There’s a few sides to this argument. First, yes, many people have a false sense of economic entitlement - they think being willing to “show up and work” should get entitle you to a middle-class lifestyle, even if you didn’t do anything (develop skills/education) beforehand, and that’s nuts.

This shoots down my theory, which was that the Turkey purchase was a kind of reverse Trojan horse: Turkey huffs and puffs a lot about NATO in public, some of which is real, some of which is for show, buys the S-400, which then lets engineers from NATO countries examine the whole system top to bottom. The S-400 stays…

No, but it shows that the plane is highly maneuverable, which is useful. It’s sort of like videos of cars stopping from 120mph or a pickup hauling the Space Shuttle - likely not something that will ever happen in real life, but its got the chops to handle more mundane work.

True! Though the total level of that families own probably puts us in a historically weak position to handle even small economic shocks- if say, there’s a minor downturn, one of the 1st things that happens is some hourly employees get a few less hours. If you’re barely making ends meet to pay off debt (mortgage or…

That’s a fair enough assessment, but it’s very different than unsecured debt - like credit card debt, where the ultimate recovery is typically 20 cents or less.

THIS. A lot of people really don’t know that they’ll put the best loan you qualify for in front of you. Dealers can also often dangle manufacturer incentives in front of you (“CASH BACK!” or whatever), and then choose a rate so that you save a tinnyyyyy bit of money compared to the rate that your bank or credit union…

While I get your point, car loans are kind of the opposite of “unsecured.” You’re talking about a piece of property that, unlike a house, is literally on wheels and left in plain view much of the time.  Sure, there’s repo procedures to follow, but it’s not like you’re asking for a personal loan secured by nothing more…

Do people really need new cars that often? Outside of performance cars and some other niche cases, most new cars are WAY more reliable than they were a generation ago. There’s really no reason - other than showing off - that you really need a new car every 3-5 years unless your life situation changes (the 3 door hot…

Not sure what options, etc., he had, but just checking TrueCar around here (Chicago metro) that’s about right by the time you factor in taxes, etc.

There’s a lot not to like about Dodge, but I’ve been in a fair number of Dodge Journeys as Ubers/Lyfts, and while they’re certainly not nice cars, they’re actually pretty amazing considering what people end up paying. On a longer ride, I talked to the driver about it - he said he paid almost $20k on the nose, which is…

It depends, since making containers is very carbon-intensive: Whether talking about aluminum, plastic or glass, you need to use a ton of energy to go from raw materials to finished product.  (Somewhat less to go from recycled materials to finish product... but you’re still shipping the containers somewhere to be…

The best way to subsidize it is to charge people more for garbage (not-recycled, not-compost) collection. There’s different systems for that - and none are entirely perfect/foolproof (like, if you charge too much, you’re effectively encouraging dumping waste elsewhere, illegally).

It depends on what your criteria for “suitability” are, and what problems are ultimately hardest to solve. There’s some who have said that although the SURFACE of Venus is a hellhole, living in Venus’s CLOUDS may be doable.

“transferred 2,000 posts at Opel’s r&d center in Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt to France’s Segula Technologies.” 

No, those weren’t factory workers, but they were jobs that moved from Germany to France. (I was mostly making a joke, but I’m not sure what happened to the 3,700 factory jobs previously mentioned - it seems…

Exactly. And the entire experience - from bag-drop off to dick consumption - would happen in front of the exec’s assistant, who knows s/he (but, c’mon, it’s a he) won’t snitch, because then he’d be sent back to the absolute hellish wasteland... of one of the factories where the actual union members show up every day…

I can see people being pro-union, but it’s REALLY hard to be pro-UAW. I feel for a lot of the actual workers in the union, but, man, UAW leadership does crap that’d make most mobsters blush. They’ve also been opposed to programs that would help workers retool for jobs that are more likely to be available in the…

The overall Hummer aesthetic would sell well, and I think that kind of design would work well for EVs, with the battery lowering the center of gravity. (Plus, it’s like most Hummers were actually sold to go any further off the road than the parking lot of the nearest Ruth’s Chris anyways.)

Especially considering it’s basically an ideal platform for an EV, with a body that’d benefit from a low, flat battery pack (and with enough room to give it a pretty substantial one).

You need to appreciate the subtlety there: Opel is doing well because they followed a trusted-and-true formula: lay of thousands of inefficient, lazy German workers and move those jobs to France, long considered the very paradigm of healthy industrial relations.

The difference is minuscule compared with hauling giant fake rocks on your wheels. Though I guess that’s one way to give the car an even lower center of gravity...