Ahh, but as a long-suffering Comcast customer (there is NO alternative in my area) they do the same sort of thing with YouTube. No internet video over 35 seconds long is watchable over my connection. Except between 3-5 am. So I and my neighbors are all quite aware that it isn't Netflix. Or YouTube. It's Comcast.

The high voltage transmission losses may be as LOW as 7%. But what about all the other conversions? Even if each and every one of those processes is 90% efficient (they aren't), after the several steps, you have significantly less usable energy than you started with. See e.g. the IEEE Spectrum article: "How Green is My Plug-In" at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-grid/how-green-is-my-plugin.

Sorry to have to disagree with someone who quotes Nicolai Hel for their sig, but NO, an electric car powered by fossil-fuel generated electricity is not better than nothing. True, power plants are more efficient at making electricity than vehicles are. But after generating the electricity, you have to step-up the voltage for transmission, transmit it, step-down the voltage (maybe in the case of the rapid-charge system in TFA, step-down only partially) charge the battery, and convert battery power to torque to drive the wheels. At each of those steps, you lose 10-30% of the energy you put into the system at the beginning of that step. Electric vehicles powered by non-renewable electric grid power will nearly always create more pollution overall than a similar payload gasoline powered vehicle with a properly operating current-tech catalytic converter. Without even worrying about what to do with the 400 lbs of extremely toxic spent batteries.

I guess that depends a bit on what you mean by "invest". All three of our kids are what the education industry calls "twice exceptional". That means they have high IQs and also some neurological issues. In other words, geekiness breeds true. But the practical impact is that we spend a lot of money on therapy and supplemental education for or kids, beyond the cost of the nanny. None of which is tax-deductible, and very little of which is covered by health insurance. In another 1-2 years, we'll be paying college expenses for the eldest. We take 15% for retirement savings off the top of our incomes, and are buying our house, but have no money to invest beyond that right now.