Noots

liberalsarecool:

Would be nice if the media could cover how Republicans meticulously explode the deficit.

no-terfs-no-swerfs-no-fascists:

tallsuperstar:

no-terfs-no-swerfs-no-fascists:

tallsuperstar:

I’m joining the orca war on the side of the orcas

YOU. YOU GET ME

spaceaceofheart:

the-itzy-bitzy-spider:

onsomekindofstartrek:

onsomekindofstartrek:

pinene:

depsidase:

we have to ban growth hormones for our trucks :( it’s hurting them

Okay, not be the that guy, but I do want to talk about this.

So, you might be saying, it’s not a fair comparison since one of those is a half-ton or three-quarter-ton truck (can’t tell if that’s a 150 or a 250) and the other is an Asian-style compact pickup (the Toyota in the foreground). BUT! Actually this is very funny and very true.

Say that’s a F-150 in the background. I’m nearly sure from the body styling that it is. 2010’s, which places it firmly within what we call “NBS” or “New Body Style” Fords.

At one time, the f-150 would have been much lower and much less likely to have a four-door cab. It would still have been clearly a much bigger truck and a different class of vehicle than that Tacoma in the foreground, but not even nearly to that extent. From about the late 60’s to various points in the 90’s and 2000’s, an equivalent light pickup from Ford, GMC, Chevrolet and even Chrysler/Jeep were about the same dimensions. With modification and effort you can even take a 60’s Ford body and mount it on a 90’s Ford frame.

But something changed in the late 90’s. With the 1997 model year of Ford F-150, suddenly the cab was much taller, significantly longer, with far fewer flat panels, the bed was substantially redesigned and did not tend to be as long proportionately. Rear seats became more common and the depth of the rear seating increased across both two door and four door trucks. Front bench seats vanished, and 40/60 seats quickly followed, to be replaced with oversized bucket seats.

I’m sure different market forces drove this change. But the consequences could not have been fully intended. After this point, Americans started to buy trucks that replicated the functionality of an SUV but with added cargo space. Suddenly the market is incentivized to build these gas-guzzling land battleships with luxury interiors, a full SUV plus a full or slightly abbreviated pickup bed, all on a frame and drive-train set up for towing and all-terrain driving.

And like, if you’re rich and own a farm or if you’re rich and move a lot of furniture or whatever, I see the fucking appeal. I can imagine wanting bucket seats in my old F-350. I can imagine wanting full AC, a good radio, more passenger space, power windows and power seats in my old F-350. What I cannot imagine is PAYING for it.

So essentially pickups have been gentrified away from their original market, and you know what has had to fill the vacuum? The same pickups that were filling that role twenty-five years ago and counting. So now anything you NEED a pickup for, if you don’t have Mercedes-Benz levels of cash to drop on it, you have to use a vehicle that potentially has 300,000 miles of heavy use on it, without modern conveniences and more importantly modern safety aparatus, and which are almost certainly worse for the environment. And more and more older pickups are aging out of service, while ten-and-fifteen year old pickups hold just enough of their market value to still be out of the working person’s price range, while beginning to suffer failures of all the plasticky electronic gadgets and doodads that were crammed into them. This means that prices go up on all trucks, not just the new ones, and leads to a genuine scarcity.

And because capitalism is irrational in its pursuit of profits, the arms race between truck manufacturers has led to taller and taller trucks among other things, leading to a case where, as you can plainly see, that F-150 is, unlike even the gen-10’s that began the new style, totally unsafe to drive around pedestrians. It’s just too big and too tall.

And the Asian light trucks, the Mazda-based Ford Ranger, the old Toyota Tacomas, what some people affectionately or perjoratively call the fishing truck? Gone, disappeared largely from the market.

TL;DR:

OP raises a great point even though they chose a jokey example: new pickup trucks have become, almost as a class, gigantic luxury SUVs, which means that the people who actually need pickup trucks for utility purposes are forced to rely on older models, which are at the same time aging out of service and not being replaced, causing a horrible crisis in this segment of the market.

I grew up in work trucks and still use them today. I do love space for more people in a truck because hell yeah we all going to the job in one truck. And we can put our tools in the back and everything else on the trailer. But jfc the expense. It’s unreal.

In fairness to trucks though, go try to buy a minivan. My household just carpools when we go places because lord vans are too much. All vehicles are too much. It’s all of them. Not just trucks. The whole auto industry is fucking itself if they think this ship won’t sink eventually. Folks are getting poorer and there’s no way to buy cars with the way wages have stagnated. But like all industries they’ll just keep raising prices until the bubble pops. (Full disclosure I don’t know shit about markets or any of that, I’m just saying this as some country bumpkin who’s seen folks Icarus themselves before out of unbridled greed and that’s what this looks like to me.)

I read this article recently talking about what rural Americans are resorting to in place of these large and expensive trucks (or John Deere equipment). They are importing very small trucks from Japan because it’s cheaper and they are better suited to what they need.

It’s a good read, and also the “kei” trucks are fun to look at.

American Farmers Are Saving Money By Importing Small Japanese Trucks

A growing number of rural Americans, such as farmers and small business owners, are purchasing Japanese domestic market (JDM) small pickup t

CarBuzz

queerdo-mcjewface:

politijohn:

Source

[Private opulence, public squalor:How the US helps the rich and hurts the poor

March 21, 2023

Hear on Fresh Air

This one statistic that I calculated just blew me away. So a recent study was published and it showed that if the top 1% of Americans just paid the taxes they owed, not paid more taxes, … we as a nation could raise an additional $175 billion every year. That is just about enough to pull everyone out of poverty, every parent, every child, every grandparent. So we clearly have the resources to do this. It is not hard.]

manywinged:

manywinged:

manywinged:

my three girlfriends, judge, jury, and executioner. and yes, they decide who lives and who dies.

and yes, they smoke weed

ALT

that-one-percent-germ-deactivat:

Reblog to heal the heart of the person you reblogged this from.

mostly-funnytwittertweets:

soberscientistlife:

Climate change is real and happening faster than scientists thought.

mostly-funnytwittertweets: