How do you put a price on “electrification” – this bum’s rush to a zero-alternative future? Ask the 1,400 people at what soon won’t be Jeep’s Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois – who just paid for it.
With their jobs.
The Belvidere Plant is closing for good next week and those jobs are going away for good because Jeep’s owner – the European automotive combine Stellantis – has decided to stop making Jeep Cherokees there in favor of making electric vehicles, elsewhere.
Specifically, the electric successor to the Dodge Charger sedan, which won’t have an engine come 2024. Another cost – to be paid by people who loved and bought the Charger (and the two-door Challenger) precisely because it did have an engine – a big one – and was thus an alternative to the zero-alternative future being forced on us with the same aggressive piety as “masks” and “vaccines.”
Everyone must be converted – and not by choice.
And no matter what it costs.
In this case, it may cost the town of Belvidere, IL everything – as the plant has been the town’s primary employer for the past half-century. All of those people who won’t be working there anymore will have to find some other way to make ends meet, to pay their mortgages and feed their kids.
Maybe they can “learn to code.”
This is the latter-day iteration of the argument put forward when it was noted that the horseless carriage put carriage makers out of work. It did, but it was different – because the horseless carriage came on scene as a natural development that was forced down no one’s throat. It was simply a better alternative to the horse-drawn carriage, because the horseless carriage went farther, didn’t require the attention necessary to keep a horse in shape to pull a carriage and so freed up people’s time (and money) for other things.
The horseless carriage increased mobility and wealth. Precisely the opposite of the electrified carriage.
The horseless carraige also created real jobs, in the sense that people freely wished to pay for the results of the work being done. People wanted to buy the Ford Model T – rather than a horse – because Ford built the Model T to be more affordable and useful than a horse. Henry Ford did not sic the government on the horse-and-buggy industry, forcing it to pay him to subsidize the manufacturing of Model Ts to “offset” the “emissions” (in dung) of horses (who also “emit” C02, by the way). Tesla did exactly that, using a rent-seeking scam called “carbon credits,” under the rubric of which car companies that did not make “zero emissions” EVs were obliged to either make them or pay Tesla for “credits” that served in lieu of making them. This dirty business is what funded the EV “business” and enabled it to gather strength by sucking the life out of victims – just like Dracula.
Henry Ford also didn’t need to use the government to bribe people with “tax credits” to not buy horseless carriages, either as every company making EVs relies on to “sell” them.
When Henry Ford was at work, Dearborn – and Detroit – became places that abounded in jobs. Real jobs, based on real wants and needs – that paid real wages, sufficient to provide a living for millions of workers over several generations and which built those cities, lately reduced to slums.
This latter is likely to be the fate of the town of Belvidere as well.
And not just that one town.
The Biden Thing says “Build Back Better.” But everything it and the other Things of its ilk do seems contrived to tear down everything, by leaving no alternatives other than one-size-fits all.
It is interesting to note in this regard that the Cherokee that won’t be made at Belvidere anymore – and possibly not at all – is the only remaining small crossover that still comes standard with a V6 engine and so is an alternative to the 2.0 liter turbocharged four (and soon to be “electrified”) everything else.
It hasn’t been significantly updated since 2014, almost as long-ago as the last time the Charger and Challenger were significantly updated. They are thus remnants of the time when having alternatives was taken-for-granted. Dodge – and Jeep – have continued to make them the same precisely because people want alternatives, which they are finally beginning to understand they soon won’t.
And then there are those jobs that 1,400 people who want to work won’t have anymore, either. The lights turn off for good next week.
Instead, Stellantis will be “investing” $5 billion in a new EV battery plant in Windsor, Ontario. In air-fingers-quotes for the same reason this writer makes a point of placing Social Security “contributions” in air-fingers-quotes. Both are “investments” being forced on the unwilling – and which they’re being made to pay for, too.
Kevin Logan, who is the president of the Local 1268 of the United Autoworkers Union, says “Everyone’s on edge . . . it’s gong to be catastrophic for the community.” Including whoever still has a job somewhere else but who will get to pay for the jobs lost, in the form of higher taxes to fund benefits for the newly unemployed and the likely decline in demand for whatever work remains to be done – as a result of people who increasingly can’t afford to pay for it anymore, either.
. . .
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My take, and it’s just my conjecture, is the issues of jobs, or, more precisely, lack thereof, is directly related to the COVID PLANdemic. In musings on the future, written in the 1970s or earlier, automation was assumed to lead to a utopia where machines do all the work, and the biggest challenge would be how to occupy all the leisure time we will have. We are seeing now it is a dystopia, starting with the challenge of how to survive financially when there are fewer jobs, to how to survive at all, when the powers that be want to kill us because we are now “useless eaters.”
If the AI and automation schemes really come to fruition, such as self-driving cars and trucks, there will be a massive wave of unemployment. Consider all the truck drivers losing their jobs. The more humane technocrats have therefore endorsed Universal Basic Income. Certainly the less humane have had the thought that it would be cheaper to kill people than pay them UBI. This is why this is happening now. It has nothing to do with overpopulation or environmental or climate concerns. It’s all about the money.
But how to do that, in a way that doesn’t end in a noose at Nuremberg? And putting people in boxcars is so 1940s.
Enter their new Final Solution: the COVID pandemic and the vaccines. Both the virus and the vaccines are bioweapons. The virus was engineered in the lab at Wuhan, China, and deliberately released. IMO, it was not an accidental lab leak.
True, the virus isn’t all that deadly, for most people. But its risks were enormously exaggerated and hyped, so that most people who rely on the MSM for news think it’s as deadly as Ebola. And most of the governments in the world imposed unprecedent, draconian restrictions on normal life. And “vaccines” were developed at warp speed. Want to go back to normal life? Take the vax, they said.
The vax is a poison death shot. Over 34,000 deaths have been reported in VAERS; the real number is at least 10 times higher. Neurological issues, autoimmune issues, myo and pericarditis, blood clots, including strange, never before seen worm-like clots being pulled out by embalmers, turbo cancers, reproductive issues, including miscarriages . . . There is a long list of pathologies caused by these jabs. The spike protein is a toxic, pathological substance that apparently kills in numerous ways. The vax is the most toxic, dangerous medical product ever introduced.
I remember the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine fiasco. That vax campaign was ended after several deaths. But this time, they want us dead.
At the dawn of the auto age, Studebaker was a healthy enough company to move from being a major coach, wagon, buggy and carriage builder to becoming an automaker. It was the only major horse transportation based company to move successfully to the auto age as far as I know.
It didn’t get forced to by the government to move to autos (or given taxpayers money either). It saw the writing on the wall that the future was cars, not wagons pulled by horses. A bit of irony, it tried electric cars for the first two years, when that failed they built gas cars. So at least that failure didn’t make them stop with cars.
When GM and Ford were brand new companies, Studebaker was already 50 years old founded in the 1850’s. By the 1950’s the corporate rot had set in and it died in the 1960’s. GM, Ford and whatever Chrysler is called are about a hundred years old now, with the same corporate rot. If history repeats itself, the end is near for the big three.
Automakers have learned they can make money by moving upmarket. It’s why fewer manufacturers are making cars and even traditional sports car and luxury sedan manufacturers are making high profit margin SUVs. EVs allow automakers to move further upmarket and continue to profit. They don’t need, or want, mass-produced product with lower profit margins per vehicle and total higher capital and operating costs (plant, equipment, human). While too many are squabling by all things woke (SQUIRREL!!), the new car market becomes unattainable for all but the elite and the middle class is hallowed-out. The ultimate anti-Henry Ford philosophy. And we’re left with a Cuban-style car economy, cobbling together ever older vehicles trying to make them last. When Toyota’s CEO, the grandson of Toyota’s founder, is quickly dumped for daring to challenge the EV myth, it’s obvious we’re facing a broader existential challenge.
Hi T,
The margins on truck-based SUVs are high and – of course – they are also popular. But there is a limit to how expensive they can get in terms of how many can afford one (can finance one) and once that point is reached, margins go down because volume does. Maybe they think they can survive – all of them – as low-volume, high-cost outfits that cater to the rich only, like Porsche.
But – even then – once everyone goes EeeeeeeeeVeeeee – what need is there for more than a small handful, maybe not more than two or three – sellers of EeeeeeeeeeeVeeeees, since EeeeeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeees are all basically the same anyhow?
As I’ve said before, the EV is a car maker suicide pact. It can’t work as a successful business plan. Depending on a bailout from FedGov is not a viable business model. The more money you take, taxes or inflation, out of the customers’ pocket, the less likely they can buy a car at all. I fully expect Tesla to be the last one standing, but how long will it stand?
I can feel only “so solly (sorry), please”, for ” Toy-Yoda”. They made a bundle with their Hybrid “Pious” (Prius), not only by most characterizing it as “Eco Friendly” to the gullible wokesters, but also by Federal and State tax CREDITS. Now the Japs, playing the “long game”, having ultimately won the great conflict (USA won the war but lost the peace), and have the USA as part of its ” co-prosperity Sphere”, with Toyota the number one car seller and MAKER in ‘Murica, are backpedaling on EVs, knowing that they’re garbage.
Fuck the lot of ’em.
More from the abc news article cited by FunkDoctorSpidock below:
‘Tony Quiroga, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver, has been forced to wander the aisles of a Walmart in Burbank, California, while the EV he’s testing that day sits and charges. He’s become a familiar face at a Mexican restaurant in Mohave, California, where a Tesla charger is located. A coffee shop recently opened nearby that caters specifically to EV drivers.
‘Quiroga’s team of reporters has to carefully plan and calculate how far EV charging stations are when they conduct comparison tests among manufacturers.
“These comparison tests are a logistical nightmare. We plan meals around recharging the vehicles,” he said. “We need to have the battery at 100% or close to it to test a vehicle’s performance. We have to time everything — it requires more work.”
‘Quiroga said the “teething pains” EV owners previously experienced have greatly improved. “Where we are now versus 10 years ago — it’s radically different,” he said. “Range has tripled, even quintupled. Look at the Lucid Air — it gets over 500 miles of range in a single charge.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/broken-machines-long-waits-reality-charging-electric-vehicle/story?id=97389275
Look at Lucid itself, Tony. The Commiefornia-based company expects to produce only 10,000 to 14,000 luxury electric vehicles in 2023, crashing its stock price last week. Maybe you’re backing a dead-horse, pie-in-the-sky scam for la-di-da elitists, Tony … which don’t include the sorry likes of ink-stained scribblers like you.
To think that I subscribed to Car & Driver at age 14 — to read the reviews, and (I’ll confess) ogle the ads featuring bikini-clad babes sprawling all over hot muscle cars.
No more. I despise the leftist, anti-car politics of woke Californicators like Quiroga.
Car & Driver will never get another penny from me. It’s just another youthful indiscretion that I’ve renounced, to improve my quality of life.
Good morning, Jim!
It’s hallucinatory, isn’t it? As a car journalist – one who’s probably been at this longer than Quiroga (I don’t know the guy) it halts me that any car journalist would defend this idiocy. This going around the block to cross the street. This let’s replace what works really well for everyone with something that doesn’t, for most – that only a few can afford on top of that.
It is like a food writer gushing over a “fast” food restaurant that makes you wait an hour for a “burger” that’s not made of meat that costs twice as much as a burger made out of hamburger.
Amen!
These so called “journalists” should be the ones sounding the alarm on this electric car scam. How are they the cheerleaders of this nonsense?
(I thought that crowd hated Wal-Mart, let alone being stuck in one for hours)
Belarus has had an airfield attacked by the Nazi Ukrainians today,,, China is shipping weapons to Russia while the US is blathering how sorry they’ll be,,, Iran is teaming up with both. While all this is going on the Big news in the US is Woody Harrelson telling a covid shot joke on SNL. lol
I don’t think the EeeVee is going to be a important thing for awhile.
I wonder what the union had truly done to save the jobs. Most likely the union and the members didnt budge a thing. The state of IL didnt help either. It is cheaper to use the existing resources thqn to create something from scratch.
You know, supposedly there are many jobs open because no one wants to work, and possibly the good people of Belvidere will be able to find work elsewhere.
At the same time, though no one wants to work, no one want to pay, either.
I did factory work until I went back to school and became a chemist. Low-level chemists are often paid about as well (or worse) than fast food workers.
I also became a nanoscientist, as nanotechnology was the WAVE OF THE FUTURE! But there were very few jobs in that as well. The way to be employed in that field is to either be an entrepreneur, or stay in academia. Possibly Big Pharma… But fuck Big Pharma.
And yes, later on, I also learned to code. No employer, including my current employer, seems to give a shit about that, either.
No, the best way to earn many in any of these fields is to work for the Military Industrial Complex. Anything federally connected makes 2-3x what their “civilian” counterparts make.
Otherwise, I believe the best paying jobs are truly the skilled tradesman: people like plumbers and welders and electricians. They make the good money, especially if they have their own business.
Good luck to these workers.
And the average age of those tradesmen is rapidly rising, because they can’t be done on a cell phone or a computer. The younger are not interested in getting their hands dirty, of on occasion possibly breaking a bone, getting gashed or burned, waking up with back pain, etc. as I have done a number of times. I suspect that an enterprising youngster could name his price by the time they became expert at these trades. If our economy survives that long. If equally enterprising young Mexicans have not already taken those jobs.
Mr. Kable,
Yep. The sentiment when I was young was that I should work with my mind and that would pay much better than busting my ass, working with my hands, and I could pay those poor saps to do things that I didn’t want to do.
That’s not how things materialized. Nope, those tradesmen are the ones driving big $70,000 trucks and have no deficiency of work or money. I generally can’t afford the services of such people, so although I might “work with my mind” for employment, I do all the dirty work at home anyway.
What’s more is that many of these people dropped out of high school, never went to college, and possibly won felony charges early in life. Along with the “undocumented”, they had trouble finding “normal” jobs, and ended up in many cases, working for themselves or with family members, and eventually ended up earning more than most college grads. Interesting how life progresses.
> many of these people dropped out of high school
Some, but not all.
In my days of earning my living as a journeyman carpenter in SoCal, I was acquainted with many skilled tradesmen (carpenters, electricians, plumbers) who also had earned at least one university degree, typically either math, physical science or engineering. Those of us in that category could, and in many cases had, held jobs which required the degree, but chose to earn our living using our trades qualification, for various reasons. Among those reasons were a) money, and b) freedom.
Based on my experience, brute force gets you only part way there. The key to superior trades achievement, IME, is mind plus hands. That, and the willingness to take the work while it is there. As a piece worker, I always thought of my job as “programming my body” to “solve the unit” in the most efficient way I could think of.
Many years later, I was watching a skilled tradesman install a new overhead door @ my garage. Believe me, there was *no* wasted motion, so I concluded he was working to a price, rather than by the hour, although I did not ask him that question. It is a thing of beauty to watch, for someone who knows what is happening. 🙂
Hey Adi,
Yes, I didn’t mean for a second to imply that tradesman are mostly uneducated brutes, only to indicate that many began their path by bucking the common trend. There, of course, is a great deal of thinking to be done to start and maintain any successful business, but it doesn’t necessarily begin in a textbook.
A) money and B) freedom are pretty important in one’s life, it turns out!
As for the last point, it’s amazing how efficient one can become in one’s profession when that efficiency is properly rewarded, isn’t it?! Meanwhile, those employers (and their bean-counters) who pay hourly are still stewing over why their employees like to dick off and milk the clock.
This morning I watched Glen Beck interview Michael Malice. One take away was that Stalin issued quotas for people to be arrested. Just some number per city. Thousands. Of his own citizens. Because they questioned “The TRUTH” of Marx.
Does anyone think the green communists are going to think any differently? They’re worried about the end of all life on Earth, FFS! Why would anyone acting in such a self-noble way care at all about a few thousand families? If those workers were as noble as the green communists, they’d voluntarily leave the factory and do something else (or just take a UBI substance income), so obvously they’re the enemy and therefore unhumans.
https://youtu.be/WggGY3al1Zo
Pretty long, but worth watching.
The reason for FedGov’s antipathy toward China is jealousy.
I think this is a real money making opportunity for the right people. Take these older cars and trucks and restore them to varying degrees. Even restored, late model cars and trucks could be sold for less than half what a new eevee would cost. I share Eric’s cynicism about them, but I have serious doubts that they will ever be universally adopted. Imagine a 10 year old eevee in the rust belt. It would be complete junk if it even lasted 10 years, which is doubtful.
Just look up sites that build and restore classics cars, I’ve found a handful of places that’ll rebuild a Defender (Classic, not modern) with manual transmissions and a choice of engines (LS, Original Diesel, Cummins, Ecoboost, etc..)
fj.co, expeditionmotorcompany.com/, https://dynacornclassicbodies.com/, some are a bit over the top, but there’s also dynacorn like I said where it’s more get a brand new body and build from there
This is one of the reasons I probably won’t be buying a new car anytime soon….just look at this abomination. https://www.hotcars.com/2024-mercedes-benz-e-class-interior/ I remember when upscale car interiors had fancy gauges, wood trim and leather. I think retro/rebuilds are the wave of the future.
In about 3-4 years when the big three are hurting for money after their EEEEVVVV push goes belly up, they will spin off/sell the tooling to their classic cars. If you happen to have a few million laying around, you could make a killing remaking the classics that people want.
‘mercedes-benz-e-class-class-interior’ — Dave H
Its central screen with cell phone app icons is an instant hard no.
I use cell phones, but I hate them.
And since I already have a cell phone, I don’t need a second cell-phone-on-wheels that costs $50,000 instead of $1,000.
My only reaction to that cheesy LED-lit spaceship cockpit would be to take a hammer to it, leaving it a gray, wrecked Blade Runner shambles.
If the gotdamned bloodsuckers at the EPA and the rest will let you…
There would be a huge market for real cars at a reasonable price- but if they force them out of production by the current manufacturers, I don’t see how anyone else is going to be able to do it.
After Atlas shrugs, maybe.
If you’ve got an old piece of junk car, you have a VIN. Start replacing or rebuilding parts until you DO have a “new car”. Or close enough to it anyway. I’m driving an 05 Accord with 200k on it. I suspect I could take up to 15 years off it’s age for $10k. I don’t drive much anymore, being old and somewhat stove up, so I won’t do it.
Yeah. It always depends on what you’re looking for. I have a 1970/1972 Z-28 in the garage. It’s nice, but it’s not “original”. Every time some new guy sees it he wants to buy it. Anyway, my point is that these older cars are not only better, they’re more desirable. No one will be able to fix that with electric motors. Just absolute garbage IMO. Plus, let’s face it, there is nothing new about electricity. Mark this down, electric cars are right the fuck out in 5 years. No one is going to put up with some retard’s wet dreams about decarbonization. That carbon was here when this planet was born and will always be here in one form or another.
Hopefully you’re right but I’m not so sure. So far the automakers are knuckling under, right on cue.
It’s great that nobody wants to buy a fucking eeeeeeeveeeeee, but at the current rate it’s not going to be long before you have no choice if you want to buy a new vehicle.
Which is the plan, of course. And it’s going to succeed if the automakers won’t fight it.
Hi Teacherspet,
You are lucky to have that classic Z28 (just as I am lucky to have my slightly newer-than-yours ’76 Trans-Am). Everyone who can would be wise to find and get a car of the same kind – not necessarily a classic, but old and made when cars were not computers – while such are still available.
I have my eye on an old Beetle I might be able to swing. I know these things really well, having already owned several. They are crude and basic but they work – and can be worked on!
How to remove the engine from a Beetle. Drop it on the ground, and pick the car up and move it aside. Two healthy young men can do it easily.
The only drawback to that plan will be the state of VA declaring your vintage Beetle “unsafe” or a “gross polluter”, and thereby making it illegal for use on public thoroughfares.
Rust Belt? An EV battery is not going to last much beyond the warranty period in a place like Florida, where the early battery replacement cost horror stories seem to be originating as of late, particularly in locations below the freeze line like Cape Coral or Fort Lauderdale.
And if the battery does expire within the warranty period, the manufacturer is not under any obligation to give the EV owner a *new* battery, just restore the vehicle to driveable condition, which is subject to interpretation with an electric vehicle.
Eric — At this point, I gotta wonder how the warranty repairs will be handled on EV drivetrains going 5-10 years out as model designs start to turn over and tech advances. It isn’t like a battery can be kept on a shelf indefinitely the way a gas tank can, and there will only be so many undamaged batteries pulled from salvage vehicles available and stored properly, ready to go in as a replacement.
Very interesting calculation on the oil needed for electrification…https://clifhigh.substack.com/p/3-million-barrels-of-oil-per-batt?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Let me tell you something about “learn to code”. I have been coding since the summer before I was a freshman in high school. I got my first “programmer/analyst (PA)” job as a junior in high school. That was 1981. I graduated in 1983.
Of course, I taught myself. I’ve always been super good at math, science, logic, etc. Back in those old days, everything was super interesting and unique. It wasn’t all homogenized as most computers and software are these days. Not in the slightest.
I left community college to work as a systems software engineer back in ’85. I had huge family issues and could not get a student loan. I couldn’t keep going to college and working at Taco Bell or something was going to “give” at home to the tune of me ending up on the street. So I decided to quit college aka “drop out” as arrogant people love to call it.
I worked fucken hard to do all that shit. The college course that I did take that actually addressed my career (computer science) were bullshit. I aced them without thinking about it because I already knew more about it than the fucken professors teaching that bullshit.
Anyway, in Souther California, joe fucken everybody “learned to code”. Even after putting in 5 – 10 years doing very complicated coding for a successful business in San Diego any tradesman with equivalent experience was making more money that I was. No two ways about it. It’s true that I was penalized for “dropping out” TBF.
But the moral of the story in this context is that, when everybody learns to code, coders become a dime a dozen. Exactly the intent IMO. They want coders to be a commodity like frozen-concentrated orange juice. Just good enough to do the job but focus on volume and quantity not quality or ingenuity.
When 50-100 guys apply for the same coding job, they’re gonna select mid-to-low range people. I guarantee it. Good luck working your way up.
That brings up the point of minor wage as well. They’re talking about $15+/hr minimum wage. Funny thing is that, when that “water” was increased, it didn’t actually lift all the boats!
“Fuck you” to the low-to-mid range (or even higher) “boats” in the water because equity. You were making $15-20/hr before minimum wage went up and now you’re making $15-20/hr afterwards too. Because fuck you that’s why. Because it’s all a lie. It’s all a scam.
I pulled myself out of that commodified coding bullshit trip by moving to the mid-Atlantic region and getting myself a clearance. And I’m *vastly* better at it than my well-degreed colleagues with their fancy BS/MS degrees from fancy colleges. I have to be vastly better because, once again, I’m a “drop out”. Dudes that stuck through the pointless indoctrination camps and got that piece of paper (along with student loan debt) get to be underperforming and hardly good at their job and they get to make as much as me or usually better.
But sure. Learn to code, they say. Good luck. Better learn to swim, I’d say.
You’re right XM, it’s all a scam.
My 80’s edumication was a little different. Us 2-3rd generation kids were all taught that you had to get a job with a Fortune 500 company. So we believed and went to do it.
But in order to get that ‘first 500 job’ you had to have that piece of paper to get in.
So, even though I balked at the whole thing, I did it to appease my parents. But, in hindsight, they were pretty smart not to push me to the ‘you must get all A’s, or your a no-body’ thing.
I hated every minute of college but my dad finally relented and started saying ‘just get the stupid piece of paper and get out’ ‘your first job will be on who you know’ and he was right.
I got passed up by ALL the 500’s because my grades were barely passing (to get out), around 2.0. But, he was right, it’s who you know and a college buddy got me into my first 500 job easily. The rest is history, and while I’m glad I went through all of that ‘reality’ edumication, I knew the college thing was bunk for the most part.
Now? to my wife and I, we did send our kids to college, but only for the ‘reality’ edumication. An affordable tuition at an average school(s). We think it worked, a little to early to tell.
And the irony of my situation includes being an “A” student in high school and the community college that I attended. Heck, I love learning, studying, test taking, project making, collaborating and helping fellow students! I would have done that shit, on the UCLA transfer program that I was on, for the entire 6 years quite happily! (2 years community then transfer to UCLA was the plan)
But I couldn’t get the student loan back in ’83 because my parents wouldn’t sign the paper and, at that time, the school wouldn’t just let me sign on my own. Or at least that’s what they told me.
I also had to move up to the LA area, with my retired grandmother because my folks lived down in the Riverside Country area where the one and only college (College of the Desert) was just a joke.
It was my grandmother’s household and the situation declining steadily due to no-job other relatives leaching onto her, that imploded the situation. I was the only one in the household with a job! A full-time job at fucken Taco Bell and a full-time class load at Los Angeles Valley College. I was worn to the bone and everything was teetering on disaster. I had to leave. I had to quit school.
I should have went back to school TBF. Once I had a decent-enough job, I should have went back and that’s on me. I will admit. But I just couldn’t pull it together. I had zero help from my family and was living paycheck to paycheck in San Diego where even the dumpiest areas (where I lived) cost a fortune in rent.
On the bright side, I made it. I’m doing fine for now. Better than ever! Better than I could have ever done in SOCAL as an industry coder. But up until about 15 years ago, it sucked beyond belief. I got lucky. Good thing I’m pretty damn smart and good at what I do.
To the factory workers thinking they’re gonna “learn to code”. Again, they’ll find out how that greener grass is actually astroturf if/when they get there.
Glad to hear you’re doing so well these days. I assume “mid-Atlantic area” means DC area and “got a clearance” means got a job working for FedGov or a FedGov only contractor. Which explains why you’re able to to be on here talking about ordering a new Korean luxury car or bidding on AMG Mercedes at auction. Or why you might have even self administered a fraudulent coof test or two over the past few years.
Yup, yup, and yup. Part of the deal of allowing my religious exemption from the ax poison was “fraudulent coof [testing]” and no skin off my nose. More than anything, I wanted bragging rights that I got the shit twice and, even as a not-in-the-best shape software engineer, survived it with no problem. Check and check again.
Sixten years ago, I was living in hotels and my car. I have zero shame in doing what I’m doing and I’ll keep doing it as long as I can make it work.
As a matter of fact, I still have a huge pile of those free “fraudulent coof test[s]” sitting in my dining room/home office. I literally did test the dog water and a couple of other things for shits and giggles as I said way back. Apparently you remember! Cool.
Haven’t been sick since but, in the meantime, for a martial arts event, those fuckers required all attendees to show proof of negative “fraudulent coof test”. I just happened to have a pile of ’em hanging around!
I’ve never had a formal (i.e., in clinic) PCR or other coof test. And now, even the contractor that I work for has lost interest in the results of the “fraudulent coof test”. They just say stay home and don’t come back until you’re not feverish, etc.
However, it’s not fair to say that “explains why [I’m] able to…” by itself. Not in the slightest. My wife has an acupuncture practice and has been contributing as much or more to our situation as I have from my job.
Lotta people not doing well these days. But, most not nearly as bad as I had it just sixteen years ago. Sorry if that includes you… not my idea. And don’t worry, I will rejoin the not-so-well off soon enough. It’s coming.
In the meantime, the wife and I have helped out dozens of people less fortunate. So, again, I have zero shame in what I’m doing and nothing lasts forever but I’ll do what I gotta do until I gotta do something else.
You may have zero shame but you seem to acknowledge, especially by the use of the aforementioned vague terms to describe your location and employer, the optics are bad. It’s interesting because I am dealing with a similar kind of situation more frequently now that I am in contact with many of the people I really didn’t see during the scam. People who have no shame about how they supported the scam, even if indirectly, and lived the life of the lie, for whatever reason. They still do shit like self administer fraudulent coof tests, not even under duress. They say things like, “during the pandemic…”. Yet, they also want to “move on” and get “back to life.” I have a hard time listening to it and harbor some resentments due to the lack of accountability across the board.
XM that’s every skill job these days.
This MSM piece acknowledges the many, many “costs” of owning an EV.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/broken-machines-long-waits-reality-charging-electric-vehicle/story?id=97389275
Here’s the boobus money quote from link:
Bragg said her parents, who also bought a Mach-E, have complained of broken public chargers and endless lines. Sometimes they drive for miles before they can find a public charger that’s working properly, she said. Bragg, a former minivan owner, is still enamored with her electric SUV despite the winter challenges.
“I love the tech and the giant screen [inside] won me over,” she said. “The only time I go to a gas station now is to buy coffee.”
I will *never* buy an electric vehicle, ever. OK, maybe a used golf cart but my personal refusnik resistance is, never will I participate in this madness. So, supposedly really smart executives at GM, Ford, Dodge and now Toyota can pursue failure.
Enjoy auto industry… enjoy your newfound customers and government mandated success.
I am with you Hans….I would rather push my ICE cars than be seen in a ev.
I won’t even buy an electric golf cart, and not just because I hate golfing.
Tons of used cars to get around, and if they try to take them off the roads, just move somewhere Red that’ll protect the citizens
Ever since the Biden Thing got into office in 2021, he (or whoever is REALLY in charge) has continually demonstrated they’re NOT doing what’s best for AMERICANS, but rather what the globalist technocrats of the world want. From trying to FORCE people to take an experimental mRNA jab under threat of loss of job if they refused to making it possible for asset managers to plunder retirement funds for ESG investing to continually pledging BILLIONS of dollars to “Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev!” while Americans suffer from ever increasing prices on practicallyeverything. Biden also demonstrated where his priorities lie when he spent Presidents’ Day in “Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev!” pledging MORE money and weapons to them while ordinary people in East Palestine, Ohio are suffering from a REAL environmental disaster. The past 2 years under this bumbling old FOOL have become a dystopian nightmare, and now we’re dangerously close to nuclear war.
I finally figured out what their mentality resembles. It’s like a bunch of 6 year old kids that found Daddy’s guns and are now making people do what they want.
The same shit that’s been happening in Europe for 30 years. No one wants “refugees” in their country, yet Brussels assigns quotas for every country. No one voted for cheap imported food killing off local production (farms that are hundreds of years old), yet Brussels is forcing farmers off the land under arbitrary nitrogen limits.
The mechanisms that were supposed to be begin debating clubs have been taken over by globalist Fabians, who are proceeding as if they have a mandate where none exists.
The tip of the iceberg. The one that’s going to sink MOST UAW jobs in the US. Since hardly anyone can afford an EV, even with the subsidies. Which translates to far fewer cars being made, of any kind, and those that are being made are unlikely to be made in the US.
Ahh the FedGov, doing what it does best. Destroy things! And people! Coming on the back of their current ongoing destruction of the US economy in general.
For the sake of Kiev. And no, I won’t be changing the spelling, since I don’t have any Cyrillic characters on my keyboard to spell it correctly anyway.
Any foodie will tell you… it’s Chicken KIEV! “Funny” (but not really) how the entire internet switched spellings on all of their garbage, rotting, corruption-infested cities, places, people’s names, etc., etc.
Almost like the corporate woke collective has a stake in it. Who in hell gives a fuck how those people spell or say shit anything?
The capitol of Ukraine is Kiev. It’s entire culture and existence is as close to indistinguishable from Russian to most people that those fools are only kidding themselves.
It’s like the paleo Star Trek episode with the half-black/half-white people. Oh? Nobody fucken noticed which side you bastards were until you mentioned it! And let’s be honest, nobody really cares!
At one time Kiev was the fucking capital of Russia!
“At one time Kiev was the fucking capital of Russia” – true John, and the final movement of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is titled “The Great Gate at Kiev”. One of my favorites btw.
ONLY good thing is from the ashes can rise new companies if Pedo Peter and his puppet masters are gone after ’24
Hopefully a new automotive renaissance emerges and we won’t have to deal with all this UAW and other crap, plus get the cars we want if they also roll back on all these rules and regs
Well, we can dream, I suppose.
They’ll be union made if they want the tax credits. Somehow that became important with O’Biden’s don’t call it Build Back Better legislation.
Unions don’t matter anyway. Employee salaries are such a small portion of operating expenses these days, and every quarter thanks to inflation even less so. The old, expensive employees at the top of the pay scale are retiring or being forced out for the untrained marching morons who are too stupid to know what a good paycheck looks like. The Great Pay Scale Reset, if you will. Employers will probably have to hire on more security to keep theft and attacks on lower management under control though. At least until the workforce automation AI is trained.