No one likes paying taxes, but we live in a society. A VMT almost feels un-American, doesn’t it? It exposes use fees in general for what they really are: a crock of shit. If we subsidize roads, we should subsidize railroads too.

I hear the taxes are non-existent in Somalia if you ever decide you don’t like the benefits of society.

So you’re a child. Got it

If you libertarian nuts somehow took over MA and abolished the T, their entire economy would collapse. Boston cannot function without it. It’s not built for cars. Traffic is already hopelessly gridlocked. Cars never should have been allowed there in the first place.

The T is to government as IT is to business. Yeah, it’s a “cost center” and makes no money, but everything else depends on it. Only dumbass beancounters don’t get that.

I’m sure you support a VMT tax then?

It sounds to me like this whole “tiny house” phrase needs to stop being used altogether. It’s become rather meaningless.

My dad grew up in a 500 sq ft house. It wasn’t a “tiny house.” It was just a small house, built before all the NIMBY tyrants destroyed the American dream.

You used to be able to buy a house from the Sears catalog and build it yourself, on your land. Karens couldn’t stop you. Let’s go back to that, and stop making it so you need a fucking PR agent to build a small affordable house.

Did you actually watch that segment? The issues laid out in it are specific to trailer parks where people own trailers and lease the land. Mobile homes actually can’t be moved once they’ve settled. People are stuck with the worst of both worlds.

Those issues aren’t relevant if the trailers are rented with the land, or if you put your owned trailer on land you own.

Also, this is a very recent grift, where parasitic hedge funds have decided to gouge trailer park owners. In the past, either they thought such things were beyond the pale, or they once feared prosecution. I don’t understand how that isn’t criminal, honestly.

It’d be interesting if this meant psychiatrists were allowed to send prescriptions for certain controlled substances with critical shortages over state lines. It probably won’t happen, because the DEA created those shortages intentionally, but it would sure be nice.

Now that probably raises alarm bells to some, but that would be part of integrating mental healthcare across state lines. Several controlled substances are critical in psychiatry.

That telehealth aspect makes me a lot less supportive of this whole thing, TBH. Empirically speaking, telehealth for mental healthcare has been kind of a disaster. BetterHelp is a gross scam. Done and Cerebral were running a nationwide pill mill during the rona. Telehealth should be more regulated, not less. You should have to see the provider in person occasionally IMO.

I thought this was about transferring licenses, not practicing in 19 states simultaneously. The only people that sounds good to, are Silicon Valley grifters trying to commoditize mental healthcare.

Trailer parks have been a major source of affordable housing for decades now. It’s not shrinkflation, it’s just an inferior good. Kinda like how Spirit Airlines isn’t a fun sized JetBlue, it’s just an airborne bus.

If I have to criticize anything about more housing being built, it’s this classist “tiny house” terminology. You live in a trailer, Becky. Own it. It’s fine. The main problem with trailers is that they deteriorate much faster than traditional homes. But don’t let this landlord’s silver tongue grift you into paying $2000/mo for a trailer. Yes, I know these particular trailers are being rented for $1200/mo (for now), but the point remains.

Insurance reimbursement rates don’t vary that much by state. It’s why the SF Bay Area has absolutely abysmal access to mental healthcare, despite being so phenomenally wealthy. Who in their right mind would work there, when you’d make 90% of your salary in Sacramento and be able to afford a house?

I don’t see how this wouldn’t be a boon for VT. MA is right there across the imaginary line in the sand, minting new mental healthcare professionals with gargantuan debts who’d be eager to find a lower cost of living.

I’m not convinced that many will move to VHCOL areas in search of patients paying out of pocket. The 1% don’t have issues with shortages. The demand for that market is already satisfied.

You should really get a pellet stove for supplemental heat… 90 kWh for a single day is horrific.

Classify single family zoning as illegal redlining and abolish it statewide via executive order. Start tearing down all these dilapidated mid-century shacks that are full of asbestos, mold, and lead, that Boomers didn’t do an honest day of work on since 1985. Replace them with 5-over-1 buildings. Have by-right construction of up to six stories with first floor commercial, for any pre-1979 house that hasn’t been officially deleaded yet. In general, start condemning buildings which fail to meet codes from 50 years ago, and grant developers the right to build 6 stories higher without a permit. Grandfathering codes has gone way too far.

The housing stock in this region is fucking disgraceful. It’s not even that it’s too expensive. It’s that so many of these buildings are barely fit for human habitation. It really is New England, eh? Both Englands are leading their continent in substandard, dangerous housing stock.

I’m surprised those two didn’t eat the dog instead. They ate everything else in sight.

Bruh I think you need to chill on the weed, it’s making you paranoid… Nashua cops are way too fucking lazy to do anything like that. American cops barely even show up to work these days. Lazy fucking pigs.

Mind you, it doesn’t necessarily have to be rooftop solar either. A subdivision could pool resources together and do community solar or wind, too. At any rate, the future of the electric grid is more decentralization.

It’s both. If you look at the power grid from a high level, power lines are just the edges of the power grid, connecting producer and consumer nodes. We have an unreliable power grid because we have so many lines going all through the hinterlands, and so little redundancy. But you can’t have redundancy without density.

IMO this 20th century model is fundamentally unsustainable without massive government subsidies. It’s not Eversource’s fault. They’re never going to be able to trim enough trees on such sprawling infrastructure.

If you want grid electricity, live in town. If you want to live on an acre plot, get solar panels. If your home can’t support sewer lines, it probably shouldn’t support electrical lines either. On that note, we really need to bury more of the transmission lines connecting towns and cities, too.

It’s going to be a tough couple of decades as entitled exurban Americans slowly begin to realize that their lifestyle depends on massive government handouts and is completely unsustainable long term. A lot of them will attribute it to “live in pod eat bugs” conspiracy nonsense, but it’s just a regression to historical norms.

We only built houses in this soulless sprawl for one human worth of time. We lived in towns and villages for thousands of years, and in tribes before that. This current built environment is anti-human. We were never meant to live like this. Car addiction has been more devastating to communities than drug addiction.

By capital, do you mean Beacon Hill? We’ll all be long dead before Beacon Hill is underwater. The Seaport will be an early casualty of managed retreat, and nothing of value will be lost. Most of Boston can be saved on a reasonable timeframe.

I mean, unless by long term, you mean when all the glaciers melt and Concord, NH is also underwater. But even in the most doomer scenario imaginable, that’s not going to happen for centuries.

I was gonna say you’re really lucky, actually. Then my dumbass remembered to adjust for square footage. You’re pretty spot on for my usage.

Just so you know, that bill would’ve been about $110 this time last year. I used the same therms as last year, and my bill increased about 50%.

Don’t criticize the foreign policy responsible for this fleecing, or the bots hosted in Raytheon Acres, Virginia will downvote you into oblivion.