downtown Pittsburgh office uses public transit. Everyone who lives in the city either takes the bus or bikes, excepting one guy who lives in a tucked-away neighborhood.
Yeah, you can ride to Indiana (one guy on my team bought a place in Indiana and takes the train in) or Wisconsin on the commuter rail, and the coverage in the western suburbs has exploded.
Dulles really is the worst, ime, entry into the US.
People sometimes forget to price flying in and out of BWI. It's too bad they didn't build it in exactly the right spot -- so the MARC station would be in the terminal.
re: 307.1
Definitely. I've flown into a fair number of US airports: Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Dallas, San Francisco, Dulles (unfortunately multiple times). Dulles is by far the worst.
In London, of course, everyone uses public transport. You'd be insane to try to drive across central London -- and the state will charge you for it, too -- and you'd have to be exceptionally rich to afford cabs. I have gotten Ubers across London before, coming out of gigs in east London at times that make getting back to the far west of London basically impossible by public transport (except via some combination of 3 or more night buses). But in almost all circumstances, the tube is better.
However, even in other European cities without the dense travel network that London has, you can get a train or metro, or even a fast direct bus (ffs) from the airport to the city centre.
290: In mines or what?
Nope, above ground. They were used for horse-drawn carts. This kind of thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swansea_and_Mumbles_Railway
In that case, what's the advantage of rail? Load-bearing? All weather?
Far more efficient. Steel on steel has very low rolling resistance; a horse can pull about (IIRC) eight times as much on a level railway than it can on a level road. (And that's a level modern road, not a level road in 1810.) It can pull even more in a canal boat, but canals aren't always practical.
Of course, none of the productivity gains went to the horse.
Perhaps one could dig a canal from Dulles airport to the centre of town, and be towed along it. A horse could easily pull about 60 passengers in a large boat. If ttaM wanted to pay extra for convenience and speed, he could waterski behind a whippet.
There's a river through the middle of DC, right?
Yes, but not a surrounding swamp now.
If the Founding Fathers in their infinite wisdom had intended the people to be governed with integrity, they surely would not have established the capital in a foetid swamp.
You know who else thought it was a great idea to have his country's capital in a purpose-built city in a disease-infested swamp?
Ooh, don't tell me. Clement Attlee?
319 - Caliph Al-Mansur? Caliph Caliph Al-Mu'tasim? Peter the Great? The Aztecs, then the Spanish, then the Mexicans? The Electors of Brandenburg, sort of?
Lots of cities in the US have good transport connections to the airport. This includes Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis. It also includes Washington DC, although the airport with good transport connections is not Dulles, it's the other one that's much closer to DC. Even Dallas/Fort Worth has one. Denver added one recently and its new airport is 30-something miles away from the city.
Acting like Houston is typical is not quite right.
323.last: It's even in the name:
The name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl- ("swamp").
Amusing, the Chinese word for Berlin is "柏林", where 林 means "forest."
You people have no sense of humor.
Obviously, the most typical airport in America is the Lincoln Airport. Thus, by default, when landing at an American airport, you should expect to find four gates, no fast food places, that the only clothing available is red, and the parking is within 200 yards of the gate.
I don't know about ttaM's, but my employer's expenses policy requires us to use public transport from airports if it's available.
This requires some kind of US exemption, or else it's outrageous. I travel in the US a fair amount, albeit much less than I used to, and there's no city where I would take public transit from an airport into a city center and the basically universal expectation in US business travel is that no one would ever be expected to do so. Public transit to/from airports nearly universally is horrible -- even if there's some kind of train that goes to the airport, the airport is way the hell out there and the train ends up taking you somewhere far from your final destination. I feel like there needs to be some kind of lobby in the UK to get employers to change their policies for US travel.
I think there should be a lobby to place America in receivership until it gets its shit together.
Also the UK, and probably some other places.
What places actually have their shit together? Germany?
329: that may well be a good description of the median US airport. (In fact even four gates is probably above the median.)
They say they have six gates because they count "stairs down to the tarmac" as a gate.
I hear the Republicans abolished airport subsidies or something, so the median should be rising forthwith.
Of course, none of the productivity gains went to the horse.
r>gg
LHR has great public transit options into London.
For airport-to-city transit, the metric should be "is this faster (or about the same) as a car (taxi/rental/Uber/whatever) to get where I actually want to go"? Except for a few point-to-point routes in a few cities, that's the case nowhere in the US. A bonus is "once I am where I want to go, can I keep using the transit system with relative ease vis-a-vis a car to get where I want to go"? Again, except for a few point to point routes, the latter is not true in most US cities, and the cities with better in-city networks are not necessarily those with decent airport connections. So, for a business traveler concerned with convenience, just take the damn car.
I think basically all medium to largish European cities meet both criteria (1) and (2) though I haven't really spent any time in European airports except the biggest hubs. I'm sure all Japanese cities do.
LHR has great public transit options into London.
Expensive or slow ones, generally, though that should change at the end of this year with Crossrail.
there's no city where I would take public transit from an airport into a city center
Not even SFO?
We're very slowly getting it in California, I think. If my searches steer me rightly, LAX is supposed to be hooked up to Metro by 2023 - specifically, 2021 for the Aviation & 96th St. station, 2023 for the people-mover which will connect to that station.
The US seems to me to have put as much money as any country into cute intra-airport rail systems like the people-mover. Which implies it's the warped priorities coming from catering to concentrated wealth.
I think basically all medium to largish European cities meet both criteria (1) and (2) though I haven't really spent any time in European airports except the biggest hubs.
Barcelona's a tricky one, although that may be specific to my needs, as generally I'm staying right the other side of town from the airport, so the metro takes forever, and a good way away from any of the city centre train stations.
341.last: The exception is Naha, where the transport system still reflects the Occupation. You can't easily get around Okinawa without a car.
That's why Mr. Miyagi moved to California.
At this moment, says Google, from SFO to the point they define as the Financial District (which appears to be One Embarcadero Center at Battery and Sacramento) takes 38 minutes by BART, with trains every 15 minutes. (32 minutes rail, 6 minutes' walk.) A car to the same spot (as I write at 8:40am) is estimated 41 minutes, with multiple slowdowns.
It's also a car friendlier city than most, particularly for a cross-town journey along the Litoral
In Mossburg, catering to concentrated wealth produced a not-bad-at-all airport rail connection in 2011. America, sucks to be you.
342: expensive or slow by which standards, though?
I paid $65 to get into central Houston from the airport by taxi. It took about an hour.
The Heathrow Express costs much less than that (£37 return) and takes 15 minutes from Paddington once you're on it; the tube costs £3 offpeak and takes about an hour. (52 minutes from Piccadilly Circus)
I thought about SFO, but I try desperately to avoid ever flying into SFO when I'm going to San Francisco proper and always go to Oakland (because you don't get fogged in), and BART from Oakland to central SF is definitely way slower than Uber, even given the bridges. When I fly into SFO it's invariably because I'm going to someplace south of SF proper ( because this is where the business is) and for that you definitely need a car. But maybe SFO to, say, the Embarcadero is equivalent distance transit/taxi.
Waiting for the BART will probably take more time, but so does finding your car. For rush hour, they're probably still at par time-wise.
Granted, if you're not flitting around downtown you may need a car.
I travel in the US a fair amount, albeit much less than I used to, and there's no city where I would take public transit from an airport into a city center and the basically universal expectation in US business travel is that no one would ever be expected to do so.
Last year I took the train from the airport to my destination in Salt Lake City and from National "Reagan" Airport to two job interviews. I wonder how much these business travel policies are just because they assume the business traveler would get lost if he had to navigate a transit map for the first time in years. You simplify the itinerary and you maintain the executive's comfort level if everyone agrees on the premise that a car is necessary for all journeys.
Public transit to/from airports nearly universally is horrible -- even if there's some kind of train that goes to the airport, the airport is way the hell out there and the train ends up taking you somewhere far from your final destination.
If there is a train, the train ends up taking you downtown where all the hotels and convention center are. Agreed that there is likely no way to take public transit from THERE to your "final destination" in a suburban office park somewhere.
347: BART's one of the few good ones. Although they should put up more signs saying that not every southbound train goes to the airport. Says the person who spent fifteen stressful minutes in Millbrae last month.
351: Fair enough. But for central SF, have you reexamined now that we have the (somewhat boondoggley) Oakland Airport Connector? The same time comparison from OAK to 1 Embarcadero says 41 minutes by BART, 57 by car.
I tried BART from OAK once post-connector and it sucked balls and took forever, as IME BART always does, something like 1.5 hours or more with waiting to get into SF. There was even a breakdown! BUT it may be that this was just a bad experience and now at rush hour it's faster or close.
This conversation is reminding me that later this week I will fly into Atlanta for the first time ever.
I was hoping to make it to 50 before doing that, but I guess people have different views of 10 hour drives.
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I suppose it's not politically correct to say it, but Don Blankenship is my hero.
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My question is, what does the airport road/dictator model say about Venezuela?
296, 307. My recent experience is that almost no one refers to "Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport" (its official name) as "National" anymore (most say "Reagan" or "Reagan National"), and almost no one refers to "Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport " (its official name) as anything but "BWI."
I didn't even know BWI was named after Marshall.
I've never heard National called anything but National, but Pittsburgh is famous for calling things by prior names.
I hear the Andrew Warhola museum is terrific.
most say "Reagan" or "Reagan National"
Don't think I've ever heard "Reagan," though "Reagan National" is quite common. I have sorted myself into a liberal community, but I still hear "National," too.
The only reason they changed BWI to Thurgood Marshall BWI was petty revenge on the people who illegitimately changed National to Reagan. Nobody ever actually wanted to call BWI anything but BWI.
296 is correct. I still call it National. (I've never actually flown into or out of it, though.)
284: The slow internet speed fits the "broken" part, but the US was on the forefront of creating Internet businesses. Now it's on the forefront of machine learning and self-driving cars.
I've never actually flown into or out of it, though.
That's too bad. As airports go, its pretty sweet. Nicely sized, with a great location and public transportation, and cool architecture.
Nobody really knows why construction costs for infrastructure are so much higher in the US, but they definitely are. Part of the reason why we have such crappy airport trains is that it costs way way more for us to build them than it does Europe and Japan. There's no single-shot explanation for why, but much of it seems to be that the US is just used to tolerating massively more inefficient building practices and big construction firms don't effectively compete on price so there's not a lot of downward pressure. But that's just a longwinded way of saying "no one really knows exactly what, but something in our construction practices must be deeply fucked up."
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure
369. I have a pretty good idea, as does I bet half the workforce who has seen/participated in RFPs or contract management.
The public agencies who issue and manage the contracts have their hands tied in bunch of weird ways, both explicit and soft; these limits on the contracting entity's scope of action drive costs up. A lot of the rules are in place to prevent repeats of public corruption in decades past, so not completely insane. But nobody is trying to solve the problem of broken public contracting.
Contracts for public service IT (like the ACA website) are plagued by similar issues.
There is substantial disincentive to write a clear analysis of the problem with recent examples.
I'm also a big fan of National, and have never called it anything else, but sometimes DCA. I'm willing to let people call it Reagan, though, so long as they also call the other one Marshall.
I kind of think it's important to keep up a steady pace of infrastructure projects. Germany did a ton of them in the early 1990s and then stopped in 1995 with the first Euro membership cuts package. In the last 10 years they needed to do some more and they have been terrible, like that airport they can't open.
You see the same sort of pattern in the UK. for a looong time we dodged them, and then when we started doing them again it was hell for a while (Jubilee Line Extension, Wembley, Channel Tunnel Rail Link), but after a few years the builders got their chops back (London Olympics, Crossrail).
It also works for some other engineering/procurement issues. The navy used to order a couple of ships a year and if they weren't increasing the force, sell or scrap the oldest couple of ships, so the ships steadily improved, the yards kept going and had an incentive to squeeze costs, and if there was a crisis they could roll right into building a lot more. Then they stopped because Thatcherism and now they do a big project once every 15 years and it's always terrible.
If I weren't calling it the 7th Street Bridge, I would start calling it the Andrew Warhola bridge.
I kind of think it's important to keep up a steady pace of infrastructure projects.
Yes. I wonder about this and it feels plausible. Though the US* seems to specialize in interminable infrastructure projects (2nd Ave subway, Big Dig) from which no one learns anything.
*but, for those projects and others, the "US" isn't the actual contracting entity, at all. Most of these decisions are made by local entities. I read somewhere that the cost of the LA Metro Rail project (big and ongoing) isn't far out of line with international costs, but the 2nd Ave Subway definitely is.
The public agencies who issue and manage the contracts have their hands tied in bunch of weird ways, both explicit and soft; these limits on the contracting entity's scope of action drive costs up. A lot of the rules are in place to prevent repeats of public corruption in decades past, so not completely insane. But nobody is trying to solve the problem of broken public contracting.
Old and busted: No competition for contracts because they go to friends of the mayor
New hotness: No competition for contracts because they go to the people who wrote the laws
376. A lot of the big projects get significant Federal funds contributed, and that means Federal oversight and rule-making. The Green Line extension in the Boston area was undertaken partly because it was supposed to reduce auto travel into the city and thereby offset the extra pollution that would come from the Big Dig's improvement of traffic flow. There was interest at the state level in cancelling the project, but then we would owe the Feds some huge amount (>$1B, perhaps) for not following the rules.
So, though many decisions (especially which firm to contract with) are made locally, there are other actors.
I'm pretty seriously considering moving to LA and the improvements in public transit there actually factor into that.
In conclusion, Bishop is right. Reading cancelled!
380 - there is public transit that works well IF it works well for both your job and your residence, so you have to pick carefully. Basically IMO either the job has to be downtown and you have to live in walking distance of a Metro line or one of the true express buses, or you have to live downtown and the job has to be on a direct line. If you have that, you're good to go, but in most cases would probably still want a car for at least some weekends.
L.A. is famous for walkability. There was a song about it in the 80s.
382: Living in the part of the Bay Area I'm in, LA seems pretty similar. I'm probably not going to move without a job lined up but I'm now checking listings more often. I wouldn't go without a car because I like to do outdoors stuff that transit doesn't really reach, plus my other motivation is being closer to my parents, who have been having a tough year, and who live far enough I'd have to drive.
If you are going to or from SF - SFO at anything near commute BART far preferable, far far far. If it's a one-day trip say SFO-LAX and back, ride a share bike to a BART station and back, you are sorted.
I travel in the US a fair amount, albeit much less than I used to, and there's no city where I would take public transit from an airport into a city center
This is just ridiculous. In the last year alone I have done it in Boston (Silver Line), Chicago (Blue Line) and Philadelphia (Regional Rail) many times, plus probably some more cities I'm forgetting. It's cheap and predictable, and in the case of Philadelphia almost always faster than driving.
and the basically universal expectation in US business travel is that no one would ever be expected to do so.
This, on the other hand, is completely true. The hotel employee in Chicago was gobsmacked (albeit very supportive) when I told him I had just come in on the Blue Line.
I'm irritable and tetchy enough about this that I have been known to say bluntly "So there's just no chance that we're going to hop on the subway, I guess?" when faced with a dithering group of colleagues who all want to call Uber or whatever.
(Why yes, I am procrastinating on a boring report, how did you know?)
Thank God, no. I don't have the poker face necessary to work for a man like that.
Agree on the hatred for Dulles. Worst airport experiences of my life, and I've been in dozens (!) over the past few years. Although Newark is pretty bad too.
Atlanta has a smoking lounge, btw. I thought it was 1950 when I saw it. (Other than that, the airport is pretty good -- I was just there last week -- and is apparently the busiest in the world.)
In other news, it turns out that being a tall extremely pale white lady with a US passport means that it takes 15 seconds to clear US Customs and Border Protection coming back from Juarez. Could've been 12 had I been more adept with the scanner machine.
I've transferred through Atlanta dozens of times but have never actually set foot in Georgia proper. Suppose I should someday.
I used to have some trouble, but in the last few years I think I've cultivated harmlessly eccentric white guy to the point that I have a pretty easy time going through customs.
Honestly, if I had to profile white ladies based on height, I'd probably assume that tall ones are more likely to be smuggling something. Probably biased from those Canadian Instagram models who just got decades for smuggling cocaine into Australia.
Agree with Halford that LA Metro sucks unless you're directly on a rail line or express bus line. But depending on where you live, bike might be preferable to car. I had a bike and a motorcycle, and on any trip that was less than 10 miles, a motorcycle wasn't any more efficient (due to traffic, parking, etc.). I was commuting largely between the neighborhoods within 4-5 miles of downtown. There are a surprising number of bike lanes (given LA's reputation), so danger wasn't a big deal. Bigger problem was people having social events more than 10 miles away.
Also re public transport from airports:
- Chicago O'Hare or Midway to downtown is often faster than cars due to traffic. Going most places other than downtown involves transfers and is less time-efficient
- I'm spoilt by my Boston airport experience as I was always going directly to a friend's house in Cambridge/Somerville and was always impressed that it was only half an hour on the red/silver lines, including the transfer
- JFK to certain parts of Manhattan is dramatically faster on the express E line than taking a cab
- Atlanta MARTA was also pretty fast to downtown, though I've never been in a car in Atlanta so maybe it's even faster.
In my mind, Atlanta's rail system will always be a loud fat Polish lady.
Fittingly, the website is itsmarta.com.
last few years I think I've cultivated harmlessly eccentric white guy to the point that I have a pretty easy time going through customs.
Lucky bastard. I get stuck with the X on my slip every single time I come into the US, so I have to stand in line for the extra questioning. I'm on a list and I don't know why.
I did get SSSS leaving London last month--perhaps because my wife and I were sitting together but didn't book together--but that just meant I had to take my shoes off and answer some harmless security questions I essentially made up answers to. No worse than what happens normally at home.
Looking from the outside, I've actually been surprised in this thread at how many US cities have commuter rail at all, however shitty. I'd never heard of the Atlanta system, frex.
I'm sure the LA Metro sucks on a day to day basis, but compared to the San Jose light rail it seems a hell of a lot better. They actually have it grade separated over major intersections and the right of ways or rights of way or whatever* seem like they actually make some sense. The two trips I took were Union Station to Pasadena and from a parking garage on the Santa Monica line into downtown and both went a lot better than I was expecting.
*It made me wonder if there's a connection to the historical streetcar system. In much of the southern Bay Area, what could have been good rights ofs ways got taken up by streets and housing and freeways and whatever and nothing grew along the lines you'd get with rail transit from the start.
392. I completely forgot the Boston Silver Line, which I have never taken. It's actually a bus line, isn't it? My vision of getting to Logan by public transit involves the Blue Line. Now that I think about it, I haven't taken the T to/from Logan in at least ten years.
359: I assumed the Sore Loser laws would keep Blankenship from running for the Senate as the candidate for a third party. Apparently, I was thinking too highly of the legal skills of theWest Virginia lawmakers.
I still don't think he'll get on the ballot, but it seems pretty clear that if Blankenship wants to make a fight, he will be able to make "help, I'm being repressed" shouts through the courts that will keep his voters away from whichever Republican won the primary.
I am surprised that Sore Loser laws are permissible. Seems like quite an infringement of someone's right to participate in politics.
Yes. OTOH I imagine it would hurt lunatics and plutocrats the most.
You can participate, just not twice.
You can participate, just not twice.
Well, you can participate in a primary, but you can't then participate in an actual election which gives you the chance to exercise your right to take a role in the government of your country.
Would it be possible to sign someone up for a primary without their knowledge or consent? That could be fun. "Sorry, Senator, you can't run for re-election because according to our records you already came third in the Howling Wolf Party primary earlier this year."
OTOH I imagine it would hurt lunatics and plutocrats the most.
Which category does Teddy Roosevelt fall into?
Teddy Roosevelt felt no pain, and hence could never have been a sore loser.
I don't think you can run in an election without your consent, but I have never actually checked. I think that a political party should be able to tell a candidate that you are either a member of the party (running in the primary and accepting the result) or not a member of the party for the sake of a single election cycle.
For some local offices here, candidates run as both Republicans and Democrats in the same primary. I will vote against you in the Democratic primary if you do that or if your cousin does it.
I think that a political party should be able to tell a candidate that you are either a member of the party (running in the primary and accepting the result) or not a member of the party for the sake of a single election cycle.
"Is this true?"
"Yes, sir, we have checked our membership records and the Senator was definitely a member of the Howling Wolf Party."
At least in this state, your party registration is done as part of your voter registration and would not depend on membership records kept by that party.
Honestly, anyone refusing membership the Howling Wolf Party is ipso facto unfit for office.
It may be different in states with open primaries.
398 - it's a pretty good system (just not extensive enough for the size and scope of the cott) for exactly the streetcar-related reasons you identify. Much of LA's geography is the way it is stull because of the steeetcar systems. The expo, blue and gold lines run mostly along old streetcar or Southern Pacific right of ways that were largely intact.
People I know who commute by metro train are pretty happy with it. The problem is that if you change jobs its relatively unlikely that the nee job will also have a decent Metro commute.
We have open primaries.
Here's the text of our statute on independent candidates: (1) A person seeking office as an independent candidate may not be associated with a political party for 1 year prior to the submission of the person's nomination petition. (2) For the purposes of subsection (1), "associated with a political party" means having run for office in Montana as a partisan candidate or having held a public office in Montana or a precinct committee representative office in Montana with a political party designation.
candidates run as both Republicans and Democrats in the same primary
So they run four times?
The way our primary is working this time is that I got 3 ballots in the mail: D, R, and G. I was allowed to vote only on one, putting it in a special envelope, and have to return the other two in a different envelope designated for that purpose.
I wouldn't be shocked to learn that there's a percentage of people who do it wrong.
Nobody will do anything until Pat Buchanan is your senator.
Our R senate primary has wilder options than that.
399:
It's a express-ish bus line, and to get to the red line interchange it's only 2-3 stops. Shortly after leaving Logan it enters a dedicated busway so it effectively acts like a subway.
So I'm flying to San Diego today. The trolley gets near the airport, but doesn't go near our hotel.
398:
I find it frustrating that the expo and blue lines are not privileged at traffic signals in downtown LA. They are both surprisingly fast until you hit the border of downtown, then it is excruciating waiting at all the traffic signals. (I know someone who commutes from Long Beach to Pasadena, and rather than changing trains twice downtown and dealing with the horrible signals, he gets off the blue line at the edge of downtown and rides his bike to union station to catch the gold line. Similarly, it was always significantly faster for me to ride my bike from USC to downtown than to take the Expo line.) It makes no sense given how many more people the train is carrying compared to the cars it's waiting for.
The other big problem is frequency---it adds a lot to my travel time if I have to factor in a +- 20 minute variance for both legs of my journey, especially when the train ride itself is only supposed to be around 45 min.
The LA metro isn't grade separated?
They're starting a BRT project here and I'm very excited about it. Dedicated, separated lanes! Buses can control traffic lights! Sure, it's not a real subway or even light rail, but it's better than just regular buses.
It's a streecar/subway hybrid. My reference point, as above, is a horrible light rail system with few riders that runs through a car dominated landscape. Much of the system is in freeway medians or running through sprawling office parks surrounded by parking lots.
Compared to that, the LA system seems reasonably ok. Compared to a completely separated subway system it's not so great.
I wish this city had BRT. The acceleration graphs for the buses are like a fucking seismogram.
I eagerly await our BRT but remain unconvinced some asshole won't figure out how to park his SUV in it.
"A bus lane is more or less the same as a bike lane and I always park in those."
No, I'm in the Bay Area, where every county gets its own transit system.
Santa Clara County managed to get a 7 mile BRT line, which probably doesn't make a huge difference but probably isn't nothing. There were proposals for a longer BRT route north of San Jose to closer to where the jobs are and the cities in their usual way said "nope, don't even bother with a piilot project" and that seems to be the end of it.
432: The amount of money thrown into it means that enforcement will have teeth. My understanding from the public meeting I went to last month is that it's legal to set fire to vehicles parked in the BRT lane.
"A bus lane is more or less the same as a bike lane and I always park in those."
That sounds like London, where bike lanes are for the exclusive use of:
bikes
buses
motor scooters
motor bikes
hideous bigots driving black cabs
vehicles making deliveries
vehicles making pickups
people who park with their hazard lights on because that makes it OK
oblivious pedestrians
bags of rubbish
enormous potholes
feral animals
dementors
My bike commute home has a 3/4-mile strectch along a busy 45 mph road with no street intersections. Southern end, full lane width bike lane. Then, 200 yards from the northern end, where a turn lane appears for northbound traffic, the bike lane abruptly disappears and the car lanes narrow. Drivers are impatient to accelerate again, especially tradesmen/ lawn guys in trucks.
There were proposals for a longer BRT route north of San Jose to closer to where the jobs are and the cities in their usual way said "nope, don't even bother with a piilot project" and that seems to be the end of it.
We were going to have BRT covering a very busy corridor of the East Bay, Telegraph Berkeley-Oakland and International Oakland-San Leandro. The Telegraph people got up in arms about the loss of parking, which was a ridiculous objection, and the plans were cut down to just the International stretch. What's left is currently supposed to open late next year, and I do look forward to it too.
437: Yeah, disappearing bike lanes are terrible, because the drivers have all gotten used to you being in a designated space and get cranky when you have to rejoin their lane.
There's an unused sidewalk that solves the problem on that road. A curb cut to allow getting on the sidewalk where the lane vanishes would be logical.
Bike support here is pretty good, overall, drivers usually pretty considerate. There's a certain density of horrible roads/intersections, so some routes work well and others just don't.
But the whole point of telegraphs is that you don't need stagecoaches to carry the letters anymore.
425 sounds about right.
The best thing about the LA Metro is definitely not its current shape but that it's legitimately expanding in a big way. The Downtown Connector should solve some of the problems in 425 and by 2025 there will be a bigger legit subway that will be useful for something other than going Hollywood-Downtown (apparently the Wilshire bus line that will be replaced by the subway line is the single most-used public transit line in the US, and if things stay as currently planned I'll probably take the Wilshire line subway to work. Maybe.)
Meanwhile, though, year over year public transit ridership is down. Basically, gas needs to get more expensive.
443: yeah I just had a meeting with some industry people who say basically a) oil's going up further, especially given the Iran situation and b) lots more pipelines should come on stream soon because they are not expecting any resistance from the EPA and c) everyone is assuming Trump will be re-elected. Cheerful stuff.
444: Presumably (b) has the opposite sign to (a) and (c)?
The best thing about the LA Metro is definitely not its current shape but that it's legitimately expanding in a big way.
Plus you have Elon Musk's underground pod network, for that all-important LAX to Dodger Stadium run.
you have Elon Musk's underground pod network
On the one hand, the underground pod thing is so so dumb and how will that ever work. On the other, there are annoying NIMBYs who are all like "OMG tunnels! How can I walk on my sidewalk safely when I know there are TUNNELS beneath?!?!" So I guess I come down on the side of let Musk dig as long as he's just burning through his investors' money. It will all make a for a good journalistic nonfiction book in 5 years or so.
This is my first fancy conference call, where people say things like, "Can somebody second?"
You'll also hear that at your first seppuku.
Somebody put their phone on hold and started call-waiting music.
I think Musk knows that self driving cars are never going to work on city streets, but if you can force them underground into a totally controlled environment, maybe they would have a fighting chance.
Actually making Tesla into a car manufacturer is evidently beyond Musk's ability at present. I imagine he could actually fix shit if that were all he were doing, but then again the prophet pose may be the only thing that can sell the next stock issue.
I have half-assed a lot of conference calls, but never bad enough that the other callers got call waiting music.
Maybe they read Musk's productivity tips.
"Actually making Tesla into a car manufacturer is evidently beyond Musk's ability at present"
A strange thing to say while linking to an article that points out Tesla has produced over 250,000 cars.
454: RUNNING A CARMAKER IS TOUGHER THAN IT LOOKS!
A strange thing to say while linking to an article that points out Tesla has produced over 250,000 cars.
I guess, is the strict meaning of the words, yes. But given how those words are commonly used, and that Tesla isn't even close to profitable nor likely to be on track to be, and their creditors are getting annoyed, isn't this just Elon's complicated hobby where he convinces very rich people to subsidize car purchases for slightly less rich people (while keeping working class people from unionizing)?
Tesla is great! I hope that Musk doesn't run it into the ground (though actually I doubt he will), that would be a terrible thing for all kinds of reasons, starting with the fact that much of the recent financial decline is due to people thinking that no one in the US will act on climate change. We should want a mass market electric car like the Model 3. We certainly should want a US company to be at the forefront of electronic car technology. Elon Musk's doucheitude is a given but gloating over Tesla going under is lame and I find it stupid and gross. (nb, I do not own a Tesla).
I want Tesla to succeed, but I'd like it to unionize first. Musk's apparent lack of seriousness concerns me.
Given that the Model 3 seems to cost closer to $80k in practice than the originally touted $35k, I query mass-market.
That's at the high end of the mass market already, and of course they need volume to bring costs down. But it doesn't really matter if they stay at the high end of the market instead of making pretty super-cheap electronic cars -- we largely know how to do that already, they just aren't that great, looking at you Nissan Leaf. The promise is to get better technology that will eventually be cheaper.
On unionization, sure, they should unionized, though I don't understand why when basically no private companies in the US are unionized and Detroit routinely outsources from the US to avoid union labor that's a particular black mark against this particular company. It's a company, of course, with a profit motive, go ahead and hate it like other companies, but relative to most other companies one can think of it makes a pretty importantly socially useful product, is unlikely to be a monopolist, and its relative success would probably be a good thing in general and for the US in particular.
It matters, beyond the general principle of of course it should be unionized, because Musk's rushing things has led to an unusually high rate of on-site accidents.
466 - First, there are nearly infinite issues with safety conditions in other, less immediately flashy US industries. But it's also pretty unclear that this issue has anything to do with unionization (workplace safety standards aren't set by unions, and unions fairly routinely bargain down safety rules in exchange for higher pay -- which, unions are a good thing, that is a better tradeoff than weaker safety standards without higher pay -- but still). Also, it's pretty unclear that the safety issue at Tesla specifically is ongoing or particular unusual for a new, as opposed to more established, factory.
Just admit that you dislike and resent Elon Musk! It's understandable and fine! He is a dick! But singling out the company for particular slagging when it almost certainly (if you work in the private sector) is doing something better for the world than what you are doing seems foolish.
Or, hate all private companies. That's also fine.
Ir oretty much any position is fine, I guess. Who am I to say.
I think it's that Musk touts himself as having a Vision and Drive to Change the World, unlike your various James Hacketts or what have you.
I think it's that Musk touts himself as having a Vision and Drive to Change the World
And that people take that seriously. I remember seeing the Wait But Why post on Tesla a while ago and that got me to pay more attention to the company but also raised the bar for what I would hope for from them.
467: I write research-validated educational software at vastly below what I could get at a software firm outside education, my dude, so I'm fine casting the first stone.
That there are worse things doesn't mean I can't complain about merely bad things. Surely there's a name for that fallacy? Unless you're think I'm being unfair to the poor widdle plutocrat.
Even if they're startup problems, the lack of concern is concerning. Again, I want Tesla to succeed. I would like to buy a mass-market-priced Tesla car--or a similar model by a better-run competitor--and I'm barely suppressing my urge to get a Tesla roof. But the current state of the company does not impress--I see no reason to trust that lifetime warranty on roofs. Musk's disrespect for what those around him, including employees, say are real concerns is shitty.
The Vision Thing wouldn't bother me at all if he was concerned about the effects of what he was doing today. It is disheartening to me that someone could cloak themselves in the trappings of The Culture while laughing off labor.
I'm not saying be a cheerleader, but the intensity of the focus/resentment is weird, for a mostly on-net beneficial private company. Clearly there's some tech industry thing going on -- the tendency of software people to either weirdly intensely lionize or weirdly intensely villainize private companies seems like its somehow built into the way computer people think, which doesn't make it any less weird. I mean who cares about the level of "trust" anyone has in Elon Musk? They'll either succeed in being a successful electric car company, which is a good thing, or they won't, which is probably a bad thing. At least their success wouldn't be a bad thing, which is more than you can say for many.
At least he's not publishing antisemetic newsletters. The bar is really low in some industries.
"I want Tesla to succeed, but I'd like it to unionize first. Musk's apparent lack of seriousness concerns me" is such harsh, vitriolic villainization. It must be built into the way I think, as a simple computer person--so weird of me!
I can't really understand where that reading could be coming from, when I'm saying I'm positive on the idea of Tesla but I have some criticisms of the implementation. That seems like it's the exact opposite of either extreme lionization or vilification. (I'm certainly taking this too personally because you brought up what I do, and honestly that response didn't feel directed at me, but I did just say I was a computer person.)
As for who cares about level of "trust" (why the scare quotes?) anyone has in Musk--I, uh, care because I was trying to decide if I wanted to make a $50k investment in their product, which is about four times I'd pay with any competitor. Specifically a product that guarantees the integrity of the home I live in. If I don't trust Musk--and when I say Musk, I mean him and the board and investors that enable him--to be able to keep the company afloat over the twenty plus years I expect that product to last, I would be making a very foolish decision purchasing from them. To a lesser degree, this has also affected my desire to buy a car from them, as well as their stock.
I still think we could get buy with one car and one road-worthy electric golf cart.
477 - not a personal attack on you at all. Go on with your bad self.
OT: Do bros still ice bros and, if yes, how likely is there to a bro at the wedding of a 40-somethng attorney? Also, if the entire bridal party is married or your sister, should you be more sedate in offering toasts/moshing.
Groovy.
I do with electrical cars had a slightly longer range--my most common journey is just outside of maximum range now, and I really don't want to lengthen each trip with an extra half hour in Carlisle.
480: It's somewhat rare and dated now, but there was a recent instance recorded within the Trump administration. So, is the attorney Republican?
No. I don't know about the people he knows.
Basically, I think I'm supposed to say nice things about the bride, the groom, the bride's parents, the bride's other family members and then say a couple of not-necessarily-nice things about the groom that have nothing at all to do with people he used to date.
"Tesla is, effectively, the world's largest-ever GoFundMe campaign."
If you want consumer electric vehicle production this is what it looks like.
The Gogoro 2 Smartscooter Series began selling in July. Gogoro's website says a new scooter can cost everyday consumers as little as NT$52,300 (US$1,780) with government subsidies applied.Median salary is ~NT40,000. Vehicles will be electrified, but they'll be electrified by existing automakers (who know how to build vehicles at scale) and a slew of newer poorer-world companies (with access to consumers who are actually buying to save energy, hence money, not just greenwashing); the Alphaville piece points in the same direction. Tesla may well survive as a niche manufacturer, but it doesn't matter if it goes under. Whatever good it's done has been done, whatever tech it's developed will be bought at the firesale.
Wait, don't the various busways in Pittsburgh already count as BRT?
487: I suppose, if you count going to Swissvale. They don't connect Oakland and downtown.
I really want the street car back because it ran from my house to the bar.
Seriously though, a wedding toast should be like two minutes, right? Even the people who like me don't like to hear me speaking loudly across a crowd.
Musk gives me the creeps a bit, but he's come up with some cool shit and is able to execute at a high level - if not necessarily profitably. I'm all for having crazy cool future-ass shit, and he's the one building a lot of it, so that's good.
But I sold my Tesla stock when he joined Trump's Business Advisory Council after the Inauguration. He later bailed on it when the whole thing collapsed in acrimony. But, lay down with dogs you get fleas, I say.
Watching Grimes getting dragged on Twitter for getting defensive about Elon Musk's anti-unionization stance is hilarious.
The Musk space stuff has seemed smart, not just for the tech, but for following the time-honored capitalist tradition of positioning yourself to get in on government contractors. Tesla probably wouldn't seem so tied up in Musk himself if he didn't seem to be running it in a way that focuses so much on him. But I guess they can't focus on the way they've totally transformed the auto manufacturing process in order to meet ambitious targets on time.
486: It's amazing to watch how quickly e-scooters (this kind, not the kind you sit on) have spread here in Vienna. I can't remember seeing them at all as recently as a year ago, and now I see them constantly. And as much as I like biking, I'll confess that they really seem far better than bikes for a lot of people/use cases -- an almost perfect last-mile solution.
I'm not saying be a cheerleader, but the intensity of the focus/resentment is weird, for a mostly on-net beneficial private company.
It's not weird at all when you remember what Musk's other business interest is. The Tesla hatred isn't hatred for Tesla as such, it's hatred for SpaceX spilling over to Tesla via Musk - there is no industry in the US, not even armaments, that attracts more focussed loathing than space flight, especially if you have hopes of putting humans into space.
Lockheed Martin can roll out a new bomber and the worst it'll get will be a subdued muttering of "it looks expensive and useless, I hope we don't buy too many" but if you get into human spaceflight be prepared for people screaming "I HOPE YOU ALL CRASH AND DIE YOU FUCKERS".
This has been the case for some time. Americans really dislike the idea of space travel. Throughout its history the Apollo programme was less popular than the Vietnam War; the American people would rather have spent money on B-52s than Saturn Vs.
That is now how I remember, say, the space shuttle stuff. Except for the "Head and Shoulders" joke.
497 I loathe Elon Musk but I'll but my love and enthusiasm for crewed spaceflight second to no one.
499: me too, but that does put you in a minority.
OT: People around me are starting to use the word "Bayesian" in an unironic sense. I predict an awkward meeting.
I think you mean you are revising upward your prior estimate of the probability of awkwardness.
Apparently, that's the kind of joke I shouldn't make.
It is unknown how much the Obamas' Netflix agreement -- which will see them produce through their newly formed company Higher Ground Productions -- is worth. In March, Penguin Random House signed the couple to a joint book deal that pays them a reported $65 million for their respective memoirs.http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/barack-michelle-obama-netflix-deal-1202817723/
497. I work in the software industry, and most people I see day-to-day are fans of Musk. Obviously a biased sample. The anti-human-spaceflight people are and have always been anti-science, anti-technology [slur deleted], or in some cases otherwise sane people who just are jealous of the (minuscule amount of) money spent on space when they could spend it SO MUCH BETTER. I don't think Americans in general are anti-spaceflight, although for tribal reasons a lot of the left is anti.
The Tesla hatred isn't hatred for Tesla as such, it's hatred for SpaceX spilling over to Tesla via Musk - there is no industry in the US, not even armaments, that attracts more focussed loathing than space flight, especially if you have hopes of putting humans into space.
Where are you getting this from? Twitter? The space flight industry is a sideshow. It barely makes the news. I guess "more focussed loathing than any other industry" could consist of 50 or 100 people who really, really hate it. Maybe there's enough aggrieved scientists who see it as a vanity boondoggle and would rather have money spent on their preferred scientific endeavors.
I think of Tesla as kind of a joke in a not terribly focused kind of way. All the coverage I see of the cars is reviewers saying "I really wanted to love this car, but the fender fell off and I needed to reboot repeatedly on the highway." (And I, too, am a spaceflight fan.)
Also, The Boring Company has the dopiest name ever, and everything it appears to be claiming to try to do is either ridiculously implausible, or if adjusted to plausibility, becomes something that already exists and isn't thrillingly high-tech at all.
So my general sense of Musk is that he's a clown; I don't pay enough attention to feel strongly about whether he's a harmless clown or a harmful clown.
The Boring Company intrigues me because it seems to me that the cost of building underground tunnles is astronomically high (at least on Second Avenue, I guess).
So if they have genuinely figured out how to get costs down that is a huge advance. Of course, it remains to be seen if they have genuinely figured out how to get costs down.
But if they have, maybe they can stop fucking around with LAX to Dodger Stadium and go ahead and build the Gravity Train.
The NY cost of building anything is a corruption/incompetence problem, not a technical problem. I'll believe Musk has a way to bring down tunnel boring costs below what it costs in a competent jurisdiction, and still end up with a functional system, when I see it, and from the criticisms of the problems with his approach I've seen, I'm not expecting to see it.
If this were a movie, of course, The Boring Company would be a front, and he would be secretly using it to cover the operations of The Exciting Company, which does something entirely different. I'll be pleased if that happens, under the assumption that the different thing doesn't involve out-of-control killbots.
If they're killbots, then when they get out of controls, they could either kill the wrong people or just not kill people. Everybody assumes the former, but laziness supports the latter.
507 - that's pretty off for Teslas as cars. People I know who've had the S and the X for years have loved them, and beyond that they are legit great cars (take a look at the 0-60 on the X, which is essentially a minivan); my neighbor has a Model 3 and maybe that'll suck particularly but I've been in it and its great. I don't think there's any real doubt at this point about Tesla's ability to produce great cars, only question is can they do so at truly mass volume at a cheaper price.
You may be thinking of reviews of the roadster from like 15-20 years ago, but a lot has changed and there are a lot of Teslas on the road now.
The Berlin airport thing is pretty embarrassing. On the other hand, Germany has been steadily rolling out high-speed train connections. Munich-Berlin can now be done in just under four hours, which is serious competition with flights. That's about half the time it took before the high-speed tracks were laid, mostly in the former East but also through hilly bits of Bavaria.
Considering how much more comfortable a train trip is compared with flying, the train is only going to keep gaining on this 600-km trip. Ironically, about the only thing keeping planes competitive is that Tegel remains more or less an in-town airport. Once BER opens up, it'll be an hour or more out to the airport, hour-plus early arrival because security, hour flight to Munich, hour back into the center from the Munich airport.
Germany's airport setup is unique in Europe, and a probably permanent legacy of the Cold War. In every other European country, the capital is far and away the most important airline hub. West Berlin was a dead end, flight-wise. As a result, Frankfurt became the main hub, with Munich emerging much later as a secondary hub. Politics moved the capital but it hasn't, and probably won't, move the hubs.
Another chapter in the very, very long legacy of Kleinstaaterei.
511: the history of the many mistakes of the building-things-to-kill-people industry tends to support that view.
Elon Musk had just emerged from his nourishment pod when the phone rang. "Please stand by to speak with the President of the United States," said the voice on the other end.After four minutes of patriotic hold music, the President came on the line. "Elon," he bellowed, "You know you are my science brain trust. Settle a bet for me, will you?"
"I'm at your service, sir."
"You know a lot of things about Mars, right?" said the President. "Can you tell me, is there coal on Mars?"
"Coal on Mars, sir?"
"Yeah, like if we retrained a bunch of coal miners to work in space, they could do jobs on Mars, right? Because of the coal up there?"
Musk considered his options in answering this question. He decided to just roll with it.
"Well, we do believe that Mars may have sustained life at one point in its history, so I suppose it's possible that some fossil fuels were created at that time, sir."
"So there is coal on Mars!"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Hot dog, I knew it," he heard the President shout as he hung up the phone. "Elon Musk says there's coal on Mars! In your face, Mitch McConnell!"
512: No, I was thinking of current reviews of the Model 3. Things like this: https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/tesla-model-3-review-falls-short-of-consumer-reports-recommendation/
and this: https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2018-tesla-model-3-test-review ("But while we did not observe any glaring fit-and-finish issues inside the Model 3, the exterior was a different story. Inconsistent panel gaps around the doors and myriad ill-fitting trim pieces were among the worst we've seen in recent memory.")
And all the stories about the problems they're having actually making the number of cars they said they were going to: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/tesla-model-3-production-stock-problems-engineering
510: The Exciting Company is accessing the Fountain of Youth, well known to Native American tribes in the area but buried by Spanish missionaries. Traces of the Fountain of Youth occasionally surface around Los Angeles, explaining e.g. how Dick Clark remained a teenager well into his 80's, and how a certain well known actress is now three years younger than her elementary school classmates.
Slightly more seriously, there is quite a lot of crude oil under Los Angeles. It seems to be concentrated in affluent areas. The century-old wells, including one on the property of Beverly Hills High School, are giving out, and NIMBY precludes new ones. A very deep, otherwise useless tunnel may be of value . . .
...but, alas, we delved too deep, and awoke an ancient evil.
If Musk can't be profitable, or even break even, he doesn't get any brownie points for what he's doing. Especially if he can't be profitable while deunionizing a share of the US auto industry. If Tesla goes under, it'd sure suck to own a Model S or whatever and have to deal with getting repairs and service updates.
I'll give him credit for pushing other companies to be better about producing electric vehicles.
Heh, I just pulled up Tesla's balance sheet and I was very impressed by how they were eating away at their long-term liabilities. Maybe this could actually be a healthy company after all? Then I realized I was reading the flow of time backwards.
516 - but they already fixed the braking issue CR identified and did so way faster than a Big 3 would, including on cars that they already sold. The paneling or whatever on the 3 is also fiixable by .. taking your car to the dealer. I'm not a Tesla super cheerleader but they've been explicit with the 3 that they both (a) ship and develop faster than the mass manifacturers and (b) can responsively fix problems faster. The kind of thing you cite to is a really, really long way from saying that the cars are a "joke" aren't competently made -- they are impressive cars and they've been making good cars for quite a while.
I see Teslas on the road a lot and for whatever reason the Model X stands out as a car I need to be more alert around when it comes to braking and anticipating lane changes. It's probably just my perceptions being affected by a couple of dangerous situations where a Model X cut in front of me when it wasn't safe, including the one time in my life when I had to hit the brakes and just hope for the best, but I've wondered whether Tesla drivers rely too much on the automated safety features. But other Tesla models don't seem to drive unusually to me.
Also, I think the Model X is really ugly.
The braking "fix" they rolled out for the Model 3 really smells bad to me. If it's that adjustable, then why wasn't it properly adjusted beforehand? Stopping distance isn't an obscure metric. Either it's clownishly sloppy of the company, or it's a trade-off with something else they want to optimize, like range from regenerative braking.
I do think the cars they make are good. Some friends have a Model S and it seems quite nice.
You're sure the braking thing has been resolved? I was googling for a funny review I remembered and found this from day before yesterday saying it hadn't been (and saying that Car and Driver had inconsistently found the same braking problems): https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/21/tesla-and-consumer-reports-fight-over-model-3/
I think this (https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-3/2017/long-term-road-test/ ) is the review I remembered: It's Edmunds doing a long-term road test, talking about a 2017 Model 3 they bought in January 2018. This is from April:
Where we drove our long-term 2017 Tesla Model 3 in April is a bit less relevant than what happened while we were driving it. We did local commuting and a few freeway journeys, sure, but everywhere we went the car was fraught with problems. Sixteen weeks into ownership, we've had so many issues with our Model 3 that we started a shared Google Doc to catalog various warning messages, necessary screen resets and general failures.
Forget that this is a "cutting-edge" EV with a cult following. That's irrelevant if Tesla wants to be anything more than a footnote in automotive history. Our Model 3 cost us $56,000, and by that standard alone, the ownership experience so far has been unacceptable. But this is no ordinary $56K car. We put down a $1,000 deposit to get on a two-year waiting list for this car and it's falling apart....
Based on many issues we had early in the month, we took the Model 3 in for service. The most annoying of those issues was a repeated, uncontrollable increase in stereo volume, sometimes when we weren't even in the car. Basically, the stereo would suddenly go to full volume without explanation. This and other issues are cataloged from our notes below:
• Would not recognize keycard in or on the console and hence would not go into gear. It did, however, unlock the car. Workaround was to force quit the app and restart the app. Then it would allow the choice of Drive or Reverse.
• The backup camera screen did not appear when reversing.
• Nav screen going haywire: zooming, scrolling, pinching, pixelating all at once.
• Audio system turning on by itself at full volume.
• Audio display randomly moving up and down the screen without any command from a human.
• Audio system came on and went to full volume all by itself while the car was off, locked and unoccupied. I heard it from 100 yards away. "Who is that joker playing his stereo so loud I can hear it from here?" Oh, it's Elon. I turned it down, but it kept wavering up and down as I started driving, working against my repeated attempts to dial it down. Then it blasted all the way to maximum. My ears are still ringing two hours later. Fixed after reboot. Not sure about hearing damage.
• Audio page leaping up and down rapidly like the up-caret button to expand the source menu was being played with by a kid who ate too much candy. Concurrent with the volume problem above. Same reboot.
• Icons on the map screen flickering.
• The passenger vanity mirror fell off completely. Installed and held on only by double-sided tape. Reinstalled by pressing really hard on the mirror.
• The screen went completely dark on startup, no music or operation. Restarted the car. The screen worked; the backup camera did not.
After diagnosing the car's problems, we took the Model 3 to the service center mid-April. The service center replaced our center screen, updated our firmware, and sent us on our way. That trip to the service center also included a software update, which was meant to address some very specific problems we were having with the Autopilot system. For more on that update, check out this video. The entire process at the service center only took about three hours, so we waited and drove the car home the same day. The service was free and we haven't had the volume issue again, but there were several warnings in the following two weeks:
• The car will not shift into Drive or Reverse upon startup. "Vehicle Systems Are Powering Up. Shift Into D or R After Message Clears." Have to wait for it to power up. A loud click comes from the rear of the car as if a drive shaft is engaging and the message on the screen goes away.
• The car displays a new message: "Cannot Maintain Vehicle Power. Car May Stop Driving or Shut Down." No shutdowns yet, but keeping an eye out.
• With 170 miles of range, the car displays a "Regenerative Braking Limited" message. Plenty of available space to store regen power. Logged the issue, then reset the screen with a reboot. The message has not displayed since.
• While the car was parked, the passenger sun visor was left down and the mirror fell out. Pressed back into place. Hoping it won't fall out again.
I mean, I'm not a car person, I just read these things as they come by for amusement, but it sounds as if the Model S is either remarkably weird or reviewers are out to get Tesla
Oh, wow. That's really treating cars like a tech product.
Why can't I have a phone that knows not to check for email messages while I'm fighting a gym?
I mean, I'm not a car person
I think they prefer "autobot".
Funny you should mention that. Check this out: https://twitter.com/MrBoak/status/998439392036433920
Apparently I can't view that in my location.
Dammit, it must have been shut down since I saw it a couple of days ago. It was little kids in amazingly convertible Transformers costumes.
526: if that lot happened to my car, I would not be seeking a mechanic, I would be seeking an exorcist.
You've basically cherry picked a bunch of negative reviews of the Model 3 when there are tons of very positive ones (which incidentally -- there are other Tesla models that have been excellent for years which was my whole point and not the 3, but). The Edmunds thing sounds crazy but also not that different than what you sometimes find in BMW and Audis (especially in the olden days of i-Drive). Anyhow, maybe the 3 has teething problems, but you're basically paying for and getting a car that roughly comparable to a 3 series or better, trading the torque and fun you get from an electric with pretty big performance on a 200 mile plus range for some build consistency issues with the interior electronics that are (hopefully) fixable on later models. That's a tradeoff we should hope more people want to make, so that they drive electric cars.
OT: If I don't say much in conference calls, I think people will figure I'm really concentrating on what is being said.
It only works if, we you do talk, you say something thoughtful.
A couple people who are or were in my workplace have Teslas, and they both think highly of them. One has swapped for a new model.
You can't buy a Tesla in Texas because of dealership rules. Is this just us or are a lot of states hold outs?
That sounds like a job for the Interstate Commerce Clause.
I don't ever want to drive a car that has anything that feels like apps.
Then you'd better buy a car pretty soon and plan on keeping it.
You can pry the crank windows from my cold, dead hands.
I like crank windows too. I have problems fine-tuning the electronic ones.
