Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Japan, New Zealand all have universal childcare and seem to have a lot less teen violence than the US that has no universal childcare.
What a weird connection to make, assuming your assertion is accurate.
Even if it is, it is worth noting that it isn’t all sunshine and roses in those countries from a demographic point of view, notwithstanding universal childcare.
The article mostly details the move by many legacy automakers to delay electrifying more of their fleet and touches on the aspect of gas stations and recharges. However, what it doesn't mention is that it appears that internal combustion engine vehicles cost about 40% more in service costs which obviously affects dealers.
Here's an article I remember from MotorTrend a few years ago https://www.motortrend.com/news/government-ev-ice-maintenanc...
I'm from the Detroit area, it's all hubris on their part.
They only latched on to EVs because of the money everyone was making on them -at the time-.
Now, Model 3s are cheap and the US is putting protectionist measures in play.
To your point, automakers have the challenge also of balancing union agreements. Plants tend to be amortized over decades, contracts for many years, and retooling for will lead to closures of at least some plants.
I call it hubris, because both GM and Ford got rid of their PHEVs and Ford has been playing shenanigans with hybrid models on a global level.
Ford CEO last month on their Q2 2024 investor earnings call [1]:
> Overall, the EV journey has been humbling, but it has forced us to get even more fit as a company, including applying it to our ICE business, and that will pay off long run -- in the long run. I am so happy we scaled 2.5 years ago, and we have the option to incorporate those learnings into our next generation of EVs launching in the coming years. I want to double-click on the software technology and services business. Ford, alongside Rivian and Tesla, are really the only non-Chinese OEMs controlling software across all the vehicle domain.
More about what he actually said about EVs:
> We also have learned a lot about the size of the vehicle. We believe smaller, more affordable vehicles are the way to go for EV and volume. Why? Because the math is completely different than ICE. In ICE, the business we've been in for 120 years, the bigger the vehicle, the higher the margin. But it's exactly the opposite for EVs. The larger the vehicle, the bigger the battery, the more pressure on margin because customers will not pay a premium for those larger batteries.
> The second success factor is matching the cost of the Chinese OEMs in Tesla, especially on affordable EVs. Now when people hear about affordability and they think about small and unaffordable, I'd like to address that now. We are designing a super-efficient platform, leveraging innovation across our product development, supply chain, and manufacturing teams. With no engine or drivetrain, a smaller vehicle can have a much roomier package, actually the interior package of a class above with a small silhouette. That's a big advantage for customers versus ICE. And we're focusing on very differentiated vehicles priced under $40,000 or even $30,000.
Further Down:
> And what we found in that trip and subsequent trips to China is that we have a very competitive battery in CATL, but many of the Chinese players in the lower cost have very affordable batteries, but they don't have the most efficient design outside of the battery on the other EV components And our team, the skunkworks team, we might as well call it a big team now because it's no longer skunkworks, we're betting on them as our affordable platform, they have really designed breakthrough EV components with our own design that we think are better and cheaper.
Not just the UK govt but same with the US govt. Loss of domain-specific knowledge is a real problem is one problem. When project deadlines slip, government departments have no choice but to pay whatever the cost for extending the contract since the specific knowledge lies with the contracting company.
I think that is something that needs to be talked about much more. I'm not an economist so not sure how things like that are addressed. Anti-trust enforcement? I honestly don't know but I'm sure there are more informed readers in HN that can comment.
The problem with that article is they're taking a 40 year average and comparing it to a year. That's not in any way realistic way to compare data. If you're going to make that comparison say the average was x over 40 years and also post the min/max/STD deviation as well to give it context.
It doesn't take an economist to know that companies don't always raise prices when they're backend costs go up. It's very obviously a yoyo effect because consumers what some price stability. So taking a year where "greedy profits are made" doesn't account for the years when prices remained stable but backend costs went up. One example that's obvious to anyone is the years and years dollar tree sold things for a dollar, even as their costs fluctuated. When prices stay at $1 for 5 years then go to $1.25 on year 6 people are OMG price gouging and that's more than inflation blah blah blah... And you can write a article like you cite... But did it really go up more than inflation across a 6 year period?
A year over year graph would be far more meaningful than what they have. Lies, damn lies and statistics.
Jerome Powell, when asked, said his annual salary is about $190,000[1]. Even though he got it slightly wrong (it is actually $226,300[2]), it doesn't strike me as unusual given the position he occupies.
Also, from the linked article:
"The website for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System reports that the Fed Chair's salary in 2019 was set at $203,500. It also says that the annual pay for other Board members that year was $183,100.
Meanwhile, according to Equilar data cited by Fortune, the median pay among CEOs of the top 100 US companies clocks in at about $20 million."
Seems one of the former senior executives of Fujitsu now runs a gov't agency that handles contracts to digital services vendors like...Fujitsu.
Not sure how the legal authorities work in the UK but people have to be held accountable, regardless of political party. One would think the government's legal authorities have to act on behalf of the citizens not just in holding persons criminally responsible but also compensating victims.
