You're right, they are still bloody expensive. It is also a convenience factor of always having hot water. Solar is even worse, and, my house isn't well setup for solar anything. My roofs are sloped toward the east and west, and I have decent tree cover, and I live in Michigan where snow and cold weather reduce the use of solar hot water. I like the idea of each person capturing a little bit of the free solar energy though. We'll get there, prices have been coming down across the board for energy efficient products.

Good and bad. My current tank is as far as possible from every potential use of hot water, which means it takes my shower 3+ minutes to heat up, and about an equal time to get hot water at the kitchen sink. The tankless is smaller and will allow me to put it into the basement without affecting the potential to finish the basement. I have city water, so pressure differentials shouldn't hurt, but I have heard of people getting frustrated with edge case uses like men who use a trickle of hot water for shaving. This is often not enough hot water to activate the hot water heater. I fill the sink with hot water for shaving, so that shouldn't be a problem. It turns out, given the cost, a tankless won't likely break even before the warranty runs out. But, it's awfully nice to still have hot water after 3 women get done in the bathrooms.

The top 1% control 43% of the wealth of the nation. ...gosh, that's awfully close to the amount of income tax they pay. Shit, don't let that get out, it might hurt their pity party.

The GDP of the US is 15 trillion. Cutting 1 trillion would definitely be noticed. We are currently borrowing that money and pumping it into the economy through the government. Eliminating that is the equivalent of eliminating the share of the economy born by 20 MILLION people. Or, to think of it another way, it would be like raising the unemployment from it's current 8.2% to almost 15%.

Note, I think there is value in moving toward a balanced budget, but it needs to be done carefully and deliberately. For example, it would be much less painful if many of those cuts came from over seas spending, like foreign wars and military bases. But that doesn't account for a trillion dollars. So, reductions beyond that really do take that money out of the economy (albeit in the short term, because it's debt, we are definitely taking that money out of the economy, we're just doing it in the future, rather than now).

You're right. I think both sides are bit blind. I personally think the right is more blind than the left, and grossly unrealistic about what taxes are currently, and have been historically. We pay relatively low taxes for a first world country. But I do agree, this wouldn't be dragged out this way if there weren't people on both sides screaming in the ears of the legislators that they won't accept one inch of compromise.

We are actually lucky Obama is in his second term, it historically gives him more leeway to compromise because he doesn't have to prepare for another election. There is speculation that both sides, but the repubs especially would like to see the tax cuts expire, because then they wouldn't have voted for a tax increase and therefore wouldn't have violated their blood pact never to ever even think about once raising taxes (or Jesus might hate them), which they can then cut after the fact and call it a compromise, blame the big bad dems, and never had to violate the letter of their little agreement.

Agreed, we could all due to pay higher taxes to pay for the services we get. The Bush tax cuts weren't paid for. It was assumed that the magic Reagan sauce (which didn't work for Reagan either) would invent magical dollars and trickle down and all that. It didn't. So, yes, we need to increase taxes across the board. But, I think it would be way more palatable if we dealt with the inequities first. I think 250k is too low a threshold. Those people make their money from payroll generally, and are paying a progressive rate. It's people like the Buffets, and the Romneys, who are making 1 million+ generally from investment income who are paying 10% or less. That's a gap, that's a failure. But, of course, they are the noble job creators, right?

And that's why we need to balance out the tax system first. The dems aren't proposing a tax increase on couples making less than 250k/year. I think thats a bit low. When you start looking at the super rich like Romney who pays ~10%/year, and since social security and medicare cap, he pays marginally more for that, it seems a bit unfair that he's paying 10% in taxes while you and I pay 30%. But, he's a job creator, right? Apparently, we're just scum. That's the sticking point. The republicans have refused to discuss, until the very last moment, anything that even smelled like more revenues. Yes, we need to cut spending, but we also need to balance revenues, and having a temper tantrum and saying they refuse to play isn't productive. WORSE, the repubs cry for decreased spending, but the moment anyone proposes cuts to their major donors, I mean military, they throw another tantrum cry 'terrorists!'.

By no means do I give dems a pass.They refuse to consider anything that even looks like a reform in medicare or social security. Some people need to pull out Simpson-Bowles and have a real discussion about long-term deficit and tell people to take the giant wet teats of lobbyists out of their mouths and do their jobs.

Mod this man up. Thank you Bert. This is exactly what I need. I live in Michigan and we have very cold groundwater. It makes tankless hot water heaters a tough sell up here. But this just might be the thing to put me over the edge to buying one.

Spaces like train stations are usually over heated, so they generally need to be cooled. Instead of using the outside air as your heat sink, you are using a building across the street, who happens to want the heat. The train station becomes more comfortable, and a building gets heat without expending more carbon.

Which is why they aren't pumping the air directly, but instead, they are using the body heat to heat water tanks, and sending the water across.

Devils advocate and all. But the world was not better off when several countries all thought that they had a chance to be dominent or grow by force. That's happened over and over again. See the Persians, Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, the great empires of Europe and of course World Wars I and II were everyone wanted to try and establish their place. The US causes a ton of problems with their imperial tactics and lame attempts at king-making (which it sucks at). But the thinking goes that the world has generally prospered because no one is all too worried about trying to be a military force, so they can focus on economic growth because the US generally guarantees some semblance of worldwide peace. I don't buy it entirely, but it would be interesting to see if China decided to start invading neighboring countries for resources if the US decided to cut it's military spending to something like that of China and the US wasn't as easily able to intervene. Or maybe it would be worth it for Russia to start taking on former Soviet states?

Similarly, there are many documented cases of air bags killing people. We still use them though, because they save way more people than they kill.

This story had me go out and check what it would cost for me. 2100 sq ft house, I live alone so my energy usage is lower than a family. I average under 300kWh/month. I live in Michigan, and various sites recommend a system between 3600W and 4700W. Total cost, before labor is between $10,000 and $13,000 for the components. I can install myself. That cost is before subsidies from federal, state, and my local utility. I'm looking at a 5-7 year break even, then it's "free" energy. This system will be over sized for my current use, but my utility will buy back the excess, and it should offset some of my natural gas costs. Five years ROIs don't come around too often, but, as always, YMMV.

You're assuming there is market capacity for that product. It doesn't appear there is. Which is why companies are sitting on loads of cash right now and they aren't hiring. It's also why making excuses like "cutting taxes for business owners will help the economy grow" are a load of bunk. Businesses have tons of cash, they don't have meaningful areas to put that cash because they can't sell the product they are producing as it is.

Perhaps you recall the media making a big deal of global cooling, but the scientific community was not. The story isn't changing nearly so much as people say it is. Popular media is doing a hell of a job of making it sound like this is a controversy. It isn't. There is a great graphic here. Source

Climate skeptics have played the media and the general populace like a fiddle. They point to the relatively small number of scientists who speculated on global cooling, and then say, "they can't make up their minds". They pick the .02% of papers speculating that global warming doesn't exist and call it a "controversy".