Revi wrote:China is getting into the car game, but they won't be able to match our rate before the music stops. They have the growing middle class who have aspirations, and more and more people will want to get a car. It's unstoppable. My parents had only one car for a while, then my mother got a job to pay for her car. It's going to be like that, because cars are the ultimate thing to have.
We are all used to having them, and it will be hard to get anyone to give them up.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
vtsnowedin wrote:Revi wrote:The average person spends about $9000 a year on their car in the US. That's the total cost. That means if mom and dad and 2 kids have cars they are spending around $36,000 to keep everyone motoring. Very little money for anything else...
I don't know anyone supporting four average cars on one income.
vtsnowedin wrote: Two teenage drivers had better have part time jobs or they are not driving 15K average a year and if they need to commute to work the job better pay well. Half time job 1000 hours a year at $12/ hr is $12,000 and some of that should be going towards college.
vtsnowedin wrote: My three all drove (well used) used cars while they were in school or could buy their own with Army money.
AdamB wrote:
None of my kids want to support the military industrial complex in that way. Milk the parents! seems to be their battle cry. But used cars are cheap, insurance is cheap, why not 5? Or 8? At $3G/each, they would all cost less CapX then the single fancy EV the wife takes off to work.
Revi wrote:The average person spends about $9000 a year on their car in the US. That's the total cost. That means if mom and dad and 2 kids have cars they are spending around $36,000 to keep everyone motoring. Very little money for anything else...
vtsnowedin wrote:I would not count on the reduction in VMT lasting more then a year. We will get past Covid-19 one way or the other and millions will get back to work and most will have to commute to their hands on jobs. You can't build or fix a house sitting on your couch with a lap top. People that are moving out of the city to avoid the crime and taxes will find cars essential in suburban and rural areas no matter the computer connection speed so you will have millions of previous urban subway riders now owning a car for the first time.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:But I think you CAN do a LOT of office jobs that are done in-office today from home, at least 50% to 80% of the time. I think a fair amount of sales jobs could also be done remotely, as long as the human salesperson is giving the customer plenty of attention.
mousepad wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:But I think you CAN do a LOT of office jobs that are done in-office today from home, at least 50% to 80% of the time. I think a fair amount of sales jobs could also be done remotely, as long as the human salesperson is giving the customer plenty of attention.
There's a lot of people that cannot handle home office well. The isolation, the lack of guidance and interaction.
The bunch of sales guys I work with are going insane. They have to work from home, but that's contrary to their personalities of outgoing, meeting, talking, traveling. It's kind of like forcing an introvert engineer out of his hiding-cubicle. It just doesn't go well for long.
vtsnowedin wrote:I think we need to take a look at what portion of jobs require hands on physical presence. I do not have any reliable figures at hand. What portion of our economy is entertainment that can be delivered online? And what portion has to be delivered in person , hands on.? If all we can do is hands off via internet we will all starve or freeze to death in the dark. What task you really need can be done remotely? Perhaps one out of five.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:First, a HELL of a lot of stuff is done by factories with VERY little human presence. And what human presence there is in such factories can often be spread out, sanitation measures can be employed, etc.
There is a limit to what can be automated as animals vary in size and shape and robots that can see and adapt to those variables are complicated and expensive.If, say, meat packing became untenable due to Covid-19 as it is done today (even with the measures already employed re employee safety), automation could be more heavily employed.
Sorry I prefer to eat less carbs not less meat. You go right ahead though.Production would be impacted and prices would rise some, no doubt. But that does NOT mean we "all starve to death in the dark" in ANY way. It WOULD mean collectively we eat less meat, which would actually be a good thing re overall health and AGW, and there WOULD be lots of whining, but whining isn't freezing to death in the dark.
All those delivery vehicles require drivers at least at present.Second, a HELL of a lot of stuff can be delivered, at least in the first world. As long as Amazon and UPS can keep the warehouses and shipping going, and the trucks can run to bring the stuff to the warehouses, that's a hell of a lot of serious economic activity (and people eating and drinking and consuming staples in general), vs. "freezing in the dark".
Third, much of what must be done "at work" today can fairly rapidly be done by machines for the most part, fairly soon (within the next decade) IF the financial incentives and necessity are there. From rapid gains in picking crops by machine to producing fast food by machine, for example.
Fourth, this issue is about cost, as we're discussing it on this thread. Despite all the usual cries about doom, if necessary, a LOT of people can adapt and people CAN get to work even if, say gasoline, is a HELL of a lot more expensive. They may not LIKE it, but taking a bus, walking, biking, car pooling, using a MUCH more efficient car, using some form of EV, etc. are ALL very much possible (just off the top), if needed. (I saw quite a bit of that sort of thing during the oil crisis in the 70's by ordinary suburbanites -- without all the tech. we have today).
"Freezing in the dark" isn't the likely problem. "How do we equitably deal with and support an increasingly, and then largely unemployed workforce" IS a serious problem. And of course, since humans don't like to look AHEAD and deal with issues, not much will be done until it's so obviously IN OUR FACE that enough voters wake up to that as a serious issue.
Now, if COVID-19, or anything else gets so bad that goods can't be delivered to people at home reliably (and automation may well be able to play an increasing role there, given what Waymo, MobilEye and others are accomplishing in geofenced areas, and plan to be doing commercially in a couple years), then THAT'S a SERIOUS problem. Or if a relative handful of folks can't work at a factory, again, THAT'S a big problem. Again, despite lots and lots of claims of rapid doom, we're no where close to that level of problem in the forseeable future.
If all we can do is hands off via internet we will all starve or freeze to death in the dark. What task you really need can be done remotely? Perhaps one out of five.
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