• naturalgasbad@lemmy.caOP
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    8 months ago

    5G, garlic, cars…

    I know this may seem like an unusual concept to capitalist America, but having more competitors drives down prices.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Low prices aren’t always a good thing. Especially for the working class when those low prices are on imported goods that replace the products these workers used to make. I thought we already learned that neoliberal policies aren’t so hot for workers.

      • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        No one has learned anything. The people who knew outsourcing was anti-worker were proven correct, but it didn’t matter.

      • totallynotaspy@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Part of the problem with the EV market in the US right now is that the majority of models available are luxury cars in price. You can get a used Nissan leaf for ~16k, but issue with that is their driving range can be anywhere between 80-100 miles (works great for errands and daily commuting). Not even gonna mention the headache of figuring out the charging port type(seems NACS format is winning the market).

        I have long maintained China is a security threat, but I am excited for the news because it will (hopefully!) push US auto makers to make more affordable models with 200+ mile range.

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          Agreed. But that’s not limited to EVs is it. They’ve raised prices overall both towards the bottom, altogether dropping smaller models, increasing the sizes of others to charge more, etc. And it works. The average purchase price is currently around 50K in the US. Which is stepping into the lower end of the EV market. So what I’m saying is this isn’t an EV thing. It’s an auto maker price and profit maximization thing. On the bright side, it’s a low margin business which means the overall amount of money that is getting extracted and not making it to workers is towards the better end of the economy. 🫢