431–440 of 728 posts
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Interesting, does the proportion by weight, size, value or count? eg a EV battery could be 25% of the weight, 50% of the cost and 0.01% of the number of parts.
Whatever the answer is, there is probably a lot of space for gaming that number. Once a metric becomes a target...
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That's pure speculation, but quite possible. Corruption is nothing new in Washington. The real question is whether people support bringing auto manufacturing back to America. As always, people who like the policy/candidate/official will overlook the corruption, while people who dislike the policy/candidate/official complain about it. The people who demanded evidence about Biden will accept speculation about Trump, ju…
American labor is low quality and high cost. China is no longer a guarantee of cheap and terrible like it used to be. If america wants to make shit again they need to compete on cost terms and quality terms. Honestly the biggest issue I have seen with US companies trying to manufacture goods is that they tend to only target US customers. Especially at the low end. There must be some quirk with US postage where it is…
Speaking as a non-American, this is just not true. I have always been impressed by the very high quality of American engineers.
I cannot comment on manufactured goods though, but I think if the US rebuilds its mid-level industrial pipeline, quality would be amongst the best in the world since Americans generally hold themselves to a high standard. I don't think there is a need to be so negative.
I don't know if it's the same people but many of the comments here seem the opposite of the comments on EUs rules where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered". If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it. I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly
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Three Tesla models meet the 85% threshold and three do not. If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen the 80% threshold instead. I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the standard.
I’d note the ones that meet the threshold are by far the vast majority of Tesla sales and profit. This puts them at a structural advantage. Those three models account for 95% of deliveries in 2024. The rules as stand only impact their highest margin vehicles, which account for 4.8% of their total deliveries. The fact that Elon Musk is personally involved in the decision making and cabinet level discussions and person…
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I'd argue that keeping Musk wealthy is contrary to the interests of most Americans.
> I'd argue that keeping Musk wealthy is contrary to the interests of most Americans. His wealth is what enabled SpaceX to exist. Musk's Neuralink now has enabled a paralized man who could not communicate to operate a computer with his mind and thereby communicate with the world.
Neuralink existed for years before Musk. If it weren't him, the researchers would have continued with other investors or govt grants (Trump gutting the NIH recently notwithstanding).
Compare this paltry evidence of benefit with the massive damage being done by the Musk-directed DOGE group, and it's clear billionaires being able to use their money to buy influence over govt is a net negative for US citizens.
This, in all its many forms, is part of why the economies of dictatorships perform badly.
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Tesla's success/threat pushed traditional automakers to actually build EVs at scale. It convinced consumers that EVs are viable and kickstarted charging infrastructure. The left accomplished its goal even if it probably would have preferred Elon not go all Kanye on us.
I don't know if I can actually believe that. EVs were already coming. Yeah the rollout was a bit slower than the demand for them in established companies, but not by much. People had already been driving hybrid vehicles for quite awhile, and some electric cars already existed even if most were lower mileage/smaller battery models. To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have gotten smartphones or touchs…
With automakers it seemed like in the 20-teens they all shrugged and said, "looks like hybrids are the best we can do". Then Tesla started selling sedans and SUVs and exactly one legacy auto design cycle later we got the electric Mustang, Golf, 3-series, etc. I think they would have milked ICE as long as they could had no one come along with a successful ev.
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Everyday people have been clamoring for some sort of change for a long time. 00s at least. It reached a boiling point in the late 2010s and you had a nearly parallel rise of Trump and Bernie. The difference is that the republicans couldn't keep a lid on Trump and his backers like the democrats did to Bernie. So Trump got in and then politicians "built in his image" started getting elected all over the place. So now t…
> reflect what voters want. and what do they want?
But it's not really compatible with a system where one person represents millions. You'd need something recursive such that no person represents more than a hundred or so, that way there's time to circle back and explain why certain complaints aren't being addressed this cycle and such. You know, responsibility of leadership to the people.
It's also not really compatible with a system where your representative for foo-type issues must also be your representative for bar-type issues, because "competent people" is too broad of a category to be useful.
How to get there from here? I'm not sure but it seems like it'll require a more significant discontinuity than we've seen so far.
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It probably also means that companies will not do it: It seems impossible to keep the tariff this high for years, and Trump will only stay in office for a few years...
Trump has been replacing anyone who would realistically force him out with flunkies as his first order of business. No one is getting rid of him in a few years.
Are you hinting at the second scenario? Then we’ll get to see what US democracy is about, or if those people hoarding guns to fight an undemocratic or abusive government were just overcompensating, as it looks like today.