The model 3 is still the 7th most sold car in 2022.
Is a car company not allowed to raise prices? Like what standard are you holding tesla to? If they can sell a tesla for $42k, why sell it for $35k? Because Elon said so in 2015? That's ridiculous, its just not how markets or companies work. And they DID sell it for $35,000, for a while. So Elon didn't even lie.
Absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will go to to hate the guy. Insane.
By actually pushing idea that everything is "great powers" game and no one else has any agency.
Russians desperately want to present the idea that they truly fight powerful US and NATO and still pushing; and not getting kicked ass by Ukraine getting 5% of US defense budget.
But the thing is that the EU is not. Every major power in the EU is predicted to grow their economy and the UK is the only one that is not.
Even if you look at it as a purely engineering problem you'd see that adding more red tape on trade would be most detrimental to the smallest player. In the relationship with the EU, the UK is the smaller player.
Predictions are not worth much. Everyone predicted UK’s economy will collapse after Brexit. While it certainly has not flourished, it is not any worse than before.
Now, what about the other “major powers” which are “predicted” to grow their economy? France’s GDP per capita has peaked in 2008, and never recovered since then. Italy? Same. Spain? Same. Belgium? Only recovered to 2008’s figure in 2021, same as Netherlands, Denmark, Finland. Sweden also only now recently recovered to its peak in 2011.
In fact, the only major EU economies that did not simply recover to their 2008-2011 peaks, but rather grown beyond them, are Germany, Poland and Czechia.
The truth of the matter is that EU economies are deeply stagnant, this is by no means a UK specific problem. There is no reason to predict growth in EU but not in UK.
"Even if you look at it as a purely engineering problem you'd see that adding more red tape on trade would be most detrimental to the smallest player"
This is economically illiterate, calling it an engineering problem doesn't change that.
Trade happens when both sides can benefit. If trade stops happening, both sides lose. Artificial trade barriers do not mean one side "wins", they are always and everywhere a way to penalize some local citizens in order to prioritize others, usually owners of businesses that are favoured by the state in some way.
At any rate it's an academic question. UK exports to the EU recovered to the prior level, it is selling the same quantity as before. Imports are lower, so UK buys less from the EU. Balance of trade therefore actually improved. This is not widely reported because the media is full of people who want everyone to believe Brexit has been an economic disaster. The reality is it'll never be possible to know because any impact is so small as to be invisible against the chaos caused by lockdowns.
1. Imports from EU are higher than pre-Brexit and higher than exports. So it's the deficit is also higher than before.
2. The EU does not have the UK as their biggest (40%+) market. Therefore the smaller player is the UK. If all trade stops - yes both sides lose. One collapses economically overnight.
3. The EU can either absorb the cost on its internal market (and sell goods internally for a smaller margin) or export to other players as there are existing trade agreements (again with a smaller margin). The UK does not have access to the same deals.
4. The EU market has a much higher GDP. Losing 1 trading partner even of the of Britain would not take down the Union.
All you're saying is that the EU has a higher willingness for self-inflicting economic pain on its citizens, which is true, but not an argument for being inside it.
Were they too small 10 years ago? I went to a car show and compared our current “mid sized” SUV to its replacement. It grew 7 inches longer and several inches wider and taller. It’s bigger and smaller cousins did the same. So “mid sized” is now “full”, and “full” is now “extra large”.
Manufactures are also dropping their smallest cars, so effectively all cars are getting continually bigger and as a consumer it’s gradual you don’t realize it until the car doesn’t fit into the garage any more.
> Manufactures are also dropping their smallest cars, so effectively all cars are getting continually bigger and as a consumer it’s gradual you don’t realize it until the car doesn’t fit into the garage any more.
Surely this can't be correct?
There are more city car models (compact cars) available right now than 10 years ago. You might argue that their sales are lacklustre, but if a consumer wanted one, they are spoilt for choice.
I think the thing is, people who need a car need something slightly larger than a subcompact (2x baby seats + 1x pram don't normally fit in these tiny cars), while people who don't have kids don't need a car anyway - cheaper and easier to use the public transport.
You're aware that people had families before oversized SUVs were a thing...?
We used to go on long trips with a family of 5 in normal sized cars regularly. Of course I would never do that today. Like many families we don't have a car and rent as needed. Long trips with kids are just infinitely much better by train.
Not sure where you live, but here car seats or boosters are mandatory for children under 8. This is a relatively recent change. Car seats have grown more in size than the cars.
Used to be that putting unbelted kids in the back of a vehicle was fine. I grew up using such vehicles. The regulatory environment and equipment have changed significantly over the years. Can't really compare today with the past as trying to live that way will get you seriously fined if not arrested.
Here, too. Three kids in the back would be tight (edit* not possible), but it's completely absurd to claim that you can't fit boosters/car seats into compact cars. We have on occasion done just that in a small rental, or even in a friends three door tiny compact car. Talking about this style:
> We used to go on long trips with a family of 5 in normal sized cars regularly. Of course I would never do that today.
Of course you won't - the baby seats that are safe enough to pass regulations are too large to fit 2 of them into the back seat of that old normal sized car.
Long family trips in smaller cars were done without baby seats or booster seats.
What??? You're saying you can't fit two car seats in the back of a "normal" car? I have two of them in a Honda Jazz (aka Fit) at this very moment. A car classed as a "subcompact". Until recently, one of them was a bulky Axkid (though it has since been outgrown).
Family of 4 here with a Honda Jazz (aka Honda Fit in the US). Doing fine. Grew up in the states as a family of four and for most of my youth we had a Honda Accord - the early 90's ones that were smaller than a Civic is now IIRC.
Yes, including until recently an extended rear-facing Axkid Move* (that did, admittedly, make leg room for the front passenger less than ideal, though my wife is short). And we use Babyzen yoyos*, though we're getting past the pram stage of life.
Sometimes I bring a Brompton folding bicycle and a Thule Coaster trailer along with the kids when we want to go for a ride.
But for the record, when biking to work today I biked for some time behind a father on a cargo bike with two kids seated in the trunk. We zoomed past the traffic on the main road, that of course was at a stand still. :)
You can only just fit 2 child seats into a smaller car. For anyone with 3 children, anything without 2 rows of back seats is basically an unusable car for the whole family.
And the reason everyone is going on about "car size inflation" and how it was fine in smaller cars 20 years ago is the same reason - you didn't have to use child seats. Now because of safety you literally can't have a family larger than 2 children with a smaller car.
For what it's worth, I've had three kids in a Prius ages 2-6 (the oldest was tall enough to use a booster in the middle) and there are narrower full car seats. One fancy option is https://www.multimac.com/range, which even includes 4-across options.
Moving the goal post. Your previous comment was about how I don't have a family (for some reason) and you discussed explicitly "a family of 4". Now you're changing the number.
In a city. How about anyone living in the countyside? Do those people not exist? Where my parents live, there is are 3 buses per day. None around school time. How does a child get to school? Or should these families just move to the city?
Do families get to go anywhere for more than a few hours? How do you bring all their stuff along like clothes, toothbrush, etc. Every child needs a minimum of 1l of water all the time, and some snacks in case they get hungry. And toys. And change of clothes in case they spill the 1l of water on themselves in the winter.
What happens when both parents have 20kg+ bags and one of your children decides to run away, say into traffic?
Judging by the replies to my original comment, not many people on HN have children or have any idea what it involves.
Do families get to go anywhere for more than a few hours?
While I instinctively agree with you, I have lots of friends with children who seem to do perfectly fine with just electric cargo bikes and public transport. And these are people with good jobs that could afford a big SUV if they really wanted one. So while you or I don't seem to get it, a lot of other people seem have worked it out no problem.
If your child runs in to traffic that's the exact moment you want the cars on the road to be small, light, and have short and low hoods so the drivers will see your child and stop before hitting them!
If your child decides to behave like a deer it won't matter if the cars are transparent, they're getting hit.
Even the new Chevy trucks that everyone loves to hate don't have a child blind spot that's larger than their stopping distance at any double digit speed.
>The rest of the world can fit 4 people, a dog and their stuff in a normal sedan or station wagon.
The demographics who are doing most of the complaining about the proliferation of big vehicles generally wouldn't be caught dead doing this (let alone doing it regularly) because it's not acceptable for people of their means if you catch my drift.
They also tend to complain and complain and complain about people buying trucks and SUVs they "don't need" and then the nanosecond they see someone doing "truck stuff" with a station wagon or crossover they're hand wringing about safety and margin for error.
Basically this is a social norms problem and the groups complaining about it are the ones who created the mess.
I am trying really hard to figure out what demographic you're talking about. Can you elaborate?
This thread has plenty of parents (myself included) saying that small cars are fine for raising a family. I see people towing with wagons (rare, now, sadly) and wring no hands. What's not acceptable for someone of my means? I am genuinely confused.
Another way to interpret this story is that the performers were whining and thought they had a bad deal, but when faced with consequences they realised it actually wasn’t a bad deal for them.
Words and words. Actions are actions.
Second hand information: Apple on average takes 2 years to fill an empty position. They almost never lay anyone off, just find another role for someone.
It's where the evil corporation narrative falls down, apple makes sure they hire the right people and then keep them. It's the way it should be.
But even for other tech companies, people on HN need to look outside of tech and see what life is like, there are people on here who literally had the best possible jobs in the entire history of humanity, with prepaid 3 meals a day, free daycare, free gym, free everything, yet somehow think that these companies were evil exploitative capitalists.
I'm sorry - no. These were the best employers in the world. Now there's a serious downturn in the economy, they are firing like 5-10% of staff. That's nothing. Try being a factory worker at a Tyson food factory in the midwest, or a foxconn factory in china, then you'll understood how good these tech companies treat their employees.
I’m sorry, but this is just class war crap. Instead of pitting workers against each other like the plutocrats want, always ALWAYS remember that even with all that non-monetary compensation, the executives are still taking more 100x of the value created by the worker.
This is like complaining about some athlete getting paid millions to risk their health for entertainment, while not once giving a thought about the billionaire that pays them.
No one is buying a ticket to watch Jerry Jones sit up in a skybox. Similarly, no one buys a piece of software or a chicken breast because of some exec cruising away on inertia.
They used to not be paid so much in the past. What's the scientific rationale that they should be pay more than before? I don't think there's any science involved on either side, it's simply a cultural practice that has arise with the growth of corporate earnings. On the flip side, if average worker comp has arisen only 12% since 1978, maybe that's not a scientifically-determined outcome either.
Actually there is a reason for the increase recently, globalisation and the internet. While a top exec in the 1960 might be serving a few million customers, maybe tens of millions, now it is in the billions (also population has increased).
By the way, do you support the corporate raiders of the 1980s who were also extremely annoyed at how much execs got paid and fired them and reduced their pay? And they actually did it by putting their money where their mouth was and became shareholders in these companies, at great personal risk to themselves.
Why hasn't worker pay arisen proportionally, since if they're working for multinationals they are similarly serving millions to billions?
> And they actually did it by putting their money where their mouth was and became shareholders in these companies, at great personal risk to themselves.
Judging by the steady growth in exec comp in Figure A of the second link, it doesn't seem like their efforts were very successful.
> Why hasn't worker pay arisen proportionally, since if they're working for multinationals they are similarly serving millions to billions?
They have. In China and other assembly countries. And there’s your ultimate answer for what the actual problem is here. For Americans. Pretty good deal elsewhere.
The fact that they coddle some of their workers (typically a very small minority), doesn't mean they are not exploitative capitalist enterprises. The two are different concepts.
There are a group of people who will use any excuse to centralise control. You can call this a conspiracy, or the illuminati or the WEF or whatever. It doesn't matter what you call them. Right now there's more of these people in positions of power than the ones who resist this.
The world is definitely moving in the more centralisation direction, and has done for a while.
And we're at the tip of the iceberg. Even the mainstream media is now covering that the mRNA shots increase the risk of stroke substantially. What else are we going to find out?
(and I'm vaccinated, but it's extremely eye opening how all this information is coming out, exactly what the REASONABLE anti vaxxers were warning about. We just don't know the side effects of a new vaccine technology, used on a new virus. It's impossible to declare it to be SAFE (which implies harmless over a long period of time) at day 0. (I'm just quoting Bret Weinstein who definitely isn't an unscientific untrained anti vaxxer).
I wonder if we will feel the same about “minimal” design in the future. I really don’t see anything beautiful about a white box with black windows, yet architects seem obsessed with it.
Probably because it’s called good design yet it’s almost the cheapest possible design outwards. Convenient. But I think in 30 years we will facepalm at these white boxes we call houses.
These things often oscillate around certain aspects. We bounce between ornate and simple over history for example. Minimalism is handy because it's a cheap and hard to mess it up. Like pop music.
Look at McMansions, which is a cohort of styles that are much easier to get wrong, and there are many objectively bad homes. But for minimalism, the worst you can often say is it's boring. Correct, but boring.
You are right (sometimes), but so is the prankster for challenging authority sometimes.
A healthy society both has rule following and rule challenging. Sometimes there’s too much rule following, sometimes there’s too much chaos, and then things balance themselves out ideally.
If anyone says only one side is the right one, they are ideologically captured. It’s like saying only left or right is the right way to govern a country. It’s both and neither. We need this conflict within society to arrive at healthy decisions.
The model 3 is still the 7th most sold car in 2022.
Is a car company not allowed to raise prices? Like what standard are you holding tesla to? If they can sell a tesla for $42k, why sell it for $35k? Because Elon said so in 2015? That's ridiculous, its just not how markets or companies work. And they DID sell it for $35,000, for a while. So Elon didn't even lie.
Absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will go to to hate the guy. Insane.