why is the US not Metric

[vk6zgo]

I assume you did notice however, that they use both nF & decimal parts of a uF, as well as decimal parts of a M !

The filter caps are in µF, the "low frequency" caps are in nF, while the RF-related caps are in pF.

The resistors involved in supplying power are in Ω or kΩ. The resistors that bias the VCL11 tube or convey signal are all in MΩ.

The person who drew this schematic was trying to use the prefixes as a specific unit for a specific application for the same measure, something that the metric system came to abolish. By the way, the nano and the pico prefixes were officially adopted by the SI in 1960. Although you can find them in schematics before that year.

"pico" as in "picofarads" was in common use elsewhere than EU, well before 1960, & may have been common for other measurements
which would not normally have come to the notice of those working in everyday Electronics.
It seems that the schematic you found was a "transitional' form.

I don't normally quote myself, but there is very useful resource available on line, if someone is curious, as I was, about exactly when "picofarad" came into general use.
This is a collection of the "Wireless Institute of Australia's" journal "Amateur Radio" .
https://www.armag.vk6uu.id.au/index.html
The first reference to "pF" appears in mid 1947.

It then becomes well established in mid 1948, then more & more dominant, having pretty much routed the forces of "uuF' (or "mmf") by mid 1950.

At least as far as the usage for capacitors, SI seems to have been more reactive than proactive!

[KL27x]

Even the actual engine-eer of the old steamship or locomotive didn't care anything for a measuring system.

The engine-eer was the guy(s) shoveling coal into the furnace under the boiler. They would have to watch a pressure gauge. They weren't reading off PSI or kilopascals or bars or inches of mercury. They were watching a dial with a red line on it and putting that needle where the conductor/captain has requested in terms of a fraction or percentage. Full steam? All the way to the red line. Half steam? Halfway. 

In our modern cars, we press a gas pedal to regulate the engine torque. The actual engineers have given the pedals the response they have. The length of throw, the linearity of the response, etc. And this basically gets tuned by test driving and tweaking. Plus, there can be some differences in how the controls respond due to nothing more than personal preference. Like how BMW puts 70% of braking force in the first 4mm of pedal travel. The driver is experiencing the results of the engineering, not the measuring system used to do it. The temp gauge, ditto. Do you know what temp your engine runs at in C or F? I only care that the needle in the middle of the temp gauge and the light is off. I've never had a car that displays gallons or liters of gas. There's just a needle and a mark every quarter.

Responses like "we'll never metricate our road signs because we don't care" serve the US no purpose and make the country look like a land of morons.

Apologies to other Americans. My personal view is that most Americas don't care about metricating, ever. In fact the majority would be against change. The same way that Swedes didn't want to switch to driving on the right. Like bsfeechannel has said, this is one of those things that wouldn't happen unless the government circumvented the popular vote. But in this case, we really don't have a befit from doing this other than politics and money changing hands. So I think the majority of Americans are perfectly justified.

This isn't to say that some university (idealistic, book-learned) led movement might not ever get a voting majority. In today's internet age, you never know what movement will get temporarily united people with nothing better to do than to experience the rush of exerting their collective power to do moronic things. (Which this is a staple thing to do in any change of power; change for the sake of change).

I would guess that even the majority of Americans who have immigrated as an adult from a pure metric country would be against change after 3 months of living here. It just doesn't matter, once you have gotten used to it. In our grocery stores, the price of everything is marked in on the shelf in dollars/oz for comparing prices between products sold in different sized containers, even.   

Do you think the electronics component industry would benefit by changing all 2.54mm spaced components and breadboards to 2.50mm spacing? Or would this just cause us all extra work and expense?

Most of our engineers use metric. Our architects and civil engineers use a lot of imperial, still. And they are totally fine with manipulating the physical world in metric and/or imperial. Most EE have to deal with tons of arbitrary choices and decisions. They have a million ways to achieve the end results. Dealing with optimizing input and output ranges at every stage. Metric and imperial is nothing. Not but a drop in an ocean. Not but a state of mind.

If you think this "makes the country look like a land of morons," that would be your opinion, bsfeechannel. W/e country you hail from thanks you for not wearing its flag. 

This "land of morons" maintains its economy and standard of living by maintaining a technology gap/advantage. This is why we spend so much on military and for subsidizing our airplane and other tech industries. 60 years ago it was the auto industry, but the world has caught up, there.

One of the things I personally like about imperial: if you can engineer in imperial, you can (and you probably have to) engineer in any other system, including metric. If you can engineer in metric, you could be a productive-enough cog in a larger machine via monkey-see monkey-do... but you might still be a moron who confuses the real world for numbers. The relationships are real. The formula which describe those relationships are real. The numbers of the units are a figment of your imagination.

Take the ATC example. You could say that km/hr is better than knots, because altitude is in meters. But "per hour" is completely arbitrary, too. Yes, there is a relationship between speed and distance, but the ratios are arbitrary. In engineering, you are constantly adjusting a knob so the signal of interest fits on the screen. The numbers never go exactly to 10 until an engineer determines what the range is and puts the knob on there that goes to 10.

[rstofer]

It's not the cost that keeps the US from metricating the road signs, it is lack of will and that is totally understandable. It wouldn't really serve any purpose.

Why are we still nibbling around this topic.  Look, it's really as simple as this:  The US is not going to have some low rent country (or association of countries) tell us how to measure stuff.  See?  Simple!  Work from that premise and see where it takes you.  Pretty much where we are today.  Once people are told the metric standards are held in France, a member of the EU, it's game over in terms of conversion.  There's no way in the world we are giving up our sovereignty to the EU.  We can see how it's working out for the UK.

Those who are compelled for other reasons to use metric will use it.  Science, for example, is slightly easier using metric units but there are equivalent conventional units that work just as well.  But not engineering.  Structural is still in KIPS, HVAC is still in CFM, FPM or GPM, Civil is still in feet and inches and Mechanical (omitting HVAC) is still primarily conventional units.  Electrical (as in power, industrial, etc) is still conventional units including AWG and MCM.  In other words, all traditional Professional Engineering is still in conventional units.  Other kinds of engineering (eg biomedical) is not in the family of Professional Engineering and is likely metric in any event.  But you certainly can't say US engineering is metric.  It isn't.  And it won't be!  Ever!

How is it that those who want us to change are from countries of minimal accomplishments?  They want to drag us down to their level, that's why!  The EU tries to level the playing field such that high rent countries don't outperform the others.  They don't want competition, they want 'equaity'.

It's like that NHS thing.  The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks.  In 12 weeks I could be dead!  I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious.  I can go to one  facility for everything except overnight stays.  MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility.  For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO.  Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it.  All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery.  Same as socialized anything else!

It's interesting that Boris Johnson wants to pull the UK back to imperial units.  That ought to be fun to watch!  I can see the smoke pouring out of Juncker's ears when that begins.  Yes, I know he is out of office...

As I said much earlier in this thread, we aren't going to change.  Certain fields already use metric but the people use conventional units and always will.

Anybody keep track of Nobel Prizes by country?  The US doesn't quite keep up with the idea that we have more than all the other countries combined but it's surprisingly close.  Somehow our 'morons' are smarter than everybody else's 'morons', combined.

OK, that's just science.  What about something more important:  Money!  The DOW is up more than 42% since the inauguration.  If you have a boatload of money in your retirement account, 42% of a boatload is still a boatload of money.  Lowest unemployment in 50 years.  Lowest unemployment of minorities, ever!  Modest wage growth but it's starting to tick up, labor is tight.  How are the European countries doing?  Last I heard, not too well!  And the reason unemployment was so low in the '60s (the 50 years ago thing) was the vast number of people drug into the military.

I expect the US to stand pat.  We're holding all the high cards and don't really need to concern ourselves with the other players.

[rstofer]

Take the ATC example. You could say that km/hr is better than knots, because altitude is in meters. But "per hour" is completely arbitrary, too. Yes, there is a relationship between speed and distance, but the ratios are arbitrary. In engineering, you are constantly adjusting a knob so the signal of interest fits on the screen. The numbers never go exactly to 10 until an engineer determines what the range is and puts the knob on there that goes to 10.

Knots are kind of handy since 1 nautical miie is 1 minute of arc in terms of latitude or 1 minute of arc at the equator in terms of longitude.  60 nautical miles => 1 degree of arc similarly defined.

For ATC, radians/unit of time would be terrific because it would account for altitude.

By Chevy truck has a display of Range - gallons in the tank and burn rate over the last <insert some interval of something here>.  It's kind of handy.  I have more than 400 miles of range when I fill up and I seldom let it get below 200 miles.  One of the places I frequent is almost exactly 100 miles round trip.  It's way out in the country, it wouldn't pay to run out of gas.

My Chevy Bolt has a range estimate as well.  It's important to watch this because the battery won't last forever.  In cooler weather, 30% of battery usage is by the heating system leaving only 70% for travel.  That's a really big deal if you only have 200 miles of range, reduced to 140 miles, and your destination is 100 miles round trip.  Sure, it will make it and still have 40 miles remaining when I get home but, again, it's way out in the country and I'm too old to push a car.  The Bolt has a lot of cool instrumentation.  The EEs really had fun with that thing!

There are several ways of specifying altitude, some based on mean sea level, some on barometric pressure (actual and nominal), some based on radar.  They all get a different answer.  It's complicated...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude

[KL27x]

^Yeah, the nautical mile is adjusted for degree of arc. But ground speed is slightly different than plane's vector speed, due to elevation. So it works pretty close to perfect for boats, but there would be a slight error vs the vector speed of a plane, then another error against the airspeed as measured in the horizontal axis of the physical plane vs its true vector. So yeah, the nautical mile is what it is for a good reason, but even then the real world is simply messy. And engineers deal with it, so that the end user can control and utilize the technology.

I pretty much agree with a lot of your sentiment, rstopher, but I think the tone is a bit needlessly harsh and the post a bit unfocused. We were making some progress, here. Don't open the door, again.

[Tepe]

Anybody keep track of Nobel Prizes by country?  The US doesn't quite keep up with the idea that we have more than all the other countries combined but it's surprisingly close.  Somehow our 'morons' are smarter than everybody else's 'morons', combined.

Try it per capita and the US is only #15:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita

[KL27x]

^This isn't about the intelligence of a country's population.

There is a gap in technology in certain areas. But as v6kgzo has noted in the example of the car industry, this is largely due to history, size of economy, and government priorities in spending and subsidization. This should be expected. It would be a waste of resources for every nation on the planet to spend 100 billion a year on building the next generation of airplanes and rockets. There are still people without AC and the internet.

[CatalinaWOW]

^This isn't about the intelligence of a country's population.

There is a gap in technology in certain areas. But as v6kgzo has noted in the example of the car industry, this is largely due to history, size of economy, and government priorities in spending and subsidization. This should be expected. It would be a waste of resources for every nation on the planet to spend 100 billion a year on building the next generation of airplanes and rockets. There are still people without AC and the internet.

It would be efficient on a global level to have only one region develop rockets and airplanes.  But efficiency isn't the only factor in play and so there are at least five (Number depends on how you count.  US, Europe, China, Russia and Brazil are my list.  Some would leave Brazil and China off.  Others would add a couple more.)  Some of those other factors are involved in the metrification discussion.

[rstofer]

I pretty much agree with a lot of your sentiment, rstopher, but I think the tone is a bit needlessly harsh and the post a bit unfocused. We were making some progress, here. Don't open the door, again.

And you don't think being called stupid or morons because we don't follow the path of low rent countries equally harsh?
I get tired of hearing about it!  We're not going to convert - ever.  If we wanted to do it we would have done it 50 years ago and we didn't.
And despite our ignorant population, we have succeeded far beyond any other country despite a sizable unproductive segment in our population.

As long as other countries are dependent on our contributions in terms of money, technology, military or trade, the least they could do is STFU!  Post back after you have made 6 lunar landings with 12 astronauts walking on the surface.  But before you reach those goals, please remember, your opinion is worthless.  Your country has accomplished nothing!

[rstofer]

Anybody keep track of Nobel Prizes by country?  The US doesn't quite keep up with the idea that we have more than all the other countries combined but it's surprisingly close.  Somehow our 'morons' are smarter than everybody else's 'morons', combined.

Try it per capita and the US is only #15:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita

We do have a sizable unproductive segment in our population.  Smaller and more homogeneous countries tend to fare better in that metric.

[bsfeechannel]

Seems the senile old goats hark back to the days of EU v1.0 (...the Roman Empire, which ruled Britain, and imposed their pounds and ounces on the senile old goats' ancestors).

Holy crap! Blueskull is right. The West is decadent!

What is amusing about the imperial lovers is that they want their units back because they want to cook their food using their grandmother's recipes or because they want to measure distances as the ancient Romans did. The ancient Romans traveled on foot from place to place, so it was only natural that they counted their paces, usually by the thousands ( Latin milia, hence mile), taking the military marching stride as a standard. Today we don't even ride horses, much less stride between places. So miles don't have any meaning for us, but we are still counting how many paces it takes from Des Moines to Rancho Cucamonga (31,700 to be precise).

They keep saying that the metric system is always tyrannically imposed on the citizens, but they forget to mention that the UK adhered voluntarily to the metric system in 1965, before they joined the EU, and that this act itself was also voluntary.

Their motivation is not only retrograde. It's also frivolous. This clearly indicates that the imperial system is not trustworthy.

Pathetic. To say the least.

At least as far as the usage for capacitors, SI seems to have been more reactive than proactive!

The SI was created in 1960. This explains why we don't have those prefixes standardized by them before.

If "...because we don't care" is what you gleaned, then you are the moron.

" I expect the US to stand pat.  We're holding all the high cards and don't really need to concern ourselves with the other players."

"We're not going to convert - ever.  If we wanted to do it we would have done it 50 years ago and we didn't."

"Post back after you have made 6 lunar landings with 12 astronauts walking on the surface.  But before you reach those goals, please remember, your opinion is worthless.  Your country has accomplished nothing!"

rstofer 08/12/2019

I love this guy.

If you think this "makes the country look like a land of morons," that would be your opinion, bsfeechannel.

I DON'T think the US is a land of morons. But some people are working very hard to try to make me change my opinion.

[KL27x]

because they want to cook their food using their grandmother's recipes or because they want to measure distances as the ancient Romans did.

As for measuring distances, it's not because the Romans used inches. It's because Americans have used inches. Today, they used inches. Yesterday, too. The day before that, as well. Three days ago, uh huh. I'm pretty sure all the way back to... ever.

Kinda like those crazy Swedes. Driving their right-handed cars on the left-hand side of the road. Basically since the beginning of driving. Then switching and having the exact same accident rate, before and after. The main difference, you might say, is maybe our democracy works a little bit better in this regard? Or maybe it has a lot to do with the age we live in, including the connectivity of the internet, where we can calmly rationalize what changing a few numbers around actually does for us all.

As for the recipes, what do you do with your grandmother's recipes? Convert them to metric so you can upload them to Thingyverse.com/Cupcakes? 

[vk6zgo]

^This isn't about the intelligence of a country's population.
There is a gap in technology in certain areas. But as v6kgzo has noted

This an interesting example of an intelligent individual managing to stuff up a simple combination of letters & numbers, several times.
My "nickname" VK6ZGO looks easy for me & others  to remember, as it is also my ham radio callsign.
People, without being stupid, without such context clues, can easily "half read" things & "get the bull by the horns".

 in the example of the car industry, this is largely due to history, size of economy, and government priorities in spending and subsidization.

In the present atmosphere of "free trade", subsidisation lacks "ideological purity".
It is interesting to note that its greatest opponents are amongst those who made fortunes in their own countries due to their previous subsidies.

 This should be expected. It would be a waste of resources for every nation on the planet to spend 100 billion a year on building the next generation of airplanes and rockets. There are still people without AC and the internet.

[Cubdriver]

Ahah, well, this would be a pretty old definition, and completely irrelevant nowadays, but even so - back in the day, what it meant is basically someone who was REALLY in charge of an engine, in a train or boat for instance, in which engines required constant maintenance and care, and a fair bit of knowledge for doing so. A car driver is definitely NOT in charge of an engine in that sense anyway.
Not any more that you're in charge of the CPU when you're using a computer.

My reply was meant as joke because someone said pages ago that the road signs in the US couldn't be metric because, when you're driving a car, you're not practicing engineering.

Methinks one of us needs to work on our reading comprehension, because that is NOT what was said.  He did not say that road signs COULDN'T be metric, he said that it doesn't matter what system they are in just as long as it is consistent.

Here's the quote from the earlier post:

It doesn't matter what the number system is, as long as everything matches.   The distance could be miles, or kilometers, or furlongs or kilosmoots, it wouldn't matter.   I'm not doing engineering with those figures.

He added that the units on the signs do not matter because the drivers are not doing engineering with them, and he is absolutely correct - the signs are informational - how far is the next town or exit, what is the speed limit, how high is the bridge, etc.

YOU then replied:

So you drive a motorized vehicle along a road and you think you're not doing engineering.

YOU are the one who first suggested that driving was engineering!

Of course a driver's license doesn't qualify you to design engines, or structures, or circuits, whatever, but you're in control of a engineering product. In the modern world, the common citizen is in constant contact with engineering, surrounded by it, dependent on it.

Engineering became so part of everything we do that it is only natural that the system of units used in engineering be also part of the everyday life of the common citizen.

Being in control of, surrounded by and/or dependent upon an engineered product != engineering.  Yes, it is a part of almost everything in the modern world.  Properly implemented, the engineering by and large is transparent to the average user.  It doesn't matter if the road was built in inches and feet or meters, as long as it is fit for purpose a driver can use it without any need whatsoever to know what units are on the drawings filed at city hall.  I can use a cell phone with no understanding or knowledge of the encoding scheme used or the wavelength it operates at.  Are there enough bars on the display to make a call?  Yes?  Sweet, good to go.  Dial the number and talk.  I think that the common citizen has far less need for understanding the significance of units than you seem to believe - most carry in blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the scenes, and the world works just fine.

-Pat

[boffin]

...
It's like that NHS thing.  The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks.  In 12 weeks I could be dead!  I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious.  I can go to one  facility for everything except overnight stays.  MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility.  For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO.  Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it.  All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery.  Same as socialized anything else!

Spoken like someone who's drinking the USA Kool-aid.  Have you ever considered that the reason you see reports that (incorrectly) report UK, Canada, France health care as all 12-week waits is that they're sponsored by the very insurance/health-care business who's livelihood would be affected if there were real change.

If you have a serious issue, and you go into a hospital in the UK, in Canada, in France or almost any other 1st world country, you'll get treatment right away.   As for 'any hospital emergency room', I'll bet you (and plenty of your American friends) have "out of network" issues, that just don't exist elsewhere in the 1st world.

This is why the UK, Canada, France etc; all have measurably better life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates than the USA.  (The USA lags even 2nd world countries like Costa Rica and Cuba in some numbers).

Last week my father-in-law was in town for a minor surgery. It was diagnosed as required (but not life threatening) a few weeks prior by his local GP in a very small town, and the surgery, plus the flight down to the big city, was all covered by our Canadian [according to you -- inferior] health care system.


The American "We're #1, we're better than you, we don't have to change anything" mentality, without examining the facts and looking at the rest of the world; is exactly why the USA lags the world in adoption of a single standard for measurement; and it's summed up in a single world

Arrogance

Aaron Sorkin summed it up nicely in the 1st five minutes of the show "the Newsroom"
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?t=94

[SilverSolder]

Seems the senile old [Brexit] goats hark back to the days of EU v1.0 (...the Roman Empire, which ruled Britain, and imposed their pounds and ounces on the senile old goats' ancestors).

Holy crap! Blueskull is right. The West is decadent!

What is amusing about the imperial lovers is that they want their units back because they want to cook their food using their grandmother's recipes or because they want to measure distances as the ancient Romans did. The ancient Romans traveled on foot from place to place, so it was only natural that they counted their paces, usually by the thousands ( Latin milia, hence mile), taking the military marching stride as a standard. Today we don't even ride horses, much less stride between places. So miles don't have any meaning for us, but we are still counting how many paces it takes from Des Moines to Rancho Cucamonga (31,700 to be precise).

They keep saying that the metric system is always tyrannically imposed on the citizens, but they forget to mention that the UK adhered voluntarily to the metric system in 1965, before they joined the EU, and that this act itself was also voluntary.

Their motivation is not only retrograde. It's also frivolous. This clearly indicates that the imperial system is not trustworthy.

Pathetic. To say the least.

The issue with the "senile old goats" is that they dream of a country that no longer exists.  I recall visiting England in the 70's, as a child.  The country had permanent sunshine and blue skies.  Its inhabitants were lily white boys in neat school uniforms that I played football (soccer) with every day, on vast expanses of green, fresh mown grass.  An ice cream van appeared every day and provided all the children with their daily sugar fix.  From that perspective, what could you possibly not like about England?

Fast forward to today.  The boys that played football in the everlasting summer are now at a stage in their lives where they can't read stuff on their cell phones without reading glasses.  Their hair is thinning.   They are generally overweight, overstimulated,  and have to watch their blood pressure.  Their doctors are telling them to take it easy. 

Can you blame them for longing back to the days of their youth?  -  and that is what sleazy politicians are trying to sell them.   Vote for Brexit, vote for us, and we will take you back to the days of lily white happy faces you remember.  The pounds and ounces thing is one of the many psychological tricks they use to help trigger those memories.

[rstofer]

...
It's like that NHS thing.  The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks.  In 12 weeks I could be dead!  I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious.  I can go to one  facility for everything except overnight stays.  MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility.  For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO.  Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it.  All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery.  Same as socialized anything else!

Spoken like someone who's drinking the USA Kool-aid.  Have you ever considered that the reason you see reports that (incorrectly) report UK, Canada, France health care as all 12-week waits is that they're sponsored by the very insurance/health-care business who's livelihood would be affected if there were real change.

I don't live in Scotland but I can read their NHS guidelines:

https://www.nhsinform.scot/care-support-and-rights/health-rights/access/waiting-times

Worse yet, it appears that Scotland is not even meeting these low standards according to an article I read in Express.co.uk
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1214516/Nicola-Sturgeon-News-Scotland-NHS-Andrew-Marr-BBC-latest

There is nothing government can do that is better than what private industry can do.  Nationalizing anything is always a huge mistake!

If you have a serious issue, and you go into a hospital in the UK, in Canada, in France or almost any other 1st world country, you'll get treatment right away.   As for 'any hospital emergency room', I'll bet you (and plenty of your American friends) have "out of network" issues, that just don't exist elsewhere in the 1st world.

The "out of network" thing doesn't apply to emergencies anywhere in the world under my plan.  Now, true, once you are stable, they will be transporting you to an "in network" facility but not always.  When I had my first stent installed back in '03, they sent me to an "out of plan" hospital because their own facilities were booked.  Basically, for 'near' emergencies, you call the triage nurse, tell them what is wrong and they deal with it.  Whatever they say is, by definition, the right thing to do and they don't leave you hanging.  I've been with them since about '69 and I'm still on the green side of the grass.  Just about everything will result in a same day appointment.

I do sympathize with anybody covered by Blue Shield or Blue Cross but those aren't my plan.  Just keeping up with the accounting is a nightmare.

Aaron Sorkin summed it up nicely in the 1st five minutes of the show "the Newsroom"
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?t=94

I loved that series!  Olivia Munn is smokin'!  Too bad it got canceled.  It had a lot to say during each episode.

[rstofer]

The issue with the "senile old goats" is that they dream of a country that no longer exists.  I recall visiting England in the 70's, as a child.  The country had permanent sunshine and blue skies.  Its inhabitants were lily white boys in neat school uniforms that I played football (soccer) with every day, on vast expanses of green, fresh mown grass.  An ice cream van appeared every day and provided all the children with their daily sugar fix.  From that perspective, what could you possibly not like about England?

Fast forward to today.  The boys that played football in the everlasting summer are now at a stage in their lives where they can't read stuff on their cell phones without reading glasses.  Their hair is thinning.   They are generally overweight, overstimulated,  and have to watch their blood pressure.  Their doctors are telling them to take it easy. 

And with more money than our offspring will ever have.  We pillaged the system, accumulated a butt-load of money in our 401(k)s and home equity and we sit back living off Social Security and our pension(s) not even needing to tap our retirement accounts.  If it weren't for mandatory withdrawals (on the order of 8% per year) we would probably never need to touch the money.  I'm using my mandatory withdrawals to pay for my grandson's college education.  Nothing else to do with the money...

There's nearly $25 TRILLION dollars in retirement plans - no wonder the .gov is looking for a way to get their hands on it!
https://www.benefitspro.com/2015/06/30/total-retirement-assets-near-25-trillion-mark/?slreturn=20191109144620

We got ours, now it's your turn.  Show us what you got!

[KL27x]

  
 

[boffin]

...
There is nothing government can do that is better than what private industry can do.  Nationalizing anything is always a huge mistake!
...

Healthcare

The US has demonstrably worse Health Care than almost all other 1st world (government run) healthcare systems; as I mentioned; but you knew that already as you read my post.

Let's look at the G7; and use the two most common measures of the effectiveness of healthcare systems.

Life Expectancy (CIA World factbook 2017)
Japan 2nd
Italy 14th
Canada 17th
France 18th
Germany 34th
UK 35th
USA 57th

Infant Mortality (World Bank)
Japan 6th
Italy 10th
Germany 19th
France 22nd
UK 24th
Canada 28th
USA 32nd

and now compare that to costs

yet the US spends the most per capita on healthcare (OECD 2017)
United States — $10,209 - 1st
Germany — $5,728 - 5th
France — $4,902 - 11th
Canada — $4,826 - 12th
Japan — $4,717 - 14th
United Kingdom — $4,246 - 17th
Italy — $3,542 - 20th


Coming dead last while spending twice as much is hardly a case for "There's nothing the government can do better than private industry"

[KL27x]

^So are you suggesting that changing to metric will fix this? Americans will have better healthcare because of meters? The cost will drop, infant mortality will drop, and life expectancy will increase? 

Oh, you got dragged completely off topic by a looney bin? 

Yes, our country sucks. Our healthcare is expensive. Anything done by the government is expensive (including changing road signs). Our people are stupid and entitled and lazy. Making a symbolic gesture by changing road signs doesn't change the fact that America remains relevant because of its influence over oceans and airspace.

[boffin]

^So are you suggesting that changing to metric will fix this? Americans will have better healthcare because of meters? The cost will drop, infant mortality will drop, and life expectancy will increase? 

Oh, you got dragged completely off topic by a looney bin? 

Yes, our country sucks. Our healthcare is expensive. Anything done by the government is expensive (including changing road signs). Our people are stupid and entitled and lazy. Making a symbolic gesture by changing road signs doesn't change the fact that America remains relevant because of its influence over oceans and airspace.

No, I'm using it as an example of

Some countries think they're #1 and hence don't have to change; vs
Other countries know they're not #1, but are willing to do things to improve

[Zero999]

I can't believe anyone seriously thinks changing road signs will do anything. It might affect the road accident rate for a short period of time, it might increase because people drive faster or decrease if people are more careful, but it will return close to what it was before hand.

It's not the cost that keeps the US from metricating the road signs, it is lack of will and that is totally understandable. It wouldn't really serve any purpose.

Why are we still nibbling around this topic.  Look, it's really as simple as this:  The US is not going to have some low rent country (or association of countries) tell us how to measure stuff.  See?  Simple!  Work from that premise and see where it takes you.  Pretty much where we are today.  Once people are told the metric standards are held in France, a member of the EU, it's game over in terms of conversion.  There's no way in the world we are giving up our sovereignty to the EU.  We can see how it's working out for the UK.

You forget a fair proportion of the EU made the US what it is today.

In reality not converting to metric because the EU invented it is a really childish reason not to. Plenty of others have given perfectly valid arguments for not to convert such as it requiring a huge investment, without a significant return to warrant it, but not using something because someone else who you don't like invented it is a silly reason. Perhaps we should all stop eating noodles or using rockets because big bad horrible China invented them?

Those who are compelled for other reasons to use metric will use it.  Science, for example, is slightly easier using metric units but there are equivalent conventional units that work just as well.  But not engineering.  Structural is still in KIPS, HVAC is still in CFM, FPM or GPM, Civil is still in feet and inches and Mechanical (omitting HVAC) is still primarily conventional units.  Electrical (as in power, industrial, etc) is still conventional units including AWG and MCM.  In other words, all traditional Professional Engineering is still in conventional units.  Other kinds of engineering (eg biomedical) is not in the family of Professional Engineering and is likely metric in any event.  But you certainly can't say US engineering is metric.  It isn't.  And it won't be!  Ever!

Well SI units are a hell of a lot easier to use, than imperial.

For example try solving the problem I posted a few pages ago:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-is-the-us-not-metric/msg2787160/#msg2787160

A 400V 3 phase geared motor is 80% efficient. It lifts a 500lb weight,  to a height of 12ft, in 30 seconds. Think about how you'd work out the power in metric (Watts) vs imperial (horsepower). Now calculate the current draw, assuming a power factor of 0.9. I'm not going to go through it, but to calculate the current you'll need power in Watts, a metric unit, so why not start with metric units in the first place?  Try again with 227kg and 365.8m. See how much easier it is.

How is it that those who want us to change are from countries of minimal accomplishments?  They want to drag us down to their level, that's why!  The EU tries to level the playing field such that high rent countries don't outperform the others.  They don't want competition, they want 'equaity'.

It's like that NHS thing.  The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks.  In 12 weeks I could be dead!  I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious.  I can go to one  facility for everything except overnight stays.  MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility.  For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO.  Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it.  All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery.  Same as socialized anything else!

The problem with US healthcare is if you don't have the money you die. Socialised healthcare is not simply throwing money at wasters. It's an investment which pays for itself in the form of getting people back to work more quickly and paying taxes.

It's interesting that Boris Johnson wants to pull the UK back to imperial units.  That ought to be fun to watch!  I can see the smoke pouring out of Juncker's ears when that begins.  Yes, I know he is out of office...

He's an idiot, pure and simple.

As I said much earlier in this thread, we aren't going to change.  Certain fields already use metric but the people use conventional units and always will.

Anybody keep track of Nobel Prizes by country?  The US doesn't quite keep up with the idea that we have more than all the other countries combined but it's surprisingly close.  Somehow our 'morons' are smarter than everybody else's 'morons', combined.

OK, that's just science.  What about something more important:  Money!  The DOW is up more than 42% since the inauguration.  If you have a boatload of money in your retirement account, 42% of a boatload is still a boatload of money.  Lowest unemployment in 50 years.  Lowest unemployment of minorities, ever!  Modest wage growth but it's starting to tick up, labor is tight.  How are the European countries doing?  Last I heard, not too well!  And the reason unemployment was so low in the '60s (the 50 years ago thing) was the vast number of people drug into the military.

I expect the US to stand pat.  We're holding all the high cards and don't really need to concern ourselves with the other players.

Science mostly uses SI units and Europe is doing quite well and the UK will start to go downhill if they cut their ties with Europe.

[KL27x]

The problem with US healthcare is if you don't have the money you die. Socialised healthcare is not simply throwing money at wasters. It's an investment which pays for itself in the form of getting people back to work more quickly and paying taxes.

No, not even remotely close, FYI.
Any emergency room will save your life, even if you don't have the right card in your wallet. It's just the ones that don't have that card will be given a bill that is ridiculous (it could be 10x what the insurance company pays for the same services). The still living patient might pay it; they might never. Medical bills don't affect your credit rating and you can't have your wages garnished or your home foreclosed due to medical bills. That's between you and your hospital and doctors. We also punish people at tax time if they do not cover themselves or their employees.

Does healthcare cost more in America? Heck yeah. Why wouldn't it, when we have a generation of rstopher's who have "gamed the system and got theirs, so much more wealth than their kids will ever see." The cost of healthcare is basically what people will pay to die a little nicer. And in America, today, this business is booming.

Rstopher brags about amassing this kind of wealth. It is pretty much how things are here. America's youth is financially obligated to wipe their old peoples' asses in a professional/commercial setting. In some states there is a two year waiting list for nursing school to get in on this lucrative profession of butt-cleaning and sponge bathing and hand-holding of someone else's dying grandpa. And to fetch them some morphine or another packet of graham crackers when they ring a bell. To heck with building cars. In America, our old sick people have the real money to spend. Why would our country not have ridiculous healthcare expenditures? The men with the money decide what they spend it on, and some sort of privatization or tiered nature of healthcare is a natural part of the house raking back some of the chips from this generation of wealth. Gotta give people options. If everyone is treated equally by the healthcare system, how are rich people supposed to spend more money to feel better than everyone else while dying? If you're poor, you die with an idiot on either side preaching to you the sins of the imperial system. If you poney up for First Class Death, you might get a decent conversation among your own class. Plus graham crackers on demand. While you play wheelchair shuffleboard, in the Aspen mountains, next to a creek.

[Zero999]

The problem with US healthcare is if you don't have the money you die. Socialised healthcare is not simply throwing money at wasters. It's an investment which pays for itself in the form of getting people back to work more quickly and paying taxes.

No, not even remotely close, FYI.
Any emergency room will save your life, even if you don't have the right card in your wallet. It's just the ones that don't have that card will be given a bill that is ridiculous (it could be 10x what the insurance company pays for the same services). The still living patient might pay it; they might never. Medical bills don't affect your credit rating and you can't have your wages garnished or your home foreclosed due to medical bills. That's between you and your hospital and doctors. We also punish people at tax time if they do not cover themselves or their employees.

Does healthcare cost more in America? Heck yeah. Why wouldn't it, when we have a generation of rstopher's who have "gamed the system and got theirs, so much more wealth than their kids will ever see." The cost of healthcare is basically what people will pay to die a little nicer.

Yes, you're right, ER will save a patient's life, even if they don't have a dime, but in many cases, if they had enough money they would have sought treatment much earlier, not needed ER and had a much higher chance of survival.

The problem with the US system is the insurance companies make loads of money. I accept the NHS isn't perfect but at least most people here have access to healthcare and those who are able to afford it can still go privately.