• mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    i can’t find the original post again but it was posted very recent so i’m sure there’s many more comments now. the OP wrote a couple long paragraphs expressing heartfelt shock and initial disbelief with our conditions, saying they believed we were spoiled and pampered bourgeois, and are now losing sleep over stories they heard

    there was also a comment like “i need to reread marx with this new information in mind”

  • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    I’ve been seeing comments be like “Americans are lying to us. There is no way what they say is true.”

    doomjak is right

    • SuperZutsuki [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      That’s not entirely true. You can get base models of bottom tier cars for like $24,000. Still completely ridiculous, though. And used cars are 3x more expensive than they used to be and we don’t have functional mass transit except in the largest cities elmofire

    • principalkohoutek [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I mean, that amount of money will get you a new Prius. Not what I would call “least reliable”, but it is an otherwise mid tier car and $35k for an average car is out of reach for most Americans

      • 30_to_50_Feral_PAWGs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        You can get a beaten-to-hell 2004 Buick LeSabre for $2.5k on Facebook Marketplace, dump about $1.5k in suspension, transmission, and engine parts into it, and have a grandma car that will last you around 150,000 more miles with proper maintenance. It’s like the AmeriKKKan Camry/Avalon. Just don’t put too much shit on your keychain, or those shitty GM lock cylinders will shut off your car at random.

        • a_little_red_rat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          what the fuck, I thought at least cars were affordable in the US.

          I live in europe and my (used) car from 2010 cost me $4k and required zero additional maintenance, it just works perfectly and has been for over a year now, and is comfortable as shit too. And if I lived in the city, I wouldn’t even need a car bc transit is fine in most places here

          • 30_to_50_Feral_PAWGs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Nope, obama-medal fucked us pretty hard with the Cash For Clunkers program, which took a lot of viable used vehicles off the market. This was ostensibly to shore up emissions and fuel economy standards, but in practice it was just yet another classic Democrat “fuck the poor” measure. Couple this with manufacturers going way downhill since 2010 or so, and you get the inflated prices that we’ve been seeing ever since then, not to mention the vehicle shortage absurdity that happened during COVID lockdowns.

  • yoink [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    since the ban got lifted, it’s been insane seeing all the libs have to internalise the contradictions they’ve been present with by talking about how ‘its hard to unsee all the propaganda that just played out in front of our eyes’ or how ‘obvious’ it is that this is proof of TikTok trying to control the American public

    as if every single chinese person on XHS is a plant lmao

    the cognitive dissonance is just only gonna get worse from here out. maybe one day they’ll figure out that the rest of the world doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking about how to trick americans who are too docile and bought in to ever do anything but be led by the nose on behalf of their state department

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    My favorite interactions are Chinese users coming up with really obvious solutions, and having to explain how much deeper the problem goes.

    “Since your rent is high, why not just build high-rise apartments?” Because if we gave poor people a place to live it would bring down property values and investors and landlords would lose money so it’s easier to harass them until they go to the next city and become someone else’s problem.

    “If you have all these taxes but poor social services, where does all the money go?” Not only does it not go to helping us, it goes towards the military and police who are actively harmful.

    “If your groceries are expensive and you have lawns, why don’t you just grow your own food?” Well, we should, but if you have a landlord they might not let you.

    “Why do you put up with this instead of standing up against the rich?” Hey, you know that Marxist theory that you had to learn in school and thought was super boring? Well, while you were learning that, we’re taught that communism is the devil, so instead everybody comes up with their own bizarre explanations of why things suck that usually involve siding with the ruling class against other countries, if not blaming minorities in our own country. And also people are so chauvinistic that they think any problem we have must be even worse everywhere else because “WE’RE #1!”

    There so much stuff that I’m not used to explaining because everyone’s just internalized the horrors and rationalized them away, and there’s also so much stuff I wouldn’t be able to say because people run away screaming if you try to apply Marxist framework to things.

    There’s gotta be a “Oh yeah, the time knife, we’ve all seen it” meme I can make out of this.