More accurate to say the car companies aren't putting up enough money to have their needs met. If a 50-cent chip can hold up the production of a $50k car why didn't they have a few more 50-cent chips in inventory? Or maybe pay a buck or two for that chip temporarily so that is higher on the priority tree?

The automakers cut way back on their chip orders when the pandemic hit, leaving their suppliers twisting in the wind. Those suppliers have since found new customers who are willing to pay and it would be pretty stupid on their part to ditch those customers without someone putting up a better deal. That is how markets work.

The buyer I support (in a completely different industry) is currently going through a similar sort of learning: you can work with a regular set of partners everyday through the highs and lows of supply and demand or you can play musical chairs with whoever has the lowest price today. Both can work you just have to except with the latter that sometimes there won't be a chair for you at any price.

I propose that we take the calls we are all getting about the Discover cards and extended warranties we don't have and forward them to Putin's personal line. And every other phone line that might happen to be near him.

Not sure whether we would get a new Detente or if the rebranded KGB would visit someone to say 'hello' but either would be an improvement.

Oh, how quaint.

Yes, fast food restaurants and the like will hire teenagers but only as a last resort, the jobs certainly aren't aimed at teens anywhere outside of Hollywood fantasies. Employing teenagers comes with a lovely pile of restrictions on what they can do and when they can do it. Want a burger flipped for you for lunch Monday-Friday? Going need to be someone doing it for a living because the teens are in school and the adults working two jobs are at the better one. Want the shelves stocked at the grocery store? Most of those won't even hire 16-17yo kids: can't touch the trash compactor or cardboard baler, aren't supposed to be in the backroom while the forklift is running, and can't checkout a customer who is buying alcohol.

Uber was originally promoted as a paid version of a casual carpool: leave for work early and get paid to pick up someone going the same general direction, do the same on your way home. Problem for Uber was that is a small market, hard to pretend you are worth billions that way. So they went looking for folks willing to work throughout the day because that is when more people are looking to purchase rides. And kept pushing them to work longer, like this was supposed to be a job or something. Because if all drivers only work when they feel like then Uber's ability to maintain service when customers want it goes to hell, and then customers go elsewhere. People can still drive for Uber as a gig but unless their preference is to haul around drunks on Friday and Saturday nights Uber just isn't going to be that interested: folks spare time and customer demand just don't line up well. (aside: I used to think about doing the Friday/Saturday night gig driving thing but about the same time the novelty had worn off for ride apps and the stores about the shit drivers had to deal with began to increase)

So if you can find a kid who will mow your lawn for $10, great for you (though God help you if he hurts himself). Of course it will likely have to be done in the afternoons or on weekends when you might have wanted to be enjoying that lawn. But if you want anything done for you on your schedule, like a burger for lunch on a Thursday or having your home's lawn tended while you are off at work then be prepared to pay enough to so the people doing the work to enable your living can do a little bit of living themselves.

Ah yes, the 'unreliable' power grid thing.

In five years I have received precisely one warning that my address would be subject to a rolling blackout. Nothing came of it. Also all of the places I have lived have been outside the zones of the fire safety shut-offs, which in turn had nothing to do with reliability of the power grid as much as the abject failure of the investor-owned power monopoly PG&E to do their damned job.

In fact they managed to fail so badly they destroyed a city and killed 80+ people. I still think many of the power shut-offs in 2019 were an attempt to blackmail the state into letting PG&E get away with murder. After that didn't work they did far, far fewer shut-offs in 2020, really only in active fire zones, because the combination of lost revenue and make-goods was expensive.

It is probably also what keeps your nearest grocery store from collapsing into a pile of empty shelves.

As you said, just a gas tax replacement, in no way offsetting the benefit of EV tax credit at purchase but rather taking a couple hairs off the per-mile operational cost advantage of electric cars versus gas.

$150 happens to equal the Saskatchewan province gas taxes on 1000L of gas (those silly Canadians and their fancy metric units). Converting to American that is 264 gallons or about 10000 miles per year for a car that gets 38 MPG. (YMMV)

Actually, nearly all of the debt is the result of the defense side of the business: the whole reason the original Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger was rammed through was so that Boeing's very profitable airliner production could prop up the development of fighter jets at MD. At the time the merger happened Boeing was partnered up with Lockheed on the F-22 development program rather than trying to maintain fighter program in-house. Lockheed has since went on to win the F-35 contract as well while the Boeing/MD team has managed to produce the Super Hornet and a few upgrades to the 70's era F-15 for export customers (who probably all wanted F-22s but weren't allowed to buy them).

So, yes, the military and space business needs to split off and will likely end up as an extreme example of corporate welfare in action. But Boeing Commercial, if freed of the idiots who moved the headquarters to Chicago and 787 production to everywhere, should be able to get back to where it was in the 90's all on its own.

We can't possibly be in a simulation: no way anyone coding SimCity30000 would waste this many cycles on NPC navel-gazing.

Now, now, we all know that last bit isn't true: they will pause to admire their work on the way out.

Maybe because that one judge is ruling on an action being taken by the Federal government, that you know, affects the whole country at once? It is kind of all-or-nothing both ways by design.

Now when the States start doing unconstitutional things that is where the court cases have to waged State by State, Circuit by Circuit, until the matter eventually ends up before the US Supreme Court.

Ahh, that is the rub. Many people in the US are in point of fact electing to people to shit all over the world like an angry, diaper-less toddler on a coffee bender (an accurate and concise description of DJT and Qanon). The folks voting this way do so for a multitude of reasons that make perfect sense to them, though they do seem to deliberately ignore the steaming piles of shit their own chosen leaders heap upon them, but this what they want.

Rather sucks for the rest of us, but that is the ride we get to work with. If we want to fix it step one is to vote in 2020, with step two being to keep voting each election thereafter.

Give that my company's trucks spend 14 hours each day parked at the warehouse I think this can be managed for many trucks.

Also, by the time you change out the heavy diesel engine, massive transmission, two 40 gallon saddle tanks, DEF tank and all of the related bits you suddenly have a massive weight allowance to use for your battery pack. And with this law, a mere 25 years to improve upon current technology.

I think we will all be just fine on this front. Except the oil companies, but frack them.

You should have read your own links: the first states that generation charges are going DOWN, it is only distribution related charges that are going up. Which is par for the course these days since generation costs are falling with new renewables blending down the cost mix the investors and execs can't possibly be expected to tolerate declining revenues so up goes the distribution charge keep their bonuses whole.

The last bill I have on-hand I paid $12.76 for electricity delivery and only $7.00 for the electricity itself.

Well, you see there's the rub: China is about the only place left that is going to have much need for new aircraft for a couple years, in part because they have a political dimension to their expansion plans.

I personally think some of the built Max-8s will never fly revenue miles because they have sat too long already, if China refuses to buy any that would up the risks and size of that scenario considerably.

While it would be nice to think HPE learned from past experience this is a large company we are talking here. I wouldn't discount the possibility that some pre-production samples they had been using internally just crapped out on them.