• 3 Posts
  • 396 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • It is not cheaper to produce the small car. You’re not quite understanding this.

    The small car does not comply with the perverse CAFE standards. The big cars do comply. If they sell too many of the efficient, but non-compliant small cars, they get penalized. That penalty greatly increases the cost of producing the small, non-compliant car.

    Do not sit there and tell me that it’s impossible for a small car to comply with standards. That’s ridiculous. Charge them extra for selling a big car so that making a big car is more expensive than creating a small car. You can’t just say that this is impossible and deny the obvious solution, this is the clear solution.


  • Last I checked, before 2012 Egypt used to be under control of the very hostile and brutal Muslim Brotherhood and massive protests rocked the country since before Obama was even in power. To give you an idea of how bad the Muslim Brotherhood is, they literally founded Hamas across the border. Idk why everybody in this thread attributes literally everything that happened during the Arab Spring to the Obama Administration. News flash, those countries existed before Obama was president.




  • If it’s cheaper to produce a small car because of the tax, then the tax is effective. Making the bigger cars more expensive incentivizes the smaller cars.

    Taxes, fines, and regulatory fees in economic theory are supposed to represent the costs incurred by the general public (in this case the environment as well as infrastructure maintenance) being paid by the parties responsible. This often is not the case in practicality, such as the costs to reverse methane emissions not being covered by the fines associated with flare stacks.

    If the companies can’t produce cars cheap enough then they’ll have to raise the price. If less people can afford cars, that’s fine, then more investment will have to be made into public transport, bike lanes, and walkable communities. I do not see any downsides to a tax on larger vehicles.



  • I could sit here and type a paragraph about how much worse the trump and bush admins were about middle eastern military conflicts, mentioning the USA hasn’t officially declared war since WWII, but that would detract from my previous argument that he was decent even without comparisons. The major policy change of his admin was respecting older mutually drawn borders that led to a lot of peace talks and diplomacy with his administration which frankly didn’t exist before. Obama was single-handedly responsible for multiple nuclear disarmament deals and treaties, notably Iran. When he tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden with a strike team to minimize excess casualties, he received praise from Muslim religious leaders.

    Gaddafi took power in 1969 via violent coup and US Ambassadors were recalled in 1972. He started revolutions and funded rebels in like 8 countries, including the perpetually unstable country of Chad. Sanctions briefly relaxed after 9/11 in return for nuclear disarmament. Blaming Obama for the Libyan Protests and Rebellion, as a result of the Arab Spring, is like blaming the single extra straw for breaking the camel’s back.

    Did Obama live up to the expectations set by his 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt? No. Did he sometimes side with monarchs and dictators? Yes. Did he do a good job? I think so, I can’t imagine doing anything differently.

    EDIT: Replaced some pronouns with names for clarity.