Viewing profile — trboyden

By comparison, the US only spends 3.4% GDP on the military per year.

If you plotted all the other things the government spends money on, pensions would be the biggest chunk. Stop being dense.

In case you need me to Google that for you some more... US GDP is currently 21.43 Trillion dollars. 7% of that is 1.5 Trillion dollars. The 2020 Federal budget was 4.79 Trillion do…

Newsflash, most taxes have loopholes in them to allow the money to be used on things other than what they were intended for [1]. Vehicle taxes are used for multiple purposes, not j…

Yes, continue the explanation with your math, including the part where you don't actually get that rebate; as part of the solar program financing, you have to hand that rebate over…

Hmmm. No. The payback is 20 years, which is the length of the panel life, and the limit on time the utilities have to pay you for the energy. After that, they get the energy from y…

Try $20k plus a re-roof at $10k. And that is for a small 1200sqft 3 bed/1 bath house that has full south-southwest exposure.

I put solar panels on my last house. You know what impact it had? Zero. Why? Because renewable energy sources are more costly, less efficient, and have a greater environmental impa…

Doesn't work. Because corporations find loopholes around the law to achieve an "equivalent" of carbon reduction, that doesn't actually reduce it, but still call themselves green. I…

It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the …

If you truly care about cost, efficiency, and the environment, you should be looking at Natural Gas plants [1]. They are inexpensive at $60 million each, are more efficient [2] tha…

No, redistribution is organized extortion. I make $100, the government takes $50 of it, pockets $30 of that, and then redistributes $20 to those that will keep them in office (A.K.…

And your point is what? You just provided the exact evidence to what I already stated. Parts of the gas tax, excise taxes, vehicle sales tax, recycling fees, etc... are all fees th…

Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns. They also see the government does not use that revenue to address those environmental concerns, because instead…

Quite a coincidence. My dad was an HM3 on the USS Frontier from 1964 to 1967. He also passed in 2016. He never talked much about his service though. I only remember one story he to…

Except, they did. Apple started the threats against Epic when Epic started lowering their prices for add-ons on other platforms, which made Apple look greedy. To bolster their anti…

These replies to my comment are completely missing the point. The debate isn't about what is the better system, which is arbitrary, it is about whether you have a choice, period. I…

Except, as we have seen with Epic, and why we are talking about this case, is they can, by dropping your app from the App Store in retribution for offering an alternative. They can…

That's a false premise because consumers have endured the Microsoft ecosystem for decades and the risk vs choice is one that consumers have accepted. The only way Apple would have …

Yes, digital downloads for Nintendo, Xbox. Digital gift cards for Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo, including credit for Playstation Store and Nintendo eStore.

I can also go into a mom and pop store, load Target's website on my phone, and order a pick-up order from Target. The Mom and Pop store can't stop you from doing that.

Except what you state already exists. I can load the Walmart app on iOS and order a TV from Walmart, not Apple. Apple is preventing Epic from doing the same - buy in-app merchandis…

The problem is, this is all marketing, and pricing it lower than Tesla is just a head-turner for the press, not the average citizens that actually buy these things. The base model …

This is a misconception of what is actually required by US state tax laws. The business is required to pay the tax on retail sales - they are not required to charge the consumer th…