Best I can do is a Husqvarna from 1997. . A lady sold it to me brand new because a tree came down (big freakin oak!) In their yard so her son was going to cut it up. Until he found out he was afraid of chainsaws. Then we showed up and she asked me if I wanted it.
Still starts cold from 3 pulls though, and once its running, less than half a yank to restart! Brrrrrp!
I’m sure I could come up with something neat though. Any day now me & kiddo are supposed to start on a katana like implement he can play around in the yard with. (Not a samurai sword!)
If there’s no actual climbing or significant heights involved, how dangerous is taking down a tree branch if one is generally not dumb and takes some precautions?
I’ve got a tree right on our side of the property line with a big branch that just sticks straight out horizontally over the neighbor’s patio. Small bits fall off now and then and it’s covered in fungus so I’m assuming it’s rotting. I want to get it down before any possible ice storms weigh it down but local tree companies are a bit outside my price range.
I’ve got plenty of scaffolding, so I thought I could just set some up underneath. It’s only like 10 feet off the ground. Then I’ve got plenty of room to safely move around, and I can just take down small sections at a time and let them fall to the ground.
It is much less dangerous, but acknowledgement that there may be some is important.
Scaffold is nice, but I wouldn’t put anything anywhere underneath it where the branch can take an unpredicted swing and hit it, causing any number of chain reactions. Especially a ladder.
Sounds like the perfect job for a pole saw though. Then once its in close and theres nothing to fall and knock stuff, use a ladder to make a clean cut at the trunk.
This is a radical position for me, seeing as how I am a fairly wealthy investment banker and you would expect me to be a big fan of capitalism.
But when 6 men own half the world, the damn thing is broken.
I think the issue is that capitalism and meritocracy are not the same thing.
Capitalism is undermined by unfairness (if you have rich parents and get sent to a private school and top university, you have a massive unfair headstart, if you inherit a house or a business, you have a massive unfair headstart). And even more so by corruption.
In the UK, everyone complains about benefits (welfare) cheats. Poor kids here are entitled to free school meals in certain circumstances. It costs about £200-million a year, and capitalists whinge about it and say its communist crap.
Meanwhile, the govt corruptly awarded a £600-million contract to a company run by Baroness Mone to supply PPE during Covid. (They called it a fast-track VIP lane, because of the pandemic crisis they didn’t go through proper procurement checks). They supplied duff PPE, she ended up in the House of Lords and bought a private jet worth £300-miilio. Yup, she spent more on a private jet (corruptly taxpayer funded) than we spend on making sure kids are properly nourished so they can attend school successfully.
I don’t think capitalism is any more prone to corruption than, say, socialism, and I don’t see ay way to stop parents trying to help their kids get ahead.
But as it is right now, capitalism is clearly broken.
Pre-industrial society, you could live off the land: the original hunter-gatherers.
Now you are born into a world where someone owns the ground on which you drop from your mother’s womb: you “owe” rent from the second you are born.
I think universal income would restore that “hunter-gatherer” option.
Also, to acknowledge the original question from @Brant_Drake, I don’t think this is really left/right politics!
Left/right for me is whether you give a shit about other people’s reproductive systems or self-labelling. For example, if you want to control other people’s reproductive choices, you’re right wing. If you don’t, you’re a liberal.
It’s your contention that six ultra wealthy ‘owning half the world’ is a result of capitalism, what system would mitigate that? What six men?
There will never be any level of fair in life. If you could make everyone equal on a financial level, there would still be unfairness in abilities, beauty and intellect.
People like me complain that the programs are incredibly wasteful, don’t impact the target group and provide gov contracts for rent seeking friends of politicians. Social nets are fine, but tugging at heart strings to manipulate the passage of new budget bills with over 10,000 pages is the real problem.
This sounds poetic and cute, but what does it actually mean? In the US, at least, the rich turnover is incredibly high. With millionaire families turning over ever 1.X generations. Unlike European countries where generational wealth turnover dates back to the 1700s (particularly in France). There was pretty good data on this a few years back.
I was thinking scaffold would be vastly more stable than a ladder. I could easily see the latter getting the legs kicked out from it by something falling and me falling down with a chainsaw on top of me, haha.
I saw someone talking about the branch collar being where to make cuts, so the tree can heal that spot and the other branches can continue living. Is that just like the spot right before the branch widens to meets the trunk?
Yep. Thats the place to leave off, but I didn’t want to tangle things up with technical stuff. It does make a difference though. Theres stuff to put on it too to prevent water holes, rot, & pest encroachment.
That happens a whole lot. Its a bad fall too, cuz its completely out of control. The tripple whammy is fall, ladder hits you, then branch. Its no good at all.
I’ve ditched my saw a few times taking out storm damage where I’ve had to jump off of a roof or vehicle when everything comes unsprung.
I think the six men include Arnault, Bezos and Musk - and possibly Putin which kind of reinforces your point.
I don’t know if there is a better system, given that socialism as practiced in the old Soviet empire/Eastern Europe clearly didn’t work out either. They all work just fine in textbooks but never in the real world.
As for benefits though - nah. You say they’re incredibly wasteful… but the grand total they waste is NOTHING compared to what is corruptly stolen.
This is classic misdirection - create a class war by making people who pay taxes hate people who have nothing.
You probably think you pay A LOT of tax, and you hate that it goes to workshy people who don’t deserve it.
But the reality is that the total amount spent on benefits is relatively tiny - that’s why I referenced the example above. The amount needed to feed ALL of the poor kids in an entire country for a year is less than
the amount embezzled by one corrupt deal.
To link back to the “6 men own half the world” theme: I pay more tax in the in the UK than both Amazon and Starbucks. No suggestion they’re doing anything illegal - they game the system by declaring their profits in lower-tax jurisdictions.
So Bezos makes hundreds of millions a year from the UK but contributes no tax. If he paid at the same rate I do, it would cover the the entire welfare bill multiple times over.
The problem is not the £1-billion welfare bill, it’s the £100-billion of tax dodged by the biggest corporations, which in turn means we end up with half of the world’s wealth owned by such a small handful of people. That is not right.
Interesting on the turnover of rich families in the US. I wonder if that will continue? Inheritance tax was supposed to change that in the UK, but it hasn’t made any difference at all.
Probably. We have a different attitude towards money than Europeans. I could be talking out my butt here, but more Europeans kind of see themselves as stewards to their families wealth & legacy.
In the US , a lot of generational wealth is lost on the generation after the ones that earned it. Like, daddy worked hard so I don’t have to type stuff.
They are. How much did you receive to adopt your children? Is there any government aid involved?
So we should just stop trying?
A simplistic point - clearly, Bezos, Gates, Musk, and the Sultans of the Middle East control a vast majority of the wealth. To deny that would be obtuse at best, disingenuous at least.
You are triggered because you work hard - by my accounts, sixty hours a week. You’re bright. What if you were paid $200K per year, your kids education was paid for, and your health care was covered.
. A lady sold it to me brand new because a tree came down (big freakin oak!) In their yard so her son was going to cut it up. Until he found out he was afraid of chainsaws. Then we showed up and she asked me if I wanted it.