This is probably by design. The “system” keeps cities designed and built in a way that they are impossible to traverse without cars, which forces people to buy cars. Youngsters are earning shit wages but can’t get to work without a vehicle so they get into debt. It’s all fucked. I live in the Netherlands and can do everything I need to do with just my cargo bike. It rocks.
To be fair, the automobile centric city has worked for about 70 years.
The cost of cars is being driven higher by demand for more features. The car companies can make a really cheap car, but consumer’s want air conditioning, power everything, fancy infotainment systems, heated seats and quick 0-60mph times. Then additionally the government mandate for safety and emissions increase the cost further.
You can buy a new car in India for under $5,000 USD.
To be fair, the automobile centric city has worked for about 70 years.
I’m not sure I buy this. Countless communities have been obliterated by overpasses/freeways paved through their neighborhoods. We have horrible suburban layouts we’ve embraced that are completely defined by parking lots that cause water management and housing issues. We’ve completely ripped up the little public transit we had and made few gains in that time.
Cars have created tons of problems over the 20th and 21st centuries.
As far as I can tell, it has every feature you’re saying is responsible for western automakers charging around 6 times the cost of this car… sans heated seats and purported safety standards.
Chevy charges an additional $1K for the package that adds heated seats to their Bolt EV.
So, am I to take you at face value that you’re inferring that safety concerns and standards are responsible for the remainder of the price gouging?
I’m with you. I paid off my 2014 but sold it so I wouldn’t have to tow it cross country. I got $8,500 for it from carmax which was a lowball for 2022. Two years before that, it nearly totaled itself when it blew its head gasket at 51,988 miles. (That was a $5k expense that ford refused to reimburse even though those ecoboost engines are prone to fail)
We moved to a small town and the car market is extra fucky up here. There wasn’t much available and I needed a car for my upcoming commute, so I picked up a 2001 Forester for $5k. Unbenownst to me, the tires were 12 years old, transmission hadn’t been flushed, and the driver’s side head gasket was leaking.
Luckily I have some buddies who are Subaru enthusiasts so I’ve only had to sink maybe $1500 to get it in great condition instead of $3-6k. Had a shop do transmission and differential flushes, and it took three months but I got gaskets, heads, spark plug goodies, and exhaust shenanigans done myself.
We just brought home a 2001 Honda insight for $3500. It’s gonna need some work too, but luckily the hybrid engine is pretty sturdy so long as we deal with battery maintenance.
You ought to be able to change the alternator yourself to save a buck-- check rockauto.com.
Idk who downvoted you, it wasn’t me lol. I personally perceived that your seriousness was aimed at the situation itself, because car costs suck, a lot.
but consumer’s want air conditioning, power everything, fancy infotainment systems, heated seats and quick 0-60mph times.
This is the same lies that the big three have been trying for decades. I want a normal boring fucking car. I want to spend as little money as I can on repair maintenance and fuel. I don’t want some garbage bullshit infotainment system.
And no I can’t buy a new car in India. Go ahead and sell me one.
I wouldn’t mind a Tuk Tuk. Could use about half the year without issue. My daily commute doesn’t involve highways and for repairs any motorcycle shop could handle it.
This may partly be because basically all of them are legal for highway use, so even if all you need is a car that is safe to drive a couple of miles to the grocery store at 35MPH, the safety features and engines (and thus emissions system capabilities) have to be designed with the expectation that the vehicle will be used at 80MPH beside all the other vehicles out there.
It might help to have a wider variety of vehicle licensing options to allow for low-speed, lower-spec ‘city cars’. Though enforcement would probably be an issue, and the safety standards would still need to be robust enough that people in small cars wouldn’t be too badly killed by the gigantic pickup trucks they have to share the road with.
It’s complicated but I would say no. Pretty much all crops require some amount of water so it’s more a question of how it’s allocated. Pistachios are popular to grow because they are high value. So it depends on how you measure. If the goal is maximizing revenue based on limited water supply, pistachios could be a good choice.
Ten percent by year is still pretty rough. People’s wages aren’t expected to go up ten percent every year, why can a landlords?
But the added protections are common sense reforms. It’s vile what the property owners have been able to get away with in California, to think of the number of lives they’ve harmed…
Yes the 10% is fucking bullshit. My senior dad had his rent raised 10% three years in a row. That’s a 33% increase. Very easy to chase a low-wage renter out in a few years with this weak law.
The employee complained to another supervisor that the incidents made her uncomfortable, but no further action was taken against the manager, the complaint said. One night during closing in August 2021, the manager allegedly reached out and pulled her hijab partially off her head.
That’s so infuriating - she reported the guy and nothing happened. Not until he tried to literally rip a piece of clothing off of her because he felt entitled to see her hair.
Pretty typical when it comes to fast food employees. You got kids managing kids, who often don’t know shit about anything.
They probably brought it up to someone also inexperienced, who dropped the ball, and somewhere along the way, a actual professional realized the wtfness and moved it forward.
When I worked in fast food, my manager was two years older than me, and he didn’t know shit about anything not related to the food.
How about an investigation into precisely whos idea the union busting was and subsequently prison sentences for those responsible?
Fines don’t hurt the rich like they do us. But we all have the same (give or take) lifespans. 5 years in prison hurts a billionaire more than any fine you could levy.
They weren’t even fined, they just had to pay what they owed. But if an employee stole $100 from a register they’d go to jail and be unemployable for life.
It wouldn’t be hard to believe if he didn’t have broken neck bones. People don’t break their neck vertebrae when purposefully hanging themselves, let alone multiple, unless they fall a great distance, which Epstein did not. That’s what has always made me suspicious of the official cause of death.
Auto loans are terrible and I always pay them off as soon as I can, but they will never really be that big a threat because you CAN sell your car and buy a substantially cheaper one, in most cases. Sometimes you can sell your car and just use public transit or bike/walk.
I quit the career my major gave me after 7 years and now I’m doing something totally different… I won’t say I regret it because my old industry is how I got the new industry connections to make them change but yeah… I’m using none of what I learned.
Be careful about turning your hobbies into careers, kids! You just might start associating it with work stress and stop doing it entirely
Opposite for me. My degree is editing/motion graphics but my first job killed that passion pretty hard. Now I’ve got “engineer” in my title but I wish I went to school for mechanical engineering
People still need cars, usually. So people who owe $50k on a car can sell and buy a $20k car while people with $20k cars are selling to that person and buying a $5k car or whatever. People are in different ranges based on their situation with income and needs.
It’s great your path is different from many others’ for whom this is a real issue. I wish you strength with your own challenges and I wouldn’t think to demean them by proclaiming they aren’t my troubles.
Our expenses are a little less but my wife and I have two kids. Although if we had bought a house around now instead of 7 years ago, it would easily be much more. If we had decided to buy a new car, add that on top.
But one thing to note is that is the average so that is anywhere from a single person to someone with six kids.
the voices ordered Smith to eat the victim’s brain so they would get a better understanding of human behavior and the eyes so that they could see into the “spirit realm.”
I didn’t even know they stopped doing those things until this made the news, and it’s just another reason why I hate the dystopia that we’re currently trapped in.
I worked at Starbucks back in like 04-06 or something like that and it was a great job for what it was at the time. The pace was reasonable, the hours were genuinely flexible, the pay was decent, and the benefits were actual. I was in the highest volume store in the metro area I was living in and I loved working there. It was busy, but the line kept it reasonable, we’d mark drinks ahead of time on cups, and half the time by the time people got to the counter we’d have their drink ready.
After unemployment ran out from COVID I went back for about a year, and it was a completely different beast. Where one line used to create a bottleneck at the register and allow us plenty of time to mark and make drinks, we now had to deal with the drive-thru and mobile ordering all at the same time, which shifts the bottle neck to drink preparation by a wide margin. Working at Starbucks now is essentially standing in the middle of the narrow point of a labor funnel. They’ve also added a lot more tasks and spread them out all over the place, so the footwork is way more than it used to be. Floor mat coverage also tends to be insufficient because of this, and there isn’t really time to slow down to a reasonable pace. Doesn’t help when you’re scheduled until 15 minutes before the hour in order to avoid having to give you another break.
Pay is basically what it was the last time I worked there plus a couple of dollars. Benefits and stock options are still left dangling as bait, but management seems to try to ensure that as few employees as possible actually get enough hours to qualify. Where previously corporate, in my experience anyway, supported positive managers who had their crews backs, they now seem to love slimy corporate boot-lickers who will rake back every bit of benefit and extract as much labor as possible.
With the drive-thru model it’s hardly surprising to see it getting worse, but it is disappointing. What was once a boon to the working class has become just another exploitative company. Not only that, but an exploitative company that’s taken their market share and has moved on to cost cutting and labor squeezing. Replacing nice little local cafes first with a polished corporate cafe and slowly turning it into an expensive McDonald’s.
I do hope the nice little cafes see the opportunity to capitalize on selling a better product and treating their employees better and take back a bit of that market share.
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