First gear:

Either inflate the sale price to today, or deflate the resale price to then. Otherwise, apples /= oranges.

Inputting your comments into the Goldbug Magic 8-Ball, and it says....

One word: Lawyers.

They roll the loan into a CDO and sell it off. Even if they continue to “service” the loan (their letterhead on the bills), their capital is no longer at risk of default.

Test drive with Ford salesperson = 15 minutes.

This is the “John vs. Fat Tony” problem presented by Taleb in “The Black Swan”: do you make a decision based on what you can see, or by what you can’t see?

Gavrilo Princip vs. Ferdinand & Sophie. The aftermath was quite messy.

They might as well have not included a speedometer at all.

Oh, dat soundtrack....

Tires were 1.5 psi low.

Simple: have a friend who is a car dealer.

So, your argument can be summarized as, “Because Jersey”?

THERE’s your problem!

The ascending stock would just have to be substantially lighter (by my rough calculations, ~3% of the descending mass). Again, inverse square law.

A real engineer at GM refused to believe it was impossible to shave a few heypennies off the cost of an ignition switch.

So you’re saying a mass 22k miles from Earth’s surface will experience a gravitational force greater than or equal to another mass sitting on the Earth’s surface waiting to go up the elevator, thus allowing the second mass to ascend?

How do you know the blades on that fan aren’t reversed, and are used for VTEC-esqe boost to aircraft needing to TOGA?

Not any more dangerous than the bikers and rollerbladers encountered (often at 30 mph) on the Lake Shore path.