226 posts shown.
Charles Ramos7 said:Fair enough. I think slycanyon11 was talking about some kind of DIY production, whatever that implies. 🤷
By the way, looking at your math, I'm assuming this kit is meant for selling power back to the grid—basically gambling that buyback rates stay this high forever.
No, that's not it. I'm talking about grid-scale power plants where the American low-voltage grid acts as a giant battery, and the benchmark price for electricity is simply whatever gets billed to the consumers.
darkbison14 said:Can you break that down? I'm really curious. Like, look at Germany and Austria—neighboring countries, same people basically, yet people in Germany earn more.
Man, just wait until the Germans or Austrians hear you say that. By your logic, we'd be the exact same people as the Mexicans too.
wearyotter36 said:What kind of consumer base are we talking about here—and does this actually offer total energy independence?
For instance, you’re building a house and instead of paying for a standard utility hookup, you just rely on one of these "kits."
Off-topic: I own some land and I'm pretty much certain I can build a tiny passive house—maybe 350 sq ft on the ground floor plus another 350 up top—with solar panels on the roof for both water and electricity. That's why I'm asking: how much actual independence could I realistically achieve with a setup like that? I'd probably still tap into the city water supply just to be safe, though I know I'd likely need a well for things like cooling and whatnot.
No, that's a grid-tied kit. You get solar panels and a grid-tie DC/AC inverter. Both are mass-produced items. Off-grid is an entirely different beast and requires a lot more gear.
For true off-grid living, you'll need about 5 kWh of daily consumption
5 kW of solar panels $8333
60A MPPT solar charge controller $1500
3-4 kW DC/AC inverter $1333
600-1000W VT $1333
Batteries: 14.4 kWh if you're on the coast (like 300Ah @ 48V or more), but if you're inland, you'll want 30 kWh or more
Stored energy from $5000
2-4 kW generator from $2333
An AC battery charger between 40 and 100A from $667
If you set it up like that, you'd have massive surpluses in the summer—we're talking a surplus of maybe 25-30 kWh per day.
In the winter, production drops to roughly 5 kWh a day on average, though coastal areas might see about 30% more.
Charles Ramos7 said:How exactly were you planning on making electricity cheaper than what we get now? 🤔
Solar panels. Everyone’s talking about them like they’re some kind of magic bullet for the energy crisis. It’s all over the news lately—everyone wants to be a green energy pioneer. Honestly? I have my doubts about how much of a game-changer they actually are when you look at the sheer scale of what we need to power the country. Sure, they work, but there's a lot more to the equation than just sticking glass sheets on a roof and calling it a day.
So, I'm looking at the numbers for a solar setup—specifically a 3.6 kW panel array paired with a 4 kW Siliken grid-tie inverter. Just trying to get a handle on what the actual price tag looks like for something like that. $7200
Looks like a bad edit. $2333
Twenty-five years. That’s the lifespan we're looking at here.
Annual production for a 3.6 kW kit? We’re looking at roughly 5,437 kWh per year. Over a 20-year lifespan, that adds up to 108,740 kWh.
108,740 kWh.
Investment. Just one word, but it carries enough weight to sink a ship or build an empire if you aren't careful. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype, chasing the latest shiny object everyone on social media is screaming about, but that's how you end up staring at a crater where your savings used to be. Real investing isn't about luck or catching a lightning bolt in a bottle; it's about discipline, patience, and having the stomach to stay the course when things get ugly. You have to look at the fundamentals. You have to understand what you're actually buying. If you can't explain why a company or an asset holds value in two sentences, you shouldn't be touching it. Period. $9533 And that’s how it turns out. $0.09 The price per kWh is four times cheaper than what you’d pay through Duke Energy. Or, if you want to look at it another way, it’s a few cents cheaper than the electricity coming out of those French nuclear plants after they've been subsidized.
Mass-market coffee brands like Starbucks or Franck are just blends of Robusta and Arabica.
Right now, Robusta is sitting at about $2 per kg.
Arabica is hovering around $3.20 per kg.
The way Starbucks does their espresso is pretty straightforward: they just roast the beans longer at lower temperatures.
We're talking between 188 and 282 °C, lasting anywhere from 12 to 30 minutes.
Normally, if you roast at 188°C, it takes 25-30 minutes, whereas at 282°C, you're looking at 12-15 minutes.
High-end selections are significantly more expensive, especially when you get into the world-class stuff.
A bag of Tanzania Peaberry can run you $5 to $6 per kg.
And Yirgacheffe—which is arguably the best Arabica out there—goes for $4 to $5 per kg.
These two are basically the gold standard globally; everything is grown by hand without any pesticides. We're talking beans carried up mountains on people's backs, hand-picked, and sun-dried on stone. That's the level of effort involved.
When you look at the retail price, the government is taking a massive cut—about 40-50% of the total.
Take Canada, for example.
They don't have a specific coffee tax, and their sales tax is only 8.5%. This means the tax burden on coffee here in America is actually 30% higher than what they deal with in Canada.
Look, people need to realize that we and the Canadians deal with some of the highest taxes in the world. Our prices stay high because the tax burden is absolutely massive while our overall market volume is relatively small.
Berlin has a population of 4.5 million. If they had to carry the same number of bureaucrats, firefighters, and police officers on their backs that we do, they wouldn't even be able to afford bread.
Frank Johnson4 said:My dad had cancer and underwent a successful surgery for it. If any of you are dealing with that kind of illness, the most important thing you can do is just offer support in every way possible.
I’ll weigh in here too, since I’m actually the one dealing with this nasty cancer. Support is fine, but sometimes it really gets under my skin. What drives me crazy is how everyone suddenly thinks they’re a doctor. I am constantly bombarded with these mindless pieces of advice, and it just winds me up until my stomach starts aching from the stress.
Don't go handing out medical advice to patients unless you're actually asked for it. If you absolutely feel the need to say something because you're about to burst, then fine—but don't be pushy about it and don't defend your "expert" opinion like some door-to-door Tupperware salesman.
I underwent surgery for adenocarcinoma back in November 2012. I barely made it through four separate operations.
1- The first was a Whipple procedure where they reconstructed my ducts, removed about two-thirds of my pancreas, part of my stomach, and my gallbladder, though they kept the entire bile duct intact. They connected the pancreas to the stomach, the liver to the small intestine, and the small intestine back to the stomach.
2- A second operation due to bleeding complications.
3- Another operation for bleeding complications.
I don't remember anything from those first 4 or 5 days. People tell me I was talking to them, but my brain probably just blocked it out—thanks for that, brain.
4- An operation to deal with a gastric hematoma.
Spent 25 days in the ICU without any food or water by mouth; I dropped 30 kg.
On day 26, I was relearning how to walk.
On day 28, they pulled out the feeding tube that went through my nose.
Day 30, I finally went home.
I spent another 15 days just lying there. My bowel movements returned naturally, and I managed to walk 100 meters on my own.
By day 60 post-op, my appetite came back, my digestion stabilized, and I had enough strength to walk a mile if I needed to. I actually gained 4 kg.
Ninety days after the surgery, I started chemotherapy following the Mayo Clinic protocol.
Today, I finished my first cycle of chemo.
To be honest, the situation is pretty rough. I’m dealing with pain, likely from adhesions in my intestines and stomach. My liver is damaged, but it’s recovering.
The meds I’m taking:
Creon pancreatic enzymes
Reglan for nausea
Aspirin for acid issues
For the last two days, I've been using ibuprofen for the pain; if it gets worse, they'll move me up to morphine.
As for supplements, before starting chemo, I began taking these based on my doctor's recommendation:
A vitamin complex
Silymarin
And glucan
The plan right now is just to survive the first five years. After that, we'll make a new plan. In the coming days, per advice from the US doctors, I need to get my will in order and sort out my finances.
Oh, I forgot to mention—the cancer was detected between stages 5 and 12, and it had already reached the pancreas, essentially infecting it initially (not sure exactly what that implies).
The tumor site was 1.2 x 1 cm in the bile duct near the pancreas. To put it bluntly, I had more luck than I deserve.
Huge thanks to Dr. Smith, who caught the cancer in time.
And thanks to Professor Smith for his humanity, his expertise, and for a successful surgery.
My thanks also go to the wonderful, kind, and sometimes not-so-kind nurses in the shock rooms where I stayed.
And thanks to the amazing nurses in the OR. I only remember the first surgery, but I'll never forget that extra heater they set up just for me.
Honestly, everyone treated me with such kindness and dignity that I can't even put it into words. No one would take a dime from me; when my family tried to offer, they actually got offended.
Professor Smith is such an incredible person; words can't describe his devotion. After the surgery, he visited me every single morning and afternoon, whether it was a workday or the weekend. He was even there on Sunday mornings. When he finally discharged me, he told me, "I have done everything in my power; now you are in God's hands." I heard from others that he felt a huge sense of relief when I finally stood on my own two feet. I dealt with absolutely every complication that comes with this brutal surgery, yet even today, the doctors see me without appointments or waiting in line.
I'm writing this in the section for Support for Families Dealing with Malignant and Other Serious Illnesses.
Technically, I am my own next of kin.
Jeremy Ramos28 said:Who do you guys think is actually the GOAT, and what makes them so good?
Anyone else notice people pushing totally toxic or just plain wrong ideas who still manage to stay all over the news?
Whose logic do you actually vibe with—and honestly, do you think those kinds of ideas should be implemented here in the States?
😉
I am the premier economic analyst
and my grand strategy is this: every single young person needs to graduate and immediately emigrate to find work abroad, then wire their earnings back home to us older folks. We’re clearly the smarter generation; we actually know how to manage money. If the youth acted as little cash cows sending remittances our way, we could finally afford plenty of sourdough bread and pâté.
Laura Brown7 said:There’s no malice intended here, but they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions rather than actual results.
The fundamental mistake being made is the constant harassment of small businesses and local tradespeople. Small enterprises can achieve incredible things because they are agile and efficient, provided we just stop burying them under endless regulations and mountain-high paperwork.
It is frankly Tragikomicna how he claims there needs to be more discipline among business owners, almost acting as if he's angry at them for not stepping up. But why on earth would they?
Half of these companies are either teetering on the edge of collapse or have already shuttered their doors. Why would anyone try to ramp up production? To hand more of it over to a government that essentially paralyzes them and puts their assets at risk with the big banks? Absolutely not.
At this point, people would honestly rather just stay home, tend to a garden, and pick up a little side hustle to keep things afloat while avoiding the tax man... instead of relying on state-run corporations, which never deliver anything anyway.
I am completely with you on this.
Michelle Barrett3 said:I wouldn't have started this thread if I hadn't been driven to distraction by conflicting information today. I’ve been Googling and searching everywhere, but one source says one thing while another says the exact opposite. I even called the Social Security Administration to ask if I'd still be liable for self-employment taxes if I already hold a full-time job with a steady employer who handles all my withholdings. The woman on the phone told me it was fine, as long as I provide proof of employment when setting up my sole proprietorship. However, when I tried to visit the office in person, they told me that wasn't possible—which completely contradicts what I read online. So, if anyone here has actually dealt with this or is currently in the same boat, please, I just need a straight answer. If I were to reactivate my old sole proprietorship, would I really be hit with extra tax obligations? It wouldn't be a high-revenue business; maybe a maximum of 10-15 $0.00 per year, and that's it. Thanks in advance.
The second you open that sole proprietorship, you're on the hook for payments.
Social Security, both parts of it.
Medicare.
Chamber of Commerce fees.
Business taxes.
If you're running it out of your home or a warehouse, you'll have to register for commercial electricity rates and adjust your water utility tariffs.
And some businesses end up paying extra for things like:
Water districts, state forestry services, local utility levies, etc.
It doesn't matter if you're already paying Social Security and Medicare through your day job.
Just set up an LLC instead.$3.25 That’s the move for you.
Paul Edwards said:Once we officially join the European Union, the entire landscape here in America is going to shift—we're talking new laws, a whole new currency, and just a complete overhaul of how everything functions...
I can't help but wonder what this means for things like real estate or even the cars we drive; will there still be those noticeable price gaps between regions, or is everything just going to level out over time?
If anyone who’s actually working on the transition or someone with a bit more inside knowledge could shed some light on this, I think it would honestly be such a massive help for all of us trying to make sense of it all...
Just hoping the whole process goes smoothly for everyone involved. Best wishes to you all. 🙂
Obviously, price discrepancies will remain. Look, price differences exist even within the exact same factory depending on which retailer you buy from.
hollowpilot13 said:In a way, that was the whole point of this thread anyway—trying to build some kind of collective consciousness for the good of the state.😁 I mean, look, even in climates much colder than California, people grow lemons and oranges in their gardens. Usually, they're just ornamental, or at least that’s how we view them here in Italy, so everyone wants an orange tree sitting pretty in a terracotta pot in their backyard. I’m not saying your average American is out there eating crates of oranges, but personally? One little tree would be plenty for me and my family. I could even start acting like a mobster😁 and dropping off baskets of oranges to my buddies. If everyone did that, we wouldn't be buying them at the store, which means fewer imports overall. It’s the same deal with seasonal produce. In Italy, women are constantly complaining about how expensive fruit and veggies have gotten, but nobody actually checks what's in season. They end up buying stuff out of season, and since everyone does it, prices just skyrocket. But wait, regarding those oranges—are they being picked by massive industrial machines? I always assumed it was still done by hand, you know, like a farmer wandering through the grove picking the ripe ones off the branches. Whether there are terraces involved or not, I honestly think we should be focusing on organic oranges. We shouldn't be messing around with all those chemical products anyway.
In Southern Italy, most of the orange harvesting is done by hand. Newer plantations probably use machinery, but in Sicily, it’s manual labor through and through.
The pricing situation looks like another total disaster. Table oranges are sitting at about 7 cents per kg.
http://archive.org/details/linktv_earth2012022913Around the 2.2-minute mark, you can hear a farmer explaining exactly how bad things have gotten for him.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philp...ce-fanta-italy
Fresh news, though it's the same old story: Coca-Cola is basically squeezing the farmers dry. They're pinning the buyout price at 7 cents per kg and stretching payment terms out to 12 months. It’s just year after year of the same exploitation.
I really hope our local farming unions give the Italians a masterclass in how to organize effective road blockades.
As for everyone else here, we could easily produce oranges for about $0.67 kg, specifically table grade, or lemons for roughly 0.7-$0.33 kg
Otherwise, the situation for Taroco/Moro varieties is an absolute catastrophe. Buyout prices are stuck at 0.2 Euros, yet in the US, they sell 12 of them for 20-30 dollars, and a 0.7L bottle of juice goes for 6 bucks.
hollowpilot13 said:Huh, interesting. I actually ran into an orange grower once.😁 Look, I have no clue what oranges go for at local farmers' markets or grocery stores, but I highly doubt anyone is picking up 90 lbs of oranges for just $1.50. It’s gotta be way, way more expensive than that. You’ve got to factor in shipping and all those other overhead costs, like import duties if they apply. Besides, in Italy, most oranges come from Sicily... and they don't exactly struggle with water issues down there since it's much further south than us. Are you saying the water costs are really that massive?😕 I don't think growing oranges requires that much water.
Having run a private business in Sicily from 2004 to 2008, I have a pretty good handle on how much water Sicily actually has.
In a radius of about 60 miles44 miles from Mount Etna, water is abundant and practically limitless. Farmers living below the slopes of Mount Etna use primitive irrigation channels to water their fields. It's simple enough: drill a 6-inch well about 60-70 meters deep, and every single one pumps out 200-300 liters of water per second. Rain on Mount Etna is frequent. The soil is incredibly permeable, and since the start of the year, we've seen about 500mm of rain and snow per square meter. Basically, the Mount Etna aquifer holds about 0.8 km³ of water annually. To put that in perspective, that could cover 800 km² with a meter of water depth.
It gets much drier around areas like Palermo or near Ragusa, but even there, the aquifer is massive.
The whole time I was working in Sicily, oranges were priced at around euro 10 kg.
Lately, the price has bumped up to 1.5 euro 10 kg. During my time there, millions of orange trees were left neglected; the fruit just sat on the branches because the cost of harvesting them outweighed the profit.
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffb6a9f8-7...#ixzz1tYGcqlodCarlos Viacava, the CEO of Cutrale, noted that contracts currently being inked with orange growers in Brazil—which produces nearly half of the world's orange juice—include price hikes of 50 to 60 percent.
“Some of the producers we used to pay R$5 (US$2.70) per box are now seeing R$14 or R$15 per box,” he told the Wall Street Journal, though he mentioned the average increase was slightly lower.
Oranges are sold in 90lb (40.8kg) boxes.
I totally forgot to mention that Brazil's premium oranges—the ones you guys grab at your local Walmart—are selling for
$1.50 to $7 per 40.8 kg unit
Right now, the projected price for the upcoming harvest is sitting at about $5 per 40.8 kg. That’s an all-time high we've never seen before; honestly, some wholesalers are even shelling out as much as $7.50 per 40.8 kg
At roughly 40 cents a pound, what are you guys actually paying at the store?
We simply can't produce oranges at those margins here unless we slash the minimum monthly wage down to somewhere around $200-$100 a month. And there is absolutely no way producers can cover their water bills at current rates; the cost of water would need to drop by something like 99.9999999999% just to make the math work.
hollowpilot13 said:Starting this thread—hopefully there isn't anything like it already—so we can dump everything we know about the Balance of Trade in America. I just stumbled upon some data showing that fruit imports versus exports is one of the absolute worst spots in the American Balance, where the ratio is basically 1:10. That means—get this—for every single kg of fruit we export, America is importing 10 kg. ☕ Apparently, our biggest imports are bananas and oranges. Check out this article I found:
I’m opening this up because I want the other, much smarter members of this forum to drop stats and data on the American Balance. I actually think this could be useful for anyone trying to strike out as an entrepreneur... why? Because you make the most money where the country is weakest. In this specific case, if someone's looking to get into agriculture, they should probably start planting orange groves immediately (assuming we can't do bananas since the climate won't allow it). ☕
Can anyone dig up some numbers on other "sectors"?
To actually cover the import needs for fresh oranges and juice concentrates, the country would need to plant about 1,500 hectares of orchards. That would yield roughly 50,000 to 75,000 tons of fruit—enough to provide 25,000 tons for consumer use and 50,000 tons for industrial processing. There’s also the potential for bitter orange plantations to produce oils and aromas, which basically grow wild on the islands anyway. In plain terms, we're talking an investment of maybe 7-8 million euros in orchards and another 2-3 million in processing plants. But before any of that happens, workers from the state agency for karst irrigation should really set up some test plots and experiment with crossbreeding varieties. And honestly, we need serious scientific papers on irrigation techniques. Oranges grown in the soil of California are easily the most delicious, tartest oranges on the planet—bursting with juice, never dry. Plus, there’s zero chance those trees will drown from excessive groundwater in California.
Maria Thomas48 said:So, the elections are over. The coalition pulled it off, and now they’re going to breeze right past the biggest issue—treating money simply as debt—while trying to drown us in these supposedly brilliant tax and fiscal fixes. People will start complaining soon enough because time is ticking, but honestly, changing the administration won't change a thing. It’ll be a total wash.
The new Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, doesn't even seem worried about how interest rates on borrowed money are bloating our debt by about $9 million every single month. Over four years, that adds up to roughly $18 billion on top of an existing $85 billion. If you factor in the annual $7 billion in new borrowing, we’re looking at a national debt of at least $113 billion. Basically, we’re seeing a debt growth rate of at least 13.8%. That’s pretty much where we’ve always been, and there’s just no realistic way to pay it back.
I really wonder when the people in charge will finally realize that treating money as debt is the main reason why all their policies fail to actually work.
Any attempt to shake up the system gets punished by being kicked off the financial markets. Imagine if we stopped our programs with the European Union—meaning the ECB, the IMF, and all the other global masters—and suddenly everyone owed money to creditors in the US who demand immediate repayment without any restructuring. And since the country would lose its credit rating, domestic and foreign banks would immediately pull every cent of foreign currency out of the country and send it back to their parent companies or overseas headquarters. It would be an exact replica of the Argentine scenario.
Most likely, our foreign exchange reserves would be tied up in court by creditors. They’d claw back almost the entire debt using whatever reserves or insurance they could grab, and we’d be left completely screwed.
Mark Campbell5 said:In a perfect world, we’d just subsidize everything... you know, pool all the cash together and divvy it up among everyone...
Everyone would be happy and satisfied, assuming we actually earned enough to cover it...
That’s a damn good question... there's money to be pinched there too... pull the troops out of Afghanistan... more savings right there...
Great, so they know they’re losing the election... and nobody else seems to have a clue what to do about it...
So, what now?
It’s not really about how much money the current administration borrows—it’s about how we organize ourselves once they finally pack up and leave.
Man, 2013 is going to be a real sweet year for the US Federal Budget. They’ve already mapped out the whole country in 3D, and soon they’ll start the "legalization" process for all those properties. That’s when the real fun begins—likely a property tax of about 0.5% of the value annually, though I bet coastal areas like Malibu or Miami will see closer to 2%.
Mark Campbell5 said:In a perfect world, we’d just subsidize everything... you know, pool all the cash together and divvy it up among everyone...
Everyone would be happy and satisfied, assuming we actually earned enough to cover it...
That’s a damn good question... there's money to be pinched there too... pull the troops out of Afghanistan... more savings right there...
Great, so they know they’re losing the election... and nobody else seems to have a clue what to do about it...
So, what now?
It’s not really about how much money the current administration borrows—it’s about how we organize ourselves once they finally pack up and leave.
The intelligence agencies, the police, the judiciary—it all stays in their hands. And their masters, the Bankers, stay right there too.
The administration just won't listen to anyone suggesting we cut costs or stop piling on more debt.
The government listens to me, though—that’s why the Department of the Treasury was right there at today's auction, issuing treasury bills worth $671 million and €133.805 million.
Some Republicans pulled me aside to hint they know they're going to lose the next election, so they're planning to dump about $5-6 billion in bonds before their term ends and split the loot among themselves. I guess since they won't be in power for the next four years, they figured they better secure their retirement while they still can.
Mark Campbell5 said:The whole system is broken now... which explains why the stock markets look the way they do today... the entire financial system is basically collapsing.
Well, damn. If that's the case, we're in deep trouble.😕
They can't just pull the rug out from under us like that. They got us hooked on credit, and now suddenly they're cutting us off?
It’s like an addiction crisis. When addicts go through withdrawal, they get their fix—so why can't they at least throw us $2 billion a year to keep things moving?