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Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

You realize the VW is also a part a of the US economy right?

They invested a billion dollars building out their facility in Chattanooga, TN and employ thousands of people, contributing to the economy and tax coffers. This is not their first plant either.

Hurting VW also hurts Americans and the local economy there.

Any US Auto Lobby also represents VW, Honda and Toyota in addition to Ford, GM and Chrysler. They all make cars in the US and have significant operation there.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Chattanooga_Assembl...

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_of_America

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The question is whether the overall gains outnumber the local losses.

Cheating on emission endangers the whole planet, protecting few workers is the last concern here, especially since tables are readily available to convert the estimated emissions in deaths and other long term damage and the numbers aren’t pretty

Nowhere in my comment is there anything that even remotely condones cheating or protecting people who do so.

If you actually read the parent post post that I was responding to:

>"but there is a widespread public opinion that this was a welcome opportunity to punish a pesky German competitor, by throwing the book at them by the US government working together with the US auto lobby"

It's clear that I was responding to the silly suggestion of there being a conspiracy by the US against a "German" competitor since VW is also a US car manufacturer.

The level of emissions achieved by the "cheating" was perfectly legal only a few years ago, just for perspective.

And in the USA at least, there just aren't enough diesel cars to really make a difference. Almost all diesel vehicles here are heavy trucks and busses and they dwarf the emissions of the cars to the point of making them inconsequential.

I fail to see how higher NOx "endangers the whole planet" when under that mode of operation they were better on fuel economy (i.e. lower CO2 emissions, etc)

there ya go http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...

29000 people != the whole planet

I don't mean to say that it isn't terrible that any people die because of transport emissions ... but the alternative was to emit more CO2 ... we don't know the exact human cost of that ... but it is not zero.

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