Are You Working Class/Middle Class and Feeling Overwhelmed?

[Serbia]

Trendy chic!

Bollocks in 2015.

[notyou2]

The measure of any society is how well it treats it's least fortunate.

Do you measure that in metric or US in Canada?

Fixed it for you,

[mrswdk]

The measure of any society is how well it treats it's least fortunate.

Do you measure that in metric or US in Canada?

Fixed it for you,

lol. Silly me, of course USA Lite uses imperial.

[Bernie Sanders]

How many Imperial gallon in 1 US gallons? The answer is 0.832674188148.

Just the facts

[jonesthecurl]

I think you'll find the correct answer is 0.75

[subtleknifewield]

Lol, is there even an official name for the system the US uses?

[Bernie Sanders]

Here's the US standard measurements, I believe we already covered the Imperial gallon vs US gallon

Linear Measure
12 inches (in.) = 1 foot (ft.)
3 feet = 1 yard (yd)
51/2 yards = 1 rod (rd), pole, or perch (161/2 ft.)
40 rods = 1 furlong (fur) = 220 yds = 660 ft.
8 furlongs = 1 statute mile (mi.) = 1,760 yds
= 5,280 ft.
3 land miles = 1 league
5,280 feet = 1 statute or land mile
6,076.11549 feet = 1 international nautical mile
Area Measure
144 square inches = 1 sq ft.
9 square feet = 1 sq yd = 1,296 sq in.
301/4 square yards = 1 sq rd = 2721/4 sq ft.
160 square rods = 1 acre = 4,840 sq yds
= 43,560 sq ft.
640 acres = 1 sq mi.
1 mile square = 1 section (of land)
6 miles square = 1 township = 36 sections
= 36 sq mi.
Cubic Measure
1,728 cubic inches = 1 cu ft.
27 cubic feet = 1 cu yd

[subtleknifewield]

Yes, very informative.

We don't have an official name for the measuring system there though, do we? I don;t seem to recall anyone telling me one.

[Dukasaur]

Yes, very informative.

We don't have an official name for the measuring system there though, do we? I don;t seem to recall anyone telling me one.

Not really official, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

[subtleknifewield]

OK, appreciate it.

[notyou2]

In Canada, we call it the imperial system, which makes much more sense than calling it the US system since it wasn't established in the US except US gallons.

[Dukasaur]

In Canada, we call it the imperial system, which makes much more sense than calling it the US system since it wasn't established in the US except US gallons.

Imperial is not U.S., and U.S. is not Imperial, nor is U.S. descended from Imperial.

Both of them are descended from the traditional English units, and so they have a lot in common, but they diverged after the American Revolution and have evolved along separate tracks. The Imperial system as we know it was not codified until 1824, a generation after the American Revolution. The American system was largely uncodified until 1988, but in general it stayed true to the traditional English units during that time. Thus, Imperial and U.S. measures should properly be seen as brothers born of a single mother, rather than seeing Imperial and U.S. systems as being in a parent-child relationship, as many Canadians wrongly assume them to be.

[notyou2]

In Canada, we call it the imperial system, which makes much more sense than calling it the US system since it wasn't established in the US except US gallons.

Imperial is not U.S., and U.S. is not Imperial, nor is U.S. descended from Imperial.

Both of them are descended from the traditional English units, and so they have a lot in common, but they diverged after the American Revolution and have evolved along separate tracks. The Imperial system as we know it was not codified until 1824, a generation after the American Revolution. The American system was largely uncodified until 1988, but in general it stayed true to the traditional English units during that time. Thus, Imperial and U.S. measures should properly be seen as brothers born of a single mother, rather than seeing Imperial and U.S. systems as being in a parent-child relationship, as many Canadians wrongly assume them to be.

Brothers? They are identical except gallons. Where do they differ?

[Dukasaur]

In Canada, we call it the imperial system, which makes much more sense than calling it the US system since it wasn't established in the US except US gallons.

Imperial is not U.S., and U.S. is not Imperial, nor is U.S. descended from Imperial.

Both of them are descended from the traditional English units, and so they have a lot in common, but they diverged after the American Revolution and have evolved along separate tracks. The Imperial system as we know it was not codified until 1824, a generation after the American Revolution. The American system was largely uncodified until 1988, but in general it stayed true to the traditional English units during that time. Thus, Imperial and U.S. measures should properly be seen as brothers born of a single mother, rather than seeing Imperial and U.S. systems as being in a parent-child relationship, as many Canadians wrongly assume them to be.

Brothers? They are identical except gallons. Where do they differ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
Not just the gallon but all the liquid measures.... quart, pint, and fluid ounce. U.S. fluid oz ≈ 1.04084273079 fl oz Imperial.

Harvest measures are different too. U.S. dry quart ≈ 0.96893897192 imp qt. The U.S. still uses pecks and bushels whereas the Imperial system has abandoned them. The word bushel is still used in Britain but no longer has a legal definition.

Specialized volumes differ also. A beer barrel in the U.S. is defined 31 U.S. gallons (roughly 26 Imperial) while a beer barrel in Britain is defined as 36 Imperial gallons, or about 43 U.S. American oil companies count oil by the barrel, defined as 42 U.S. gallons, whereas there is no legal definition of an oil barrel in Britain and oil is sold in metric units.

British weights still use the stone while U.S. weights do not.

Lengths:

The US survey foot and survey mile have been maintained as separate units for surveying purposes to avoid the accumulation of error that would follow replacing them with the international versions, particularly with State Plane Coordinate Systems. (The choice of unit for surveying purposes is based on the unit used when the overall framework or geodetic datum for the region was established, so that - for example - much of the former British empire still uses the Clarke foot for surveying.) The US survey foot is defined so that 1 metre is exactly 39.37 inches, making the international foot of 0.3048 metres two parts per million shorter. This is a difference of just over 3.2 mm or a little over one eighth of an inch per mile.

The main units of length (inch, foot, yard and international mile) were the same in the USA, though the USA rarely uses some of the intermediate units, such as the (surveyor's) chain (22 yards) and the furlong (220 yards).

At one time the definition of the nautical mile was based on the sphere whose surface is the same as the Clarke Ellipsoid. In the US, the full value of 1853.256 metres was used, but in the Commonwealth, this was rounded to 6080 feet (1853.184 m). These have been replaced by the international version, which rounds the sixtieth part of the 45° degree to the nearest metre, as 1852 metres.

Weights:

One important difference is the widespread use in Britain of the stone of 14 pounds (6.35029318 kg) for body weight. This unit is not used in the United States, although its influence was seen in the practice, until World War II, of selling flour by a barrel of 196 pounds (14 stone). Another difference arose when Britain abolished the troy pound (373.2417216 g) on January 6, 1879, leaving only the troy ounce (31.1034768 g) and its decimal subdivisions, whereas the troy pound (of 12 troy ounces) and pennyweight are still legal in the United States, although no longer widely used.

The imperial system has a hundredweight of eight stone or 112 lb (50.80234544 kg), whereas a US hundredweight is 100 lb (45.359237 kg). In both systems, 20 hundredweights make a ton. In the US, the terms long ton (2240 lb, 1016.0469088 kg) and short ton (2000 lb; 907.18474 kg) are used to distinguish them. The term metric ton is also used to denote a tonne (1000 kg, 2204.622 lb), which is about 2% less than the long ton.

The imperial system uses a stone of 14 lb., a long hundredweight of 112 lb. and a long ton of 2240 lb. The stone is not used in the US and the hundredweights and tons are short being 100 lb. and 2000 lb. respectively.

So, yeah, there are quite a few differences between the two systems, a lot more than "just gallons". I summed it up quite well.

Both of them are descended from the traditional English units, and so they have a lot in common, but they diverged after the American Revolution and have evolved along separate tracks. ... Imperial and U.S. measures should properly be seen as brothers born of a single mother, rather than seeing Imperial and U.S. systems as being in a parent-child relationship, as many Canadians wrongly assume them to be.

[subtleknifewield]

Whoah, that made my head spin...wheeee!

That's my way of saying, you learn something new every day, and I just learned a great deal from that post.

[Phatscotty]

Being overwhelmed by a job is better than being overwhelmed by slavery. At least we get paid and have the option to learn a new skill. Oh yeah, we can quit any job we don't like, we can ask for a raise and get it by showing we deserve a raise, we can get promoted, we can stand out from the rest of the workers by doing a better job and putting in that little bit of extra effort while the rest of the workers are bragging about how little they care about their job. I will go ahead and guess the workers who don't care about the work they do are the one's who are the loudest about being overwhelmed.

[Phatscotty]

While I agree to the notion that the “free market” is indeed an illusion, he continues to use the utopian mindset to think that the “Government” is somehow above it all, providing useful services to everyone out of the kindness of their hearts.

Imo, what matters is the degree of how free a market is.

The free market may not exist, but that shouldn't be the premise in the OP on which to hinge an alternative which no doubt is government monopoly, which of course makes the prices go up much higher than they likely would have (tuition, healthcare, food...) which of course is the opposite of what the consumer wants, and exactly what the business/institution wants, and hey what do you know it ends up with the government and the industry working together and the consumer sits out and just waits for someone to tell them what the price is. Simply put, when a person doesn't pay for something and the government/someone else pays, nobody gives a crap how much it costs, and when a consumer doesn't care how much something costs, it's a green light for the producer/provider to ask for more, and they will get more too. What we have here is irresponsible consumers. The consumer is trading/giving up their power for convenience and access. This of course goes against everything a free market is supposed to be.

For a market to be stable and to organize supply/demand and for prices to be affordable is a big deal when it comes to the consumer as they play a crucial role. Consumers who buy something with their hard earned money basically make an agreement to pay the price. When the price is too high or the product is not of quality, consumers will certainly purchase less of that product/service which sends an immediate signal to the producer that they need to make a change asap if they want to stay in business and if the people who are employed in every rung of any given production process want to stay employed. That's the gist of how a free market works, and you can bet your ass that the capital investors who put up their money to build said company and who take most of the risk loaning money and who are responsible to insure everything along the way and make payroll every week ON TIME will find some kind of solution, otherwise the result will remain they are making a product/service that nobody wants or that they want but choose a different brand or just do without and in that case there is no reason for said company to exist.

However, when a consumer doesn't care how much something costs because they aren't paying for it and as is pertinent to the topic here the government takes over and deals directly with (let's say) a health insurance company or a university, then there is no incentive to try to keep prices down and affordable, which means a lot of waste/things at the bottom of the crucially important list that might normally be dealt with tend to get ignored, and you can add the price of that right into the tuition or insurance premium. And how about quality? To the university, they are going to care less about quality because they deal with the government up front and before you even know what is being paid for, so you go to your classes and if you think you got ripped off, why would you care if you didn't pay your money? why would you look for a better school? Why would you even think about the value of the money or tuition at all? Likewise, if the students don't care, why would the university tend to a situation nobody seems to care about. They can continue with the crappiest professor in the university teaches the same crap and charge more the next year, and thus quality is less and less an issue and access becomes more important. Why would it matter if an institution pumps out crap when their money is guaranteed and most of the time the consumer doesn't even know if their class was crap or not, it's all about getting the credit and getting the degree.

So now like with health care, nobody even knows how much something costs up front. Does anyone even ask? oh no, someone else takes care of that for us, we don't have to. What is the result? Prices are so high and out of whack that only the rich can truly afford to pay for it, and now the government and the health insurance industry needs to take over. Did that make a band-aid drop in price from $18 to $17.50? That is to say, is healthcare more affordable and accessible in a fundamental way now that 'the government/insurance is taking care of it?' NO! The band-aid went from $18 to $24, a single aspirin went from $32 to $42. Heck, I was in the ER for not even 2 hours a couple years ago for pain in my back so back I had a hard time breathing. I wanted to sleep it off, but I have family who works in hospitals and they are always 'oh no! some guy had the same thing yesterday and coming into the hospital saved his life!' so I got talked into it. I got checked for kidney stones why? idk, I didn't mention that. I got 1 dose of morphine. I talked to a doctor for 2 minutes, and I used a bed for about an hour. Turned out to be nothing. Total bill? 4 different bills from radiology, anisthetics, ER, and something else, $8,000 DOLLARS! Of course, the 2 minor bills were 10$ over the price requirement for insurance to cover it, and for the main part of the billing my super awesome all important insurance covered 80% which was about $4,500. I was still stuck with $3,500 in bills. THATS CRAZY! And as you can imagine I'd assume an overwhelming majority of people ignore those bills since they don't go against your credit. What i've learned over the years is that doctors and hospitals have a habit of running people through a bunch of tests they may or likely may not need, juicing the bills up because the price system in this market is so tremendously f'd up they know most of the time they are only going to get paid what the insurance company gives them. This is just one example of what happens to a market that is the complete opposite of a free market. So we end up with a company/product/service that everyone will need at some point, but virtually nobody can afford. real quick another example from last year about why I don't trust doctors, my finger started going numb for some reason so I went to a regular doctor. He was reading from his instruction booklet on how to examine me while he was examining me. Needless to say I was not impressed. End result was the same result as before I saw the doctor. No answers, no medication, no diagnosis, a referral to a different doctor who was much more expensive. On top of that, the doctor said he wanted to do a blood test, because 'it could be a number of reason why my finger is going numb' and they were talking about injecting me in the neck with steroids to mask the pain and I was like 'F no!' I didn't even know what was going on yet and I wasn't gonna let them stick a needle in my freaking neck. So, he told me to call him back in a week about the blood test. I called him back a week later and he was all 'Hey Phatty, what's up? Why are you calling me again so soon?' and I said 'you told me to call you back in a week about the blood test' and he says 'OH! yeah, you're good' Cost of the doctor visit $600 cost of the blood test $400. I felt like I was treated like an ATM, nor did I get any answers or information about my finger.

One thing I know for sure, the health care market has been completely destroyed by entities neither of which are the HC provider or the patient. I have no say in the matter, I cannot find out how much something costs, a lot of things providers do are to protect them from being sued, and everything is treated like 'why the hell would you want to know how much is costs?' prices aren't even mentioned. There is no market. But then again, we are living in a time where many champion the fact that it's 'progress' a wife works full time along with a husband, yet health insurance and healthcare are unaffordable. 60 years ago a family of 7 could afford to pay the doctor on only one income and the wife actually raised the children. 40 years ago a student could work only during the summer busting tables at a restaurant and afford tuition, board, and food for the entire year. Granted my uncle admits there were weeks when his diet was ritz crackers and peanut butter, but he never seemed to run out of beer. So now that market is completely destroyed as well to the point people might spend 30 years paying off their tuition debts from what used to be paid for a total of 12 months busting tables for minimum wage during the summers.

These are major reasons why Freedom and Liberty will become words that don't mean anything anymore in the near future, and why everyone will have to be enslaved to and responsible for everyone else in wonderful Socialist utopia.

[jonesthecurl]

I think you'll find the correct answer is 0.75

actually my brain shorted on that one. The correct answer is of course 80%.
with 8 pints in a gallon - and the US has the mnemonic "A pint's a pound the world around", while ironically everyone else has "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter". (It was the "quarter" that gave me the 75%. I was of course working from the end of the sum)

[Bernie Sanders]

It boggles the mind that approximately 30% of every health care dollar spent in the US goes to administrative costs rather than to delivering care. If our goal is to provide high-quality health care in a cost-effective way, what should we be doing? Clearly, we must move toward a single-payer system.
The health insurance lobby and other opponents of single-payer care make it sound scary. It's not. In fact, a large-scale single-payer system already exists. It's called Medicare. People enrolled in the system give it high marks. More importantly, it has succeeded in providing near-universal coverage to Americans over the age of 65.
Establishing a single-payer system will mean peace of mind for all Americans. The goal of real health care reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way. We must ensure that the money we put into health coverage goes to the delivery of health care, not to paper-pushing, astronomical profits and lining CEOs' pockets.

[Dukasaur]

I just want to understand this sir, every time a rug is micturated upon in this fair city, I have to compensate the person?

[Phatscotty]

I just want to understand this sir, every time a rug is micturated upon in this fair city, I have to compensate the person?

[Bernie Sanders]

"The Koch brothers and other billionaires are going to throw everything they've got at us. Bring it on. At the end of the day, our ideas are supported by the vast majority of the American people. Their ideas are supported by the billionaire class. Guess what? There are more of us than them."