• 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Oh yes it’ll go on for a long time and might never return to the previous state.

    American products got world wide recognition in a time when USA was the peak of western culture, technology and quality.

    With or without tariffs and boycotts, people everywhere in the world will once again have to question if they even want America products. This doesn’t go well with the increased consumer awareness that is happening everywhere else but in USA.

    UK turning down clorinated American chickens is the funniest thing today, like eew brother, eew what’s that?


  • Unpredictable things happen at that speed.

    Forget about braking distance. The reaction time is the difference between life and dying before you even know it.

    I know of one example where a motorcyclist killed himself that way. Nobody knows how fast he was going but it’s assumed above 250 km/h, on a regular highway. Down the road is a cross section. A lorry was fully stopped at the crossing and preparing to turn right onto the highway in the same direction as the motorcycle. The lorry driver checked both directions and saw that the road was completely clear as far as the eye could see, hundreds of meters.

    A split second later he heard a bump and pulled over to check if he had hit an animal or something. He found a massive hole in the back and the debris from a motorcycle. There was no brake marks or anything indicating that the motorcycle had even attempted to brake or steer around. The theory is that the motorcyclist might have glimpsed at the speedometer or something for long enough that he drove the entire visible distance before being able to even react.

    Obviously he was a fault himself, but the point is that at speeds like this, you no longer have any capability to predict what happens next.

    If your friend thinks that cool, he might as well play Russian roulette. At least that doesn’t put innocent people in danger.







  • VAT is (almost) the same idea as American sales tax.

    The difference is only how it is managed in wholesale, how it is displayed to consumers in retail and obviously the rates. Otherwise it’s the exact same thing.

    European stores show the price including the tax, whereas American stores show it without taxes. The VAT rates are generally higher in Europe than the sales tax in states, but this is not the explanation for the car prices.

    Cars are more expensive in Europe due to other kinds of taxes. Germany is actually one of the cheaper countries for vehicles, because they don’t have vehicle registration taxes, but they do have an import toll of 10% on cars. The same price increases happens the other way too. A European car will be more expensive in USA than in Europe for the same reasons.