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by ealhad 1113 days ago
What a load of utter bullshit.

"infinitely knowledgeable"? Bollocks. Big deep learning models work fine, and if you forget the part where big firms hoard loads of data without any kind of consent it's pretty cool tech. But that's not knowledge, and it has already been explained many times.

But my beef is more with the author's view of inequality.

So, bourgeoisie isn't stealing from the proletariat? How to describe a society when one percent gets more than half of all new wealth every year? [0]

Tesla are now ‘affordable’ cars? Hell, the cheapest model is twice my yearly income.

Can't say I'm struggling to understand how some people can think this way though. Can't say I'm happy about it either.

[0] https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/survival-richest
2 comments
bkirkby 1113 days ago
With tax credit the cheapest Tesla is $30k. With default interest and loan terms, the Tesla would cost about $4500 / year.

Median annual household income in the US is $71k, so the cheapest Tesla would be ~6.3% of median household income.

Personal finance experts say car loan payments should be no more than 10% of take home pay. (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/much-spe...)

You not being able to afford a Tesla and the cheapest Tesla being generally affordable can both be true.

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ealhad 1113 days ago
Do you know what this median annual household income of $71k means outside of the USA? Inequality is a global problem, unfortunately. Cheapest Tesla being generally affordable in one country doesn't mean it's not fairly expensive.

Side notes: - the World Inequality Database is full of interesting data (https://wid.world/) - I'm not sure the median income is always relevant (I mean, if half of a given population couldn't affort to eat correctly, I wouldn't say food is "generally affordable") - fortunately, not everybody needs a Tesla, let alone a car

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mrtranscendence 1113 days ago
Well, what's "generally affordable"? $30k for a car isn't even that expensive these days (in the US at least), relative to the competition. The average cost of a new car in the US is almost $50k. Except for the very cheapest new cars you're almost certainly going to pay over $20k.
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cpursley 1113 days ago
Coastal Americans live in a bubble.
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CatWChainsaw 1109 days ago
And the bubble is in a gated community to keep out all the poors they unjob'd.
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