"...In the land down under, heated front seats and a heated steering wheel are available in a month-to-month format..."

As an Australian (a Sandgroper to be precise) I have absolutely zero desire for heated seats or steering wheel. COOLED seats and steering wheel? Hell yes, THEY would be worth it for me! Perth doesn't get cold, but it does get hot.

I'm digressing, sure, as I understand a lot more people seem to live in the colder climes than the warmer ones, hence heated seats came out before cooled/ventilated seats did.

If you bought a car that didn't have heated seats - you don't have heated seats.
What's the issue?

Of course, if you got it from a dealer who advertised that it had heated seats, and they stopped working after you bought it, that's the dealers problem to resolve, not yours.

And yes, I'm aware that some cars have all the hardware and (disabled in settings) software to have heated seats, but if they were not sold new with that option activated, then you can either subscribe to it, or just accept a car with the features you paid for - which doesn't include things like heated seats.

Or, you know, share the link for the video on [video site] so anyone can use anything to watch it?

Huh, and until I 'duck duck goed' Pennisetum Clandestinum, I had assumed it was a body part of a human...

Well, today I learned that it is not! :)

"If we'd had a bit more "Drill Baby Drill" in years prior to today, we'd likely not be seeing $5+ per gallon gasoline prices today."

Seriously?? You really think that? Why??

10 seconds of typing and I find this fact checker:
"President Biden claimed that there are 9,000 unused oil drilling permits. That’s mostly true.
At the end of 2021, there were about 9,000 approved permits to drill. They include some issued under Biden and some still active from Trump."

So, despite having over 9,000 (9,173 apparently - I'm sure you can confirm this as easily as I did) drilling permits, pretty much an open invitation to, ahem, 'drill baby drill', baby has not been drilling, because that would increase expenses and lower profits.

Remember, you live in a country which apparently believes companies only exist to increase value for their shareholders, not to actually do good for the country/s in which they operate.

Drilling more wells to pump more oil to lower the price of oil for Americans? Why, that's tantamount to socialism!! It's certainly not part of the 'me me me!' culture that is the USA of today.

1.6 gallons per FLUSH??

West Australian here, my toilet uses 3 litres for a half flush (yellow stuff in the bowl) or a massive 4.5 litres for a full flush (the bowl has brown ick in it). These dual flush are mandatory and have been for years for all new builds and renovations.

1 US Gallon is 3.785 litres.

So, for a start, if your 'new' toilets are only single flush, not dual flush, that's problem one. Second problem is the sheer volume of water being used each flush, 6 litres! Third problem? If it's yellow, let it mellow - if it's brown, flush it down.

You do NOT need 5 flushs per person per day.

And in Perth, the capital of WA, we drink recycled sewerage and desalinated water, our dams are pretty much empty (we pump the treated effluent into the groundwater table and then suck it out from elsewhere).

We are walking the walk.

" If I was buying Twitter I would demand to know the median IQ of users."

If I was buying Twitter I'd do my DUE DILIGENCE before signing the purchase contract...

Nice! The whole week off, on full pay!
Sweet!!

"Lairs"??

Did you perhaps mean "Liars"?

Because that would make more sense in context - though I admit so many James Bond (and other) movies have their evil villains ensconced in volcano, space or other equally unlikely but amazing lairs.

I can easily see Vladimir Putin clasping his fingers together - snickering evilly - as he plots the downfall of Ukraine, while in his secret LEGO lair (because the dude is a currently a ridiculous tool for utterly failing to defeat a much smaller and presumed weaker country - but could easily afford ALL the LEGO sets).

Well, thanks, but I'm not a researcher and needed to go shopping so... :)

Here's a recent article about Australian floods and a flood proof house:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

And here's an article about insurance costs in the same town:

https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

And here's yet another one with insurance costs of $1,000/month or more.

https://www.theguardian.com/au...

All of these articles mention frequency of floods, and that the historical frequency is obsolete as floods are increasing in number and volume.

And here's an article with actual figures of likely amounts of uninsurable properties, and costs:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/sc...

It seems that a 1% risk per year of a damaging event is enough to make a property effectively uninsurable, as the premiums are likely to be 1% or more of the value of the property, each year.

Also, seems a lot of the change can be attributed to being built on flood plains, or too close to the ocean, sometimes on actual sandbanks, though this isn't all new developments, some towns are over a century old and have been flooded before, but not as badly as recent floods.

""How many people who read this have actually taken any steps to reduce their footprint?"
I have. House I bought 20 years ago now has a native garden that doesn't need watering and the trees I planted shade the house and yard keeping it cool (while filling the gutters with leaves, gum nuts & twigs, but...) and I wake up to birdsong each morning. Birds nest and feed in my backyard. It's quite pleasant. And it's an air purifying carbon sink.

"Have you bought a smaller more efficient car?"
Sure did! I have a 2016 Skoda Octavia wagon, 1.4 litre turbo, 6 speed manual and the best economy I've gotten is 4 litres per 100km. Average long term around the city is 5.4 L/100km. Plug those figures into a convertor for you US people. Then Google the car so you can see it's not a tiny econobox. If you're wondering what a Skoda Octavia is, basically a VW Golf made in the Czech Republic for 2/3rds the cost of a Golf, in the same factory that makes Audis.

"Increased the temp in your home in the summer and cooler in the winter?"
Yep, Perth isn't cold, if it hits freezing here it's national news. Dressing warmly, drape a rug over my lap and warmth is sorted. In summer my aircon is usually set to 27C as that's cool enough most of the time. And pretty much every aircon unit in an Australian house is reverse cycle, has been for decades - so they can heat as well as cool, efficiently. I also have ceiling fans.

No, increase in value of assets is NOT income. It's an increase in wealth, aka capital growth/appreciation.

And if you tax increases in wealth due to capital appreciation, then logically and fairly you'd allow deductions for a fall in wealth due to depreciation.

That is a very messy situation which no sane government wants to get involved in!!

As far as I know, the USA taxes citizens on their global income, so income in other countries is taxed. Presumably (I don't know, I'm not a US citizen) you get a deduction from your USA income tax for the tax you've paid in other countries, that's a pretty common thing, but not ubiquitous.

Sales taxes (especially when applied by more than one layer of govt, ie city, local, state and federal) are... a whole different topic of conversation, but certainly it is the poor who pay the greater amount proportionally to their income.

"The world coming out of recession caused the oil price to spike and the supply chain problems."

I thought the supply chain problems were a mix of shipping companies having no crews due to COVID isolation (and illnesses/deaths) as well as ports having no workers due to COVID isolation (and illnesses/deaths) and then trucking/rail businesses having no workers due to .... as well as various large companies cancelling computer chip orders instead of reducing or postponing them, so the computer chip factories (fabs) took on other orders instead, now there's a queue for certain chips that is a year or two long before the fabs are going to restart production of chips for cars and consoles.

There are certainly more issues involved, but are they not the main ones?

You can't ship stuff around the world if you have no crews for the ships, or if the ships are in another port in 10 timezones away waiting to be unloaded and reloaded before they can leave with new cargoes. Or if the seatainers needed are on the other side of the ocean.

And if GM and Ford (for example) cancelled orders for chips their cars need, and fabs then took orders to produce chips for other industries, like those making washing machines and microwaves, well, GM and Ford go to the back of the queue once they place their new orders. They have to wait.

A flat tax?

What, exactly, are you suggesting is to be taxed?

Assets (aka 'wealth')?

Windows?

Spare bedrooms?

Income?

Because they all have issues...