What happened to $1000 used pieces of crap as a first car? Are they gone, or do Zoomers have unrealistic expectations?
If they end up merely being the third richest generation of humans to ever live, is it really the end of the world? Did we think things would just always get better forever, without some force dragging us upward beyond fulfillment of our own basal desires?
I drove cheap pieces of crap when I was living with my mother.
What changed when I had kids myself was that there have been noticeable safety improvements in cars, which didn't use to happen often. There's stability control (2007), tire pressure monitoring system (2008), backup cameras (2018), and automatic emergency braking (2022). Other tech that's not required is adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection, lane departure warning and lane keeping, etc.
Before that it was 3-point seat belts (1973), third rear brake lights (1985), and front-seat shoulder belts required & airbags common (1987).
The only change from 1987 to 2007 was the introduction of five-star safety ratings in 1993.
We handed down our 2015 Mazda CX-5 to our son and he would be driving it today except that somebody else's drunk son hit our car while it was parked and totaled it. So we got him a 2024 vehicle that had all the safety features we could find. It helped that we have more money than my folks did, of course.
GM Marketing is absolutely concerned with secondary markets, as they prop up the initial buyers. Force every car owner to hold that car until it is scrapped and see what the demand for GM vehicles is. A small dip in interest from secondary buyers and all of a sudden lease rates shoot up, because that willingness of secondary buyers to get the car is the sole determinant of the single largest lease cost -- depreciation.
Imho, BYDs are cheaper and more globally available. If you are already at the margins from an energy affordability perspective, you’re not buying a comparatively overpriced Tesla unless you cannot buy a cheaper Chinese alternative in your country (the US, for example).
Agree this price shock is going to be favorable for transportation electrification in the short term (electricity generated via oil is an edge case, but LNG volatility is certainly going to push electricity prices up in some markets). The economic pain will influence consumer decisions until the volatility is ironed out, which could be months from now.
It's much simpler than that. North American oil is suddenly worth twice as much.
Plus it gives an excuse to allow Russia to sell some oil on legitimate markets.
> North American oil is suddenly worth twice as much
That doesn't make up for the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of American capex at risk in the Gulf, for example Exxon's tens of billions of dollars of capex in Qatar's LNG supply chain or Chevron's monopoly as the sole upstream producer in Kuwait and the KSA.
Any potential profit they could have made from North American extraction (which itself is questionable due to the significant processing requirements for North American crude) would itself have been eaten away by losses that have already been incurred in the Gulf.
The ONG industry has very low net margins (around 4% for integrated ONG), which means any shock is catastrophic, let alone a crisis such as the current one.
If you think they're pissed now, just wait to see how they react to election interference.
I recently read up on how the House of Representatives renews itself and quite frankly it's one of the most beautiful processes I've seen, completely removing the influence of the prior congress.
Anyone who lived in a browser was fine a decade ago.
At this point... it's basically anyone who doesn't want to play competitive mp games with poorly implemented anti-cheat, or who doesn't have niche legacy hardware (ex - inverters, CNCs, oscopes, etc).
Steam tackling the gaming side of things has basically unlocked the entire Windows consumer software ecosystem for linux. It's incredibly easy to spin up windows only applications with nothing but GUI only software on most distros at this point.
Crazy how much better a system with a modern linux kernel and Gnome or KDE is than Windows 11. I'm at the point where I also prefer it to macOS... which is funny since I think Gnome was basically playing "copy apple" for a bit there 5 years ago, but now has really just become the simpler, easier to use DE.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
In this case isn't it more that:
Every sculpture that is made, every picture drawn, every bed left unmade, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
From where I'm sitting, this is theft, its forced wealth redistribution, from people that are potentially already struggling,to people that choose to slum it as artists. Its not even means tested, this really will result in money transferring from those on the edge of poverty to rich art school kids.
There's currently 16,000 homeless / at risk people in Ireland, including 5000 children [0]. I can think of at least one better use for that money.
reply