The 11-year-old high-end Carrier system at our old Harvard Square place failed in the hot summer of 2024. It was probably some sort of leak in the outdoor unit, but it was tough to say for sure. In Florida, this would have been repaired for about $6,000 via installation of a new outdoor unit and recharge. In Maskachusetts I got estimates from $24,000 to around $40,000 to replace both air handler and the outdoor unit. (This might have been a $12,000 project in Florida for top-of-the-line variable-speed gear.)
The company that quoted $24,000 was rated 4.9 stars in Google Maps. They’re an authorized Carrier dealer. They said that they needed to do $thousands in additional items in order to satisfy the building inspector. My suggestion that a building permit wasn’t needed because they were just replacing existing equipment was laughed off. They ran new coolant lines and, despite me begging them not to, decided to monkey with the hydroair system that sends hot water up from a basement gas-fired boiler into the attic where the air handler lives. Because the attic is technically unconditioned space, even though it never gets very cold (poor insulation in the old wooden house underneath allows heat to rise), the circulating water must have some antifreeze in it.
When the winter arrived, the hydroair system didn’t work. The only heating was from the heat pump, ruinously expensive at some of the nation’s highest electric rates. The company came back and said that we needed about $10,000 of work. The circulation pump was failed, which is why fluid wasn’t circulating. The boiler was from 2003 and should be trashed. At a minimum, everything attached to the boiler needed to be replaced. I called the plumber who’d installed the boiler. He came by and said “Your HVAC people are idiots. They filled the pipes with 100% glycol, which is too viscous for the pump to move. I drained it and refilled it with 50% glycol like it is supposed to be and everything works fine now. Your boiler doesn’t need any service and is working perfectly.” He sent me a $1300 bill (would have been $500 in Florida, but this guy is kind of a genius and Massachusetts is truly a paradise for anyone competent in the trades).
It’s finally time to sell the old unit. The market for short-term rentals in Cambridge never recovered to its 2019 level. I was never going there except to fix stuff. The family wasn’t interested in spending time in Maskachusetts. What did the lawyers working on the closing find? The HVAC company never closed the building permit that they pulled in 2024 and for which they said that thousands of dollars of extra work were required. (Ultimately, it did get closed, but not without multiple follow-up emails and calls from me. The HVAC company called the inspector and he actually did come by within a week, but he marked it as a “rough inspection”. The permit wasn’t closed and the HVAC company never checked to see if it was closed.)
(Note that the cost to heat and cool this 1400 sqft. condo, thanks to high utility rates in Massachusetts and low quality construction, is actually higher than the cost to heat (one week per year!) and cool (to 72 degrees; no Jimmy Carter austerity here) our 5400 sqft. house in Palm Beach County.)
Loosely related… this lamppost sticker from Harvard Square would make a good tagline for an HVAC business:
Also, a friend’s daughter got into a summer math program at Boston University. She is required to live in a BU dorm as part of this program. Faculty, staff, and students at BU are such experts on Climate Change that there are 31 pages of results from Google when searching for this string on the BU site:
How did the climate change experts prepare their own campus for the brutal heatwaves that are now hitting Boston regularly? (example) They failed to install air conditioning in their dorms.
C’mon Phil, aren’t you just telling a little fish story here? (I do it too.) Is Florida really a magical fairy-tale land where contractors don’t ever fleece you? Where 7 dwarfs can be trusted with a hot white princess? I’m a little skeptical of that $6000 claim (without supporting evidence) for similar work in Florida (similar, but different for some reason). We’ve had Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey (despite illegal weed here), and Sneezy (during the pandemic) service ours, in recent memory and they had their little hands out for large stacks of cash every time.
OAG: We got multiple quotes for complete replacement of both air handler and condenser here in Florida on a same-size (4 ton) system and they were all roughly $12,000. (The condenser is more expensive as a part, but installation is much easier so $6,000 is about right for just the condenser and recharge.)
The Maskachusetts contractors aren’t “fleecing” people, i.e., being super competent and clever. That’s just the market price for those who choose to live among the Righteous. As part of wrapping up the condo sale, I found a 2002 invoice from a plumber to replace the water heater. It was $1,250. The same plumber came back to replace the water heater in 2019 (presumably there was one in the middle). He charged $3,500.
————— from the plumber’s invoice
Removed and replaced the leaking 75-gallon gas water heater; supplied and installed a
new Bradford White 75-gallon gas fired water heater with all related water, gas, and flue
connection. The factory warranty is six years we added a four year extended warranty for
a total of a ten-year warranty. Disposed of the old water heater.
Model # RG275H6N Serial # TK44146335
Warranty Up-grade Serial # XW10L14160HS20
Labor & Material $ 3,500.00
Our 1 1/2 ton Trane heat pump for my tiny 350 sq. ft. home office cost $7500 in 2022 in North Carolina. They replaced the air handler (which contains the blower, evaporative coils, TXV) because we changed from some off-brand unit, as well as the outside unit. They reused the 50′ copper line by flushing out the R-22 lubricating oil which saved $1000. Fleecing is doing work that doesn’t need to be done. Why would they need to replace your copper lines in Mask. and not Florida? Why did they replace the air handler in Mask.? Why is the spread of estimates so big? Labor is another major cost — fixed-ish with respect to the tonnage? — so halving $12,000 doesn’t seem right.
I’d have to look, but I’m pretty sure my econ. text has “(fleecing * (100/customer-knowledge) + collusion + limited EPA licensees) * climate_change = ‘market pricing’ WRT HVAC” written in the margins. Not sure how to factor in “trust” or regional goodwill towards man, because I don’t trust anyone, even ones rated temporarily at #1 by Angela.
Our tree trimming bill for the same trees went up 4X after two years ($2000 now) — they claimed fuel costs were to blame. Is diesel $20/gal yet? Palm trees probably don’t need trimmed. W again for Florida! The question remains: why are air conditioners so cheap in Florida? Everything’s going up in price, all the money is going into Palm Beach, and they are subsidizing HVAC to lure rich people down to Florida, would be my inner conspiracy theorist’s answer.
One thing is for sure, HVAC is a hot-button issue in our household. At dinner, my wife and I decided that labor was probably the biggest difference between Mask. and Florida for Phil. Is there a union involved? Incompetence is a big problem, everywhere. Most of the techs they send out are more interested in their phone than their occupation.
> My suggestion that a building permit wasn’t needed because they were just replacing existing equipment was laughed off.
https://massachusettshvacauthority.com/massachusetts-hvac-permits-and-inspections#core-mechanics-or-structure
> Residential central AC/heat pump replacement — Permit Needed: Yes Inspection: Final
Looks like a like-for-like replacement does require one. Who’s going to argue with or laugh at the Mask. HVAC Authority? I think I’d charge Phil G at least $12K extra for dealing with Mask. government in any form. And thus, have we found our difference in cost? I think we needed a permit too, but it wasn’t broken out as a line item or discussed much. Crossing fingers it was closed. HVAC hell.
> It’s finally time to sell the old unit
Hopefully Phil will recover the HVAC costs through gains in selling the condo. Then he’s out, no worries and a few dollars profit to gas up the aeroplane, a piece of equipment without any bureaucratic rules and quite low-cost maintenance (but hopefully competent techs).
A 3 ton Trane variable speed condenser/AH combo cost us $10,000 ($20,000 for two units) in 2024. A single speed combo would probably have been $6000.
HVAC repair companies are notorious for scamming people. Buyer beware. You got scammed. Suck it up.
Their scams were (1) bidding 60% of what a competitor bid, and (2) opening a building permit and not closing it so that they could spend some time two years later getting the building permit closed? Instead of paying their workers to talk to the building inspector in 2024 they saved money via Scam #2 by paying their workers to talk to the building inspector in 2026?
Unrelated – Phil, did you get hit by Portugal crusade against golden visas?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2026/04/07/portugal-golden-visa-government-votes-to-extend-citizenship-timeline/
The lawyer described the law change to 10 years (from 5, but actually it will be 12.5 becuase it took them 2.5 years to issue my first golden visa) as being motivated by “an invasion” of low-skill migrants.. The golden visa might still have some value for a citizen of an Arab country or of China, but they’ve essentially made the program worthless for Americans with money (we can already visit Europe for as much as we’d want to; there is no situation in which an American with significant dividend income would want to stay in Europe long enough to be subject to European taxes!).
I would have applied for citizenship in November 2026. So they literally moved the goal a few months before I reached it. It’s pretty sad. Bizarrely, the people involved in this still seem to think that the program has value, but I can’t figure out what the value might be. Why do I want the right to change my tax rate from 23.8 percent (federal dividend tax rate plus Obamacare) to 45 percent? (Portugal taxes worldwide income so I’d pay 28% tax to Portugal. Then the IRS won’t credit most of those payments to Portugal because my income is primarily US-derived, so I would pay 23.8% in addition,)
I guess the answer is that when a program like this is announced you have to jump on it immediately. I have a lot of rich friends in Maskachusetts who are getting hugely subsidized electric power because they got solar panels in the first batch ($$ extracted from working class renters to subsidize my friend in a 12,000-square-foot house). Portugal Golden Visa was started in 2012 and the people who got in then are surely now citizens and have also been able to pass that down to their under-18 kids.
(My renewal is right now so I’m going to renew and hope that they patch this situation. If not patched within the next year or two I’ll probably pull my funds out and because I never wanted a passport for myself, but only for the kids. I guess there is still some possibility of them getting a passport if there is some “famly unification” maneuver pulled, but that’s more fees and they’ll have to make 3-week trips to Portugal every 3 years and they wouldn’t get a passport in time to do a year of college in Europe or whatever. Once they’re established in a career in the US what do they want EU citizenship for? I guess we could think super long term and imagine that this could be useful for THEIR children (my grandchildren). The cost in fees, etc. hasn’t been all that high, but it is disappointing. The cost in having invested in the Portuguese stock market instead of the US stock market has been huge, unfortunately, though that wasn’t knowable at the time. Missing from the Portuguese market: NVDIA, Apple, Google, and the rest. I’m not sure that the Portuguese market has underperformed, in dollars, relative to the US market minus Big Tech, but that’s cold comfort because I would have just bought more S&P 500, I think, and thereby have gotten a Big Tech boost.)
Socialism is a sucker’s scam. And you were the sucker. Enjoy your Portuguese “investments” and also the rape gangs, general crime and Jew hatred that prevail in Europe.
I think that I can freely admit to having been a sucker for the Portuguese economy (the investment) and the various Portuguese people who have jobs in the golden visa industry. The way the government over there is spinning it is that they didn’t scam anyone because the golden visa was a residency program and issuing passports is a citizenship program, distinct from and unrelated to residency. From my point of view, this is a distinction without a difference. Now that the Portuguese economy is thriving due to Portugal being nicer than the other European countries, they don’t need those who signed up in good faith for the golden visa program (i.e., the suckers).
Portuguese citizen here. The golden visa path to citizenship was always a scam because Portuguese nationality law is Kaftkaesque. Even if you could apply, it is nearly impossible to obtain it unless you speak Portuguese AND have a connection to the community. But all is good. We do not appreciate the rich foreigners that come here only to obtain nationality or digital nomads that leech off the public system without paying taxes.
@8646: please stay in the US and do not come to Portugal. You will be safe from high general crime, rapists, and violence. Also, Jews are beloved in the US.
João: Thanks for this frankness. I probably should have realized that it was scam when it took 2.5 years for the Portuguese government to issue the first golden visa. In exchange for a 1 million euro investment in their economy, which they solicited, one might reasonably expect that they’d not just put someone into an endless bureaucratic maze.
I’m a little surprised to hear you say “We do not appreciate the rich foreigners that come here only to obtain nationality”. Didn’t someone in Portugal want these rich foreigners? If not, why does the golden visa program exist? Google AI: “As of early 2026, over 1.5 million immigrants are living in Portugal, representing approximately 15% of the total population”. If low-skill immigrants are welcome, which apparently they are since Portugal has welcomed 1.5 million, why aren’t people with 1 million euro to invest welcome? If the rich foreigner never becomes resident in Portugal, isn’t that the ideal situation? He or she doesn’t clog up your real estate market, doesn’t burden your health care system, and probably doesn’t take the time to vote even if eligible.
(For reference, the U.S. government can be slow, but usually they’ll hold things up for a few months, not for 2.5 years, especially if you’re actually buying something from them.)
Sad to hear that Phil. I guess the morale is that you should not risk your money on the enterprise where socialists *may* have a say, even in the distant future. But i am sure the masses will cheer on this, eat the rich is as popular as ever.
Brussels has been cracking down on golden visas and such, so perhaps that explains the delay and/or damp squib.
For some reason accepting a smallish number of rich foreigners is considered worse than waving in large hordes of unidentified but ready-made welfare recipients.
If it were me, I would want my kids to live in a vibrant and challenging place – not to live off of an inheritance in a third rate country that reached it peak about 500 years ago & since then has accomplished nothing & offers nothing to anyone ambitious. I can’t say I have followed the Greenspun Portugal idea very carefully since I never understood the argument and don’t see any appeal to Portugal or anywhere in Europe except for vacation. I have been to Portugal. I know a few people who live there. They are Brits using Portugal as a tax dodge since Britain does not tax worldwide income & somehow a home in Portugal works for them from a tax standpoint. Portugal is part of Europe and Europe is the world’s largest open air sanitarium. I would want more for my kids than living in a sanitarium starting at age 20 or 25 or whatever. Let them chose to retire there, if that is what they will wish, after they have made some dough. That is my unsolicited opinion.
Jdc: the idea didn’t seem quite as dumb in 2021 as it does now. I never expected our kids to settle in Europe. But what would be bad about a paperwork-free year spent at a German university or a Slovenian aviation innovator? We live in a global economy and every person who is a child now could benefit from some non-tourist time in Asia and Europe.
Somewhere, over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why, then oh why, can’t I?
— Dorothy, Wizard of Oz
Because you ain’t got the cash or the wings, girl, outside of fantasy tales.
Rich Hong Kong citizens scrambled to buy their way out of there in the 1980s and 1990s, before the handover back to the Chinese. I heard Spanish citizenship was a popular one.
I would have liked to live with my extended family and friends, out for multiple generations too. Reality intervenes, especially for the middle class. I’ve been an American nomad since birth. And being a closed-off townie has its disadvantages too, like intolerance of outsiders. Some of those New Englanders I met growing were/are straight-up deranged. Some of my ancestors got out of there way back when, out west. Too much like England? I got out while the getting was good too.
BTW, does Portugal have better A/C or something? I don’t get it, but never mind.
RMD: other than Malta, Portugal was the only place offering EU passports to people who never became tax residents. (Biden advisor Eric Schmidt wisely went the Malta route.)
@RMD (If that is your real name.) Re: Rich people and their problems.
“Oh wheresoever shall I lay my head at night? What will be the country I love, 183 days a year (for tax purposes).”
The best “country” for 183 days/year for anyone with a US passport is… Puerto Rico. https://www.gq.com/story/how-puerto-rico-became-tax-haven-for-super-rich
I guess I’ve gotten accustomed to the level of taxation in Florida and don’t seek to escape it (40% of income when we consider federal income+property tax+various consumption taxes, e.g., sales and gasoline?). But I wouldn’t want this pushed up to 50 or 60%!
@NH
Listen to Phil, hippy bro. Rich people paying lower taxes means everybody pays lower taxes except immigrants, who will somehow receive more tax. (In the Florida-centric, linearly abstracted economic model adopted in this post.)
Yes, but judging from the stories you have to accept certain rigors, like major power outages, when you move to Puerto Rico. It seemed somewhat popular a couple of years ago but nowadays those people seem to have moved away.
Then again, much larger Spain recently had its nice solar grid suddenly die (for systemic reasons, it is said). Perhaps it’s a sign of the times.
Tom: I’m pretty sure that the Ritz-Carlton Dorado has a generator!
Let’s see… https://mfsolar.com/projects/dorado-beach-resort/ is about their solar array, but that supplies only 20%.
https://christiesrealestatepr.com/blog/bad-bunny-buying-grid-independent-luxury-pr suggests that Act 22 communities either have generators for each house (sometimes Tesla PowerWalls for short outages as well) or “community-wide power redundancy systems that eliminate dependence on the central grid. These neighborhoods feature dedicated substations, multiple backup generators, and sophisticated load management systems. The most advanced communities maintain 200kW backup capacity with automatic transfer systems.”
The 200 kW number doesn’t seem right. That’s only 800 amps at 240V. Maybe that could run four houses for tax-avoiders if there aren’t any load-shedding transfer switches.
https://www.doradobeach.com/real-estate-listings/#/?slug=la-cala—lot-6&plan_id=86&source=AdWords
is 20,400 square feet. That’s going to be quite the cooling load.
How much are you paying for electricity/gas in Florida for your house?
With constantly rising prices energy bill for either heating or cooling of my 5000 sqft house in Seattle area got to $1000. Which is honestly quite ridiculous. I’m playing poker with some realtors and at the last game there was a talk about people leaving WA (wealth taxes) and thus problems in the housing market…
For a 3000 sqft house in Florida, we pay $250 on average in summer, maybe $300 in August (about 2,000 kWh). Last month was $180, but it was unusually cool.
Two units, one per each floor.
SK: We’re kind of profligate, I have to say. We cool the 5400′ house to 72. We cool the garage with a mini split to 78. When it gets cold, instead of sucking it up like the neighbors do we turn on the “heat strips” (space heater in the air handler; can’t do heat pumps because our ancient (2003) return lines aren’t insulated and there would be condensation dripping inside the house). We have recirculating gas-based hot water for instant access. We run the dishwasher 3X per day (don’t ask me how or why). The laundry is constantly going (gas dryer). The baseline cost of utilities is about $500/month for gas and electric (way less than what we paid for either a condo or a 2200-square-foot house in Maskachusetts). Then a bit more for pool heating ($250/month in the winter?).
Are you kidding me? “…what would be bad about a paperwork-free year spent at a German university…” So you could learn:
1) How wonderful socialism is even though it has destroyed Germany and most of Europe.
2) The latest elements of Wokeism.
3) How to freeload on the U.S. to subsidize said socialism by getting U.S. to provide nearly free national defense, subsidize healthcare/drugs by price controls so U.S. citizens pay for them and on and on.
4) How to enact trade barriers that protect jobs in said socialized industries so superior/cheaper U.S. products are excluded.
5) How successful people are evil and how their assets and wealth should be expropriated and given to lazy people and islamic terrorist invaders.
6) How to gaslight citizens into believing that Islamists invading your country and raping, murdering, assaulting your citizens is “enriching” and a therefore good thing (all they while providing them free everything…shelter, food, living expenses etc.).
Did I miss anything?
Clueless: I wish that I could say that you’re wrong! Estonia and Poland aren’t bad, though! As much as Europe has self-destructed, a young person who wants to work on tunneling machines would enjoy working at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrenknecht
Pilatus in Switzerland is awesome, but Switzerland isn’t EU. ChatGPT, however, says “It is much easier for EU/EFTA citizens than for U.S. citizens to work in Switzerland.”.
Your nickname is most fitting. Please do not come to Portugal (or Europe), we are full and fed up with overtourism.
The socialism that destroyed Germany was national socialism, which is quite far from socialism and much closer to the current viral strain of Trumpism. If I remember correctly, wokeism, pronouns, trans rights, and associated bullshit originated in the US and are infecting Europe, not the other way around! As a romance language, Portuguese has no space for idiotic pronouns, there is no third gender, and nearly all nouns need to be either female or male, not something in the middle. Which makes it by construction a little more resilient to wokeism.
You are most mistaken if you think the US is providing free defence to the EU. Most American bases on Europe are used to project US power worldwide (especially Middle East/Asia), not to protect Europe (that would be the nuclear deterrent, for which you need almost no bases). Europe provides the bases for this, and in return has very favourably allowed US companies and rules to sell their overpriced shite here. US citizens pay extra for drugs because they are stupid, and believe in trickle-down economics.
Not all Europeans, not even a majority, agree with unlimited muslim immigration. You need only open your eyes and see with major political parties (even in government in many countries) are advocating for.
> Portuguese immigration to Hawaii began in 1878 when laborers from Madeira and the Azores migrated there to work in the sugarcane plantations. By the end of 1911, nearly 16,000 Portuguese immigrants had arrived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_immigration_to_Hawaii
I’m sure the indigenous Hawaiians thought their paradise island was full too. Portuguese descendants nearly match in population the non-mixed indigenous today. What comes around, goes around, senhor/senhora/senhorx. As Americans we have constant propaganda about how valuable the immigrants are, and we invented the term “we’re full”, IIRC.
Walking now on different dirty streets
But the same old feeling still exists
Hate is like a shade that will never leave
Leave me alone I don’t need sympathy
What goes around
Comes around
— Sepultura, Roots
To echo the comments by Clueless. Are you kidding me? You might have saved yourself a massive investment loss and a huge amount of wasted time…in summary a huge scam that you were suckered into had you done one simple google search: what are the native citizens in Portugal doing? Are they staying because it’s a great place? Answer: NO. They have been leaving for decades, consistently, EVERY SINGLE YEAR, because it is a shithole country like many other countries in Europe now (think UK, France, Germany in particular, but they are NOT alone). Buyer beware. Stay the hell away.
PS: I’m not sure if you are aware of the existence of the European Union. The golden visa process did not require an investor to ever reside in Portugal. Once an EU passport is obtained, the holder has the right to live anywhere within the EU (if he/she has some money, a job, a need to be at a university). So a person could pursue a Portuguese passport even if the goal is to spend time in, e.g., Poland.
Okay, I now understand your original goal was to scam the shithole that is Portugal so you could get to Poland, and there is some logic there since Poland isn’t a shithole. Consequently, I now have a bit of pity for you, but just bit because the Portuguese scammers scammed you before you could scam them.
PS: I don’t know why you think it is a “scam” to get an EU passport and then spend time in various parts of the EU. I was only responding to your characterization of Portugal as a bad place. My objective was for my kids, not for me. There is no way for anyone to know right now which EU country they might want to work or study in 10 or 15 years from now.
I personally like Portugal. It retains more of its national character than France, Germany, and the UK. A lot of people speak English and they’re generally friendly. It isn’t absurdly crowded, as a lot of Europe is. The weather is quite nice. The Azores are beautiful when Florida is uncomfortably hot. It’s not expensive for a tourist. I was in Portugal with my mom in 2017 and liked it, four years before I started on the golden visa project (in retrospect I should have started it as soon as I got back to the U.S. in 2017!). I can understand why a lot of British citizens retire in Portugal. It is a much better place to live than the UK, in my opinion (sadly, however, for the young Portuguese, Portugal is a tough place to work and make enough money to survive in a country whose population has been swollen by 1.5 million foreigners (mostly low-skill; 15% of the total population)).
Getting an EU passport is like buying an index fund. You don’t know now which of the stocks in the fund will be the best in 20 years so you buy them all. Who would have predicted in 1993 when the EU was formed that Poland and Estonia would end up being far nicer places to live than Germany?
(How could Portugal knock it out of the park? Personal income tax is only about 19 percent of the government’s revenue (ChatGPT). They are positioned kind of like Florida in that they have warmer weather and a better beach than a lot of places where high-income Europeans live. Portgual could “pull a Florida” by eliminating its personal income tax, raising its property tax rate (currently only 4% of government revenue; compare to 10% here in the U.S.), and cutting government spending slightly (unload the lowest-skilled migrants on Spain and Germany?).
I can’t figure out your perspective here. In your various comments here, you vacillate between the (correct) view that much of Europe is a shithole (as the natives in Portugal demonstrate by voting with their feet every single day), but then alternately seeming to defend the shithole that Europe has become. And, you state clearly that you would never consider living there because they despise people like you who are successful (and expropriate their assets); and, though you haven’t mentioned it, there is rabid Jew hatred in virtually the entirety of Europe (is this somehow a good thing in some twisted logic that I’m unaware of?). Wondering, seriously, have you succumbed to some sort of Cult of Leftism that causes you to reflexively defend the shithole that is most of Europe?
@PS, USA is not far behind. We are one whimsey election away from being worse then Europe in most regards. Just look at the so-call Democrat party and insane policies and personas that it has adapted and at narcotic epidemic. As @João noticed, a lot of idiotic policies that are maligning Europe originated stares-side.
Portugal’s population numbers 10,000,000. We have more people escaping urban areas overrun by Islamism, socialist policies, violent crime and Jew-hatred.
Perplexed, I categorically agree with you about the Leftist cancer that has also infected the U.S. And that elements of said cancer did originate in the U.S. That said, curious if you agree, but my sense is that there is a much larger cohort of people in the U.S. that are now defiantly opposing the Leftist Cancer vs. in Europe. Feels like the split is more like 50/50 in the U.S. vs. perhaps 70-80% Leftists/20-30% “normal” folks in most of Europe (certainly in UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal). With hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the root of the problem in the U.S. can be clearly traced back to one person and his psychopathic socialist/woke/racist policies along with his sick gaslighting: Barack Hussein Obama…who gifted us Joe Biden, who then gifted us Kackling Kamala.
@PS, I can not quantify European politics as I do not follow it. I know that Reform in UK swept English local elections and together with Conservatives whose current leader Badenoch is classically liberal and local sensible national parties represent more then 30% of voters in England and Wales. Big thing that is going for US is tradition of personal liberty and self reliance confirmed by US Bill of Rights with its protection of free speech and firearms ownership. But US Supreme Court gerrymandering championed by Democrats could sweep it away and, as Regan said, we are always one generation away from tyranny. Looking at new wave of Democrat “talent” and the fact that they are supported by Democrat moochers of old, I can imagine situation when US government becomes much worse they European, Russian, Chinese tyrannies. Habit of Americans voting fuel prices in the past few months disregarding what said prices were four years ago do not increase my belief in American future. America could and should have great future and I hope that my worries are not founded, but you never know.
Dunno, seems like an Ivy League quality education to me, except it’s for free.
Traditionally, it was said the hard route was undergraduate in Europe, graduate in the US. But who knows these days?
Re AC installation costs (FL, central east coast, 4 properties):
2017: Low-end 4-ton condensor+air handler+new refrigerant lines = $5500 + $700 for 10-yr full parts & labor warranty (has been fully honored as needed).
2020: Mid-grade 3-head 2.5-ton mini-split system = $8000 + $900 for 10-yr full parts & labor warranty.
2022: Mid-grade 2.5 ton condensor+air handler (required a crane to put condensor unit on roof or 2-story condo building) = $8000 + $900 for full 10-yr parts & labor warranty.
2023: Low-end 4-ton condensor+air handler = $6000 + $900 …warranty.
Re electric bills (FL, east central cost, 1600sq ft SF):
Winter: $35 – $45.
Summer: $70 – $110.
Nat Gas = $30 every month. $20 base fee + $10 taxes and regulatory fees. I use so little ng that use shows as 0 month after month.
^ and perfectly comfortable!
The big problem with HVAC guys hereabouts is getting them to come out. If they’re any good they’re slammed with work. Phone numbers passed around samizdat-style. Ya gotta know a guy…
CCReed: Where do you live?
Warwick RI (pronounced Wahrick)