What will happen is that eventually people will die.

What needs to happen is that rich people need to start dying. Does that sound like an incitement to violence? Sure does! Why? Because right now the rich don’t feel scared enough to make do with less.

We’ve heard of MAGA, but I think we need MRAA: make the rich afraid again.

Unemployed young people who despair for the future.

That always works out well.

Way to go, Bibi. Putting all of Israel and every member of the Jewish diaspora at risk just to save your corrupt political skin.

Oh, and killing tens of thousands of innocent people.

Labour makes up about 15-20% of the cost of a vehicle. Curiously, that number doesn’t change all that much between jurisdictions.

And while ~18% is as lot, materials makes up most of the rest, and those costs don’t change with jurisdiction. So the OEMs relocate to save a few percent, but mostly they relocate because the overall supply chain is more cost effective. This is why China (and now Vietnam, and Thailand, and before China, Japan and South Korea) are able to do what they do: the government and industry are willing to think long-term and make huge investments to make it happen: slapping down power plants and steel mills and making trade deals with, eg, Africa or the middle east to secure resources at scale.

You’re falling for the modern version of blaming the working class–even in a roundabout way–for the capitalists’ failure to plan.

Companies seek out cheaper labour, sure, but you’re taking a very simplistic view of it:

Canada, the US and Western Europe is a big reason we farm stuff out to cheaper places (like Mexico and China) that don’t have pesky things like high safety standards or employee benefits.

This isn’t nearly the case any more, and hasn’t been since the 1970s. They actually do have roughly similar safety standards. Replacing workers is expensive, and churn costs a lot, and you really do want to run a plant as efficiently as possible, which means not burning people out. We’re not in the triangle shirtwaist era any more.

Workers don’t really have much of an impact on the cost or quality of the product because it’s cheaper to engineer your plant such that they don’t. Mistakes are expensive. Waste is expensive. Re-work is expensive.

If you had said environmental standards, yes, you’d be right. Those can be more lax. That’s something different, and also not nearly the gap it used to be.

the fact the huge disparity in labour costs between the two countries is reason the TFW program even works

Slinging donuts at Tim Hortons, answering support calls and/or writing shitty front-end web code is a different thing entirely, and yes the TFW program is a problem, but that’s not the issue with heavy industry.

In the 1980s, faced with a crisis of their own making, Harley went crying to Ronald Reagan for tariffs on imported bikes. Reagan, free-market champion that he was, obliged.

This resulted in

• Harley getting a handicap, allowing them to keep doing what they were doing, selling uncompetitive and overpriced bikes and just prolonging the inevitable.
• Because Harley didn’t have to try nor evolve, and because their bikes were overpriced and uncompetitive, their international sales, which were never great, dried up.
• Honda et al, because they were at a cost disadvantage, had to make a better product for the same money, which they did. Basically every standard and cruiser product Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki and especially Honda made rubbed Harley’s nose in it, notably the Gold Wing.
• Because Harley didn’t have to try, while the JDM makes had to try extra hard and everything cost more, the motorcycle market as a whole collapsed
• Again, because Harleys were not competitive but were anachronistic and could get away with it because of Mama Reagan, what few bikes did sell to new riders weren’t Harleys, and Harley didn’t bother to try new things, missing out on the adventure-bike boom and losing at least two generations of street-bike riders.

Basically, it set Harley up for failure and nutured mediocrity.

Tariffs, if they don’t come with government pressure on the industry being protected, are basically corporate welfare that helps in the short term but results in long-term pain.

EVs will be similar. Protecting the North American industry in the short term isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it would require the American and Canadian government to bust the balls of Ford, GM and Stellantis, as well as the domestic-produced imports: you get the tariffs and you get tax breaks, but in turn you have three years to produce a cheap, capable EV or, eg, we’ll make it happen without you.

Our governments won’t do this because they’re neoliberal chickenshits who lost their spine forty years ago.

The result will be EVs that are too expensive, sold to the most profitable niche domestically, with collapsing sales abroad. Which is what we have now, and it will get worse if we insulate lazy OEMs from market pressure.

China’s hands are not clean, but one thing they have done is invest in the long term. The North American OEMs resolutely refuse to do that, and tariffs would make that situation worse.

What’s horrible is that Trump’s misunderstanding of how tariffs work is only forgotten by how much he doesn’t understand about how viruses and vaccines and health policy works.

Had it not been for the pandemic, he was well on his way to crashing the global economy, between the reckless tax cuts, deregulation and slapdash tariffs. Ironically, the stimulus spending necessitated by the pandemic probably saved him–and all of us–from the second great depression.

That’s not at all a bad idea; it certainly avoids Harley Davidson syndrome, which is what we’re looking down the tubes of right now.

The first two (labour and quality control) aren’t really what affect the MSRP. Labour makes a difference, but it’ materials cost that really drives price, and QA isn’t really the differentiator you might think.

But that last one–government support–that makes a massive difference. China has been, and continues to be, very strategic throughout the entire supply chain, from security raw materials at low cost, to building transport and energy infrastructure, to setting up hub-and-spoke centres for OEMs and suppliers, to securing a labour force. Non-Chinese OEMs, and especially Americans that depend on tax rebates little else, can’t compete.

It wouldn’t hurt the American and Canadian governments to twist the arm of industry and get them to think a little more long-term. They won’t, of course, because of neoliberal capture, but they could.

Could also be one of several major Canadian cities.

Hear me out, but aren’t these people supposed to be professional?

Wondering whether “happy” or “angry” variants of a person will show up should stop being a thing around sixteen to eighteen years of age.

Maybe thes story should read: “Trump grossly unfit for office and the Republican party is so badly broken that they can’t manage to replace him”?

He’s going to get his wish as leftists sit the next one out.

All eyes are going to be on Harris, if she wins. That’ll set the tone: will it be more rainbow-painted wealth extraction, or are they going to try to actually help people who don’t have millions of dollars already.

Again, it’s “Don’t quote the troll”. Some of us learned this in Usenet in the 1990s.

Saying “This is bullshit” or “You’re weird” without engaging with their ideas stops the contagion from spreading.

It is, though. Studies in disinformation have proven this. This is why right-wing bullshitters are so eager to engage in debate: just getting the chance to show up and be refuted in a legitmate setting, like a major newspaper, gives them an audience for the ideas and credibility, that their position is one worthy of refute.

This is how we got the alt-right in 2015: by taking neo-Nazis seriously.

This is what the media doesn’t understand, and why fact-checkers are getting–correctly–rolled on social media. Every time you bring up one of these lies, even to fact check it–especially to fact-check it–you give it credibility.

This is why the Harris/Walz campaign’s tactic of ridicule is working so well. Instead of saying “No, you’re wrong about XXX because YYYY and ZZZZ”, they’re saying “What is wrong with you? You’re weird.” The latter doesn’t give the lie any oxygen.

The Econoline (and maybe the Transit) seems to be the vehicle of choice for people who actually work.

No, it’s because enforcement is a joke, not licensing.

One of the things that’s hard for a European to understand is how shoddy and capricious law enforcement in North America can be. You know those lovely conditional speed limits that Germany has? No way that works in North America because the police won’t do anything except sit in their interceptors on the last two days of they month doing speed traps.

Swerve, fail to signal, brake-check, basically drive like you’re Bumblebee in Michael Bay’s Transformers 2, that’s fine. Just stay below the speed limit on the last two days of the month.

Aren’t most trucks equipped with interlocks that prevent travelling at speed when the bed isn’t fully lowered?

It’s not embarrassing that they’re Nazis.

It’s probably embarrassing because they were brought over at the behest of powerful people who would rather it not be know than they patronized Nazis for political or monetary gain.

Werner von Braun was difficult enough, but you could make the case that they needed to keep him and scientists like him out of Soviet control. This is was probably just people that the Laurentian elite played wet towel tag with at Upper Canada College.

Don’t they have enough money yet?!

Are they not, ever, going to be satisfied? Does a tiny little modicum of restraint upset them that much?

(don’t answer that!)

After the USS Liberty, Israel realized it has carte blanche.

One way to stop the alt-right Russian propaganda campaigns from undermining trust in our institutions would be to improve those institutions

God, this is so succinctly put. Well done.

A huge, huge part of the problem is self-inflicted, with thirty years of neoliberal-induced decay providing fertile grounds full of resentment and disillusionment, ripe for protofascists to grow their poison fruit in.