I met a nursing student in Shanghai who ended up marrying a "driver". (For reference, the way you get into nursing school in China is by flunking the college entrance exam.)
Attending Fudan University, I also met several students there and at the school across the street, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Both are highly prestigious.
Everyone's graduated by now, and the most materially successful of all the contacts I made, by far, is the nurse. She already owns a Tesla and an apartment in Shanghai. (She also has a child, which is true of only one of the university students.) What's her secret?
The couple's parents bought those things for them.
What's her secret? She works in healthcare, which is very expensive in the United States and especially in the Bay Area, and tends to pay nurses very very well (especially in the Bay Area). This illustrates my point. Her high salary as a nurse comes at the cost of many people around her, in many ways: we all pay higher healthcare costs, in part because of the high pay for doctors and nurses (as well as to hospital administrators, insurance companies, drug companies, etc.), and she's yet another highly-paid professional with the ability to outcompete other people for things like housing. Is she working class? I'm not convinced that she is.
Well, for example, you referred to my acquaintance's "high salary as a nurse" despite the fact that she doesn't have one. You strongly implied that you believe she is located in the United States, despite the fact that I mentioned her location in China in roughly every other sentence of my comment. Nothing in your comment suggested that you were able to understand any complete sentence from mine.
Was that all an illusion? If so, what image were you trying to present? Why?
Just as I thought. You said you know a working-class person who can afford a Tesla, in a thread about homelessness in San Francisco which, last time I checked, is in the United States. You said she was a nursing student in Shanghai in the past, and does own an apartment in Shanghai now. I know people from China who are nurses in California now, and I know people who live in California who own property abroad, and nothing you wrote ruled out any of that.
So, if it turns out your friend isn't a nurse, doesn't have a high salary, and doesn't live in San Francisco, or some combination thereof, I'm going to score that as a giant lapse in reading comprehension in a thread about high salaries in San Francisco.
The median price for a Tesla Model 3 in 2024 was ~$47k. The median price for a 4-door compact sedan in 2024 was ~$26k, or almost half as much. I'm sure some working-class people can afford a Tesla. None of these are hard and fast rules, and there are exceptions. But, which do you think is going to be more affordable to a typical working class person? The $47k car or the $26k car?
Then perhaps you should clarify it in the beginning as to not have these exchanges on semantics. Anyway, of course a cheaper product is more affordable than a more expensive one, that's a vacuous, trivially true statement that does not add anything to the discussion being made in this thread.
> Then perhaps you should clarify it in the beginning as to not have these exchanges on semantics
Well, nobody's perfect. After all, perhaps you could've been perceptive enough to understand that I meant that for a long time, and even now, Elon's cars have been premium products at the high end in their category, priced accordingly, and tend to be less affordable for working class people than the alternatives (and even out of reach for some of them), without getting wound around the axle on these "exchanges on semantics." And yet, here we are.
> Anyway, of course a cheaper product is more affordable than a more expensive one, that's a vacuous, trivially true statement that does not add anything to the discussion being made in this thread.
In my experience, it's the trivially true propositions that internet debaters most readily overlook.
Sounds like goalpost moving for the common use of the word "afford," but even if we take it to be what you mean, that's still an assumption you're making, as they can afford it theoretically, and the fact that they do or don't buy is ancillary; I can also afford a Lamborghini, but I'm not going to buy one.
I met a nursing student in Shanghai who ended up marrying a "driver". (For reference, the way you get into nursing school in China is by flunking the college entrance exam.)
Attending Fudan University, I also met several students there and at the school across the street, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Both are highly prestigious.
Everyone's graduated by now, and the most materially successful of all the contacts I made, by far, is the nurse. She already owns a Tesla and an apartment in Shanghai. (She also has a child, which is true of only one of the university students.) What's her secret?
The couple's parents bought those things for them.