Related? Or perhaps better suited for the booming insurance prices thread…
U.S. cities at risk of collapse…
https://thehill.com/future-america/future-of-cities/4934071-cities-climate-change-insurance-heat-waves/
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A recent paper found that a citywide power outage in Phoenix would put half the population in the emergency room, capacity that the city plainly does not have.
Not good!
I assume that would occur only due to excessive heat. Middle of winter? Probably not.
Back-up generators are sorely needed. I bought one recently, still in its box.
And Pool Water Coolers. Was in Scottsdale a couple summer ago and the hotel pool was a good 90+ degrees. Not all that cooling.
Also, don’t live in fucking Phoenix!
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First everyone complains that housing prices are too high, and affordable housing is unavailable; then they complain that half the city of Phoenix could die in the event of a power outage. Folks really need to look at this from a glass-is-half-full perspective.
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I feel bad about laughing at this.
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I’ve been to Phoenix in summer. Waaaaay too fluffin’ hot. 0 
, do not recommend. 
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Is that the half that doesn’t have to go to the emergency room?
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I have a cousin who lives in Phoenix. One time, I was talking to her on the phone and it was October. I asked her if it’s still hot over there(it was in the 100s in the summer). She said “no it’s cooler now. It’s 92 degrees.” Wow, that’s cool!
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I think it fits well. Some people need to think about whether they still want to be in Phoenix.
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I thought it was fairly comparable to traveling in the US. AirBNBs were a lot cheaper, drinks were cheaper and food comparable once you factor in the 15-20% tips in the US, while petrol was obviously a lot more. +1 on the cool things to see, but you need to get out of London generally.
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I was quite surprised by the restaurant costs my son was quoting in the large US cities he visited on his current trip. Certainly comparable to London costs and more than their Canadian counterparts given the strength of the US dollar.
Eh, I think you still tip like 10% in UK, no?
I haven’t been in like a decade but in my experience the nominal prices were comparable without actually calculating the exchange rate.
That is… something that cost $10 in the U.S. cost £10 in the U.K.
But since £10 = $15 or thereabouts… it was really all about 50% more expensive.
I mean maybe sometimes the $10 item was only £9, but that’s still quite a bit more expensive.
Whereas when I went to the US last year, I thought it was expensive. I guess it depends where you go. I think London is expensive too.
Also when you go. The exchange rate certainly matters.
The nominal prices were about the same with fx about 1.25 at the time, and no tip that I recall. Its 1.29 currently, so yes, the exchange rate matters a lot. It was 1.5 for a long while (about 10 years ago as you mentioned) and 2.0 prior to that.
Flights are still about 1k to get there but its a good time to travel.
We go to the UK every year to visit our daughter and the big US cities have certainly caught up in recent years with the UK prices at current exchange rates. It has been a while since I could consider the US to be a bargain for Canadians to visit.
When we lived in the UK 30 years ago the old $1 = 1£ cost rule applied for some items but that is not the case now.
That was my experience in 2011 when I was interviewing there/considering moving there. I got offered the position, but ended up turning it down. My pay would have gone down nominally, ignoring exchange rate, when most grocery items were the same price ignoring currency. Plus, I got offered substantially higher pay for my job in Australia.
When I went over last December, the prices seemed lower than Canadian prices in many cases, but hotels were crazy expensive. 2 December’s ago, I ended up vacationing in NYC and then flying over to London to meet up with a friend and the hotels in London were expensive compared to NYC.
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My last visit to the U.S. (from Canada) was just over a year ago. I was shocked at how many things were nominally more expensive in the U.S. let alone after calculating exchange rates. The particularly surprising part was that I noticed this the most on groceries, which in many cases they come to Canada from there. I’m still trying to figure out how the Canadian carbon tax is driving up US food production costs.
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Those London prices are about to get a lot worse due to the latest budget.
I travel a lot and London is definitely over-priced now in many areas of hospitality.
Explosive new investigation by the Times on the Crown.
Its amazing to me how much they fleece from the UK taxpayer, and how they are allowed to do this by politicians and judges.
Any other developed country on the planet would be bringing out the pitchforks for them.
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