United States Presidential & Congressional Election 2024

I had trouble with that when I finally got a real ID. Who gets bills mailed to them these days?

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FYI, I often wear a mask when I’m in crowds, or on mass transit (including airplanes and airports) or going to a drugstore (even if I’m just buying Tums or something). Also when I dance. And if I’m not feeling well, I will wear a mask even to the well-ventilated supermarket. The first group it to protect me, I wear a mask when I’m not feeling well to protect you.

Maybe you think I’m an extreme leftist. :shrug: You are factually incorrect in thinking that masks don’t work, for what it’s worth. Mandating crappy cloth masks wasn’t terribly effective, both because crappy cloth masks aren’t terribly effective and because a lot of people ignored the mandates. But actually wearing a well-fitting N95, KN95, KF94, or FFP2 properly makes an enormous difference in both your likelihood of being infected by sick people near you, and your likelihood of sharing your germs with others.

If you compare the covid mortality of any of the Asian nations that leaned into masks and ventilation until vaccines were available (Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, despite its poverty) to that of… say the US, or most of the places that didn’t have either a supply of good masks or a habit of using them, you can see the efficacy of routine civilian masking.

Anyway, I don’t mind that you aren’t wearing a mask when you have a cold, but I really do mind that you have been so grossly misinformed about them. :cry:

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or even VP. I did some canvassing in Wisconsin, and one of the women I was canvassing with spoke with a man who was really mad that Kamala Harris raised his property taxes.

Sigh.

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Most importantly, the President controls the price of oil. That’s HUUUUUUUGE.

I’m getting tired of hearing the topic of inflation getting beaten by a dead horse. That is so 2021-22. Someone needs to point out that wages have surpassed inflation by almost 2 percentage points for well over a year now.

Yes, Interest rates were too low, and both Trump and Biden injected a crap ton of money into the economy … quelle surprise. Powell has done a great job since we got into this mess, and I’ll enjoy watching him resist Trump if it comes to that.

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FT Alphaville has done a good job condensing the result into 10 explanatory economic and immigration movements.

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Some of the charts are feelz that could be tied to campaign messaging. Cheapflation i think is the real issue. Mcdonald’s is expensive and $50 for a family of 4 is going to piss off a lot of America. Highly processed food which is a large% of rural American diets is crazy expensive compared to 2020.

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This is true but is going to miss the impact of inlfation in various groups. Aggregate spending habits fail at picking up the socioeconomic differences in spending.

I buy a lot of flavored soda water like La Croix. I could get a 24-30 pack of this from Costco for 6.99-7.99 back in 2020. It is now 8.99-10.49 or so. A 35 pack of Coke has gone from $10 to over $20. Similar product targeted at two different economic groups with two different inflation rates. Chips, frozen pizza, cereal, cookes, granola bars all seem 2x more expensive at the store. Milk, cheese, eggs, fruit bread cost like 25% more.

Maybe it was a long needed correction in prices in the US where highly processed foods caught up as cheap labor to produce them disappeared.

Cross reference to the food quality thread - this stuff is the base of many American diets that is responsible for sky high obesity rates.

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Now comes the consequences of voting. Its not going to be pretty.

GOP looks like its going to take the House too. So its a trifecta.

And..

Print out an online bill?

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lol

That’s what I did.

Biggest problem I had in getting Real ID is that I had to order my birth certificate, and then discovered that despite being born decades after the law mandating uniform birth certificate numbering standards, mine doesn’t comply.

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That is a great point and actually something I had been wondering. Increases in food affect everyone. But in my situation the cost to play bridge at the club has remained level and cost to buy a Tesla Y hasn’t been going up.

My kids work minimum wage jobs and they saw nice increases during the scarcity a few years ago, but that isn’t as much the case anymore and so I think their wages haven’t moved as much since or at all.

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Not if you drive an EV. :wink:

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https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535295/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-income-us/

If you buy stuff that has been driven around on an ICE or had components driven around on an ICE (and… this applies to pretty much every single American) it’s only marginally less huge than if you drive an ICE or hybrid.

Fleet electrification is happening slowly but it has started to happen. There’s some good developments in the electric truck space and is starting to make more sense financially for a company.

An impressive 57% of fleets in North America say that a quarter or fewer of their vehicles are EVs , while another 21% say that EVs constitute over a quarter of their vehicles.

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local schools looked at this for their fleet. determined their ability to maintain those vehicles with the same personnel as those who manage the ICE fleet was not where it needed to be. but that delays the conversion and highlights a challenge - how do they find the money to make the switch

So… in 50 years maybe mathman’s statement will be accurate?

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Are you talking about school busses?

Seems like you just gradually replace them with electric ones as the existing busses approach the end of their useful life. First you send one mechanic (probably your best and brightest) to train on how to maintain them then a second and a third… in 20 years you have a fleet of electric school busses and a team of mechanics that knows how to maintain them.

I guess ā€œmarginallyā€ is the undefined word here.

Suppose half the petroleum we use for transportion goes to moving people in private vehicles and half goes to moving freight.

If so, driving an EV cuts my exposure to petroleum price increase by half.

The ā€œhalfā€ is approximate, but seems reasonable given the bar graph here:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transportation.php#:~:text=Light-duty%20vehicles%20account%20for,U.S.%20transportation%20sector%20energy%20consumption.&text=Source:%20U.S.%20Energy%20Information%20Administration,2023%2C%20preliminary%20data%20for%202022.&text=Source:%20U.S.%20Energy%20Information%20Administration,data%20for%202022%20are%20preliminary.