You use 5 times as much water as the average household for the number of people living there, you pay 25 times as much for all the water past the average.

Exponential functions mean: (any_number)^x. And they grow much faster than x^(any_number)

x^(any_number) is a polynomial function

Nevermind. I'm not wasting my time with nitpicking today. It's too good a day.

Bottom line, their grass isn't as important as people who need to use water.

Some European countries - the Nordic ones, I think - use this system in assessing traffic fines. The richer you are, the more you pay for traffic violations.

Sadly, money does not mean that much to the rich. It's about image and GOD FORBID that their lawn is brown.

What a difference from our system where Greed is Good.

but not a whole lot.

80% of the water goes to agriculture, industry and energy. Reducing water use, like reducing energy use, is really about powering down the entire economy.

Food, manufactured goods, energy. Figure out how to do it all with a lot less water, or do less of all of it.

But we have all kinds of new housing under construction in Southern California.

People need not just water, but the food that requires water to grow. To stay healthy, we have to keep our homes and our bodies reasonably clean. Takes water. Human life takes water. We can cut back on water, but only to a certain point.

Even when it comes to landscaping, we need to keep our trees alive. The grass is not so important, but if you live in a house like ours with lots of windows and no air conditioning in a region 10 area (by gardening regions, that's pretty hot), you need shade from trees,

The gravel on the ground doesn't cool things off quite the way grass does. The best solution is to plant native plants, but even some of those succumb to the heat in the worst of the summer.

It sounds easier to say "reduce water usage" than it is. Most of us in our neighborhood in the city are doing everything we can to cut our water usage. We think about it and talk about it a lot. But we can only cut to a certain point.

I save all the water that I use in the kitchen except the water that has soap. I recycle it into my yard, onto my trees and other plants. That's how we keep things alive.

If you just let your yard go completely to dust, you get dust storms. That's what happened in Oklahoma in the 1930s. That is not an alternative either. It's really bad for your health -- for respiratory diseases for example.

Drought is much more complex than people realize. You have to wash dishes sooner or later.

If every household in America magically cut their water use by 90%, it would move the overall water-use needle by about... 9%.

The other 90% is agriculture, energy and manufacturing. To cut our country's water use by (for example) 30%, the only way to get there is 25% less agriculture+energy+manufacturing (pick you want to manipulate each to get the final total). That is assuming households managed a 50% reduction in water use.

Understand, I'm totally in favor of not growing grass where grass doesn't grow naturally. But the math says that the total impact of that isn't actually a big part of the overall picture. Those rich people are being assholes, with their giant mansion lawns (and really, fuck them), but they aren't a big part of the problem. There just aren't that many of them.

There are a lot of basins in California that are lumped together.

A pot plant in Humboldt =/= a rice plant in Glenn =/= an artichoke in Monterey =/= a grape vine in Fresno =/= an avocado tree in Ventura =/= a swimming pool in Palm Springs.

One obvious way is drip irrigation which saves half of the water or more.

Another is to catch the water used to wash vegetables for market and send it back out to the fields.

I get $968/mo on SS and have ZERO sympathy for her problems.

Yep, just the three of them. In the summer of 2003 she told me her air conditioning bill was $700 per month. We had a little sink in the area where we worked. She'd wash her coffee cup & leave the water running while she talked to me. Then she'd use 3 sheets of paper towel to dry her cup. It was an amazing mindset to watch in action, a total lack of awareness of her consumption.

of FDR, Eisenhower, and LBJ.

Without unity and comm-unity we aren't a nation, we're a venue.

Reagan

if I were looking to write a book I'd doing a lot of looking at the Thatcher/Reagan era.

If I were looking to change the future, I'd want to be looking into potential motivators of social unification.

Unfortunately, I think we missed a terrific opportunity following the 2008 crash and I'm not expecting or wanting another one of those during the closing years of my life.

starting 1/20/1981

We're In This Together vs You're On Your Own.

We've had 30+ years of YOYO policies & a culture that cultivates that kind of thinking. If you were born after 1980, all you've ever heard is that unions are bad & Cadillac queens & their ilk, are the reason for all our problems. Oh, but hey, we're a Christian nation.

And watch as they weaken and go delirious just like anybody else. Juts before they expire, come bring them water and then comment, "oh, it appears we ARE EQUAL when it comes to water".

is often times my favorite type... wish it happened in reality more frequently

the people. Socialists do not approve of torture, although I appreciate the spirit in which you are offering your post.

to stop being used as an excuse for exploitation of resources. We are all on one planet and limited resources. Those exploiting the resources, hogging them for their own purposes, will have to be stopped. Those using wealth as an excuse will be seen as moronic and in the way.

Not...

...to stop being used as an excuse for exploration of resources.

with finite resources and space, and the landscape is changing. Those resources thought to be endless for years, forever, are going away.

Depriving the wealthy of their faux stature and toys would be one hell of a mental torture. Not that I'd disapprove of that.

horror, the horror!

Miserable lives of the formerly rich and famous. You could show them working nasty jobs as punishment.

again in their living area unless they are in even worse shape and are homeless.

an excuse for exploitation of resources and others. I don't know how/when this will come about, but it will. We are living in a finite space with finite resources. Individuals such as this will eventually be brought under control for survival of the species.

The French invented the guillotine for people like this.

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."

possesses an inescapable logic.

drinking, cooking, dishes, vegetable gardens and showers. If there isn't enough for your castle grounds, tough shit!

Years ago we all had to ration water out here in SoCal. Just like during the 70s we all had to ration gasoline. It's just tough shit. We're all in this together. And SO WHAT if your lawn goes brown? That's "the cost of doing business" here in California DURING A DROUGHT!!!! You are NOT immune!!! That's just part of how it is here in drought country. Get used to it, Rancho Santa Fe! Lawns went brown all over the swanky parts of town, like the Pacific Palisades, parts of Santa Monica, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, all of it. That's just how it was, and how we had to cope.

Btw, Rancho Santa Fe, and La Quinta, and Palm Desert, and Palm Springs - that's another ritzy part of SoCal, but it's been carved OUT OF THE FUCKING DESERT, OKAY?????? The natural order out that way is dry. DRY, DRY, and more DRY. For Pete's Sake, it's the FUCKING DESERT!!!!! It's like building some palace out in the middle of the Sahara and then whining about how you don't have enough water rights. Well, if you choose to live or build or do business out in THE FUCKING DESERT, water issues are going to COME WITH THE TERRITORY!!!!! Get USED TO it. Just like if you choose to live or build or do business up in the Great White North, you're GOING TO have to deal with the cold and the snow, okay????? You're just gonna have to cope with that!!!! It comes with the territory forcryingoutloud!!!!

With rich whiners like this selfish entitled arrogant jerk quoted in the OP, I'd say - hey, YOU are well-heeled enough, YOU have enough money - to be able to pay more. Just like it should be with taxes. YOU are uniquely and comfortably positioned to be able to afford to cough up a little more! OR, you also have enough money to move to a climate where there's plenty of water to have your nice green lawn - that is totally and completely and nothing but ALIEN to a desert climate. I've lived in neighborhoods where everyone MUST have their nice expansive well-kept green lawn (HUGE water guzzler) AND a rose garden out in the front yard (ANOTHER HUGE water guzzler). We gave up on that a long time ago and where we could, we put in drought-tolerant plantings. LOVED my mom's rose garden. I eventually took over the care of it. Worked on it every weekend and took great pride in it. It was beautiful and wonderful and all that. But it was unsustainable. And it was a LOT of work, and by then I had little kids who took up all my extra time, and gardening kinda got shoved to the back burner. So it goes!

INDEED! So it goes! Things change! Sometimes you just have to adapt. This elitist coddled spoiled rich jerk doesn't want to have to adapt. But hey, GET OVER IT, DUDE! We all have to. And today, OUR little drought-tolerant garden is the envy of our neighborhood. You don't have to have a big green lawn and/or a rose garden to have a beautiful front yard or curb appeal. And these days, a drought-tolerant garden has its own distinct and natural beauty. BEAUTY!!! Don't even need flowering plants so much. The colors in the foliage and the stems - like manzanita bushes, for example, with their sumptuous deep-cranberry-red branches and stems - just GLORIOUS! We have all natives and other plantings specifically from this particular area - the kind of thing you'd find growing naturally in the local hillsides and canyons of and around the Santa Monica Mountains.

AND - we're also a habitat now. Maybe some here have gone to the Lounge and checked out my birdie threads.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018769356

We have hatchlings and birdies and music all around our house from the various bird calls. It's like a symphony outside! And it's TONS of fun! I just posted photos of the first sighting, yesterday, of the new hatchlings - the second bunch of 'em THIS YEAR! We've had nestlings every Spring for three years now, but THIS year we have TWO rounds of 'em. Going natural has its own benefits, FOR SURE!!!!

....where the hills are bone dry....

By the way, that great rolling lawn thing is a fetishistic hark-back to country estates in England, where it rains and rains and rains, and the lawn mowers were the landlord's flock of sheep. It's totally unsuitable for anywhere West of the Rockies.

humans, the 1%s or 99ers, without drinkable water they all will perish. It will just take a little longer for the rich.

She was only a little girl at the time, but every citizen was allotted a ration of food & gas. In today's world, the rationing will be monetary, like this asshole wants. If you have money you will get water. If you don't, you will not.

These people have no understanding of The Commons or the common good. It is all about them.

then the whiners will find out that all the money in the world can't turn the spigot back on for them.

just reinforces the idea that rich people are greedy self centered aholes. If he was smart he'd keep those kind of opinions to himself.

If you have a certain amount of money, you are allowed to think of yourself as "more of a person" than the common rabble, and therefore deserving of extra privileges. The poor and middle class, in their opinions, are lucky to have a portion of *their* water, because they're all lazy bums who are inferior to them. This is a dangerous mentality that needs to be destroyed from our society.

But $800 a month?

Living in the Pacific Northwest my water bill is about $10 a month. But then we only have to water or lawns maybe 3 months out of the year at most.

I'd like to see these entitled assholes get what is coming to them

Hard. Right in their shitty faces.

they have to unbutton their collars to take a leak.