I work for an installer. Sometimes our company does installs on our employees houses where we don't charge for labor, just materials at cost. It's a sweet deal. Today I was part of such an install, and a dozen Hanwa 410 Qcells, each with a microinverter, were put on a roof. This cost our employee about $6000. So that's about $1.21 a watt with all the necessary equipment.
Unfortunatly I don't know how much we would charge a normal customer. It would probably be double that. All I know is we aren't the cheapest player in the market.
Where does the extra money go? Most installers at our company get paid between 19 and 25 an hour. There's the warehouse expenses, but that's divided between a lot of installs. There's the office staff, but that cost is also divided between many installs.
Things our company does others don't: Our sales people don't earn comission, we don't do door to door sales, don't advertise in a serious way, our CEO earns less than 70K, profits are shared with all employees, and it's a co-op, so you could buy in and get an even larger profit share.
Other companies are probably doing all these things we're not doing and passing that cost on to the customer.
There do exist companies that will sell you equipment packages at wholesale prices, or so I've been told, but you'll need to get the permits and install it yourself.
I'm in the USA and have four charging apps. I think you can pay via card at some chargers but I've never tried, I only pay with the apps. I use the apps because I review my route beforehand and verify the chargers were used recently, as there are a few dead chargers or chargers that aren't actually accessible 24/7. I also use the apps because the charger screens/buttons are sometimes fried from being in the sun all day, and my phone is the only way to interface. Then there is the problem of ICE vehicles blocking access, but that seems to be a less common problem as time goes on.
The system sounds a bit better than what you're experiencing, but I don't really like it. My main complaint is the chargers are all unattended. It's not like a gas pump where there's an employee who can at least put an out-of-order sign on it or perhaps get it working again. If it breaks down there's no one to ask for help and methheads sometimes steal the charging cable. This creates a situation where I'm not 100% certain I can charge at a location until I get there, which I think is the root of my complaint.
Don't bother arguing with the doomers here. I think you're right, but you're indirectly attacking their nihilism and that makes them uncomfortable. Eventually they'll find something that makes them want a future or they'll get old and realize they have nothing.
Why would one want to put their phone in a faraday cage? I know what the cage does, but don't understand why you'd want to use one instead of turning the device off.
Edit: According to this, unless your phone is compromised, turning it off is sufficient.
I get where you're coming from, but I don’t think it holds up the way you’re framing it. Pinning the root of their trouble on a decision made in 1994 is a bit of a reach. You’re talking about a 30-year-old choice—one that may not have panned out financially, sure, but let’s not act like anyone who steps off the traditional path is just writing themselves into a future of failure. People take risks. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t. That doesn’t make someone reckless or undeserving of support three decades later. You’re applying hindsight like a hammer, and it oversimplifies everything that likely happened in between.
And honestly, the “$200k job to start a band” line feels a little too convenient. Maybe he quit for health, burnout, family reasons—we don’t know. Framing it as a dumb, selfish move is an assumption dressed up as fact. Life’s not a spreadsheet. People don’t always make optimal economic choices, and pretending everyone has the foresight, stability, and circumstances to do so just isn't realistic.
As for the $37,000 car—yeah, that’s not ideal. But again, you’re pulling one purchase out of what’s probably a complicated financial picture and using it to write off their entire decision-making process. Have you priced reliable vehicles lately? Even used ones? You don’t know if that was their only option after a breakdown or if it was financed under pressure. It’s easy to diagnose “bad choices” from the outside when you’re not in the thick of it.
And about “doing what you have to”—I agree in principle. Life is about hard choices. But let's not pretend that “just move to a cheaper state” is some silver bullet. Moving costs money. Leaving behind your doctors, your social support network, everything familiar—that’s not nothing. It’s not just a matter of pulling up Zillow and hopping a U-Haul to West Virginia. The fact that you think that’s a simple fix kind of underlines how disconnected this solution is from the reality of aging in poverty.
You say they have no Plan B. That’s fair, maybe. But they also don’t have many cards left to play. Working at 81 isn’t ideal—but it’s what they’ve got. And instead of asking “why didn’t they plan better 30 years ago?” maybe ask why we expect any 81-year-old to be keeping a job just to afford rent. That’s not a personal failure—that’s a systemic one. The fact that they’re still working shows grit. The fact that they have to shows a breakdown in the system we’re all supposed to be able to rely on someday.
You’re focused on their past decisions like they were filling out a retirement strategy on a clean whiteboard. But most people aren’t living with that level of control, especially over decades. You don’t know their full story, just some snapshots, and you’re building a moral framework around it. That’s fine if you want to play armchair financial advisor, but don’t pretend it’s empathy.
And yeah, they're in a bad spot. But treating them like a cautionary tale instead of real people facing a brutal system isn’t going to help them—or anyone else headed in the same direction.
I have come to the conclusion that Trump is actually an alien. He is helping to prepare our planet for the arrival of his species by ensuring CO2 levels quickly reach a more tolerable level. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
I would argue that they were in fact victims of circumstance. The 2008 mortgage implosion seems to be the root of their troubles. I doubt they thought they were making subpar choices in the aftermath. Putting the blame on them really shifts focus from the elephant in the room, that our society should provide a baseline level of dignified existance for the elderly and infirm no matter the quality of their life choices.
Suggesting they move to west virginia because it's cheaper is a ridiculous idea that only someone who lacks life experience would propose. I'm calling out a kid, aren't I?
Why is it that every comment chain about an unfortunate event has at least one callous person who is obviously victim blaming but trying their best to downplay it?
I'll ask you directly, why are you doing this, partial_accumen? Are you trying to convince yourself that this couldn't happen to you? Are you perhaps trying to convince yourself to stick with your soul-sucking yet decent paying job? What's your motivation?
I work for an installer. Sometimes our company does installs on our employees houses where we don't charge for labor, just materials at cost. It's a sweet deal. Today I was part of such an install, and a dozen Hanwa 410 Qcells, each with a microinverter, were put on a roof. This cost our employee about $6000. So that's about $1.21 a watt with all the necessary equipment.
Unfortunatly I don't know how much we would charge a normal customer. It would probably be double that. All I know is we aren't the cheapest player in the market.
Where does the extra money go? Most installers at our company get paid between 19 and 25 an hour. There's the warehouse expenses, but that's divided between a lot of installs. There's the office staff, but that cost is also divided between many installs.
Things our company does others don't: Our sales people don't earn comission, we don't do door to door sales, don't advertise in a serious way, our CEO earns less than 70K, profits are shared with all employees, and it's a co-op, so you could buy in and get an even larger profit share.
Other companies are probably doing all these things we're not doing and passing that cost on to the customer.
There do exist companies that will sell you equipment packages at wholesale prices, or so I've been told, but you'll need to get the permits and install it yourself.