Here’s another “insider’s insight”: The car industry is a tough business. The profit margin is not like selling bottled water, especially when you consider overheads in R&D and the regulation compliant measures they have to adhere to, to sell in the German/EU market. Cars sold in the US are cheaper to produce because they go through much, much less vigorous testing, but then they are loaded with stupid add-ons (screens behind each seat, more luxurious user interface, better speaker+subwoofer combos, etc)

I also want to know. Same with Tony Blair. Alas, I’m not a legal scholar.

In Germany: Big car manufacturers do have round-table sessions where they share research informations with each other. However, they do not co-ordinate pricing.

When you feel like car manufacturers release models with similar specs within a short time frame, this could be why.

Gerade gemacht, die sind generell teurer, aber noch im Rahmen. Verschraubte Teile super, high visibility ist keine wichtige Priorität aber ein guter Plus

I think so too, but oh well, people disagreed and that’s okay :D

Hahaha, okay, that’s somewhat funny

It really depends on the kind of work you do. My mindset is, if you’re interested in it, invest time in learning about it. If not, then not. We don’t have to go all “kids these days…” or look down on people who aren’t as interested in techology as we are.

Coming from a simulation software company here, not everyone in my company will know how to deal with servers or IT security and I think it’s ok. The programmers and engineers are brilliant, creative thinkers, all highly educated, but some just never bothered to learn this one thing. It’s almost offensive how our IT department treat the engineers, as if we’ll break anything we touch, but I get it from a security stand point.

As a student, I used to work part time in server maintenance for our uni, that’s how I personally got that knowledge. But even people working in the “tech industry” don’t all have the same sets of skills or tech interests.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing

Really? But most consumer products work so easily nowadays.

What do you mean, I can plug this USB stick in and it works without me having to turn the system off and start another boot cycle? Then when I finish, I can just unplug it and it doesn’t break?

It’s like magic.

This is about the Americas, yes? I believe its original roots was in Calvinism, that is, the brand of Christianity in the reformation era that was brought over to the Americas by early European settlers/colonisers as proposed by the theologian John Calvin. It’s something about how God chose its people and gave them the grace of worldly wealth. Wealth is good because it comes from God, so it follows, that poverty is due to a lack of God’s grace = immorality (laziness, lack of personal qualities, wickedness).

I think I read about this in a book about US American economy a couple of years ago, but I can’t remember which book it was.

Yes, absolutely bonkers!

Which is sad, because the way for women of that milieu to have any standing in society or a disposable income is by marrying. And the way to “seal and secure” the marriage is to have children ASAP.

I had a part time job when I was in uni. It was a crappy job at a cinema (it was not crappy, it was actually a load of fun, but you know, “crappy”), but I’m a millennial. My mother’s cousin told me she used to want to do part time at a store, just to have her own money (her husband had a flashy job), but hubby told her not to do it, because, “What if our friends visit that store? Where do we put our face?”

Saving face… pffftt. I believe this is still the sentiment in places like Hongkong, certain classes in India, in Indonesia, etc. Upper class women shouldn’t work or study, lest it makes them look working class.

I noticed this just last night. I wanted to watch an episode of a comforting show, and I’ve had it prepared to go. I only had to press play. Then I got a notification about a new video on a Youtube channel I subscribe to, so I started watching that instead. Midway through, I remember that my medicine cabinet needed replenishing, so I opened another tab to look for the medications I needed and I made a list of the things I was going to buy next time. By that time, about two hours had passed from when I prepared the comforting show, I didn’t finish the Youtube video, and it felt like two hours where I did a lot but achieved nothing. It was as if my brain was slipping from my grasp and it was a scary feeling.

Rich white women of a certain age might have been the ones whose parents chose to not send to college over their brothers. Perhaps this goes for rich women of any colour. My mother’s (now 68 yo) parents sent her brothers to college, not the girls. My mother got a vocational training, contributed to the brothers college funds, and then finally paid for herself through college. My mother’s not white.

I believe that most people have a certain hunger for information and education, and if college wasn’t an option, they’d look for these educations elsewhere.