General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
KL27x:
Changing road signs or whatnot might be a useful ploy if and when needed to temporarily distract Americans from more important issues. To borrow more money from China and pour it directly into the pockets of America's overprivileged working class so they can make 5x the money they could make in any other job they are qualified for. In exchange for riding around in a truck and standing in a crane bucket with a drill while wearing a reflective jacket and hard hat. This gesture of solidarity with the rest of the world will of course be thrilling to Bank of China. Foxconn workers are jumping out of windows for $2 an hour so that American high school dropouts can make lawyer money for sitting in a truck and driving around.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 02, 2019, 06:01:15 pm ---Changing road signs or whatnot might be a useful ploy if and when needed to temporarily distract Americans from more important issues. To borrow more money from China and pour it directly into the pockets of America's overprivileged working class so they can make 5x the money they could make in any other job they are qualified for. In exchange for riding around in a truck and standing in a crane bucket with a drill while wearing a reflective jacket and hard hat. This gesture of solidarity with the rest of the world will of course be thrilling to Bank of China. Foxconn workers are jumping out of windows for $2 an hour so that American high school dropouts can make lawyer money for sitting in a truck and driving around.
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Seems a little harsh on all the hard working Americans I have had the pleasure of meeting...
SeanB:
Funny thing is in a metric country ( South Africa) I still can get a limited range of Imperial and US fasteners, often very cheap, as old stock dating back from the 1970's, a while after South Africa went metric. Only used for USA designed equipment, which uses those cursed fasteners of odd ( to the metric world) sizes, thread pitches and fastener heads. Limited range of the actual fasteners as well, but there are enough taps, dies and insert kits around for use, though I often just go and replace the fastener with the metric version where possible, or if I have to put in an insert (stripped thread) it will in general be metric, unless I actually have the correct imperial size already.
Only common imperial size is 1/4 UNC, which is the thread used on cameras, so I actually have the die nuts, the fasteners and the right size drills for them, from installing and using CCTV cameras. Even there a lot of the newer cameras come with a M6 thread, so you need to keep a set of M6 cap head screws around for those, and eventually all those older cameras will be gone.
KL27x:
For every one of these Americans you have met, there are 20 people in Asia slaving away so these wonderful Americans can collect their disability and unemployment and their prescription benzos and opioids. I'm an American. I can be honest about it.
At least when we created the TSA, we can hand out mere $14/hr jobs to Americans to sit in a chair and walk around in a uniform with absolutely zero qualifications and skills. To change road signs will require hazardous duty pay and workman's comp payouts for the Larry and Curly's that decapitate their coworkers by moving the crane the wrong direction while Moe is standing in front of a sign 50 feet over our freeways.
How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb? Depends how good their union is. You want to know how much it could possibly cost to change a road sign? American (and America's lawyers): hold my beer. I have a record to break.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 02, 2019, 07:46:44 pm ---For every one of these Americans you have met, there are 20 people in Asia slaving away so these wonderful Americans can collect their disability and unemployment and their prescription benzos and opioids. [...]
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Who do you think is happier... a hard working person, or an obese person rotting in front of a 60 inch TV on schedule II drugs issued by the medical-industrial complex?
My heart felt sympathy goes to the latter, frankly...
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