Yes, the company employing plumbers may bill $150/hr, but that's certainly not what the actual plumber is paid. You seem to be greatly confused about the difference between salary and billed hourly rate. The numbers I threw out were average salaries before taxes. The various costs that you have for doctors are overhead expenses that would be paid by the practice, not out of the doctor's salary.

Admittedly, the salary range for both of these professions is wide, but on average a general practitioner makes double what a plumbers does.

You know a plumber that owns his own company, right? He make $100k+ because he owns a successful business, not because he's a plumber. Tradesmen who are employees do actually get paid hourly for everything you mentioned in your first paragraph.

I keep hearing this, but all the data I can find does plumbers making on average ~$60k and general practitioners ~$140k.

If car theft is the issue they don't even need to collect any data. Upload a list of license plates of stolen vehicles to the units in the morning, before they roll out. Have the unit record location data ONLY when it finds a plate on that list.

They won't do this.

It is absolutely a valid question in response to a post that implies that all socially valuable majors will result in you easily paying off student loans.

And how the he'll did I present anything as a binary choice by asking a question. I wasn't presenting or dismissing anything, I was attempting to clarify that the previous poster truly believed that certain majors had no social value.

You are quite possibly seriously underestimating the cost of remodeling vs. new construction. Trust me, this is my industry, building something new is often cheaper than remodeling what you have, and usually quicker.

Do you not see any societal value in philosophy or art history? Not all societal benefits are financial.

Nonsense, rolling back the time limit to a more reasonable 20-30 years would still allow creators to extract the vast majority of value from the vast majority of properties. Not that I'm holding my breath or anything. I too refuse to pay for IP that is more that 30 years old.

Yes, let's point out a GMO strain that isn't even commercially accessible anymore.

Monoculture isn't caused by GMOs though. Look at our potato crops, and there aren't any GMO potatos currently.

I'm not arguing that cell cite data could create a fairly accurate picture of overall movements, but the post I replied to claimed "precise movements to the second and to within three metres". I don't believe that is possible with nothing but cell site data.

Nothing in that article suggests accuracy to 3m.

How can which cell tower your phone is currently connected to possibly locate you to within 3m? That's usually about as accurate as the GPS system in a phone can get.

Seattle's electricity is already generated from ~90% non-carbon sources. You can put up solar panels if you want but it's not going to reduce your carbon footprint noticeably.

Something like this should allow you to run a small desktop, and most laptops just need 19vdc. I'm not sure what you could do about the microwave, but if electricity is in short supply cooking with it seems like a waste.