Drive

Ford Mach E, courtesy of Ford Motor Company https://www.ford.com/

There’s lots of talk these days about electric cars. Europe says it’s gonna happen — well, except for five countries. California says it’s gonna happen. Most of the rest of the states are not so enthusiastic. There are of course pros and cons.

Not everyone should be considering them. But it looks very much like I am the poster child for who should be considering one:

I drive a regular daily commute of under 20 miles one way. Furthermore, I drive that reliably 5 days a week.

I have a garage where it’s easy to install an outlet. Plug it in Friday night when I get home from work and don’t worry about it.

Surge pricing for power you say? Fine, most home charging systems can be set up with a timer to start in the wee hours of the morning.

I live in a town with reliable electric infrastructure. Even if Lake Mead dries up and Hoover Dam is no longer producing lots of electricity, the sun is still shining and solar power will continue to work. If the sun stops shining, we all have much bigger problems than charging our electric cars.

Thanks to the casino industry, chargers are everywhere. Looks like there’s a dozen public charging stations near me, each with multiple charging units. Malls have them. Some big employers have them. It wouldn’t surprise me if hospitals started installing them since I’ve met many doctors who love their Teslas (heh, and one pharmacist who hates his). And the car or your phone will have an app telling you where the nearest chargers are.

Let’s also address some of the arguments against electric cars. Road trips? There’s a gas car in the family so that’s a non-issue for me. That vehicle is a small SUV with a towing package, shutting down the “but what about hauling” argument before it begins.

“Just as dirty as gas cars, but moving the pollution elsewhere”? Electricity can be made more cleanly than it is today. Petroleum based solutions cannot.

But what about maintenance? This may still be a valid argument regarding Tesla and Rivian. But now you can buy electric vehicles from VW, Nissan, Ford, Chevy, Cadillac, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo…. and you can get your electric car serviced at the many places that sell those cars.

And what about the price? There are some models under $30k. Not many I concede. This is not yet a solution for people making less than $15/hr and living in apartments.

I’m not saying it’s the answer for everyone. I’m not saying California is on to something. I still think “can I make it from Vegas to LA without stopping for a charge” is a valid metric. But it may be time for people to start looking at whether it’s a good option to consider for one of the family vehicles.

Musings for Labor Day Weekend

One legacy of the COVID pandemic is people re-evaluating work: what kind of work we want to do; what risks we are willing to take at the workplace; where we want to work; even how we want to be treated at work.

This is as good a time to point out as any that President Biden — neither the best nor the worst president we’ve had in my living memory — said in the State of the Union address that he both wants to reduce gas prices and get people back to working from their doggone offices. Seems to me that gas prices could be reduced by reducing demand and letting people work from home. But I digress.

This weekend we celebrate changes in our workplace made in the 19th and early 20th Century, giving us such things as a 40 hour workweek, overtime pay, the end of children working in factories, safe workplaces, and even a minimum wage that was originally intended to provide a living wage. It is an admission that we would not have the things this nation has without labor.

The status of regular workers has been declining for decades. Wages simply haven’t kept up with inflation, even the undercalculated inflation that currently is reported.

And so the Great Resignation happened. According to many, is still happening. Workers collectively said “Nah, we’re good. I’ll find something else.” You can measure the churn with the JOLTS report. And many who didn’t actually quit started dialing back what they actually did at work, or Quiet Quitting.

The name makes it sound like they stop coming to work. But no, they do come to work. They do their job and nothing more: no picking up slack, no adding additional duties, no overtime, no calls or emails after business hours. And sometimes they proudly proclaim it on social media. Another name for it is “acting your wage.” In short, it’s taking “they aren’t paying me enough for this” into practice!

Of note, there’s also such a thing as Quiet Firing.

Good news, there’s lots of articles out there about trying to combat Quiet Quitting: why people do it, what managers can do about it. Bad news is that the problem might be bad managers, who are unlikely to implement any of those strategies.

Wishing you a happy Labor Day. Furthermore, wishing you a safe job that pays more than enough to cover your bills, and leaves you glad you actually do it.