I found $170 CAD in monthly subscriptions to cut, I didn't realize it had gotten that bad until I sat down and went over it. Amazed is a good word for it.

Probably could find another $70 monthly if I started cutting some things I prefer to use but have alternatives for (like cutting QoBuz because I have YT Music, PlexAmp).

But yes, inflation has taken a bite and I've started to cut back on unnecessary things.

It's climate denial dressed up. The US lawmakers wanted a chance to get their "forest managemt" narrative in front of people again.

It's much more than that, it's a decades old problem of slowing population growth and the impact from it. North America's least favorite economicbsuccess story is the population boom after WW2. We tell ourselves tales of ingenuity and hard work but the fact is we owe much economic success to growing the population whole other countries needed to rebuild. In the context of colleges and schools, we see a decade long period of increasing domestic demand as population and education requirements grow. But, as population growth slows the colleges find themselves with enough capacity for a generation that already graduated, with no new domestic students coming. So they fill the capacity with international students, who also help fill the missing economic capacity. The recent changes leave colleges with the original problem, capacity built for boomers and their children being far too much for the children of millennials. So they're shrinking now. The colleges are a kind of microcosm of our entire economy. Population growth is slowing long term, and economic fallout will follow. I wish I had solutions to our problems that didn't involve a time machine. We needed to not stop building public housing 40 years ago, we put ourselves in a housing trap that's going to be hard to get out off. Colleges are just a prominent example.

The average vehicle is, for the last 20 years or so, pegged at 4000 lbs when doing road damage calculations. A Chevy bolt EV is around 3800 lbs, or smaller than average, while Tesla vehicles are heavier. Road damage is proportional to the per axle weight to the fourth power, or in short "The fourth power law". The take away point from that law is that all vehicles in and around that 4000 lb range and nothing, notta, moot, compared to large trucks and shipping rigs. Small increases in weight mean big differences in road wear.

As an example. Take the bolt EV at 3800 lbs, the F150 at 4200 lbs, and the F350 at 6764 lbs.

The bolt and f150 would have 1900lbs and 2100lbs per axle respectively. Applying the fourth power rule the F150 does (2100/1900)^4= 1.49 times the damage of a Bolt EV. Meanwhile the F350 does , (3382/1900)^4 = 10 times the road damage.

So then, is it true that the F150 and F350 will be made to pay 1.5 and 10 times the registration and fuel taxes of an EV like the Bolt? I have not yet seen this to be true anywhere EV taxes are reality. Now imagine how much damage a delivery van, or large shipping vehicle does.

The other part of this is environmental damage, are these states going to find a way to charge for carbon emissions proportionally from the gas vehicles? Of course not.