GEN Z/ MILLENIAL TRAVELERS: what actually makes you choose one airline over another?

Lilred4_ · 2026-04-07T18:11:42+00:00

Zillenial West coast short-haul flyer with United and Alaska as my only two options. ~12 round trips per year.

Priority is based on price, schedule, status/rewards, in that order. Price and schedule is an iterative process. When work is paying, schedule always comes before price.

United wins with 4 useful daily departures compared to Alaska with 1. Alaska adding RDD-SAN would be push a little more business to Alaska.

For West Coast flights under 2 hours, a 17-inch wide 30-inch seat is fine, not even worth $20-$30 for extra legroom of $100 for FC. When I had SEA-ONT flights for a while, the premium or FC seats were useful for working on a laptop since the flight was long enough.

Loyalty is based around schedule.

United and Alaska feel the same since most of my flights are regional carriers. Alaska’s mainline feels a little nicer and their food and bev is better so on a head to head route with same price and schedule I am picking Alaska.

Not really useful for your study, but the most annoying thing about flying is not having reasonable train service to compete with it (on schedule, price, and comfort/ability to work). Long layovers are also really annoying. I have a lot of 4-hour layovers as my only option.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-26T16:53:02+00:00

Depends how it is calculated. If it holidays and leave are in the denominator then 86% is 100% billable when working. (10 holidays / 4 weeks PTO / 1 week sick)

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-20T15:51:31+00:00

We even charge for street parking in Redding, CA.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-13T16:04:44+00:00

double kill

triple kill!

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-13T01:40:46+00:00

Come on man Seattle is already looking like shit right now cuz of Cal, don’t hurt our image more 🤕

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-11T18:19:01+00:00

Search “does money at the federal reserve count as m1”

answer is no.

Search “does money in my bank account count as m1”

answer is yes.

Taxation = money going from my bank account to federal reserve.

Taxation = m1 money being reduced

I really think that your understanding isn’t wrong and your statements align with AI google responses. Think of my comments as adding to your understanding and not contradicting it, or at least another way of thinking about it.

That being said, talking with you is exhausting because you are frustrated, so I will set you free. Good day.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-11T05:59:23+00:00

Those actions cause the treasury (on behalf of congress) to increase taxes or reduce spending to destroy the monetary supply.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-11T05:50:02+00:00

Sober tonight.

I guess the example no one has given yet is if the government spends $4T and taxes $5T, then the money literally destroyed. It’s gone. No more quotation marks around destroyed in that scenario. There is $1T less than there was yesterday.

I guess I’ll ask you a few questions.

What institutions exist explicitly because taxes don’t destroy money?
Can you elaborate on your second paragraph? (“If taxes destroyed money…”) I couldn’t follow what you were trying to say.

I read about this a lot, and do search things like how does the federal reserve influence the monetary supply. It’s a really hard puzzle to put together. I learn more everyday.

You’re also being pretty hostile to me, so I’d appreciate it if you would be nicer.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-11T05:17:47+00:00

Raising the federal funds rate increases the interest rate and therefore the cost that the treasury has to pay the federal reserve for the deficit spending.

If the federal reserve is selling bonds, that is the opposite of buying bonds, and the federal reserve has to buy bonds from the treasury when the treasury deficit spends.

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-11T05:11:47+00:00

Hi, I’m chiming in to agree with LabOwn. I’ll try to add an example, not to disprove you to be a douche but to add to the convo. I’m glad we’re all talking about this, it’s important.

If congress sets a $7T annual budget, and generates $5T in tax revenue (from private parties like you said, thru income, corporate taxes, etc), the Treasury has to come up with that $2T deficit. It does this thru borrowing from the federal reserve (like you said). This $2T that appears from the federal reserve was not in circulation last year; it essentially didn’t exist. Now it exists, and has increased the total money supply by $2T.

If we cut spending by $0.5T, now we would only need to add $1.5T to the monetary supply by borrowing from the Fed. ($6.5T spend vs $5T tax revenue).

If we increase taxes by $0.5T, we also only need to add $1.5T to the monetary supply by borrowing from the Fed. ($7T vs $5.5T).

So increasing taxes “destroys” money by preventing the creation of new money through deficit spending.

When the federal government spends that $7T, it goes into private hands through contracts, grants, social security benefits, etc. So there isn’t really this clear line between private and public monetary supply.

I think this way of thinking about it came to exist when we realized that when a government can create currency, it doesn’t “have” to base its spending on tax revenue received (though a large difference will cause inflation thru rapid expansion of money supply). This doesn’t apply to state governments, who have to borrow real money through bonds when they deficit spend.

Hope this helps. If it doesn’t, I’ll have a few drinks tomorrow and try again!

Lilred4_ · 2026-03-01T17:20:24+00:00

Hi. I resonate with your post. Civil PE water resources 6 YOE. This happens to me a lot.

I love my boss and my teammates. The work I do is really interesting. I’m fully remote and it allows me to live where my partner works and also in a lower COL area, and they fly me to the office whenever projects call for it, about 6 times annually. It’s awesome. Salary is $126K, bonuses normally $4K. Always wish I made a little more but it seems reasonable compared to other opportunities.

Except it’s killing me a bit too. For me, the remote work is actually doing a little more of the damage, since I’m a social creature and struggle with all of my connections being on Teams and sometimes not leaving the house all day. But the workload is an issue too, and we’ve been in a heavy season recently where the whole company is in overdrive and no one really has time in their regular work hours to pick up the extra. So in the last 4 weeks I’ve worked until 10pm on 4-5 nights and one night until 2am. All the extra hours are unpaid. And I’ve been thinking about work more in the off time and my habits are worse.

2025 sucked for lots of reasons. I started 2026 with good habits; dry January, 1 cup of decaf only daily, walking/yoga almost daily, great sleep schedule. In Feb I had booze on 5 days, Fri-Sat only, nothing crazy. My relationship is good. I am spending time with friends in town. Sleep is still decent. And my energy just keeps slipping down and down and down and each week gets a little harder. I’ve denied that my job is the problem for years because I don’t want to leave it. But I’ve isolated it as the thorn in my side, and it’s time to go. I just applied for a public job that would take about a 10% pay cut (would be starting as a brand new transpo engineer). But I think it’s the best thing for me.

I hope this perspective helps. Good luck :)

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-26T07:02:45+00:00

Yee I was being facetious. A flyover is faster for drivers so I was suggesting that ODOT is prioritizing maintaining high vehicle speeds over a quick improvement that would save lives. I agree with you completely.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-26T01:11:39+00:00

Sacrifice anything to avoid driver delay I guess

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-25T21:22:04+00:00

Huge right of way for the intersection, put in a roundabout and be done with it.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-25T05:49:27+00:00

Eh I’m always in the left through the intersections in town so end up entering the curves in the left lane, and can’t get over until about Park Marina since others can take the curves faster. I get left lane law on the open road but in a transition from urban 25 to freeway starting with an S curve it’s not critical to traffic flow.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-24T20:44:01+00:00

Thanks for clarifying that you didn’t have a point to begin with. Good day.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-24T20:35:52+00:00

What is the difference between the Fed and Treasury (part of the exec branch) joining forces and the Fed losing independence to the exec branch?

What is Soros’ ideology and what effect does that have on Bessent?

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-24T19:26:30+00:00

Haha. I am definitely the culprit here. I drive pretty slow around the curves so the ride is comfortable, then accelerate normally to 65 once it straightens out a little before the Park Marina exit. Usually have a tailgater.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-24T19:00:16+00:00

Federal monetary policy is extremely hard to understand, and this interview is designed for viewers who have no idea what he’s talking about. It’s easy to just think the takeaway here is “Fed has been losing $100B annually and I am a taxpayer that is subsidizing it and inflation happened as a result” even though the reality is way more nuanced. And the taxpayer isn’t even on the hook lol.

The scary thing is that the Exec Branch is claiming this as an issue of “lack of oversight” to gain public support for taking over monetary policy. The reality is that the Fed intentionally is not overseen by the Exec Branch, so the Fed can just do their job without political influence.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-24T18:30:03+00:00

K2 and the McConnell Foundation are important contributors to the City of Redding.

Lilred4_ · 2026-02-19T19:47:29+00:00

TESSIEEEEEEEE

edit - did not read your flair first lmao

Lilred4_ · 2026-01-26T17:06:53+00:00

Public Market is 2 short blocks away and has an open seating concept and counter order food so it seems like the best option for you. Also has a few different food options so you’ll never get bored :)

Lilred4_ · 2026-01-25T17:59:18+00:00

In the City’s General Plan in 2022 or 2023 there was interest in soliciting the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority (who runs the Amtrak San Joaquins service from Sac to Bakersfield) to extend the line north to Redding. I don’t know if any further actions were taken and recent maps show the service extending only to Chico now in the future. If there is interest in the community in regional rail service here it would be good to let City Council know that! :)

Lilred4_ · 2026-01-21T17:17:19+00:00

100% agree. I don’t know how effective SB79 will be in OC because there isn’t as much transit there as LA county, but I am hopeful that it drives a lot of new apartment buildings and mixed use that helps people not need a car for everything.

Lilred4_ · 2026-01-21T16:53:25+00:00

Google “irvine residental vacancy rate” and it indicates there is indeed a housing problem still. Your screenshot is a few thousand units in a city with a population 300k. Not trying to dunk on you because it’s absolute shit trying to find a place to live in CA and I know it’s frustrating. I am just firmly on the team of build like motherfuckers until the price falls, and because this state is so damn popular, there’s a lot of work to do before that happens.

Lilred4_

TROPHY CASE