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Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

foxbusiness.com

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Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#201

Post by rayiner »

jdhn wrote: post #189
godshatter wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent poster, but we should probably start with our biggest outlays, and work down from there. I'm assuming that's military spending and entitlement programs. If I'm wrong, we can start with whatever the two largest outlays actually are.

I believe that Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security make up close to 50% of the government's budget. Put military spending in there, and I'd be surprised if it didn't go over 75%.

Note that at all levels of government, spending is close to $7 trillion annually, with only $4 trillion from the federal government. Medicare and SS are together about $1.5 trillion. Defense is about $700 billion. Roads, education, schools, etc., make up most of the $3 trillion state spending.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#202

Post by gumby »

chopin wrote: post #159
gumby wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VAT is applied to business to business transactions. Sales taxes are just applied to consumer transactions. This is not true. The final user pays the sales tax. So if a company buys a bolt and uses it to make its product: no tax. If they buy bolts and build shelves to hold inventory: pay the tax.

>If they buy bolts and build shelves to hold inventory: pay the tax. At least for Germany even that is not true. As a business all VAT payments are refunded (Vorsteuerabzug).

I'm sorry I wasn't clear: I was clarifying that all end consumers pay sales tax in the USA (for transactions subject to sales tax; not every jurisdiction has them, or has them for all products).

However your comment is about VAT and the end result is also the same: the Vorsteuerabzug only applies to goods sold on to a subsequent buyer.

So the business pays VAT on everything it buys (that is subject to tax), but when it sells something it collects VAT on the sale. It can then deduct VAT paid on the inputs to that sale (i.e. the bolts in my example). This is central to the concept of VAT thus is basically how it works in every country with a VAT/GST.

This is explained in the law itself: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ustg_1980/__15.html

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#203

Post by dwild »

michaelt wrote: post #120
inanutshellus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another suggestion for a non-clickbaity title: Insurance Companies do Preventative Maintenance on High-Value Assets But yes, this feels like ... class-baiting or something. This headline is everywhere, made to rile up folk for.... what?

Some people consider that, when the rich are hiring a duplicate of a public service, it proves the public service is not fit for purpose.

> Some people consider that, when the rich are hiring a duplicate of a public service, it proves the public service is not fit for purpose.

Hire a thousand person to just constantly spray water at a single house, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to make sure that house never catch fire, thus is better than any firefighter service.

That doesn't means the public service isn't fit for the purpose, they just literally can't do the same.

As he said, they mostly do preventive care and not actually fighting fire. The public service does that by education (which make much more sense to me even though it's less effective, but that's just my opinion).

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#204

Post by jahaja »

Ottolay wrote: post #132
jahaja wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to note that most western countries have gone through a neoliberal regime of tax cuts since ~1970. For example the corporate tax in Sweden was 52% in 1980 (albeit with generous deductions for various kinds of investments).

Yet Europe still does a way better job than the US in affordable education, universal healthcare, and environmental policy.

The US sets a very low standard. The downfall of the wellfare state in Sweden is very obvious.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#205

Post by xadhominemx »

Robotbeat wrote: post #168
patentatt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know if transmission lines can be buried? Some high voltage DC can be in the hundreds of kV, is there a limit to what can be buried in moist ground even remotely efficiently? You’d need a good amount of electrical insulation, but also thermal conductivity (I assume these lines heat up?). Any experts here?

Absolutely they can be buried. They must be insulated, but that's not particularly expensive. There are thermal limits, as you mentioned, but that simply requires appropriate engineering. It costs $1 million per mile (roughly) to bury transmission lines. PG&E has about 18,000 miles of transmission lines. That's about $18 billion to bury the lines. Sounds like a lot, but... ...the estimate price of these multi-day bla…

$1m/mile is off by like a factor if 10. PG&E thinks it costs $3-5m/mile to bury _distribution_ lines: http://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-undergroun...

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#206

Post by lonelappde »

inanutshellus wrote: post #84
abathur wrote: post #33

I've seen similar variants of this headline floating around, so I don't want to over-blame this Fox outlet for something that's just in the water by this point (I don't recall if they were all on Fox-family outlets, but probably not). That said, the headline seems pretty manipulative... > However, private firefighters are more likely to contract with insurance companies like USAA to offer mitigation services to custo…

Another suggestion for a non-clickbaity title: Insurance Companies do Preventative Maintenance on High-Value Assets But yes, this feels like ... class-baiting or something. This headline is everywhere, made to rile up folk for.... what?

Fire protection, schools, healthcare, they are all specific cases of the general issue that wealthy people are... wealthier than poor people, which some people find unfair. That's a valid and complex debate (capitalism, communism, socialism, social democracy, progressive taxation, inheritance tax, etc) but it's annoying to slog through every specific applied case that doesn't add anything to the overall analysis.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#207

Post by lonelappde »

someonehere wrote: post #138
post_break wrote: post #93

I see nothing wrong with this. If I'm wealthy and I can pay money for a service for risk management and the benefits outweigh the costs it makes sense. Private security vs police? Sure. Private jet vs common carrier? Sure. Private firefighter vs public? You guys lose your minds over that? I don't see what is wrong paying for extra protection. It's like owning a very expensive car and paying for extra insurance in cas…

I pose this question to people when articles like this come up. If you were wealthy, would you do something like this? In this case, if you were wealthy, would you pay to have extra protection for your home by hiring private firefighters? Almost willing to bet their answer would always be yes.

I'm wealthy and I spend my money on charitable giving instead of building and defending an ostentatious mansion. When the revolution comes I hope that means my back won't be up against the wall, and my house won't be torched by revolutionary warriors.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#208

Post by lonelappde »

noirbot wrote: post #136
WhompingWindows wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this -- suppose all the public school teachers who taught children how to succeed can't afford private fire-fighters, yet their students who benefited from their lowly remunerated services can? I think the visceral nature of fire and being protected from it by wealth (earned or unearned) is much more upsetting and visible than a jet to transport you.

But doesn't that just mean that the public fire fighters are essentially getting "free" assistance from the private crews? If anything, this is rich people paying to help prevent the spread of fire, which is a good thing for everyone, and lets the public resources go towards helping those who can't afford the private services.

That's true if their efforts do protect the whole region and not just their local rich neighborhood.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#209

Post by jchulce »

patentatt wrote: post #118
xadhominemx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big difference between burying distribution lines and transmission lines. It’s transmission lines that have caused the most destructive fires in California and those are indeed too expensive to bury.

Does anyone know if transmission lines can be buried? Some high voltage DC can be in the hundreds of kV, is there a limit to what can be buried in moist ground even remotely efficiently? You’d need a good amount of electrical insulation, but also thermal conductivity (I assume these lines heat up?). Any experts here?

It is physically impossible to have long distance underground high voltage AC transmission lines due to capacitance: http://www.puc.nh.gov/2008IceStorm/ST&E%20Presentations/NEI%... HVDC wouldn't have that issue, but there's not much experience with HVDC in North America.

Re: Private firefighters go to work for California's wealthy

#210

Post by bogartmyjoint »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #146
bogartmyjoint wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And perhaps even begin building a superconducting grid ad for once in PG&E's history, doing something that was pro-active rather than reactive.

Is there a superconducting grid anywhere on a large scale? Last time I read up on it, the experiments by Detroit Edison were a failure due to an inability to keep the coolant from escaping because it used liquid helium. This was probably a decade ago. Have there been advances since then?

Large scale, no, but succesful in New York to bridge two power grids.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/07/12/0135227/superco...

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