MrMakabar

joined 2 years ago
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[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago

Sure, the US will have cheap workers, but high skilled migrants will prefer other countries. This is not just going to hit farm workers after all.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

By detain you mean this right:

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago

You pay 10% for the product when imported. However there are a lot of people, work and capital involved to transport the product and actually sell it to you.

Also a lot is also not imported, but made in the US. That is especially true for a lot of food, electricity, gasoline and even quite a bit of actual physical products.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Currently at a few percent EVs there is a pretty decent charging infrastructure around. There is no reason that would not be the case for combustion engine cars, especially since it has been built already.

However what we will see is refineries being shut down, as they have to run at at least 80% capacity for technical reasons. So above 20% EV sales starts causing trouble for them. Especially in markets like Europe, where car adoption is not going to go up a lot. Obviously exports are an option as well, but to a limited extend. There are also not that many refineries around. The EU has less then 100 for example.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 days ago

This is generally true. HSR is only really needed to replace long car and plane trips, which are not that common. In daily life regional rail is much more usefull. That combined with local public transport, cycling and walking actually can replace a car. HSR alone can not. Obviously when you built a new line going for hsr is an actually good idea, as it does not cost that much more. But there is a lot of railway infrastructure around already. So adding trains on it for regional rail, electrifying it and so forth would really help. The US is probably the most obvious thanks to having a massive freight rail network, mostly without passenger trains, but a lot of countries have old unused tracks.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 days ago

Strategic autonomy is a huge reason to go green and this is just one example.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 14 points 5 days ago

It was clearly some French bureaucrat, who was too lazy to actually map out the border properly.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Most of the lines are used fairly well. Overall ridership of the network was 3.2billion trips last year. It is still growing.

As for the economics, it is infrastructure, which is going to last for a century or more. It obviously requires upgrades, but having a fast reliable, green form of transport between a countries large cities has a lot of advantages. Not the least are indirect economic advantages. Like for example making business trips easier, but also tourism. That is why Japan, South Korea and Western European countries built hsr as well.

That also means taking on debt is somewhat sensible, as long as economic growth from the better connections is bigger then the cost of the debt. That is honestly just running the country like a business.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Audi does not have a US plant and if they built one it is unlikely to produce EVs given how few are sold in the US.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 days ago (6 children)
[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The netherlands are pumped dry anyway....

 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24106397

Cutting overseas aid is shortsighted. Who are our political leaders really putting first – ordinary people or the super rich?

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