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It’s all planned. It costs about the same to assemble an SUV as a sedan. Materials are more. But you increase your margin with a larger car. The shareholders like this.
When the top 10% of earners account for 50% of the overall economic activity, it’s clear why the wealthy have just decided to stop catering any and all products and services to the bottom 90% of earners. They really want us to be in the “you’ll own nothing and love it” situation, the bottom 90% as a permanent renter class that has to rent everything from their home to their car to their computer.
I mean, it’s kind of frustrating that our media can’t put this together and call a spade a spade. It’s pretty fucking obvious.
The kicker is that they still want us stuck renting cars, they couldn’t possibly ever give in to the idea of quality public transit because they can’t bleed money from us with that.
I mean, it’s kind of frustrating that our media can’t put this together and call a spade a spade. It’s pretty fucking obvious.
It’s not that they can’t; it’s that they won’t because they’re the propaganda arm of that same 10%.
🎯
Trend I am seeing now as I look for a car to purchase this month. I have been watching prices closely for over a year.
The prices in the used car market is declining rapidly. It used to be that a new car lost around 10-15% of it’s value in the first 30K . Today I am seeing cars that drop 30-40% in 30k miles.
They next 60K miles they only lose another 10-15%.
The used car market shows what the average consumer can actually afford. The new car price is to take advantage of the top 10% and the financially ignorant.
Used EVs plummet like rocks. You can get a 6 year old Leaf for $8K or less.
Probably doesn’t help that the leaf has made a name for itself for battery degradation due to previous model’s lacking any sort of thermal battery management, so they probably see some of the worst depreciation due to that association.
It is a price trend for all EVs though: probably also caused by no one wanting a swasticar, and then other brands similar second hand EVs prices tend to follow Teslas, as not everyone cares about being associated with Nazis, so they are competing on price somewhat. Then there’s also Chinese EVs that are crazy cheap new…
I actually don’t think this is a bad thing. If middle classed citizens get priced out of cars then they will be forced to embrace walking, biking, and transit to get around. If enough of the population becomes dependent on these means of transportation then local governments are going to be forced to invest in infrastructure that is not car centric.
It will take time for that to happen, but I feel that more people are questioning car dependency due to the astronomical prices of owning a car.
If enough of the population becomes dependent on these means of transportation then local governments are going to be forced to invest in infrastructure that is not car centric.
The thing is, you need the infrastructure investment first. I don’t think very many people will choose to walk, bike, or take public transportation if the supporting infrastructure is minimal or non-existent. Without a forward thinking, planned investment in the infrastructure now, I think what will end up happening is people just hold onto the cars they already have a lot longer.
Edit: and I think now would be a great time to really ramp up the investment into the non-car infrastructure. Cars are getting more expensive, more and more people are holding onto their old beaters for longer, taking away the status symbol aspect of car ownership. At the same time more bike lanes could be built, more train, tram and bus lines could be added, restrictive zoning laws could be repealed, allowing for more higher density, mix used development. Hopefully this entices people to walk, bike and take public transportation more, so fewer people are driving, meaning fewer people are paying fuel taxes, meaning less tax revenue for car infrastructure maintenance. The car infrastructure further degrades, making driving even more unpleasant and inefficient. This further entices people to walk, bike and use public transit even more.
I think it could work, but it takes competent leadership to plan and implement. Maybe that’s what we need to work on first.
The thing is, you need the infrastructure investment first.
That’s not how that works, in practice. Governments only speculatively build roads; transit projects get cancelled unless they can show existing demand (and then still get cancelled anyway).
In order to change this, driving must be made painful first so that the public forces the government to change.
It sucks because it’s a dumb way to do it, but IMO the best we can do is aggressively support development/density, infrastructure be damned, to deliberately cause that problem. That actually has a chance of succeeding because developers are politically powerful.
driving must be made painful first so that the public forces the government to change.
But that’s not how it works in practice either. Driving is already painful, it’s been painful for years. Traffic jams, constant road construction, it’s awful. Yet, people still drive. They’ve had more than enough opportunity to demand government change, but they haven’t. At least not the kind of change that results in more biking, more walking and more public transit use. No, instead they’ve demanded the government build more roads, which of course we know only makes things worse due to induced demand.
Making driving even more painful isn’t going to force people to get the government to change towards less car centric transportation, it’s going to result in an even more pissed off populace voting into power the next firebrand populist who promises they will build more roads to fix the congestion problem.
Maybe the disagreement is because I’m speaking from a more urban, rather than suburban, perspective. In my area, they can’t build more roads, or even widen them, because the space just doesn’t exist anymore and because the property owners won’t stand for it. That’s the goal: build the area up enough that there can’t be more roads, forcing the only choice to be to use the existing space more efficiently.
You’re right, finding the best approach probably does depend on whether you’re dealing with a relatively densely populated urban area, or a suburban/rural area.
suburban/rural
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
Rural areas are car-dependent relatively legitimately and not worth trying to fix because, by definition, both their impact and the amount of people who would benefit are negligible. Focus on the 80% of the problem that is feasible to fix and ignore the “but whatabout my rural lifestyle” concern trolls completely.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
I guess that’s the other reason my perspective differs about “transit before density”: I think trying to “fix” the suburbs (as opposed to destroying them by abolishing zoning restrictions and thus causing them to become fully urban “naturally”) is a fool’s errand.
I wouldn’t consider those to be the same category.
I shouldn’t have implied that they were. I was just trying to distinguish both from urban areas, not necessarily trying to imply that they were the same. They are different.
Suburban areas are literally a scam perpetuated entirely by government policy (in the sense that, in the absence of regulation, people do not build that way) and should be abolished.
But that government policy is not arbitrary, it didn’t just happen for no reason. It exists to protect the value of detached, single family homes, which is important to the owners of those homes who see their home as an important investment. Indeed, for most people, the majority of their wealth is in their home. For that and other cultural reasons, people still want detached single family homes, and an area can’t be both relatively low density, single family homes and higher density multifamily and mixed used development simultaneously. It’s not physically possible, it has to be one or the other. I really don’t think that making car dependency more painful is just magically going to change people’s preferences, especially if no investment is made FIRST to ensure that better alternatives are available. People ain’t moving into higher density areas with non-car infrastructure if those areas don’t exist. You gotta build the shit first.
Nah they’ll rent out cars first, subscription-based. Cars as a service. The Netflix of cars. It just writes itself. Silicon Valley and VC money will come down from the heavens putting up a facade that their new app will change the world and help those poor people that have been priced out.
And the media will eat it up and adore and fawn over the charming CEO that says all the right things.
Nah they’ll rent out cars first
What do people think a lease is? You rent the car.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I want to share your optimism, but I have a feeling that there are a whole series of stopgaps escalating in level of absurdity between middle class Americans not being able to afford new cars and middle class Americans actually demanding public transit by visible majority. Gonna get badder before it gets gooder.
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You do realize you are doing the same thing, right? That you have become the spammy monster with multiple accounts that you hate so much?
