There is a middle ground; the best class on a domestic airline is far from luxury, but better than cattle car.

Source: economy premium on ANA has the same legroom and amenities as domestic first class... *sigh*.

After some Googling it appears the term "gate check" is used to refer to both practices, checking through to final destination from the gate as well as "leaving the bag in the jetway". Locally we've called the latter a "gate check" because that option is available on pretty much all planes leaving our smallish airport, and uses less words than "leaving the bag in the jetway", but it appears that is a technically incorrect usage.

Gate check your large bag, you'll get it back at the arriving gate.
Besides, the cost of checking a bag undoes most of the savings to be had with this method anyway.

I don't see this working with round trip tickets; many airlines cancel the rest of your itinerary with no refund if you no-show for a leg...

Sprint has the option where you can actually disable the generic part of the voicemail, and it only plays your recorded greeting. For a while I did that until I realized I didn't actually want people to leave messages, and a short greeting seemed to encourage message leaving.

Actually having it spelled out is useful, since they might have just called someone else after not getting you instead of leaving a message. If you're on a call list for example. Or if someone you know is just trying to reach *anyone* inside a house/office where any of 6 people could let them in / handle their problem. In those situations, a missed call with no corresponding message simply means "disregard, I've tried someone else".

I worked with these systems (not Cisco but another enterprise wireless mfgr). Spoofing is not easy; the APs "know" whether they are talking to "one of their own" because they communicate with the controller via the wired network. If they are in close proximity the AP you are spoofing will immediately alert the controller, since it shouldn't be seeing anyone else with that mac address. They'll most likely jam the interfering AP along with the legitimate one. If they are not in close proximity then jamming will work entirely as intended, regardless of Mac / SSID choice.

Two year old cars could be coming off a lease, or former rentals. If anything the lemons will have had a lot of kinks worked out by then under the original warranty. If you live in a state with used car lemon laws, you'll just get a lot of free service in the event of any "surprises". And perhaps that's why those used cars are only 90% MSRP at the dealer - they are accounting for the need to service a used car with a like new warranty.

Unless both are large enough cities for decent public transit options, flying is more expensive than just the cost of the ticket.
You forgot:
Cost of long term parking at home airport (or taxi)
Cost of car rental at destination airport (or surrender your freedom to travel at will upon arrival)

Either way, there's also the stress of the entire flying process. Unless it's around a major holiday, a 2 day road trip can actually be relaxing.

That said, what this country could benefit from is either high speed rail, or more slow speed auto carrying rail like Amtrak's Auto Train. I'm surprised that idea hasn't taken off for coast to coast travel, the only reason we even have that route is because it was a novel idea a legacy railroad had long before Amtrak was formed...

Memorial Day and Labor day are major shopping days though - a triple overtime requirement would pretty much kill that. The retail employees working that day are often students who want the extra pay, and those shopping are people who appreciate the extra day off to go shopping. Neither of those are particularly "family days".

And for those who are unable (or unwilling) to spend time with family, it's nice that some places are open on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

At *most*, require holiday work give a 25% bonus or an equivalent amount of time off to be used on any arbitrary day in the future. It's enough that there is incentive to let people have the day off, but not so much that entire towns become ghost towns, with only a handful of places being open but so swamped that shopping is a miserable experience.

Walmart would *love* a 3x overtime rule, they'd have no problem staffing stores to the bare minimum knowing full well that they would have to beat customers away with a stick vying for the "privilege" of waiting 3 hours in line to check out... since they'd be the only ones open.

I met a contractor who had that same deal. Since it cost him nothing to do so, he would instead bill only for the 8 hours and continue to work the 16. With the money saved, the client were able to play a few games and get him switched to a different subcontractor, one which actually paid overtime.

It wasn't intentional - the doors are supposed to be left unlocked to allow exit, however the doors are very old and were designed such that a key could lock each side of the door independently. Sometimes, an overzealous guard or janitor might lock the wrong side. I only found a "no exit room" once. More often than not, it wasn't usually an inability to exit that concerned me; sometimes I would pass a "point of no return" where I would then have to find way out and walk outside for a while to get back to the other side of a one way door I mistakenly let close.

There was a far more pressing problem anyway: some of the stairwells would get buried in snow. If you weren't paying attention, you might exit a building on the basement level into an enclosed courtyard, realize the stairwell was impassable, but then be unable to re-enter the building to exit via an interior staircase. *that* issue was very dangerous because most people would usually choose to try and navigate the treacherous staircase rather than call security for help. *Those* doors needed to be locked from the inside to prevent exit, but of course, they were the first ones to be replaced with ones that couldn't *sigh*.

Some airlines (and Amtrak) email you a PDF of your ticket - if they all did it, this problem would be as simple as saving the PDF to your device.

Tangentally related, but I've learned to never close a door unless I was sure I could go back through it... I worked in a facility that had rather bizzare one-side-locked doors, and it was actually possible to end up in a room or hallway junction with no exit unless you had a key. Escorting contractors to unfamiliar areas was fun, they were curious as to why I was trying all my keys on the doors we had already passed...

"Stop resisting" is too often the codeword for "we will beat the shit out of you regardless of what you do".

That said, I think both sides will be on better behavior if they know the encounter is being recorded...

I grew up in NYC and was there during the blackout... I overall have to disagree with your sentiment. If there is distrust among strangers is simply due to sheer number rather than diversity. If you're constantly surrounded by 20-30 people you will find a quality in at least one of them untrustworthy.