4 ms·

Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regula

by Dig1t 1y ago

Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans. Hence the market catering more to people less willing to spend a lot of money on a car. The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.

SirHumphrey 1y ago
It's also roads. On narrower roads smaller cars feel better and you have a lot more narrow roads in Europe.
dtech 1y ago
No, US also has rules for cars. It just has much more stringent rules for smaller cars, so SUVs and trucks have an unfair advantage. It's like if smaller cars are taxed at 30% and larger cars at 10%, of course there are going to be more large cars compared to a place that taxes both at 30% or 10%.
yugoslavia4ever 1y ago
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. GDP and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race
oreilles 1y ago
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. The state, maybe. The missisipian, not so much - considering their Human Development Index is right in between that of Hungary and Bulgaria, at the very bottom of the EU. How great is it to be able to buy expansive cars if you can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find yourself in the street if you lose your job.
- Amezarak 1y ago
  Mississippi, like all US states, has free K12 education. It also offers free college education at public universities to anyone who scores well on college admittance tests. (In many countries, people can't access college at all if they didn't perform academically.) About 25% of Mississippians are on free government healthcare (Medicaid/CHIP). About 21% are on very-cheap government healthcare (Medicare.) Additionally, many hospital systems in the state are owned by state and local governments, and offer free services (roundaboutly) to residents. Mississippians, like others Americans, are eligible for Social Security in retirement, and have access to unemployment insurance. Of course Mississippi is not some sort of welfare state paradise, but it's tiresome polemic and exaggeration to claim that people "can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find [themselves] out on the street if [they] lose [their] job."
  - cpursley 1y ago
    HN folks get their kicks from insulting the southern US states. I blame stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood.
    - selimthegrim 1y ago
      Some of us even live there.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  > expansive cars Probably a typo, but accurate. Gotta have my truck.
sofixa 1y ago
> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again? > Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. No, you're looking at this the wrong way. US regulators make bigger cars more lucrative for manufacturers, so they only do that. EU regulators mostly focus on safety and emissions, which also slightly favours bigger cars (whose bigger price absorbs the safety features better), but not nearly to the same extent. Two of the biggest EU car groups (Stellanti and Renault) both are publicly asking to reduce some of the burden for smaller cars to be able to make cheaper small cars. On the other hand, US manufacturers (even Stellantis' Jeep, Dodge, Ram) don't mind just churning oversized monstrosities. > The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
- matthewowen 1y ago
  > GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling. Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance. You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries. Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in. But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars. You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
piltdownman 1y ago
Ah this old Chestnut whereby agitators use the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi as a KPI indicating Europe's lack of economic prowess. In fact, it's just a scathing indictment of wealth inequality in Mississippi where life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher than in Bavaria, despite their similar GDPs. For better or worse the EU is run as a Society whereby the US is run as an Economy, a fact conveniently forgotten in these apples/oranges comparisons.
- cpursley 1y ago
  It’s more culture than anything. Germany is absolutely run like an economy btw.

by Dig1t 1y ago

SirHumphrey 1y ago

It's also roads. On narrower roads smaller cars feel better and you have a lot more narrow roads in Europe.

dtech 1y ago

No, US also has rules for cars. It just has much more stringent rules for smaller cars, so SUVs and trucks have an unfair advantage. It's like if smaller cars are taxed at 30% and larger cars at 10%, of course there are going to be more large cars compared to a place that taxes both at 30% or 10%.

yugoslavia4ever 1y ago

> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. GDP and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race

oreilles 1y ago

> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. The state, maybe. The missisipian, not so much - considering their Human Development Index is right in between that of Hungary and Bulgaria, at the very bottom of the EU. How great is it to be able to buy expansive cars if you can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find yourself in the street if you lose your job.

Amezarak 1y ago
Mississippi, like all US states, has free K12 education. It also offers free college education at public universities to anyone who scores well on college admittance tests. (In many countries, people can't access college at all if they didn't perform academically.) About 25% of Mississippians are on free government healthcare (Medicaid/CHIP). About 21% are on very-cheap government healthcare (Medicare.) Additionally, many hospital systems in the state are owned by state and local governments, and offer free services (roundaboutly) to residents. Mississippians, like others Americans, are eligible for Social Security in retirement, and have access to unemployment insurance. Of course Mississippi is not some sort of welfare state paradise, but it's tiresome polemic and exaggeration to claim that people "can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find [themselves] out on the street if [they] lose [their] job."
- cpursley 1y ago
  HN folks get their kicks from insulting the southern US states. I blame stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood.
  - selimthegrim 1y ago
    Some of us even live there.
lostlogin 1y ago
> expansive cars Probably a typo, but accurate. Gotta have my truck.

sofixa 1y ago

> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again? > Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. No, you're looking at this the wrong way. US regulators make bigger cars more lucrative for manufacturers, so they only do that. EU regulators mostly focus on safety and emissions, which also slightly favours bigger cars (whose bigger price absorbs the safety features better), but not nearly to the same extent. Two of the biggest EU car groups (Stellanti and Renault) both are publicly asking to reduce some of the burden for smaller cars to be able to make cheaper small cars. On the other hand, US manufacturers (even Stellantis' Jeep, Dodge, Ram) don't mind just churning oversized monstrosities. > The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.

matthewowen 1y ago
> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling. Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance. You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries. Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in. But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars. You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.

piltdownman 1y ago

Ah this old Chestnut whereby agitators use the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi as a KPI indicating Europe's lack of economic prowess. In fact, it's just a scathing indictment of wealth inequality in Mississippi where life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher than in Bavaria, despite their similar GDPs. For better or worse the EU is run as a Society whereby the US is run as an Economy, a fact conveniently forgotten in these apples/oranges comparisons.

cpursley 1y ago
It’s more culture than anything. Germany is absolutely run like an economy btw.