Does the decimal number 90 represent 100 states? Your absurd usage of numbers is self-defeating: if 10bin doesn't represent 'four states' rather than the cardinal number two, surely 11 does as well, in which case 10=11 and there are only three distinct states: 00, 01, and 10. I suspect under your system the other states would collapse as well.

It's only 'military time' in the US and Canada. It's the standard nearly everywhere else.

there is not a single thing that REQUIRES paper in todays age.

In my personal life, I do well without a printer. In my job, not so much. I work at a charter high school and a lot of things need to be printed. I suspect it's a legal requirement. Maybe we can file stuff electronically and get digital signatures(???), but I'd want to discuss this with a lawyer before abandoning physical documentation.

It's not just a few universities. It's the entire public school system, every accounting department in the country, and probably most other institutions.

How long does it take to pull out the hard drive and hook it up to another machine for easy perusal? Don't use this as your GPG password or for remote login, but most security--login passwords and the lock on your front door--work because it would take more than five minutes to circumvent. (Actually, I've discovered that the knife method of opening door locks takes thirty seconds before you've had any practice. Five minutes is great.)

I wouldn't trust it as much as even a weak password, though. I suspect it's either way too easy to fool or will lock me out if I shave.

(you'll gladly pay plenty for clean energy)

I'll gladly pay my portion of the cost of a dramatic reduction in energy usage. If I'm the only one paying more, no change will be made in construction methods, etc., so it's only worth the cost to me if a lot of people do it.

As for green energy...yeah, it'd be nice, But I think the majority of the problem is energy waste (chiefly space heating and cooling), not dirty power generation. At any rate, it would be a lot easier to meet our energy needs with clean energy if our energy needs were cut in half, or even 10%.

I was trying to talk to the fact that amanicdroid and you were both saying "I'll pay shitloads more" to which I was trying to point out that you will not get fit to the curve ;)

True enough. I recognize that raising prices will be really, really painful for many people, but I think the majority could handle it, just as they handled rising gas prices (despite the fact that fuel consumption seems to be incredibly inelastic) and countless other changes over the years.

Gas prices are a good example to consider. They can happen relatively rapid, and while many people complain when they rise, people manage to cope, despite the fact that they can't do much about their consumption in the short term. In the long term they can get a more efficient car. Houses are a much longer term invested, but they're also a lot easier to modify to make much more efficient (and there's an insane amount of government money available to help people do that right now). It's hard to say how much we can cut back (as I said, I went without AC for years and can do so again--but it would suck), but it's pretty clear that we have the ability to do things much more efficiency.

On further thought, though, I will accept that taxes are the incorrect way of addressing the issue. Taxes will encourage people to cut back on their usage, but the real savings comes in the initial investment. People would be much willing to buy an energy-efficient home (or weatherize their existing home) if the long-term savings didn't come with an up-front investment. We need to make energy-efficiency cost-effective in the short term, via subsidies. (And there is a ton of money government out there for just that.)

'm sorry even Austin is more expensive than that. Are you sure you're the entire household? Living in an unsubsidized house or apartment? Paying your actual and FULL living expenses?

Nope. That's not really relevant, though, is it? What's relevant is that we have an uncorrected externality, and we need to correct it. This whole examination of my personal finances is a red herring.

I would have been able to afford it, yes. I saved up more than that much. Rent+utilities+food was roughly $550/month--cheaper during the summer. West Campus, Austin, Tx. One of the more expensive neighborhoods, due to being three blocks from campus. Again, I could have cut back. Air conditioning is a luxury I grew up without and could forgo again if I had to. And there are cheaper places to live.

But, what about the lower income families

I'm not a family, but I just finished AmeriCorps, which pays roughly $11 000/year. Earning more now, of course, but a year ago I would have been fine as well.

I work with low-income students (teen parents, most of them), and, yes, some can't pay the electric bill and have trouble paying for gas to get to school or work, but most people aren't in that situation. Allocate taxes and subsidies accordingly.

living in poorly insulated homes, likely in less temperate climates?

I'm in central Texas.

There's a chicken-and-egg problem here. No one builds efficient houses except non-profits because people don't see the profit. We have negative externalities (environmental damage and oil dependence). The way to correct that is through taxes. When that causes undue pain to the poor, we counter with subsidies for efficiency improvements, and possibly for low-income families. Simply doing nothing because it's the solutions are unpopular and complicated is clearly not working.

More likely, Exxon will simply raise their prices to be the same as BP's.

Chevron, on the other hand...

Apparently getting money from people is more important than enforcing laws.

Yes, because illegal aliens wouldn't be any less likely to file taxes if they believed it would result their arrest/deportation.

If we wouldn't have the information to share if we didn't have the protections, then providing the protections doesn't reduce information sharing. May as well argue for getting rid of attorney-client privilege because obviously accused criminals would continue to speak honestly to attorneys even if they knew their attorney would turn around and tell the prosecution everything.

My electricity+water was $61 last month, and that was with some asshole screwing with the thermostat. Triple it. Go ahead. I'll cut back some if I need to.

More importantly, developers will cut back. I work at an organization that builds energy-efficient houses for low-income families (not HfH, though I used to volunteer there) and thanks to intelligent design and a few solar panels, residents have had electric bills well under 100USD per year. I think once guy had an electric bill of 11USD in 2008.

If we tax gasoline a lot, food prices will soar, and that will hit me a lot harder. We already subsidize food like crazy (and not very intelligently) but if necessary we could provide exemptions (or better, tax and subsidize--the point is to correct for the externality).