441–450 of 475 posts
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Other humans. If other humans were giving you everything you need for free, why do you need a job?
To afford things I merely want? To afford to support friends and partners?
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For a lot of people the infrastructure is an outlet in our garage. Going to the gas station is a novelty and just for snacks. Road trips are a few times a year and not a dealio at all. A PHEV is a nice sweet spot. It's 2026 and we are still debating this? There are a range of use cases for the population. We have semis, F350s towing landscape trailers, motorcycles, bikes, evs, NEVs, etc. Pick what you think will work…
>It's 2026 and we are still debating this? You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM no…
One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice.
Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip.
So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere.
Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back.
The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
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> if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do That does not seem like a feature unique to progressives? Conservatives are trying explicitly to involve other states, they'd happily put us all under the thumb of a Evangelical theocracy if they had the power to do so.
What part of "lowercase p" was unclear? Those jerks in NC to cram Christian values down everyone's throat via the federal government are no different than the jerks in CA who think that if they have to suffer through a low flow shower head some guy in Alton Missouri ought to as well. They're all progressives. We can debate the merits of the directions in which they seek to progress but they're both progressives on a…
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Someone must tell the 200,000+ dead Iraqi civilians that the war was fake.
Strictly speaking, it was, since we never actually declared war on Iraq. Which only makes the whole tragedy a more egregious violation.
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Which is very different to labelling them a national security risk instead of just not awarding them contracts.
It is a security risk. That's the problem you create if you allow every single vendor from imposing their own rules. The contracts are not awarded because doing so would create a security risk. I don't know what analogy would drive the point home. Imagine a password management system where the people running the company have an ideology that leads them to believe that their system should not allow anyone to secure an…
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To afford things I merely want? To afford to support friends and partners?
But other people are giving you everything you want for free. Why do you need to afford it? What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?
Also:
> What does it even mean to question whether you can afford something you already get unlimited amounts of for free?
If I had unlimited money, my limiting resources would quickly become time and energy instead. So affording something would mean fitting it into my day/week/month/etc, and finding the energy for it. I have severe ADHD and executive dysfunction, so I don't always have the capacity for things I should be able to do.
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Why do you assume there’s debt involved? Whether BS or not, people with degrees have higher earnings (~2x on average according to the FED) and pay higher taxes (more than 2x on average); it’s very much in the government’s financial interest for more people to have degrees.
That suffers from the stereotype fallacy. Some majors have huge ROI while others leave graduates very frustrated with their prospects. Not everyone will benefit from a degree. Not all degrees are financially sound. If people think that all majors tend near the average, they are mistaken. Some do very well, others are of dubious value to a career. Averages hide ugly realities.
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But China wants to make everything, that is the problem. It might also be the case that we misunderstand the state of the Chinese economy quite a bit. I heard an argument by an economist that the situation is mainly explained by the real estate crash. That was a ginormous event but the government basically just denied any big consequences. That did kill the credit market for a long time. Now Chinese consumer have lit…
> But China wants to make everything As long as a typical Chinese person is happy with a standard of living that is far below what an American expects, China will be way cheaper on labor. For most products, labor is a significant cost. For a lot of consumers, price is more important then where it's made. Maybe not what they say they think is important but when they actually decide. As a result, China will make almost…
Explain how this is supposed to work on any medium time frame.
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An interesting feature of Trump 2.0 is that his party has essentially entirely keeled over. Presidents are not historically all powerful within their own parties and the nature of the big tent systems means usually it is fairly difficult to get agreement on everything within a party without some compromise. Trump has managed to defang everybody else in the GOP.
There is no point for a Republican to fight Trump now . He'll be out of power in 2 years, so it's much smarter to just wait him out. What happens then will be very interesting! I don't see anyone who can keep wielding Trump's power.
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on what basis do you claim the local product is "good" if people are not choosing it?
You can manipulate the meaning of "good" to suit your purpose, but it generally refers to quality. Cost is a different aspect entirely. A one-dollar scoop of ice cream and a $100 scoop are both good.