While I agree with parts of your argument, land lines are expensive more because they have millions of miles of physical wires to maintain. Cell towers do not have this burden.

Also, Cell phone service for any smart phone is MUCH more expensive than landlines now if you are single. It's sort of like "$100 for 4" or "$100 for 1".

That said, I use smartjack (flawlessly) over my internet. $19 a year. It's mainly a backup to find my cell phone and for extremely long gaming calls (can't get one player to use skype). I think the network effect for land lines is collapsing.
Pretty soon it will be smarter to have a "land line" format phone that actually connects to a local cell tower (no lines to maintain, install, etc.).

But it occurs to me that as long as they have DSL cable service, the lines will be there anyway. So maybe the network effect won't be lost. not sure. I haven't been a landline customer for 3 years.

Also, Fukushima is only rendering about 500sq miles uninhabitable for (currently optimistically estimated) 25 years while Chernobyl is about 900sq miles for over 25 years so far. It won't return to average radiation levels for over 20,000 years. You can live there now... if you don't want to have children and accept a higher risk of cancer. About 600 elderly live there now. The animals in the area have mutations, stillbirths, etc. But, those that survive handle the radiation better as time goes on and thrive from the lack of human predation and habitat destruction.

The Chernobyl radiation area 's sort of butterfly shaped tho and due to wind pattern there is a second 'wing' / exclusion area which is also uninhabitable of similar size- so about 1800sq miles total.

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/...

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

China, and the chinese, have a massive superiority complex laid over a very deep inferiority complex stemming from the 1800s all the way to the 1940s.

Until that gets resolved, they are more dangerous than average. They have a chip on their shoulder and have something to "prove" combined with a sense of manifest destiny.

Their military spending is much less BUT their labor costs are much less so their spending is much higher than it looks like given the raw numbers. Effectively its 3 to 4 times as large.

Hopefully they transition to a truly confident nation and resolve their issues. Then there is still "average" danger. Any group of people can go apeshit on other groups of people when they think they are more powerful. It's happened over and over.

Good to know!

Autonomous rates will be $400 cheaper when you first get it. And after a few years it will be the same price unless you change companies.

I'm changing back to allstate from 21st century this year. Allstate wanted to charge me $1200 a year-- 21st century was $700. Now 21st century is closing on $1000 and allstate has offered me $1000, $900, $800,and now $700 to switch back over the last 4 years.

Rents have risen by 400% in Texas (and similar top states) in the last 15 years.

Housing has risen by 500% during the same period. But... if you owned your house, your value rose but your payments increased only by the tax increase. My house payment before i paid the house off in 2012, was $700 a month. Total- including taxes. Now, it's $330 a month.

Once your house is paid off, property taxes, insurance, and repairs are approximately 1/3 of rental costs or new home costs.

I totally agree- it's right for you right now. But it's a terrible option for anyone who ever hopes to retire unless they are earning in the top 10% of all citizens.

Still, you want a paid for house by the time you reach retirement. Rent goes up much faster than property taxes and repair costs (esp with a home warranty).

The key is when you retire.

Rent goes up faster than retirement income.

I use a home warranty service. As long as you don't try to sign up and then get a repair higher than your annual premium right away they are pretty reasonable. And their repair people are REPAIR people which is nice. A feeling of comfort knowing my max bill will be $65 too. No phony recommendations "well this is so old, better we replace it for several thousand dollars!

And predictable costs which is good when retired.

And homes are tremendously overpriced due to low interest rates. Even when rates just return to 2% (and home loans to 6%), you could see homes lose 16% (or more) of their value.

On the flip side of this, there are many stations which have no conveniences and which have no operator 8 to 12 hours per day. I expect these are much more profitable than traditional stations.

They have controls in place that require executive approval of all changes. Any unapproved changes are a firing expense. So the little tuning changes we always used to do for "free" can't be done. Likewise, the changes won't be approved since by management point of view, there is no value to the activity since it is not a feature (this is true at small companies too- had a developer bend my ear on this issue literally today a few hours ago).

Be a man, in response to revealing our massively illegal behavior which you had no legal way to address and protecting most the citizens of this country (slightly) from our invasinos, we'll put him in a solitary cell for the rest of his life.

Just to make sure no one else ever makes the mistake of trying to protect the country from our illegal behavior.

There is no such thing as an idiot proof flat tax.

Businesses by their nature have very complicated taxes. We'll let them write off a $45,000 truck to deliver product but not a $45,000 mercedes (unless you are in the limo business in which case, you might be able to after all).

Wealthy people, by their nature, have very complicated taxes. Is this a business trip or a holiday? Is this a business lunch or a personal lunch?

We can reduce the loopholes (temporarily) but corporate bought representatives will put them right back in. The flat tax by it's nature is either regressive OR has a massive deduction for everyone which means many of the poorest won't be paying taxes (just like now).

Each share of the national spending last year was $10,000 for every baby, child, senior, and working person. It's about $20,000 if you restrict it to adults who have earnings. That means- unless people can earn well over $20,000 there is not point in working under a totally flat tax. Which means it must be progressive (you have to take money from those who have money to pay).

AND it ignores state and local taxes which are currently higher on the poor than the middle class and higher on the middle class than on the wealthy in every single state. In some states, it's 12.9% for the poorest but under 1% for the wealthiest.

It's pretty simple. Do you want to vote for corporate sock puppet #1 or #2?

But the republican sock puppets are very much against my self interest. The party has drifted a long way from when I voted for three republican presidents in a row.

While the right calls Obama a socialist, he's really a capitalist corporate servant.

To be fair, the system has been so rigged at this point, that unless you are an independently wealthy socialist, you are going to have to sell out to capitalistic corporate interests to be elected.