“These are the sorts of proposals that sound good in theory—who wouldn’t want to pay less in junk fees? But some of these fees exist for good reasons. (Late fees, for instance, encourage people to pay their bills on time, which is good for both credit card companies and for users, who will otherwise rack up more interest to pay back.) And in any event, companies aren’t simply going to say, “OK, we’ll just make less money.”
Hotels may respond by raising base room rates or charging new fees for typical amenities. Airlines that can’t charge for choosing your seat may raise base ticket prices, baggage fees, or other costs. Banks that can’t fine people for overdrawing their accounts may raise rates for opening an account, require higher minimum balances, or deny more people bank accounts to begin with. Credit card companies that can’t charge late fees may deny more lines of credit or charge higher interest rates. And so on.
All the Biden administration is really doing is shifting people’s costs around.”
“The West isn’t really saying “never” on fighter jets for Ukraine — it just wants to focus first on getting Kyiv weapons for a looming offensive.
That’s the sentiment emerging in the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s blunt “no” — echoed to various degrees by leaders in Germany and the U.K. — to the question of whether he would be sending Ukraine the fighter jets it is requesting. While officials have publicly remained relatively unequivocal that no jets are forthcoming, private discussions indicate it may actually just be a matter of time.”
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/hundreds-key-u-warplanes-aren-162400482.html
“the fastest speed that a train has ever achieved—not while carrying passengers, mind you, but just as an experiment—is 357 mph. Over long distances, while carrying passengers and making stops at stations, the world’s speediest train is China’s Beijing to Nanjing line, which runs at slightly less than 200 mph.
Meanwhile, the average speed of a commercial jet in the United States is about 500 mph.
That’s not even close to being an apples-to-apples comparison. After all, planes carrying passengers used to routinely break the sound barrier (roughly 760 mph, though it varies based on atmospheric conditions), and experimental aircraft have gone far faster. Still, the world’s fastest train still finishes a distant second when matched up against an average, boring Boeing 737.”