$18 for a beer at the 2022 PGA Championship (Tulsa Oklahoma)

[Bobby Henderson]

Good point. Maybe do some kind of monthly fee estimate that estimates high and then you get a refund with your registration like a tax refund works.

I think a tolls-only system for funding streets and highways needs to be billed the same way as most turnpike authorities run the billing on their accounts. My Oklahoma PikePass account automatically replenishes to $40 (via a credit card I have on file) whenever I pass through enough toll gates to drop the reserve below $10. I can log into my account online to see billing info and toll use history.

I've had a PikePass account since the late 1990's. It was a particular incident, at the Newcastle toll plaza on I-44, that made me finally cave-in and get a PikePass. Some guy in an old pickup truck hauling a trailer full of junk was up ahead at the toll booth arguing endlessly over what his toll should be -not wanting to pay for the axles of his trailer. He was literally causing a traffic jam. Meanwhile I saw other drivers breezing past the toll plaza at 75mph in the PikePass lane.

The first PikePass device I had looked like a soap bar. It attached to the windshield via Velcro strips. I could take it out of my Camaro and carry it in a friend's vehicle on trips up to Oklahoma City; he'd pay the gas and I'd pay the tolls using my own PikePass. Only certain motorists can get the portable transponders now, mostly for some types of commercial or government use. All us regular motorists have to use a more permanent decal; once you apply it to the windshield you can't remove it without damaging the RFID device inside. Individual PikePass accounts are tied to a specific vehicle.

Congestion pricing for tolls is a newer thing in the US. None of Oklahoma's turnpikes have it (yet). The toll roads and express lanes in the Dallas Fort Worth area all have it. Congestion pricing can make a big difference on when or if motorists will choose to take a toll road. Some traffic jams in Dallas can be so soul-crushing I'll pay the damned fee to take the express lanes to bypass a horrible jam on the LBJ Freeway's "free" lanes. My PikePass account now (finally) works on all the toll roads in Texas, thanks to interoperability agreements between various toll road agencies (not to mention some extra hardware being installed on the toll booths). Really, the United States is more than 10 years overdue on complying with a federal law that mandated a compatible toll tag reading system that worked nation-wide. Thanks to bureaucracy, red tape, politics and general foot-dragging, that still hasn't happened. But motorists in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas are all in a compatible system now.

[Leo Enticknap]

Just replace all gas taxes (federal, state and local) with a cost per mile added onto your yearly registration fee.

That would have two undesirable consequences. 1 - it would encourage people to drive fuel inefficient vehicles, because, presumably, the per mile tax would be the same regardless of whether you drove a 50 MPG Prius or a 5 MPG Hummer. 2 - it would punish those who through no fault of their own, have to live a long distance from their workplace, because homes aren't affordable anywhere closer. So a billionaire who lives in Beverly Hills and works in Hollywood (5 miles or so) would pay a lot more than I do, living in Loma Linda and working in Fountain Valley (57 miles). I suppose you could mitigate this by making commute miles tax deductible at the IRS rate, though.

[Bobby Henderson]

Actually Lyle wrote the comment: "Just replace all gas taxes (federal, state and local) with a cost per mile added onto your yearly registration fee."

it would punish those who through no fault of their own, have to live a long distance from their workplace, because homes aren't affordable anywhere closer.

This is a key reason why I believe "New Urbanism" is mostly a lie. This philosophy of city planning where people live and work within city centers looks great on paper. Residents can literally walk or ride a bicycle to work in a short time rather than spending a bunch of time on highways polluting the atmosphere. City center densification can limit urban/suburban sprawl. There would be all kinds of benefits across multiple categories if only the philosophy could actually work in real life.

Greed in the residential real estate market makes the dreams of New Urbanism impossible. Just look at all the price-gouging going on right now. There's plenty of loud complaints about high gasoline prices. Not nearly as much is being said for extreme housing costs. That's because a larger segment of the American public is in on the racket.

The philosophy of New Urbanism cannot work without balance and availability of housing ACROSS ALL INCOME CLASSES. If downtown housing is affordable only to high income people then the philosophy falls apart. The philosophy becomes just as unrealistic as communist utopia.

Trendy downtown areas depend very heavily on all kinds of lower-wage service industry labor to staff restaurants, theaters, retail stores, night clubs, etc. People working those jobs pay extra penalties by having to commute downtown from other areas of a city. Not everyone working in a downtown office tower is pulling in a six figure income either. The cost of riding a city bus or train daily adds up very fast, not to mention the penalty of lost time. Commuting in a vehicle can get expensive too when factoring in things like parking costs.

What ends up happening is a high rate of employee turnover. At first a young adult will think it's cool to have a job downtown until the financial reality sets in. Then he/she will be forced to leave that job for a similar paying one closer to home. The downtown businesses are able to survive on this scam because there is still a steady supply of young, naïve workers who don't know better. With costs for fuel, food, rent and everything else continuing to rise and wages not keeping pace that game may not play out much longer.

Replacing the gasoline tax with a cost per mile use tax would likely worsen this scenario and make it more clear to service industry employees that working in a downtown douchebag district is a very bad proposition. Many service industry businesses have been struggling bad enough for labor due in part to the untenable balance of low wages and high living costs. Downtown locations amplify that imbalance.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This is a key reason why I believe "New Urbanism" is mostly a lie. This philosophy of city planning where people live and work within city centers looks great on paper. Residents can literally walk or ride a bicycle to work in a short time rather than spending a bunch of time on highways polluting the atmosphere. City center densification can limit urban/suburban sprawl. There would be all kinds of benefits across multiple categories if only the philosophy could actually work in real life.

It certainly can work, because there are already places where it works pretty well. Nothing is perfect, but the Netherlands has many small and medium sized cities that have centers that are walkable and pretty livable. Places where you can work within a walking or biking distance and places where you can get all of your daily needs in a walking distance. I used to live more urban, but now I don't take the car to the supermarket, I usually just walk there. I used to have two or even three fridges, fully stocked, I've since stopped doing that and simply buy the stuff I need on the day I need it or maybe the day before. It actually saves a lot of waste, as less food tends to get spoiled.

There is also a lot of urban sprawl here, most of it built between the 1960s and 1980s, which is almost impossible to live in, without a car. Those places are, by all means, awful and completely inefficient. Many of those have been designed like mazes, often featuring random cul de sacs, because people like to get lost in endless urban mazes I guess...

Due to a mixture of greed and short-sighted politics, there is now a big shortage of livable housing though. Prices have skyrocketed to the moon and back, which is an ever-increasing problem for anybody entering the housing market and will eventually drive out lower income classes out of certain urban environments, because they simply can't afford to live there anymore.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think I mentioned it earlier, but "New Urbanism" sort of works in a lot of European cities because those cities are not new at all. Many of them pre-date cars, railroads and even the industrial revolution by hundreds of years or more. The layout of those cities were designed with pedestrian travel in mind.

Europe has also had another advantage of major population centers being more closely spaced together than they are here in the US. That made it more feasible to build out complex city to city railroad networks as well as subways and other kinds of commuter rail within cities. Eastern Seaboard cities in the US (Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington) are among the few American cities that have any kind of European style function and layout to them. Likewise they're among the few places in the US where it's possible to get around without owning a car. Most American cities were built around car culture.

Many American city planners have bought into the ideals of New Urbanism and are trying to use various techniques to make cities more bike and pedestrian friendly as well as promote housing densification. Politicians and business people both come in and fuck up things with their money making angles. Trendy downtown living? Sounds great! Let's price it for people making $200,000 per year and up!

Due to a mixture of greed and short-sighted politics, there is now a big shortage of livable housing though. Prices have skyrocketed to the moon and back, which is an ever-increasing problem for anybody entering the housing market and will eventually drive out lower income classes out of certain urban environments, because they simply can't afford to live there anymore.

The lack of reasonably priced housing within a practical distance to one's work place threatens so many of the basic functions of our society. I've gone on and on before about what the extreme costs of parenthood are doing to our birth rates. Americans in particular take so many things for granted. We all expect people to wait on us hand and foot when eating out at a restaurant, going to the movies, etc. We really expect that when visiting some trendy location in a big city. How is that going to work if those service businesses are severely short of employees? How are the property values on those downtown condos going to fare when the surrounding "quality of life" takes a big hit, when that trendy area isn't so trendy anymore? We have severe structural imbalances baked deep into our economy and they're going to yield serious long term consequences. These supply chain crunches we've had to endure lately could be a small taste of things to come in the decades ahead.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

If you think these prices are high, try going to the Kentucky Derby some time... $25 for a beer in the infield area and up to $250 for a cocktail, depending on the Bourbon used. Give me a break! And they end up losing their bank account on horse bets. These people are nuts! Can't even imagine what the prices are in the Stands...

[Leo Enticknap]

We all expect people to wait on us hand and foot when eating out at a restaurant, going to the movies, etc. We really expect that when visiting some trendy location in a big city. How is that going to work if those service businesses are severely short of employees? How are the property values on those downtown condos going to fare when the surrounding "quality of life" takes a big hit, when that trendy area isn't so trendy anymore? We have severe structural imbalances baked deep into our economy and they're going to yield serious long term consequences. These supply chain crunches we've had to endure lately could be a small taste of things to come in the decades ahead.

A rant writer in a British newspaper yesterday made a similar argument, in respect of the meltdowns at airports that happened last week:

In post-Covid, workshy Britain, where millions experienced a foretaste of retirement through the furlough scheme, everyone wants to go on holiday but far fewer people want to work. We now see the result: too many passengers and not enough flight attendants, counter staff, pilots and maintenance crew.

We keep being told, in connection with the cost of living crisis, that we are “back in the 1970s” – yet 50 years ago, most Britons had no more than four weeks’ holiday. Now, many people expect several long holidays a year – and think they should be able to afford them without having to go through the tedious business of going out to work in the interim.

I wonder how many of those effing and blinding about the queues at airports because there is only one worker to check the tickets of an entire planeload of passengers have themselves declined to go into the office since Covid. Airport chaos is the living embodiment of a society where millions have either retired early or have assumed the right to work from home. It might work in some cases, but just try flying a plane from your spare bedroom.

What he doesn't mention is the likelihood that many civil aviation workers are now paid so poorly and are subjected to such poor working conditions that they are voting with their feet from the industry; and that the same applies to many other service sector industries, ours included (the managers of theaters I service tell me anecdotally that there has been an uptick in abusive customers since the post-covid reopening).

[Bobby Henderson]

I think most Americans in upper middle class and higher income categories are grossly out of touch with the financial struggles people working in the bottom rungs of our society have to face. They don't know what it's like because they've never lived that kind of experience. Or if they've toiled in low pay, crappy jobs they did it decades ago when many aspects of life were very different than today.

It's one thing to just not know any better and take an entire class of workforce for granted. What I find offensive is the generally spiteful, punching down attitude some of these people openly display toward service industry workers or anyone else not pulling in a big paycheck. They're regarding people who work low pay jobs as if they've committed some kind of crime. Servers in restaurants, people working behind counters, etc all have to put up with a lot of abuse from customers. The jerks probably don't stop to realize somebody has to do those crappy jobs. Otherwise big parts of our daily lives stop functioning.

I don't know if the issue of customers abusing service industry workers has grown worse in recent years. It feels like it has, but maybe that's because so many instances are caught on camera.

A big part of the American public wants service industry workers paid as little as possible since they're losers and need to be punished. The minimum wage in Oklahoma is still $7.25 per hour; for tipped employees it's $2.13 per hour. Any suggestions of increases are met with angry statements like, "flipping hamburgers is not a career!" Yeah, no kidding. But if that burger joint is open Monday-Friday, during the day, while school is in session, grown adults have to flip those burgers. Or maybe we just need to close down all those restaurants during the day and then only open them for an hour in the evening so the jobs can be done by high school kids living at home with their parents.

If you think these prices are high, try going to the Kentucky Derby some time... $25 for a beer in the infield area and up to $250 for a cocktail, depending on the Bourbon used. Give me a break! And they end up losing their bank account on horse bets. These people are nuts! Can't even imagine what the prices are in the Stands...

The Kentucky Derby is another douchey event I don't care to see in person. Throw in the Super Bowl for good measure.

I do find it disgusting what has happened with the prices of concert tickets over the last decade or so. The face value price of tickets has skyrocketed. And the ticket re-selling industry (cough: scalpers) greatly exaggerate those prices. I'm not playing along with that.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I think most Americans in upper middle class and higher income categories are grossly out of touch with the financial struggles people working in the bottom rungs of our society have to face. They don't know what it's like because they've never lived that kind of experience. Or if they've toiled in low pay, crappy jobs they did it decades ago when many aspects of life were very different than today.

It's one thing to just not know any better and take an entire class of workforce for granted. What I find offensive is the generally spiteful, punching down attitude some of these people openly display toward service industry workers or anyone else not pulling in a big paycheck. They're regarding people who work low pay jobs as if they've committed some kind of crime. Servers in restaurants, people working behind counters, etc all have to put up with a lot of abuse from customers. The jerks probably don't stop to realize somebody has to do those crappy jobs. Otherwise big parts of our daily lives stop functioning.

I don't know if the issue of customers abusing service industry workers has grown worse in recent years. It feels like it has, but maybe that's because so many instances are caught on camera.

A big part of the American public wants service industry workers paid as little as possible since they're losers and need to be punished. The minimum wage in Oklahoma is still $7.25 per hour; for tipped employees it's $2.13 per hour. Any suggestions of increases are met with angry statements like, "flipping hamburgers is not a career!" Yeah, no kidding. But if that burger joint is open Monday-Friday, during the day, while school is in session, grown adults have to flip those burgers. Or maybe we just need to close down all those restaurants during the day and then only open them for an hour in the evening so the jobs can be done by high school kids living at home with their parents.



The Kentucky Derby is another douchey event I don't care to see in person. Throw in the Super Bowl for good measure.

I do find it disgusting what has happened with the prices of concert tickets over the last decade or so. The face value price of tickets has skyrocketed. And the ticket re-selling industry (cough: scalpers) greatly exaggerate those prices. I'm not playing along with that.

Totally douchy events for sure.... It's looking.more like those in charge would just as soon completely get rid of the middle class all together... I used to go.to hear the Utah Symphony almost every Saturday night when I lived there. I only did not get a season ticket because of all my traveling servicing Movie theaters. It cost $40 bucks for really nice main floor tickets. Today that price has quadroopled... Same here in Nashville, although I did go to Blue Man Group for 60 bucks a ticket.

[Mike Blakesley]

I do find it disgusting what has happened with the prices of concert tickets over the last decade or so. The face value price of tickets has skyrocketed. And the ticket re-selling industry (cough: scalpers) greatly exaggerate those prices. I'm not playing along with that.

This is one nice thing about living in a lower populated area like I do -- there are basically no scalpers here. I've never bought a concert ticket from anyone besides the actual venue where the show is. If you want to go to a concert you can probably go to it, if you aren't too picky about where you sit. One thing that has permeated the concert industry everywhere including here is the scourge of "VIP seats" -- the front two rows (or more) are held out for the promoters to sell at ridiculous prices, which they justify by throwing in a T-shirt and a meet-and-greet with the artist. I refuse to play THAT game. The other common one is the outrageous "service charges," which our nearby arena charges up to $26 per ticket for some of the higher profile events. That's gotten a nope from me for quite a few shows. We're pretty picky about what concerts we'll see these days.

[Bobby Henderson]

Lawton isn't a big enough city to attract a lot of currently popular, top level music acts. We do get some big names from time to time who play at Fort Sill's Polo Field on the 4th of July weekend. Outside of that, most who play here are old "dinosaur" bands. And the prices of those tickets are crazy now. We're talking bands that may not have any original members, such as The Temptations.

10 years ago Brad Paisley played a free concert on Fort Sill (open to Lawton residents too) and it wasn't on the 4th of July either. He just made Lawton a tour stop and had a fleet of semi trucks bring his real tour stage here. I thought it was very cool of the guy to do that.

Recently, the current version of Quiet Riot played a concert at Apache Casino's music venue. Bassist Rudy Sarzo is the only original member left in the band. The casino was charging something like $80 a ticket and far more for VIP seats. Around 15 years ago Quiet Riot played here in Lawton (at the Diamondback Club in nearby Medicine Park). I think I paid $25 for my ticket. All four original members of the band were at that show. I took my vinyl LP of "Metal Health" to the show and got it autographed by all four band members. It was a good concert, but I kind of felt sorry for the band having to play such a small venue. I remember when they were packing 20,000 seat arenas in the 1980's.

Companies like Ticketmaster are a big part of the problem over concert ticket price gouging. They enable a lot of bad practices. And they use monopolistic control over many prominent venues across the country. If a particular band wants to play at a specific NBA/NHL arena they're forced to use Ticketmaster. Of course there are other ticketing companies pulling the same shit.

Back in the mid 2000's when I saw Nine Inch Nails at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City I was able to get good tickets by being a NIN fan club member. Their web site sent out two factor authentication steps to real NIN fans to fuck over corporate bots who buy giant blocks of seats at once. Trent Reznor hasn't been able to do things like that to help fans nearly as much since then. The cartel of ticket selling companies and arenas have too much control and need to be broken up like any other monopoly.

One thing I find sad (or funny) is the people filling the best seats at these concerts are often not real, true fans of the music act on stage. They're just people who could afford to pay the most money to get those tickets. They don't have the energy of real fans.

[Leo Enticknap]

What I find offensive is the generally spiteful, punching down attitude some of these people openly display toward service industry workers or anyone else not pulling in a big paycheck. They're regarding people who work low pay jobs as if they've committed some kind of crime. Servers in restaurants, people working behind counters, etc all have to put up with a lot of abuse from customers. The jerks probably don't stop to realize somebody has to do those crappy jobs. Otherwise big parts of our daily lives stop functioning.

And during covid, that punching down attitude trickled down from the very top, i.e. government. During the first wave of kneejerk lockdowns and business closures, federal, state, and local government divided the population into those it labeled "essential" workers (most of whom, with the notable exception of healthcare and supermarket workers, were employed by government), who were promoted and propagandized as heroes; and "non-essential" workers, who were told to lock themselves in their homes and make themselves invisible upon pain of criminal penalties. Working from home became the new middle class status symbol, meaning that the lowest rung of the social and political ladder became "non-essential" workers who could not work from home. This of course included most of the leisure industries, ours included. So not only are workers in movie theaters, restaurants, etc. poorly paid and having to put up with poor working conditions, but they know that they will be the first to be laid off if and when another covid-like public emergency happens. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that these businesses are having trouble recruiting and retaining quality staff.

[Bobby Henderson]

Major companies have a nasty habit of treating employees like they're cattle rather than human beings. Some corporate chiefs are even openly hostile to employees. We saw that from Elon Musk this past week in comments about ordering everyone back to work in person and by the way 10% are going to get fired pretty soon.

My late friend Jack Connor worked as a theater manager for Carmike Cinemas over 30 years. He worked longer hours than anyone else I knew. Carmike used his ridiculous work schedule as a crutch to not hire enough hourly workers. The higher ups were always giving him shit about payroll. When Jack was finally going to retire and move to Oregon with his wife (where she had a job opportunity waiting) he died of a heart attack while packing for the move. It has been almost 10 years since this happened. It left me with the vibe Carmike didn't give two shits about Jack and what he literally gave of his life to that company.

When there is so much open hatred toward people working at the bottom levels of our economy it shouldn't be surprising so many job positions in those levels are going unfilled. When the pay is crappy and often not a livable wage, when the work conditions are terrible and treatment from managers and customers is often terrible why would anyone in their right mind take such a job? Why would they stay in such a job for any significant amount of time? Yet the big companies demand loyalty from these bottom rung workers. And the expectation from the general public is those jobs need to be filled. Those lazy people need to go to work!

The truth is the service industry has relied heavily on people where working is optional. Elderly people drawing Social Security, pensions, etc can opt out. Married mothers with kids are also opting out. A bunch of Americans have died over the past 2 years -over 1 million from COVID-19, 1 million each from cancer and heart disease about 600,000 from diabetes. We're losing 100,000 per year from drug overdoses, 45,000 per year from suicide. All that death does make an impact on the labor force.

As I said earlier, the American public takes a lot of shit for granted. They need a Goddamned reality check.

[Leo Enticknap]

We saw that from Elon Musk this past week in comments about ordering everyone back to work in person and by the way 10% are going to get fired pretty soon.

He does take after the yellow-haired individual, discussion about whom is not allowed per this forum's rules, in that he tends to spout off a lot on social media in order to grab attention. He also wrote, "the more senior you are, the more visible you need to be," which I also agree with. I'm essentially on his side as far as working from home is concerned, because (a) most Tesla workers earn a pretty reasonable salary, from what I gather, and (b) you can't build cars on a laptop in your spare bedroom. And I do believe that having everyone in a workplace department together in the same place, at least on a regular basis, is good for productivity. As a field tech, I sometimes go for weeks at a time without setting foot in our office/shop. When I do, for the first time after 2-3 weeks on solid field calls and/or OOT, I usually manage to get a lot more done face-to-face with the 2-3 co-workers I work closest with than all the emails and phone calls over the preceding weeks accomplished.

[Mike Blakesley]

I think a lot of frontline workers have taken the employment shortage to mean that now they are the ones giving the orders. While I agree that employers need to treat their employees with dignity and respect and pay them a decent wage, that doesn't mean the employees get to decide when and from where they work. Not all employees are productive in a work-from-home environment, and not all supervisors work best through Zoom either. The employer should be the one who gets to decide on the best "work format."

I don't agree with Musk's "come back or else" strategy. He should allow people to make their own case for working from home on an individual basis, and if their previous performance (and job type) warrants it, why not allow it? Rent those offices out to somebody else.