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| why is the US not Metric |
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| tooki:
--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on December 06, 2019, 02:41:47 pm --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on December 06, 2019, 04:35:58 am ---When all is said and done - isn't it really about priorities? For example, what should USA do first: implement universal health care similar to most other advanced economies, or switch over to the metric system? --- End quote --- If Sweden could get it done I gather the greatest country in the world should be able to manage. --- End quote --- Not sure why you chose Sweden specifically, but in a nutshell, it's because Sweden (like most countries) is smart enough to tax its people (especially the rich) enough to keep the government adequately funded. (And they're not pissing away billions on pointless military entanglements.) The US is currently starving its government to the point that even basic services are suffering. (12 year backlog of naturalization applications, IRS so defunded it can't perform audits on all but the biggest cases of tax evasion, but also is unable to adequately staff its call centers to provide citizen advice, police reliant on literal highway robbery for funding, etc.) So in such an environment, a pointless switch to km on road signs is simply not going to happen, and rightly so I'd say. |
| vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 06, 2019, 07:24:48 am --- --- Quote ---Just when I get to think you are fairly rational, you post abject "duck poo" like the above. Mud huts, my backside! Even the least developed Commonwealth countries had far more complex economies than you suggest. Australia has been an independent nation since 1901, & had its own manufacturing sector of the economy. Yes, some stuff was imported, but much of our needs, including measuring equipment was locally made. --- End quote --- Well I went too far. But I didn't say Australia, exactly. Nor did I specify the year. There were plenty of tropical islands that were part of the commonwealth. Countries that are still 100% dependent on imports in order to have even building material for houses, cars, refrigerators, the whole nine yards. America also started out as a raw material factory for Britain. We all did. But back to Australia, you mentioned a car industry? What company? Did Australia develop this industry independently? Or did a car company in another country help to build a plant in Australia? --- End quote --- Yes, GM, but they wouldn't do anything until the Aussie taxpayer ponied up a substantial share of the cost. And, no, the gurus from the USA didn't bestow their advanced technology upon us awestruck savages, like unto Von Daniken's aliens. Other companies joined in local manufacturing after the success of the Holden car. That wasn't the first Australian designed & manufactured car, though, the Tarrant was the first, back in 1901, but couldn't compete with the massively subsidised offerings from the UK, & other countries. --- Quote --- This is before metrication? --- End quote --- Yes, but the Germans, French & Italians quite happily produced Metric cars contemporary with the Tarrant, so Australians were familiar with Metric threads, etc, very early in the piece. --- Quote ---At the time of WWII, America was so self-sufficient it basically ignored the war until near the end. America had most all the raw materials, agriculture, and manufacturing tech it needed, and it was pretty content to watch the rest of the world kill each other. --- End quote --- I feel you do your great nation a disservice here----the USA may have been nominally "Neutral", but it leaned as far as it could in the direction of the Allies fighting against Nazi Germany. The "Lendlease Act" of early 1941 allowed the US to supply military equipment to Britain, & ultimately the other allies. Unfair to the Nazis?----who cares! Once the USA joined the War, they were in "boots & all". --- Quote --- Until Pearl Harbor, or something like that. I would think most of the rest of the former commonwealth did not have this situation. I thought they had economies that were more closely intertwined with their neighbors. --- End quote --- Not really, they were more intertwined with that of the UK.(welcome to "globalism" early 20th century style). Because of this, we came to the aid of the "Mother Country", to the extent of, in Australia's case, leaving us dangerously vulnerable to Japan, with most of our troops overseas. It is a "charming" conceit of Brits to proclaim that they " Stood alone against Nazi Germany". The Commonwealth countries might well say "what are we, chopped liver?" --- Quote --- Not trying to ruffle feathers, but I work with folks doing business in Australia. And they liken the retail marketplace to America 20 years ago. --- End quote --- That may be so, but it is also brutally competitive. Some multinational retailers, have in the past, gone home "with their tail between their legs". --- Quote --- As far as internet vs brick and mortar, anyway. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's good that your country isn't taken over by Amazon, yet. Is my entire post completely assinine? I take some liberties, here and there. But I think there's something solid in there. I mean, the country that builds nuclear carriers and exports F16's might have a lot of internally developed manufacturing technology that doesn't necessarily depend on only mm's. --- End quote --- The thing is, you think we have some mystic belief in the wondrous power of the Metric system, but nobody except yourself & a few other 'Imperial" supporters has ever expressed that thought. Of course you can make all sorts of stuff & do all sorts of stuff without Metric units. They are just a tool, & in our opinions a superior one. --- Quote ---None of this was meant as an insult. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. If it has already been done and perfected, it is easier to copy than to start all over. This is why most of the developed world has AC, refrigerators, cars, cable TV, internet. This is why we trade. --- End quote --- |
| KL27x:
Re:Tooki And yet our government workers make significantly more than equivalent workers in the private sector. And in most cases they are essentially unable to be fired as long as they come to work on time. Our military spending is huge, and making a $30 billion airplane might seem insane, but the bulk of this is paying peoples' salaries and pensions at the end of the day. It's not like we're taking $30 billion of resources and pouring it in a toilet to make one plane. It's feeding people who serve in the military and paying the contractors who are creating new technology. And at least the military services retain some ability to fire/discharge contractors and personnel. It's reassuring that the plane/tech spending is so much of this; otherwise all this spending would be going to soldiers and bureacrats and putting boots on the ground? US military spending is how we will all get flying cars one day. :) This has been one of the US's main bags, since WW2. Military technology and what spins off of it. ;;;;;;;;;; v6zgo: --- Quote ---The thing is, you think we have some mystic belief in the wondrous power of the Metric system, but nobody except yourself & a few other 'Imperial" supporters has ever expressed that thought. --- End quote --- Do you have bsfeechannel blocked? He thinks metric will improve the quality of our roads and make them cheaper to maintain. I'm not even sure how our roads will know when they're metric, but we await further details from the guru. Can the power of metric convince government workers to dissolve obsolete programs and to vote themselves a paycut? Several "imperial supporters" (or defenders of logic) have spoken against rstopher. Silver Solder seems to have some sensible words regarding bsfeechannel's opinions, but yet bsfeechannel continues his antagonistic and vapid antics mostly unchecked. And then Scram drops in to add another derogatory and vapid comment. It's distracting to me, so don't take it personal if my tone sometimes feels a little harsh, and I stray a little off the course. --- Quote ---Yes, GM, but they wouldn't do anything until the Aussie taxpayer ponied up a substantial share of the cost. ... That wasn't the first Australian designed & manufactured car, though, the Tarrant was the first, back in 1901, but couldn't compete with the massively subsidised offerings from the UK, & other countries. --- End quote --- Honestly, I did not know the answer when I asked. The Tarrant is neat history. But I suspected there would have been a foreign car company building in Australia. The image in my head was Subaru. And I know that is only because I can still see Crocodile Dundee driving an Outback through the outback. :) ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Payin' the devil his kilo of flesh. Give 'em an millimeter, they take a kilometer. The quality, here, is kilometers apart. He centimetered his way forward in the dark. Walk a K in my shoes, pal. He summoned his last gram of strength but came up a millimeter short. (hmm, not bad) Dude is just K's ahead of the competition. This achievement is a true K-stone! Let's have some half kilo cake! Like getting hit with a 5 kilo hammer! Or a tonne of bricks! The kilometer high club. This thing weighs a ton. I mean tonne. With the silent "e". No that's not just the brits adding random "e's" on the end of words. It rhymes with done, not run! Clear now? Good luck on the mission to eradicate the english language. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inch https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mile https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ton vs https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centimeter ;it's a unit of length! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kilometer ;ditto https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tonne ;this one is mass! |
| vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: Tepe on December 06, 2019, 11:56:32 am --- --- Quote from: forrestc on December 06, 2019, 12:20:31 am ---The cost to leave our road signs alone is minimal. The cost to switch is enormous. The benefits of switching are dubious. So it doesn't get switched. I recently came across the document at https://www.gao.gov/assets/230/221472.pdf which had an estimate of $754 million (754 megadollars) to switch state and local road signs to km in 1995. This is nearly $1.3 billion in today's dollars. --- End quote --- Enormous? The US population in 1995 was 266.6 million so $2.87 per capita... For comparison the same year the US spent $321.6 billion on the military or about $1,206 per capita. The total national health expenditure that year was $1,022 billion or $3,833 per capita. Add all the other public spending and that drop in the bucket becomes even more negligibly small. It's not the cost that keeps the US from metricating the road signs, it is lack of will and that is totally understandable. It wouldn't really serve any purpose. --- End quote --- As you have pointed out, $1.3 billion does sound huge, but in context, is not at all that large. In 2017, the new Perth Stadium was completed at a cost of $A1.6 billion.(at current exchange rates, that is approx US$1.09 billion.) This was spent by a single State, with a population of around 2.7 million. What are the benefits of a new stadium? To sports, it is immeasurable, as it is for very large concerts by international performers, to most everybody else ---meh! It could have been spent on other things, but it wasn't. Unlike a stadium, replacing road signage in the USA could have been done over a decade or so, by the existing road maintenance crews, much as it was done in this country. As I pointed out previously, they have 7 times our road mileage, but nearly 13 times our population. |
| SilverSolder:
... Now you've listened to my story Here's the point that I have made Cats were born to give chicks fever Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade! ... Elvis Presley. Nuff said! |
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