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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

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Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#61

Post by ptaipale »

ralfd wrote: post #46
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> The UX is awful Wait, what UX does a fridge need? Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold.

Of course there needs to be a clock that you then need to switch between daylight savings and normal time.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#62

Post by _xnmw »

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

It’s not until I was forced to live in Europe due to circumstances that I realized that there exists a much better life than the North American one. Even though I’m in the East (Ukraine), everything is better here. Everything, especially the food, the prices, and the lack of racial tensions and militarized police. The only thing I miss here is trying to fill the emptiness in life with same-day Amazon junk delivered to my door.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#63

Post by dqv »

ralfd wrote: post #46
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> The UX is awful Wait, what UX does a fridge need? Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold.

American fridges have falcon wing doors with door knobs instead of handles

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#64

Post by mosselman »

ralfd wrote: post #46
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> The UX is awful Wait, what UX does a fridge need? Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold.

"Mine just has a scroll wheel which goes from cool to cold."

It not having a touch screen doesn't mean there is no UX.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#65

Post by mojuba »

tim333 wrote: post #25
rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

In the US the power of large corporations seems to have run amok a bit allowing them to foist crappy bread, chocolate etc. In Europe things are more regulated and it seems easier for local producers to not be wiped out by the large corporates. I think the US need some political reform so it's less easy to buy political influence.

Yes it's regulations, but there's another factor too: population density. In Paris for example, you can find food markets where stuff is brought from small farms and is ridiculously cheap, right in the city central areas, though often hidden in the back alleys. The reason this works is that this type of commerce doesn't require marketing: local people just see it and use it. Only possible in higher density population areas.

I think this is one of America's problems: living far apart from each other has a lot of disadvantages and inefficiencies. Homes are much more expensive to build and maintain (just think of the road infrastructure and all the utilities alone). In a typical suburban there can be virtually no public areas other than shopping malls, which are owned by someone.

There's also research that confirms people are more productive in higher density areas from the point of view of economics.

We'll have to see if America can fix itself by moving to bigger cities, which seems to be the current trend among the millennials and younger, I hear.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#66

Post by skissane »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #49
roenxi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a trade deficit of ~600 billion, which roughly equates to every American having $2,000 to spend buying stuff from overseas. Then on top of that there are all the services America exports. If foreigners are willing to give Americans stuff for paper there is a real pressure for Americans not to bother making stuff and printing more paper instead. That probably influences a lot of the decisions behind Americ…

I live in Australia. What are the tax incentives to spending money on my home?

roenxi is possibly talking about the main residence CGT exemption.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#67

Post by baybal2 »

arethuza wrote: post #3

I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.

> I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher

That's only one side of the problem out of many. It has more to do with the general attitude and culture withing the company, which ultimately stems from wider culture.

Tesla is currently enthusiastically repeating all of GM's failures with their engineers screaming murder, and being dismissed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+welding+cracks

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#68

Post by lazyjones »

rtpg wrote: post #5

This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…

> The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California

This is a strange comparison, housing prices depend on many different factors and you can get really crappy small apartments (including the plumbing) in expensive parts of London or Monaco for that kind of money.

If the $2m home in California has mediocre doors and plumbing, it's probably just due to lack of attention/clue by previous owners, possibly also from abundance of crappy plumbers because everyone in the business makes plenty of money from rich people in the area.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#69

Post by atq2119 »

lnsru wrote: post #33
kstenerud wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to agree. I've lived in Japan (5 years), in San Francisco (6 years), and now live in Germany. The food quality goes Europe -> Japan -> USA, with a sharp drop between Japan and the USA. I'm currently living in Leipzig, which still has bombed-out looking empty buildings from the time of the Iron Curtain (although things have finally been picking up over the past few years). And yet even here the infrastruc…

Infrastructure in Leipzig is awesome because it was newly created after joining Western Germany for the money from westerners. Infrastructure in Western Germany is crap! My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains. Buildings of universities in Western Germany is a bad joke. University in Regensburg was literally collapsing while one in Dresden got many new b…

At least there are trains... and Munich in particular is slightly weird in that the subway (U-Bahn) is run by a municipal company and works very reliably given the amount of people they're moving, while the suburban trains (S-Bahn) are run by Deutsche Bahn and are often a mess at rush hour. In part that's due to the design flaw of having a massive central bottleneck.

Similarly for universities, the quality differs. Go to Munich's technical university and you'll see buildings in the top percentiles. Go to other universities and the substance is easily going to be much older - but then again, Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education.

Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#70

Post by roenxi »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #49
roenxi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a trade deficit of ~600 billion, which roughly equates to every American having $2,000 to spend buying stuff from overseas. Then on top of that there are all the services America exports. If foreigners are willing to give Americans stuff for paper there is a real pressure for Americans not to bother making stuff and printing more paper instead. That probably influences a lot of the decisions behind Americ…

I live in Australia. What are the tax incentives to spending money on my home?

When you spend money on your house the value of that house increases. When you sell your primary residence, it isn't caught by the Capital Gains Tax. So essentially if you are looking for a place to park money you have two choices:

1) Put it in your primary residence. Wealth is stored, no future tax liability, you are more comfortable

2) Buy a productive asset. Wealth stored, you will pay capital gains tax on the asset price rises due to asset inflation.

The most tax-effective place to store money long term is capital improvements to your primary residence, mainly due to how inflation and CGT interact. And the capital value of the property could reasonably rise more than the cost of the work done.

There are risks but there is also a lot of incentive to remodel the kitchen or upgrade something if money is available.

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