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I just want to express my sorrow for the loss of these brave Canadians. While I certainly can't speak for all Americans, I can assure you that the vast majority of Americans have your back and would really like to kick these MF's ass. When you mess with Canada you mess with the US.

Some what off topic, but in the ball park. The very early 428 Cobra Jet Mustangs and Cougars were so nose heavy they actually had to use narrower rear shoes to keep the rear end from locking up. The stopping distances for those cars is laughable today. Good point Richard, I don't think that they are vented. Disc brake pads actually work better with some heat. From the design stand point, if a pawl type lock did make sense, you could easily add teeth to the outer edge.

Not arguing, but not communicating very well either... (on my part). I think this is a great discussion. From a marketing standpoint, 4 wheel discs sell better. This is getting lost in the discussion of why drums are cheaper than discs: If you have a drum brake you don't have much added cost to produce a highly effective parking brake. (Basically one lever and a link between the shoes) If you have a rear disc you have to add a supplemental secondary parking brake mechanism. On a light weight vehicle with an automatic transmission with a minimal tow rating, you can get by with a secondary mechanism to acute the caliper, but it is far more complex and expensive than the lever and link in a drum brake. If you add a manual transmission, additional weight, or towing capacity you have to add a complete secondary rear brake to the mix to hit the target. It is sort of a spectrum of choices starting with a simple drum on one end and a combination disc drum on the other. I am just trying to explain from an engineering standpoint what the "go to" is for different applications. For small cars, a rear drum brake is adequate to get the job done and less expensive when you factor in the parking brake regardless of how the parking brake is configured on a disc brake based system. Drums are not universally cheaper than discs. They are cheaper where they are small, adequate to the job and the cost of the parking brake is taken into consideration. Given all of that, why hasn't someone designed a less expensive way to add a parking brake to rear discs? Maybe a pad that contacts the outside diameter of the disc? Drop a pawl into one of the vent slots and it won't go anywhere.

Sooner, the engineering requirement for the parking brake has a lot to do with weight and the type of transmissions available. The Escape, Explorer, and of course F150 and Expedition as well as Super Duty all use the drum in disc combination. The engineering requirement for rear brake capability is also weight based. If you have a light vehicle, with little towing capability, then probably a drum offers more than adequate capacity. This would be particularly true where you have a front wheel drive vehicle with a weight bias to the front of the vehicle. As the vehicle gets heavier, the weight is more evenly distributed, and towing capacity becomes more of a factor, disc brakes would offer more capacity. I suspect that the spring activated disc parking brake system is limited in holding power where towing ratings start to be a factor.

Everyday, at every level, they pass more rules and regulations that make it harder to do anything, and then wonder why no one is doing anything...

The parking brake has to hold the weight of a fully loaded vehicle at a 30% grade (for vehicles with manual transmissions, 20% for vehicles with an automatic). There are also limitations on the amount of force that must be applied to make the brake effective. It takes considerably less force to achieve the standard with a drum brake than with a disc, and the mechanism to apply the force can be simplified where less force is required. The point of all of this is that the rear brakes have a dual purpose that makes it incrementally more expensive to use discs than drums. Unless disc brakes are required to meet the engineering goals of the brake system, drums are a money saver. Conversely, ABS systems for discs are more effective as the disc brake responds in a more linear way than a partially self-energizing drum brake design.

Rear disc brakes also incorporate a drum brake that is used as the parking brake. So you are getting a set of drum brakes and a set of disc brakes. A single slightly larger drum brake is not much more cost and serves both purposes. Unless you are towing heavy trailers, rear drums are easily up to the task. As it turns out, about the time they had made the switch to disc brakes, the big issue with drums was resolved by venting the drum radially (drilling holes through the drum). As it turned out most brake fade was being caused by a layer of gas in between the shoe and the drum. The venting solved this. Conventional wisdom had been that this would allow water into the drum, but as it turns out it actually allowed the drum to dry out faster, like a disc brake.

I have been to China several times to qualify manufacturing facilities. People in China understand capitalism far better than the people in the US. For example, at night the sidewalks will be lined with factory workers with little micro businesses, kind of like the Kool Aide stand you might have had when you were a kid. There will be food vendors that might have a tiny Hibachi grill cooking some kind of meat served up on little sticks. Then right next to them will be a lady with a sewing machine repairing clothing and making alterations on the spot while you wait. Next to her will be a guy that is fixing bicycle tires and selling a few bike accessories. The next one might be selling Tupperware bowls. Behind them there might be a row of stalls, the size individual one or two car garages, that are little stores selling all kinds of things. This is the next step up the ladder. I talked to many factory workers from the country side that would tell me they were there to make money to buy a tractor or a well pump or some other thing that they would use on the family farm to increase production. They were living in factory dorms to save money. They all seek in some way to be in business for themselves. Most of this activity is now illegal in the US. You would need to have permits and licenses and collect taxes and provide hand washing facilities and porta potties. We are safer and cleaner, but we have lost our way.

Back on topic... I tried retirement in my late 40's and it didn't work for me. I don't play golf and after building my dream garage I got bored. I started helping people turn ideas into products and or companies. Things were good until 2008. The only point is that you need to have something to do to replace your career or it gets boring fast.

Gotta love this stuff... unsubstantiated claims leading to an unfounded conclusion. Claims: 1. American corporations are just sitting on vast amounts of money. 2. they refuse to invest in the US 3. that's the way the Koch Brothers want it Conclusion: it's all Obama's fault (sarcasm) This makes as much sense: Currently, Reindeer are just sitting on vast amounts of toys. So far, they refuse to deliver them in the holiday season, and some, like Dancer, are considering a move to avoid paying gift taxes. So much for supporting the holiday that made them great, but that's the way Santa Claus wants it, so it must be good. And of course, it's all Bush's fault, it's gotta be.

AKirby, I am not bashing you. Just commenting on the situation from a different perspective. I think that Robert runs forums pretty darn well and I have great respect for that. The great thing about running a business is that you still get to call the shots, and some times pay the piper if you get it wrong. Off topic sections in forums are like a crazy uncle that thinks he's a chicken: Sure a doctor could help him, but we need the eggs.

From a purely business standpoint, sacking this forum has cost a ton of traffic and that is rarely a good thing. Many years ago I had this conversation with Robert and I was the one suggesting that he was diluting search with all of the off topic threads. As I recall then, the decision was that traffic, thread activity, and time on site, was more important (from an SEO standpoint) than relevance. At the time I did not think he was doing the right thing, but time has proven otherwise. When a site starts getting reduced traffic, reduced time on site and less new content the site rankings reflect that. On August 16th the ranking for the sitre dropped out of the top 100,000 to around 240,000. That had to hurt.

Gee, maybe Cadillac could leverage existing platforms and enter new market segments that way... Sounds familiar?

Well,if you accept Moore's Law as a law, rather than the conjecture it actually is, then anything is possible. Things that were once luxuries are now common place. If our standard of living were stuck in 1948, and no new products were being developed, we would be in the exact crisis position that the video threatens. What actually happens is that one thing does lead to another. For example, lets say that robots make it possible to dramatically lower the cost of photovoltaic electricity. It becomes less expensive than grid power. This would free up hundreds of billions of dollars in the economy that could be used to do other things, and robots would not be crawling around on roof tops installing everything. Cars that don't require drivers don't cause drivers to be unemployed, they free up driving time for more productive purposes. What could one do with an extra hour a day?

Ed, so much of that is wishful thinking. Bots write stories to be read by other bots, not people. If you need a bunch of content to make a search engine bot happy, a bot is your man, so to speak. Discovery by lawyers? Yeah a bot is going to question witnesses and make them sweat... not bloody likely. Even the basic facts are wrong. Horses are actually increasing in numbers in the US right now. I know you despise capitalism but it just lifted a billion Chinese out of the gutter in less than a generation, and another billion or so in India are following behind them.

Now that is some funny stuff!

A few facts... There are two components to the Social Security Insurance system. Medicare is sometimes considered a part of the system and it is administered by the same folks, but for the sake of clarity lets look at the SSI First, the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI). This is the retirement component. Second, The Disability Insurance (DI), this is insurance for those who become disabled before reaching regular retirement age. The two systems have two different trust funds different funds. Each trust fund invests any money above what it required to make current payments in US Treasury Bonds. The fund then earns a very modest amount of interest income on those bonds. For the past several decades more money was coming in than going out and a substantial part of the government debt was actually owed to the SSI trust funds. What is happening now is that the DI trust fund has almost burned through its savings. It will run out in 2016. This is caused by large numbers of people using disability as a retirement program.

Refusing to accept money that you paid into a retirement plan and a prepaid health insurance program is like refusing to take money out of your bank account because the bank was run badly.

Elon Musk is a very smart guy, but probably not in the way most people think. He just gave away hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder assets (intelecual property) and got praised for it. He basically took the poison pill, and convinced the rest of the world it was vitamins. If you look at Kodak and other bankruptcies you can see that the only real value the creditors had left was the catalog of patents. Elon already monetized the patents when Tesla went public. They had no additional value to him, but he made sure they wouldn't have value to any one else.

This won't be an either / or situation, cars will just slowly transition to autonomous operation in certain situations. You have to connect the benefits to the person paying for them. The idea of shared anything appeals to internet people that think everything should be free (to themselves). In the real world autonomous cars will benefit who ever is sitting in the car, and most likely that is going to be paid for by the same person.

Aggregate demand adds a sixth variable, the number of consumers. As in the number of people working is declining thereby reducing the number of consumers and total demand. This is why the labor participation rate is important.

That is an interesting read, but it is almost entirely false. This statement in particular: "wages are the principal driver of demand. " Is very misleading. Any Econ 101 student would get an F for that answer. The primary driver of demand is and always has been price. But even at that, there are five drivers of individual demand (income is one of the five). Price of the good or service. Price goes up, demand goes down. Price goes down demand goes up. Exactly how much is called elasticity of demand. If you have to have gas to get to work, you will buy gas no matter what the price until it costs more than the trip to work is worth. Prices of substitutes and related products. You might substitute olive oil for butter if the price of butter is too high. You might never ride the bus if the subway is cheaper. Income of those with the demand. More income increases demand, but with in limits: you won't buy more butter than you can eat. Tastes or preferences of those with the demand. Apple products sell for more than their functional equivalents because they have prestige value. Expectations. These are usually about whether the price will go up. Employers are reluctant to expand business if they thin that the cost of employees will rise faster than profits. Consumers won't buy houses if they think the price may fall.

I guess that Edstock is unaware that Canada has been lowering corporate taxes to attract more American companies to move north?

There was a Saturday Night Live skit for Jiffy Express: When it positively, absolutely, had to be there three weeks ago, call Jiffy Express, they will take the package, and the blame. Sometimes you absolutely positively have to have a hard drive crash! https://screen.yahoo.com/jiffy-express-000000274.html

If you are serious about hauling a trailer and you live in Arizona, you will go with an F250 diesel or the Ram equivalent. There are four big factors: heat, elevation, speed, and distance. If you are going to do 75 mph for over 300 miles in temperatures of up to 120 degrees and climb to over 7500' in elevation, nothing gets the job done better than the F250 diesel. With the old 5.4 pulling a heavy trailer at 75 mph at high elevation gas mileage drops to less than 10 MPG even if it is not hot outside. Range with 30 gallons of gas starts to become an issue in some areas of the west. Going up hill, the torque of the diesel is unbeatable, and going down hill you really like the frame stiffness of the bigger truck. No one here trys to do any kind of serious hauling with a Toyota.