How much is your local "Trump at the Pump Tax?"

Costco was $3.70 yesterday.

That's quite good. Around me, alcohol free gasoline means a trip to a marina, and the price is much rougher.

My account numbers are off putting. Higher numbers are better than lower numbers if they reflect an increase in values (part of the reason gasoline numbers aren't shocking most people), but if your portfolio doubles and you home value doubles and the price of your car doubles, it isn't real progress. Of course, it could be worse -- your portfolio could decrease in nominal dollars while prices also rise.

I have a gift to distribute and am supposed to have it all distributed in the next several years. I sell stock to make good on the gifts, but the prices keep increasing so that I have more now than I did four years ago.

 

....the stock market is doing astonishingly well...

 

Yes, and I'm going to be that guy who has to add a "but".

My manufacturing clients are also doing great business, but they have a rough time finding people under 40 who are employable. It's been six years since the covid panic interest rates near zero and houses in my area are still selling before they can be listed. Tradesmen of all sorts are in short supply.

Is all of that just from increased demand?

 

and some data centers have contracted off book rates of 1-3 cents per kwhr

puts your off peak to shame.

also lends credence to the fact that cities can likely provide contracted free street side and streetlight L1 charging (outlets) in downtown regions using the 1-3 cent production cost electricity during specific hours. If they charge for a monthly parking pass or meters anyway they are already getting their road taxes.

anywhere there are street lights you already have infrastructure, our lights are 277vac and 15+ amp rated, with some converted to led you have 24 hour surplus power

 

Rhetorical Question, obviously.
Nobody spends $300,000 and 6 years of time to get a degree in home electrical wiring....or plumbing - and jobs in the trades are "AI" proof.
Why else do you think that there are so many people battling against data centers - and why they are being funded so lavishly by entities that want to stop the US from "getting there first?"

Price in my home town $3.079-3.099
I researched my HOME Town (in Indiana) this time.
My last fill-up was 3.319 because I passed up a grungier place at 0400 that's trying to put a new series of Indian gas stations out of business with gas at 3.299.

Dot, not feather Indians.
There's rez land hereabouts somewhere but I do not pretend to know what they sell it for.

 

Most readers may envy, but not readers from Washington's Chelan County, just east over the mountains from here, who still have this flat rate, no TOU:


Industrial customers have an even lower rate of 1.70¢/kWh, though with demand and much larger basic charges added in.

After having major problems from crypto miners and data centers rushing in from around the world, and occasionally going belly-up shortly after the utility spent a lot on equipment upgrades to serve huge individual facilities, they were put into a special category with an annual "market rate adjustment", bringing their current combined rate to 11.57¢/kWh, plus basic and demand charges.

We have several other PUDs with very low rates, thanks to their Columbia River hydroelectric dams, but not this low.

 

Our duly elected for eight years President who inherited a devastated economy on day one in office from repubs. If any president gets credit for a stock market it this one. But he never wanted credit, always giving it to the people. Now we have a cult giving credit where none is due, and ignoring all the dastardly deeds and racking up a record deficit 47 has done.
What did they make an issue about this President? Wearing a tan suit.

 

Certain specific southern states have a population density distribution similar to one of the graphs below (one for over a decade), but the population vrs age/gender graph is starting to look more like both in Midwest and north each year that passes.

Data centers cost more than humans to do tasks and it is assumed they will always do the tasks worse than humans due to fundamental mathematical limits. (Aka somebody has to be there to do an in depth review)

The only use I can see for ai data centers is if you have an altruistic government combined with altruistic highly caring businesses that want to create a care state so our elderly don’t just get thrown into the street boxcar Willy style and instead have carebots to cook clean and deliver food as our youth population completely disappears.
Yet despite it being public information that there are only ~1 million around 25 year old men in our entire nation we still get shoveled stupid nonsense that young people don’t want to work, while the reality is there aren’t any in most areas.

considering they are setting up a surveillance state that tracks every dump I take with cameras watching inside school playgrounds , swimming pools and other nonsense, I have to assume the data centers that take precious water away from farming and basic life are likely not intended to help society in any way with the loss of young people to take care of the old.

the fact the guys building these things are building bunkers tells me all I need to know

 

Your 401(k)s should have reached record highs under every administration since you opened them. Mine have, and I started under Reagan. Well, I'd have to recheck about under Bush-II, but the upward march resumed shortly after Obama was inaugurated, and hasn't stopped: 5.5 years of R, 12 years of Ds since that Great Housing/Bush Recession.

 

Must have clashed with his complexion, unlike these guys:

 

That would put him in the company of Trump, GWB and Clinton, Reagan and Nixon, as opposed to Biden, Carter and GHWB.

Your recollection could use a supplement. Obama somewhat famously instituted his own immigration policy when he was unable to persuade Congress to pass a change in law, pushed a nationalization of medical insurance that didn't turn out to be constitutionally solid, pushed for and got a stimulus program for "shovel ready" programs that he later admitted wasn't put together too well, and ridiculed Mitt Romney for taking the Russians seriously on the world stage saying "the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years”.

 

I was going to post that one but the amount of time it takes me isn’t worth it. McConnell more recently wore a tan suit in the Oval Office, not a word of complaint. They actually accused Obama of encouraging terrorism by wearing a tan suit, Lou Dobbs or someone said it. .

 

Complete nonsense, right wing long dead and debunked talking points, you might want to open your eyes to what is going on now. It’s more interesting that the manufactured word cherry picked talking points, lies in reality, have stayed with you for 16 years.
Btw I wasn’t saying eight or four years terms are an issue as to who was President better, but apparently you don like it when I say Obama had eight. Seems to have struck a nerve.

 

It’s actually a deep issue. I know I live the anonymity every day as a white person myself. Sometimes I get pretty tan in summer. Look at Reagan, no one in the slightest way would talk about him wearing a tan suit is doing something wrong. It should be like that for everyone.

If that is the oval office it looks like America, not flashy, not about one person, it is the concept of America that is its strength, not fancy trappings.

 

I must note how different that fireplace scene looked then vs now. Then, the only gilding was on just three picture frames. In recent pictures, the gilding on nearly every room detail is overwhelming.

 

I wasn’t sure it was the oval office. This is how it should be, the president walks into a room and respects the history, realizing they are not the last president. The wall decor should be subdued, it isn’t about the walls when heads of state visit. Then there is the cost of changing things using taxpayers money, that should also be respected. Up till now they have only made well thought out changes, everything done with respect and consideration.

 

Prices are artificially low in Indiana for the time being, given that Governor Braun has been suspending both the gasoline use tax and the gasoline excise tax, about 62.5 cents total, starting in early April, and lately extended again to early September.