Why doesn't CSS absolute work with a static parent?

Question

W3Schools says that

element with position: absolute is positioned relative to the nearest positioned ancestor. Where positioned element is one whose position is anything except static.

My question is why are static elements excluded?

I know that I can set

position: relative;
left:0px;
top:0px;
right:0px;
bottom:0px

which is the same as position:static, but in my opinion, it looks like a workaround.

Answer 1

Just position: relative will do.

This is a good thing, because otherwise the browser will have to apply calculations on every element instead of being able to take shorter routes for static positioning.

It also means you can have arbitrary containers, so long as they're static, and still have an element be positionable relative to the container of your choice.