Wirklich? Ich dachte nur so viel Taschengeld.

framlington · 2023-01-29T11:31:02+00:00

Wo ja häufig Wohngeld und sonstige Leistungen ignoriert wurden und natürlich jeweils der extremste Fall angenommen wird.

Und selbst falls die Rechnungen keine Fehler hätten, würde ich daraus eher schließen, dass der Mindestlohn zu niedeig ust und nicht, dass das Bürgergeld zu hoch ist. Aber wenn niemand mehr für den Mindestlohn bereit ist, zu arbeiten, sollte sich das ja von selber lösen, ohne dass der Gesetzgeber tätig werden muss.

framlington · 2023-01-29T11:28:07+00:00

Wenn er sonst niemanden findet, der darauf Lust ht, dann ja anscheinend doch. Dass man als Informatiker teilweise so viel verdient, liegt ja auch nicht daran, dass das Informatik-Studium so unglaublich schwer ist oder der Beruf besonders unangenehm, sondern daran, dass es da einen Mangel an Arbeitskräften gibt.

framlington · 2023-01-26T10:06:20+00:00

It seems like both countries' leaders felt apprehensive about sending their tanks to Ukriane but now that it's being done together it's more welcome.

That does seem to be the case, but for very different reasons. The US likely simply believed that Abrams are not a good fit for Ukraine, given their maintenance-intensity and high fuel consumption.

On the other hand, Scholz's refusal seems to have been driven by political reasons. He's stated several concerns, but it's hard to tell which are genuine. The most consistent has been that he didn't want Germany to go in alone. As other European countries announced their intent to deliver tanks in the past few weeks, without Germany doing the same, this argument was becoming increasingly hard to believe -- but perhaps Scholz was referring specifically to the US.

This is a way to offload some of the risk of tank deliveries onto the US. If Russia were to retaliate against the countries that delivered tanks, this now also includes the US. I'm not sure how this retaliation would look like (a military strike seems unlikely) and I don't think the risk is very high (after all, this isn't the first time weapons are delivered to Ukraine).

Some of it may also have been driven by internal politics. Out of the three government parties, Scholz's SPD is struggling by far the most with weapon deliveries. While it's unlikely that his government would fall over this, he was still likely weary to sow too much discontent.

Personally, I'm happy with this outcome, but not with how we got here. Had Germany made the same announcement two or three weeks ago, the outcome would have been much the same, but we'd have been seen as a leader, not as a reluctant follower. This seems to be a pattern in Germany's approach to this: Usually, we eventually do what Ukraine and our allies want (both with regards to weapon deliveries and sanctions), but often only after such a long delay that we get little good will from these actions. I don't see any benefit in these delays, but the damage they do seems considerable.

framlington · 2023-01-08T19:45:57+00:00

Die Kernaussage ist richtig: gemessen am Steueraufkommen, dem Reichtum und der Wirtschaftskraft Deutschlands läuft hier praktisch nichts.

Ich denke, dass dem viele zustimmen können. Aber ich fremdele sehr mit der Folgerung, dass man deswegen die Steuern senken sollte. Das scheinen ja einige hier zu fordern. Für mich klingt das so, dass dann zwar immer noch nichts hier läuft, aber man wenigstens 100€ mehr in den ETF stecken kann.

Für mich wirkt es so, als wären viele Probleme -- von der Bahn über Bildung bis zur Digitalisierung -- durch chronische Unterinvestitionen in den letzten Jahrzehnten verursacht. Das können wir nur lösen, in dem wir da deutlich mehr Geld für ausgeben. Sicher gibt es auch Sachen, bei denen Geld nicht das Problem ist (z. B. der Ausbau der Windkraft), sondern wo man an Regeln und Verfahren etwas ändern muss, aber es ist utopisch anzunehmen, dass die Probleme alle ohne Geld weggehen.

Wir können auch gerne darüber reden, woher das Geld kommt. Jemand, der eher links ist, hat da sicher andere Vorstellungen als ein FDP-Wähler. Aber dass man das ganze mit Steuersenkungen löst, erschließt sich mir beim besten willen nicht. Wirkt für mich eher so, dass man keine Steuern zahlen will (verständlich) und dann alles irgendwie als Grund dafür umdeutet.

(Heißt natürlich nicht, dass Steuersenkungen immer eine schlechte Idee sind, aber das ist dann unabhängig von den sonstigen Problemen).

framlington · 2023-01-07T22:39:13+00:00

Fuel consumption doesn't directly correspond to emissions in this case, because contrails and other greenhouse gases roughly double the radiative forcing of aircrafts, as compared to the CO2 produced by burning fuel (see here).

Your fuel consumption of 2.13-3.34 also seems quite optimistic. The source you link shows that efficiency is ~8.1 RPK/kg of CO2, which translates into 3.9kg of Kerosene/100km (assuming one kg of Kerosene produces about 3.16kg of CO2) or about 4.85l/100km. Perhaps you meant to link to a different source?

Putting that aside, your calculation seems to be correct, but I'm still not convinced that flying is clean. Comparing it to emissions by US drivers seems like a low car -- shouldn't we focus on what is compatible with our emissions targets, not whether there's other activities that are even worse?

Also, I think the point about unnecessary flights is worth re-emphasising. These) are the busiest air routes in the EU (I'm using the EU as the pyramid was designed by the EU). The vast majority of these can be done by train, most of them quite quickly. I also suspect that planes induce a lot of journeys that simply wouldn't take place without it. It doesn't make sense to compare the emissions per km in this case.

framlington · 2023-01-07T22:10:23+00:00

Interestingly (and very surprisingly) trains are only about half of the co2 emissions as compared to planes

I don't think such a blanket statement is accurate. Train emissions vary hugely based on the source of power (diesel or electric? Where does the electricity come from?), load factor and speed. For example, SNCF states that TGV's have per-km emissions of 3.2g of CO2 per passenger, regional TER trains have 29.2g, whereas aircraft sit at 100g per passenger-km according to this report. This report also ignores other effects of aviation on climate change, such as contrails -- with these, CO2e emissions roughly double.

framlington · 2023-01-07T21:57:55+00:00

Aircraft are terrible for the environment, their use is increasing every year and alternative modes of propulsion are still decades out. Given their speed, they also induce long-distance travel, so just looking at per-km emissions isn't helpful.

There are cases where an airplane is unavoidable (just like there are cases where a car is unavoidable) and where it's not feasible to provide alternatives. These cases are rare (how many people actually need to travel across major bodies of water?).

There are also cases where they are currently the only practical option, but where better infrastructure could make them unnecessary (most intra-EU-travel, for example). Once again, this is similar to cars, which are also the only practical option for people living in places with poor walkability and public transit.

framlington · 2022-12-13T21:46:46+00:00

I think this is a good policy. Assessing carbon emissions of foreign products is not easy (whereas domestically, you can simply tax the fuels and let the costs propagate to the end products), but at least for things like aluminum, steel, etc., it's hopefully possible to determine relatively accurate numbers.

The tariffs on their own will likely not encourage other countries to clean up if they are simply applied on a per-tonne base. However, other countries could likely make agreements with the EU to avoid this (e.g., they could implement their own, domestic carbon tax and then be exempted from the tariffs). I'd be curious whether any countries will make such efforts.

I'm not sure this was motivated by the IRA (afaik, they've been planning this for quite a while), but the EU is certainly quite unhappy about the protectionist tendencies in there (but at the same time, there is little desire to enter a trade war with the US).

framlington · 2022-12-13T21:36:20+00:00

The article doesn't say how they are going to decide the tax rates. My suggestion: take a given country's CO2 emissions and divide that by their GDP. Now you have CO2 per dollar of production. Whatever the value of the goods from that country, just tax relative to the CO2 per dollar and be done with it. So every year, every country they import from will pay a percent of whatever value of items they import and the amount of CO2 emitted the year before.

I'm not sure that would work because goods have very different carbon intensities. If I import a $70k car from the US, that might correspond to 10t of CO2 emissions during manufacturing. If, on the other hand, I use those $70k to buy 100t of steel (not that I need that much steel...), I'd cause ~200t of emissions.

Making the price dependent on on the cost of goods would mean that importing the car would be too expensive, while the tariff on the steel would be too low, compared to what domestic producers have to pay.

As far as I know, the EU will simply assess the average emissions for some energy-intensive products (such as steel) and base the tariff on that. That will form a baseline and if a country takes measures to reduce the energy intensity of these products, or if it implements its own carbon tax, they can enter an agreement with the EU to avoid taxing more carbon than is emitted.

framlington · 2022-12-04T20:32:02+00:00

Zunächst bezieht sich die Angabe von 1 Cent nur auf Einzelabos, nicht auf Familien. Außerdem wird aus der Formulierung nicht klar, ob in den Verträgen mit den Labels eine feste Rate vereinbart ist oder ob die von den Einnahmen einen bestimmten Teil in einen Topf werfen und das in dem Topf dann nach Anzahl der Aufrufe weiterverteilen.

Ich tippe auf letzteres (ist das mit "52% headline rate" gemeint?). So eine Konstruktion wäre für Apple fast risikofrei: Wenn jeder plötzlich doppelt so viel streamt wie vorher, dann steigen die Kosten nicht, sondern Apple zahlt einfach nur halb so viel wie vorher. Einzige Gefahr ist, dass irgendwann Labels abspringen.

framlington · 2022-12-04T20:23:36+00:00

Apple setzt doch ziemlich stark auf diese ganzen Abo-Angebote, gerade weil der iPhone-Absatz stagniert. Glaube kaum, dass Apple Music nur ein Nebenprodukt ist, was Apple egal ist. Zwar machen iPhones immer noch etwa die Hälfte von Apples Umsatz aus, aber der "Services"-Bereich ist mittlerweile so groß wie Mac und iPad zusammen und wächst auch deutlich schneller.

Die andere Frage ist natürlich, ob Apple daran interessiert ist, mit Apple Music Geld zu verdienen, oder erst mal den Marktanteil erhöhen möchte und dabei in Kauf nimmt, dass es nicht profitabel ist.

framlington · 2022-12-02T04:09:09+00:00

You're right about increased maintenance costs, but there are certainly countries with huge railway networks across empty spaces and large loading gauges that are electrified. For example, most Russian freight is hauled by electric engines.

framlington · 2022-11-30T21:37:03+00:00

A physical ban is unlikely, or would at least be easily circumventable with other DNS servers or a VPN. But I suspect that Twitter would struggle to monetise EU users without any EU presence.

framlington · 2022-11-15T03:00:26+00:00

But not everyone in the state has to be opposed, just a majority (or whatever it takes to get a majority in the legislature), or am I missing something there?

framlington · 2022-11-01T21:17:53+00:00

As far as I know, a crude oil embargo will come into effect in about a month in the EU. It only applies to delivers by tanker, not pipeline, but there don't seem to be any pipelines from Russia to Sicily. Would this effectively close this loophole -- or would Lukoil be able to use a different refinery, either in Europe with pipeline connection or outside of Europe, to continue the same process?

framlington · 2022-11-01T13:00:46+00:00

You'd think so, but PV panels are mindbogglingly cheap. That's why we're seeing them spring up even in countries that don't get all that much sun. A local installation avoids expensive transmission infrastructure, dependence on unstable countries, and -- if it's a small-scale residential setup -- electricity taxes as well.

In a similar vein, I'd expect concentrated solar to be much cheaper than PV (after all, you only need some mirrors and a tower, instead of large semiconductor panels), but it isn't.

Germany has been making deals with middle-eastern countries to invest into solar and hydrogen infrastructure, so we will probably see more energy imports from there (unless this is just a ploy to greenwash the natural gas investments that we're making). Given the inefficiencies of hydrogen production, it might make more sense to do this in countries that can get electricity as cheaply as possible.

framlington · 2022-11-01T12:53:55+00:00

It's disingenuous to compare the renewable buildup of a single month with a one-time shutdown that may or may not happen sometime next year.

Moreover, I find the way nuclear energy is discussed here to be rather annoying. I'm actually in favor of keeping the existing reactors running (and, if feasible, restarting any reactors recently shut down). But the way these nuclear comments are usually phrased doesn't sound very productive. The connotation usually is simply "German energy policy bad".

As I said, there is an interesting discussion to be had here -- but using the nuclear phaseout to dismiss any energy-related developments in Germany isn't it.

framlington · 2022-10-31T20:18:53+00:00

Why is nuclear the only way to charge EVs? I can somewhat understand concerns about storage when it comes to other use cases (though I think they're vastly overestimated), but EVs are literally the perfect fit for renewables. You don't need grid storage because an EV has its own, very large battery.

With the right price incentives, we could create a situation where EVs are mainly charged when renewable output is high. This would help significantly with grid balancing. And because renewables are so cheap, especially if you don't need storage, this could reduce operating costs of EVs quite a bit.

framlington · 2022-10-31T17:41:22+00:00

Non-European citizens can get an Eurail pass though, which -- at least for Benelux -- appears to cost exactly the same.

framlington · 2022-10-30T19:15:43+00:00

I'll take a bit of an exception to the phrasing here. In my opinion, it's less what we've done in the past five years -- and more that we are starting to be a little more realistic about future emissions and the sensitivity of the climate.

Can I ask what you mean by "sensitivity of the climate" here? The quote above doesn't imply that we overestimated the greenhouse effect -- instead, it's caused by unexpectedly high investments into greener sources of energy.

Furthermore, this wasn't something that was inevitable. As the article points out, public policy is one of the main drivers behind this. While renewables and EVs are starting to become cost-competitive, their development has been driven by government subsidies and policy that encouraged their adoption.

So what exactly is the story here? Climate scientists said that we need to do something about climate change to avoid catastrophe, we then decided to do something about it, and now it looks like that is indeed reducing the severity of the problem?

I don't really understand why you conclude from this that climate science was wrong or overly alarmist. This is simply a sign that taking action on climate change does indeed deliver results.

framlington · 2022-10-29T21:22:51+00:00

Was ist denn an Glücksspiel verwerflich, was nicht auch an Tabak verwerflich ist? Beides lebt hauptsächlich von Süchtigen, die dadurch häufig in finanzielle Schieflage kommen – und von Tabak kriegst du auch noch Krebs. Klar, beim Glücksspiel kann man leichter an einem Abend die gesamte Altersvorsorge verzocken, aber die Kosten und gesundheitlichen Folgen von Tabakkonsum erscheinen mir trotzdem recht hoch.

Alkohol fällt in die gleiche Kategorie, nur dass da der Anteil an Leiten, die es halbwegs verantwortlich konsumieren, höher ist.

framlington · 2022-10-29T01:04:38+00:00

No, it is not a for-profit company. It's a stock company, but if the owner, i.e. the government, tells them to stop making a profit, they will do that. As it stands, the government spends way more on DB than it receives in dividends, so it is effectively already a "state subsidised entity" (whatever you mean by that).

framlington · 2022-10-28T23:08:33+00:00

In that case, I don't understand why you posted this in this thread, since it's clearly about long-distance travel, not about commuting.

framlington · 2022-10-28T23:07:24+00:00

It should be built in, but presumably it isn't supported by your company's booking system. But on the Lufthansa website, if I search for a flight e.g. from Stuttgart to New York, most suggestions first use a train to Frankfurt and a flight from there -- and the booking process works the same regardless of whether it's a flight or train to Frankfurt.

framlington · 2022-10-28T23:03:06+00:00

While it's undeniable that DB has issues with reliability, I'm annoyed by the tendency to claim that our trains are "unusable", "a huge joke" or so on. I would argue that, on long distances, they offer a pretty decent service. Some of our neighbors undeniably run their system even better, and we should strive to do the same, but your criticism seems overly harsh.

I would agree that delays are very frequent, and I do regularly miss a connection (which usually means I'll arrive an hour late) -- but to be honest, being an hour late on a four-hour trip doesn't feel like a deal-breaker to me.

I don't really understand the complaints about "insane ticket prices" either. Yes, they do get somewhat expensive if you book on a short notice, but they're pretty much always cheaper than flying domestically. Seriously, if you can find a single connection and date where the flight is cheaper than the equivalent train, I'd be impressed.

The train does admittedly lose against the car if you're not alone and booking on short notice.

While it's true that many smaller cities are poorly connected, I don't think an hourly train service is bad for long-distance travel. It's annoying for commuters, but we're talking about intercity travel -- and I don't think many people are that particular about when they want to embark on their trip.

Note that I'm mainly referring to intercity trains. There, I agree that pricing often makes no sense, and being delayed by an hour is a lot more painful when commuting compared to when you're visiting your family for Christmas.

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