This is precisely what I assume as well. How does something run 20x over budget...

Sounds like California's high speed train to no where. I'm sure it's making someone rich and that someone is almost certainly well connected.

Government always punishes people for being more efficient. Government cares about it's precious revenue streams. Doing the "right thing" doesn't matter at all. Regardless of what they say.

Funny, because that's true in California as well. If you drive a hybrid in California, it's cheaper to buy gas then charge with electricity. This stays true up until around ~$7 a gallon. Of course, by the time gasoline goes to $7, the KwH cost will likely be a $1. It's already over $.50 now.

Weight would be "fair". Taxes are never fair. They tend to let people that make poor/selfish decisions off the hook much more then your responsible person that's driving more efficient vehicles.

Probably because those "benefits" don't tend to go towards the people paying the taxes. Workers pay taxes, non-workers suck down all the benefits. Some how, everyone gets the same vote, despite nearly half the population not contributing to the tax base.

I actually wrote California about the purposed per mile charge and specifically asked why vehicle weight doesn't get mentioned in their idea. As you can guess, crickets.

As I'm sure you are aware, weight of the vehicle directly impacts damage to the roads, which is what gas tax is suppose to cover.

Here is a link talking about the purposed changes. https://caroadcharge.com/about...

My favorite part is concern about rural and poor folks driving shitting cars. Some how, they are responsible for damage to the biosphere, only city folks and people that bother to drive hybrids and evs...Typically.

Road maintenance. Yeah...They divert some of our gas tax to build other shit, like light rail. So the gas tax doesn't even go for what it's suppose to. Not entirely anyway.

Nah. Any time we find a way to be more efficient and avoid "use" taxes, the government passes a new tax to make up the revenue drop.

Let me use California as an example. SDGE (power computer in southern cali) just recently added in a "base service fee" to the bill. It's $0.79 a day. Since it's illegal to not be on the power grid in the vast majority of cities in California, it's effectively a connection fee. You could use ZERO KwHs and they are still charging you.

They did this to scrap back money from the solar folks. How DARE people get solar to reduce their bill!!!! They aren't paying their fair share, etc. So now we have a connection fee. Sorry if I sound hostile. I'm a second class citizen renter that can't have solar and yet my bill basically went up $24 a month despite the exact same power usage compared to a prior bill that used nearly the same power (164kwh vs 168 kwh).

We're current talking about rolling out a way to track cars for miles driven. I want to say the purposed tax is $.027 a mile. This is to attack EV and Hybrid drivers. The asshole in the 20mpg tank won't notice a difference, as they currently are gobbling down gasoline (and paying more gas tax). So for the folks that want to be more efficient, we are punished as it's our fault we dare use less gasoline (and therefore are damaging the biosphere LESS).

Some basic napkin math shows I use about 8.5 gallons for 10 days of driving. So I use basically .85 gallons a day times 365 days, equals 310.25 gallons a year.

California charges 61.2 cents per gallon right now. So 310.25 * .612 = $189.873 a year in gas taxes. I get roughly 50mpg.

Under the proposed changes, I'll pay per mile. 50 miles per gallon means I'm driving about 42.5 miles a day. So 42.5 miles * $.027 = $1.1475 tax a day. $1.1475 * 365 = $418.8375 a year. So for bothering to drive a hybrid (how dare I!!!) I'll go from $189.873 up to $418.837. $419 / 190 = 221% increase in gas tax.

It's pretty backwards given the hard push by California politicians to get us all to go green. Those who did go green, well, time to punish you for your choices.

P.S. Hybrids and EVs also pay higher registration fees in California. YAY I'm so happy to be green. Thanks daddy government!

Police are hardly an essential service. According to https://www.britannica.com/top...

So I guess society was just pure chaos and horrible before then, eh? Of course, if you ask certain segments of society today, the police are much worse. I don't take that stance personally but I still wouldn't say police are essential.

When seconds matter, the police are minutes (or hours) away.

That's a silly comment. If AI could in fact do everything, it would provide great utility for humanity. The problem is not our technology advancement, it's our social stagnation. If machines can liberate us all from having to go to work, we could literally sit back and play on passion projects, or do other stuff.

The only reason AI is scary is most of us (in the USA) labor under the impression that you have to work to eat. Well, that's only true if you let the "owners" of the AI fuck society. Of course, it sure as heck looks like that's precisely what we are going to do, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Other societies, such as the Chinese, may very well show us how it can offer a good life to it's people while letting machines do most the work. Over here in USA, we'll be killing each other while Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc, sit back in their fortified castles with AI-drone controlled terminators protecting them.

So to reiterate, the problem is not the technology. It's our social norms.

Not necessarily. Ever go to an office with a lot of 50+ aged people that are using 30 year old tech because it still works? Yeah, I've seen that enough times. The old people will dig in and fight changes because that requires learning something new.

Today's kids that will be in the work force in 10-15 years will have been born with a cellphone in hand and AI will be something they've used for their entire education process. Think how much further AI will get in 10-15 years. Yeah, we're fucked screwed if we don't change our social structures by then.

If using AI means a department can go from 12 reduced to 8, while retaining the same amount of efficiency, then 4 jobs were just lost. So yes, AI is costing jobs.

Does this even matter? Sure, it's not good but we're already screwed ourselves with micro-plastics. They are found at the bottom of the ocean and probably at the top of Mt. Everest. They are in our soil and water. It's definitely in all our food.

The only way to MAYBE avoid this would be to do hydroponics, some how filter your water before hand, etc. Basically not feasible.

The industrial revolution will be what ends us, it would seem.

So, on average, most people never really made it to adulthood, according to this study. At least brain development wise. The average life span was between 30-40.

So clearly we renters should be getting a nickle or something, right?