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California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

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Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#61

Post by scarface74 »

refurb wrote: post #35
heavyset_go wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.

Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything. My point was, the US is not falling apart. Or if it is, it’s always been falling apart. The current situation is not unique.

Has any other President - Republican or Democrat - actively tried to make it less effective? Why are we pretending that the current administration is normal?

This isn’t a difference on the margins about whether you believe in supply side or demand side economics.

If you look back on Presidents or politicians on either side of the aisle. We have never seen anything like this during my lifetime (born in 74).

I didn’t agree with all of the policies or proposed policies of Republican or Democratic candidates on either side. But it was more like seeing your favorite sports team win or lose. I didn’t feel like they would or did do long term harm to the country (except for the deficit).

I would say the same about any of the other candidates in 2016. If they had won it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#62

Post by riantogo »

blhack wrote: post #39
lisper wrote: post #2

The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(

I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I’m seeing this sentiment expressed more and more, and it seriously concerns me. If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. This isn’t blind patriotism. Seriously if you are feeling like the US is becoming a…

Any data shows US near the top? Are you sure you looked at data at all?

Here is data from top sources referenced in the wiki:

Education: ranked 40 of 72 in mathematics, 25 of 72 in science, 24 of 72 in reading

Health: ranking 42nd among 224 nations

Standard of living: ranked 25 out of 151 countries for 2018

Politics: ranked 45 out of 180 countries

Peace: ranked 121 out of 162 countries

Economics: ranked 17 out of 178 economies

Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_th...

(You might be able to pick slightly better ranking based on your choice of source, but yeah, we are no where near the top. If you filter for developed economies we are near the bottom or have already slipped through the floor)

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#63

Post by DuskStar »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #30
lisper wrote: post #2

The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(

People like to dismiss this by pointing to the shiny parts of America, but every city in the world has good and bad neighborhoods. The surprising thing about corrupt countries is the wealth inequality -- the political class is full of grifters who pocket the contracting fees and the citizens who are supposed to be recipients of government services are wondering why the highway has been under construction for the last…

Funnily enough, the biggest obstacle to HSR in the US is all the restrictions we've put in place to protect people from corrupt or otherwise authoritarian officials. Uzbekistan doesn't have to worry about environmental impact reports or people complaining that the rail line will hurt their property values...

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#64

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52
refurb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt). And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

Much of, not most. Jim Crow South was never a majority of the country, and racism in the north was much more implicit, segregation was never formal.

Segregation was rarely government mandated in the north during that time period, but it was often formal; many sports teams, property covenants, and unions prohibited black membership.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#65

Post by mikem170 »

Lammy wrote: post #25
refurb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt). And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

Go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and you can actually see things change. California voters put the brakes on infrastructure projects starting in the late 1950s, for example, like the 1959 anti-freeway San Francisco Supervisors vote. It all made sense to me once I learned about the Second Great Migration, a topic that strangely wasn’t taught to me at all by American public school curriculum.

>Go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and you can actually see things change.

The time just after World War II was kind of an economic anomaly for the U.S. Our population of about 4% of the world generated something like 50% of the worlds GDP, most other industrial economies were still rebuilding.

It might not be accurate to consider that period as a baseline for purposes of economic comparison.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#66

Post by marcinzm »

heavyset_go wrote: post #22
refurb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt). And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.

And the murder rate is half of what it was in the 80s. A number of cities no longer look like third world war zones. Etc.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#68

Post by grecy »

blhack wrote: post #39
lisper wrote: post #2

The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(

I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I’m seeing this sentiment expressed more and more, and it seriously concerns me. If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. This isn’t blind patriotism. Seriously if you are feeling like the US is becoming a…

The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.

also Maternity/Paternity Leave, Paid Sick Time, and Paid Vacation

In many of those areas (incarceration rate, rate of homicides) the US is doing vastly worse than other OECD countries.

Explore the data yourself - https://data.oecd.org/

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#69

Post by arminiusreturns »

grecy wrote: post #48
cipher_system wrote: post #10

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

[flagged]

It's worth noting this is a common tactic of the IMF... offer big loans to countries, as long as they let in outside companies to do business in their sectors, which causes lots of corruption and kickbacks... meanwhile, the problems that needed to be solved don't for the non-powerful locals, and now the country is in worse shape with corruption, and wealth inequality jumps while hvings massive amounts of debt. If that country tries to resist... well, I think people should read John Perkins books.

Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

#70

Post by tibbydudeza »

We been having load shedding for a few years now in South Africa due to tender corruption , aging and badly maintained coal fired fleet and the late commissioning of new power stations.

Outages are at least planned and last about 2 and half hours every day for each area so we learned to cope plan our lives around it.

Solar power hot water/gas cooking appliance/DC battery backup system for the Fibre OTN box and Wireless router and wireless AP and I can continue to work.

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