Zenith, Motorola (Quasar), Admiral, RCA, GE televisions in the United States. (worked on them in the 70's), but then along came the Japanese TV's in the late 70's early 80's and along with the cheaper labor, and solid state televisions and cheaper prices, the American television industry collapsed. Now, the Japanese television industry is going through the same thing. The Chinese, with their massive cheap labor, ability to reverse engineer other things, has pretty much taken over the television set industry.

What about all the coal, oil, gas used to generate the electricity, not to mention the TONS of material needed to create the batteries for wind/solar & the disposal costs?

You have to pay MORE. /s

With the massive influx of people from the middle east, most who shun alcohol & the "dying off" of the older people it makes sense that pubs are shutting down. A lot of the younger people don't drink as much either.

According to Consumer Reports, Rivian placed last in its ranking of reliability, with the consumer-focused magazine citing electrical issues, frequent repairs and constant over-the-air updates as cause for the low ranking.

Stories were terrible, most of the comments got WAY to political.

But we cleaned it up. Japan had a similar problem in the 60's & 70's too, but cleaned it up. China had a smog problem in the 2000's, but are cleaning it up. India will have a smog problem too. It's industrialization. Once they get better, it will clean up as well. Most industrialized societies go through this.

Now it is a desert. The climate changes. In the 90's during the Algore era of global warming, when the ice was melting, it uncovered an abandoned settlement somewhere up north, iceland, norway or somewhere up that way. Scientist were all giddy with the discovery. It was dated to the 12-1300's. NOT ONCE did anyone ask, hey! how was it warmer 7-800 years ago, to have a bunch of people living in a community, without "man made" global warming? Too much burning of whale blubber??

LOL, how many people died of blood clots, it didn't STOP the Wuhan flu from getting you infected and on and on. But, it made a TON of money!

And where does all the electricity come from to recharge the batteries? Coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, and a little from wind, solar not to mention all of the MINING that goes into making the stupid batteries.

Just like a "drug dealer"...give it away cheap, get people use to using it so they are hooked on it. NOW start stuffing ads into it!

In the USA, there was Zenith, GE, RCA, Motorola, Admiral that had the lions share of television sales. Then, the Japan came along and the USA television makers disappeared. This happened about the time of the switchover from tubes (valves) to solid state televisions. With the solid state boxes, you'd turn on the tv and didn't have to wait for it to "warm up". Labor costs also figured into this shift to the Japanese sets. American workers wanted more and more money after WW2 and labor costs increased. In Japan, reeling from WW2 was CHEAPER. As Japan modernized and their population expanded, the labor costs in Japan increased as well. Now the shift to CHINA where labor costs are LOW and for the most part, will REMAIN low as long as the CCP controls everything. Not like the workers can demand much of anything. There has been some push back to the labor problems in China, which has made some companies pull out and move to India. And the trend of corporations to seeks out more profit and cheaper labor continues. Once AI/robots improve human labor will be replaced with robots anyway.

Shoot, most of the new stuff doesn't interest me anyway. Pluto, Tubi, Plex, are enough for me.

Said no one.

I worked 911 and did a lot of ride alongs with deputies. In our downtown area, the traffic lights had this long tube above the light and if you shined the spotlight into it, it would change the light from red to green. It was obviously suppose to be for fire trucks etc, but once high powered flashlights started showing up and people would trigger them, they disabled their function.