Reported as not really being politics, and I could see it as being more !news@lemmy.world or even !business@lemmy.world
But pocket book issues like this impact politics.
"It's the economy, stupid!" and all that.
Everything is politics.
The only way you can escape politics is to live alone on an uninhabited planet.
Even then, I'm sure someone would figure out a way to have conflicting ideas that need to be argued out. There's a reason Tom Hanks invented Wilson (and the real-life stories such concepts are based on), we NEED other people to engage with, to debate with, to argue with, for validation and support and to negotiate with in order for our ideas to sharpen and for our minds to stay stable. Without this, we lose our minds or even die.
So not only is everything politics, we can't live without it.
I think about this every time I see someone whinging about politics in entertainment.
Politics underpins finance at every level
maybe if dealers would actually tell you the price of the car instead of spinniing it as a monthly expense
Yes, but how can that poor salesman possibly get you into the most expensive car for the longest terms that way? They've got a commission to max out!
There is a dealership local to me that pays their sales staff annual salaries with benefits rather than working on commission. It’s the only place anybody in my family will buy a car now.
America had a public rail system already...
We nationalized rail during WW1, and then after giving it back they all went broke in the 60s
So then Amtrak was created (there's a push to privatize it right now) and when that was going to put private rail out of business, Jimmy Carter de-regulated rail so private companies could cut corners and not be replaced nationwide by Amtrak
We'll never get nationalized rail on a good scale with neoliberals, they'll never fix any problem where money is involved, because they'll take the offered money to change their minds.
Uh oh
In August, the share of subprime auto loans where borrowers had missed payments for 60 days or more was 6.43pc, according to Fitch Ratings. Bar a 6.45pc reading in January, this was the highest level recorded since Fitch’s data began in 1993 (back then, the rate was just 0.12pc) and far above the financial crisis peak of 5.04pc.
Woah
I'll tell you what though, I'm glad I have a paid off car.
How do I Michael Bury the auto loans? 👀
Are the millennials killing car ownership!?
Boomers told me millennials kill everything. Which by its own nature means millennials killed killing everything.
Not long ago I could buy a used van for 5000. Now I had to pay like 13k for a used one after our typical accident caused by another person had an insurance that wouldn't pay up.
That's such a shit business going around telling people they're covered but then in the end not actually covering anything. I get it cars depreciate.... Well great, why doesn't my insurance premium deprecate? I would gladly maintain the same level of payment if it means my car will be replaced. Similarly, if they won't actually replace my car, they should just tell me..you're going to need $5000 to make up the difference if you get into accident.
Once living in your car became a viable housing alternative, they had to take that away, too.
Wait until they figure out we need food to live.
Do you know what Henry Ford himself did?
Increased the wages so his own workers would buy his cars...
Henry Ford was a capitalist, racist, eugenicist asshole, but he had one thing the current capitalist, racist, eugencist assholes in power today don't: long term economic planning.
It's literally just supply side economics. If you have the power to increase the buying power of your customers, your customers can and will spend more money. Also more free time means people will want to spend more money on things to do and things to own, meanwhile if they're stuck spending 60-80 hours a week purely focused on work they'll be too tired to want anything other than food in their belly and a bed to sleep in
And gave them more time off to use them. He wasn't any humanitarian paragon, just a good capitalist.
A capitalist with a longer time horizon than next quarter
Right, a capitalist. What we have now is something else, something demented, rotten. The wealthy are aware of that, maybe not that they caused it, but they pay smart people to manage their money and it must be obvious that a myopic business strategy is preferable to a long term one. Workers aren't assets anymore. Ford might have been a shithead, but he understood the vitality of low turnover to a successful long term company. My grandfathers brother worked for Sikorsky his entire life, started turning a single bolt and retired from the executive suite. But his generation was among the last to be that lucky. There is a barrier between labor and management, it used to be a college degree, now it seems to be a PhD or a Masters. Which is just a different representation of money because education is wildly overpriced. There are obviously exceptions, but it's rare to find large companies that still promote from within, especially from the floor to a desk.
Fake News. All my homies can’t wait to go sixty goddamn thousand dollars in debt to by a house-sized . . I wanna say . . truck?
Me though, been pulling extra shifts - got my eye on that $90,000 volvo EV. Mmmm! You basically can’t afford NOT to buy it!
If I had the money lying around I'd totally buy a midlife crisis car. A v8, automatic coupe style with a real healthy rumble to it. I drive less than 3k miles/year, and barely travel far enough to make the lowest end of the fuel efficiency range. You know the kind of car that says "yeah this car is for fun, and that dude is probably not alright".
But I have class so at minimum I'm looking at burning $60k on like a used Lexus RC F.
Like come the fuck on you know? Even if I ponied up "half" that cost, the 5 year loan runs $700/mo. $700. Who the absolute fuck has a monthly extra $700 just sitting there right now AND that mystery $30k I mentioned.
Are people just not able to math?
No, they are not. That’s why a significant number of students fail math classes. The number of children who cannot even perform basic 7th-grade math is shockingly high. Then, they discover that they will pass even if they fail, so they relax and blame the teachers when their parents see their grades.
The average American car payment right now is like $670 per month. Its truly absurd. Its no surprise that people are drowning when you look at what theyre paying to have this or that.
Even more shocking is the amount of people buying their next car while still underwater on the first one. A large number of people are rolling $10k of prior vehicle debt into the purchase of a vehicle, driving up their monthly even further
Trump is bankrupting Americans and America so they can install a technocratic dictatorship
Why do we only blame trump?
There's bi-partisan support for making sure China can't sell its EVs in the US, even though they cost $15k and have 300km range.
Meanwhile we have dumbasses buying teslas saying "they didn't get ripped off."
Sure. An eroded economy. Stagnant wages for many long with decreasing buying power. Price hikes thanks to tariffs, increasing insurance costs, rising subscription costs, etc. Cars bought at inflated prices and high interest for extended payment schedules during the covid price gouging, and just generally way too expensive these days anyway, are all draining bank accounts far more quickly than ever.
Bet any repos don’t go back on lots for resale, they’ll park them in the desert somewhere just to prop up scarcity and new car prices.
Can't we have affordable repairable cars AND reliable public transport? That would sure be nice.
Many places in America at least are just too spread out. But we dont need a super mega duper feed f teenthousand to drive around. Shit like the Slate would be amazing if it could exist (I realize bezos funded it. Still doesn't keep it from being a bad idea).
Thats why I will argue old cars were undeniably better. You could actually repair them and they weren't rolling spyware with a subscription.
1990 to about 2014 is the perfect spot for cars. Before that is archaic for most people (i prefer 80s cars myself) and newer than that its just a corpo bot on wheels.
The name of my local mall is prefaced by "Cadillac Fairview (CF)". Cars have been overpriced for a long time now and the auto industry is investing in real estate. I think they may price themselves out of customers, just like the theater chains but at least they'll get a bailout.
CF has no relation to Cadillac the car company. Fun fact, it's parent company is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan
Awww. Theyre still not gonna make them one cent less expensive
You mean there is a flaw in the capitalistic idea of infinite profit growth. I am shocked.
Don't forget proper bike infrastructure, trams, subway, busses. Like in most European countries. You'll end up with smaller roads, lower speeds, less accidents, cleaner air, faster transportation, less car parks so more room for development of huises, more jobs, less waste. Or you could widen the roads, remove sidewalks and force people to drive cars on a road crowded with massive trucks which will crush you like a tank when hit. Hard choice.
Anyone got a non paywall link.
Archive.is is your friend
Disable Javascript for that website and their paywall will disappear
How much do you use the train? I spent 8 years without a car, and let me tell you this, getting that 4 to 5 hours back that I was wasting on the bus, commuting, shopping, going to entertainment, Eric, that's something I don't ever want to do again. Bus and train combo with a bike still was hours to do a commute that takes maybe 30 minutes by car.
That's not really an inherent problem to buses or trains, but rather a problem with poor implementations of them. Build out mass transit and fund it properly, and they largely go away. At rush hour, I have 3 different train options that would get me from my neighborhood to the city center faster than I could by car, and cheaper on top of it.
If we keep on saying, "Well, it's not good enough now, so forget about it," we'll just be having this conversation again in a few years, lamenting the fact that we didn't take the chance to build out now, but probably with more people having even more cars.
My truck is 25 years old 139k miles and runs great. It will probably last another 80-100k and we just paid off my wife's car. We have no intention of taking on debt for a new vehicle unless it's necessary.
I'm round 250k miles on my car (admittedly, not American so it's actually a bit over 400k km) and it's not even the most kilometers I've had on a car.
Buy something with an engine and transmission that are known to last that doesn't have known rust issues, take care of it, and it will take care of you. You of course seem to have realized it already.
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