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That's every car company out there. Toyota and Honda only exist today because of the US government getting Japan back on its feet and then later the Japanese government supporting them with currency manipulation and socialized pensions and medicine. Subaru was originally Fiji Heavy Industries which built busses, trains, heavy construction machinery, and was a major supplier of airplanes. FHI is still a major aerospace company who supplies parts for the Airbus 380 and just about every model Boeing makes or has made that starts with a 7. They also make military helicopters and both military and commercial drones. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and VW are all here today because of the Marshall Plan and later their countries' social medicine and pension programs. Mercedes makes a lot of military and construction equipment purchased by governments. BYD (and others) is where it is because the Chinese government spent loads on battery development and incentives to its citizens to by EVs. Prior to that, BYD built their industrial might on building busses and other heavy machinery for the Chinese government and local governments all over the world. GM and Ford had major defense contracts during WWII, the 2008 bailouts, the Biden EV tax credits, the Obama cash-for-clunkers incentives, and much more. However, they famously have always had to manage their own healthcare and pensions systems which are what put them at a competitive disadvantage throughout the 80's and 90's. Stellantis's ownership timeline is too convoluted to even tackle, but Chrysler was bailed out in 1979, then they bought AMC/Jeep which had been kept afloat by the military, then they were bailed out again in 2008 by both the US and Italian governments. Fiat is/was a major equipment and bus supplier in Europe. The French government has always supported Peugeot and Citroen... the list goes on.

They never would have gotten off the ground if it weren't for the government holding them up.

Its really exciting when people bootleg wire them into panels without disconnecting the panel from the main utility. Utility comes back on and...boom.

I got a mid-size portable one rated for 4500w. It doesn't run the whole house. It's enough to keep the downstairs fridge and freezer going, the internet up, and the phones/laptops charged. In the wintertime it can also be used to run the furnace. We lost power for 18 hours overnight this past winter when it was 11 degrees out, so getting one that will run the furnace was on my list of requirements. We get multi-hour outages several times a year, during the worst of covid we had a transformer blow a couple streets over and they couldn't get a replacement for days, so I think it was an overdue investment. While it does have a connection available to wire into the breaker box, my breaker box is not set up for it. So for me, it was just stringing orange extension cords under the garage door and out the living room window to plug into the unit in the driveway. We got power back for a short time at 11 p.m., then again at 3 a.m., I was able to power down the generator at 3. Last I looked, there were still 134k without power, over 400k at the worst of it. They're saying more bad storms tonight.

Exactly why the myth of totally free markets is just that, a myth.

Tesla would be so gonzo if markets were free. This lumber yard is in central PA, I think a Ranger road trip is in order.

I am buying a car in 2029.

Ahhh that makes sense. Just get things running and get the "proper" install done when you have time. For some reason, my I completely forgot about the conventional outlets on generators (face palm) and I could only picture them running to a breaker box.

Yeah, I have a coworker that lives in downtown Pittsburgh and heard this morning her building has a generator but it's been on and off...

Daaaamn, best of luck with everything, bud. We've been hit a couple times pretty bad this year, luckily power loss was limited to only a few hours. We were pretty fortunate because there were areas out of power for days. Smart move to go get a generator ASAP. This is probably a stupid question, but if you were to get one in an emergency situation, like yours, how do you connect it to your house? I thought usually you had stuff ran so you can just plug it in.