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And now the local wants to have to commuting tax… Y’all better dig up the pavement and put those trolleys back in service. If I’m going to have to take transit it better be free of traffic
When I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, they had disused trolly rails laid in the median during the USSR. And right next to them, chinese trolly buses with 2 pantagraphs.
Presumably this tells us its cheaper or faster or more politically feasible to steal the parking lane and build 2 pantagraphs on either side of the road and use rubber-tired, electric-overhead buses than to refurbish existing track in unused RoW and build 1 pantagraph.
Presumably this tells us its cheaper or faster or more politically feasible
cheaper… in the short term, endless tire replacement going foward
I get super peeved that just 80 years ago we had the best transit options in the world then these diesel powered effigies roll up… Like why bother at this point? Now buses barely go to Saratoga.
I have owned a car for 30 years, and never got close to $50,000. I once made the poor decision to buy a brand new $19,000 VW in 2009, never again. Only suckers buy new cars.
Only suckers buy new cars.
well you need them to or you’d not be able to buy used. Having no choice though ? that’s what sucks.
brand new $19,000 VW in 2009
Passat? My dad made the same mistake. German engineering lmao.
Meanwhile the 2006 toyota I inherited from him still runs fine, though the paint and the plastics are sad.
How much have you spent on maintenance, repairs, fuel, insurance, fees, taxes etc for your cars in those 30 years?
Listen, I agree in practice.
But I would not quote “Unusual Whales” for economic advise. This is an AI account that posts “hot tips” for attention.
The deliquency rate for auto loans has been in headlines since at least March. This is a big show slow ship and it’s bait to assume some AI account is going to tell you the day it goes down.
yep AI has gotten so good that even people that hate it can’t even detect that it’s an AI account.
Someone not paying attention screenshotting a quote of a quote is not AI being good enough to evade detection, it’s someone not bothering to check if it’s AI.
I’ve taught car maintenance and repair to single soldiers for almost two decades. The issue with the Internet’s default to buy used is unless you can repair it yourself or have someone that can work on your car cheaply it might not be the best call.
Hell, even being able to diagnose problems a bit can help avoid being scammed by places recommending unnecessary repairs or maintenance.
Oh and as someone who worked as the guy who told you all the stuff that needed to be done at a shady dealership, they will definitely recommend whatever they can. And then its $180 and hour for labor and its .5 hours of labor to change an air filter. I couldn’t cut it in that world…
For soldiers? So Dodge chargers and Ford mustangs? Ya those will fall apart after a couple years. There are plenty of reliable brands, most of which are not American or European.
Shit, I won’t buy a vehicle that’s not Japanese. Kawasaki for my bike and Toyota/Subaru for my cars.
What I’m reading there is that there’s going to be a 2008-style Crash (this time on auto debt instead of realestate) alongside a 2000-style Crash (this time on Generative AI instead of a Net bubble).
Mind you, it will be centered in the US and other countries will mainly feel side effects.
so the time to buy a car will be soon?
2008-style Crash (this time on auto debt instead of realestate)
The 2008 crash was also an auto debt crash. That’s why you had Cash-For-Clunkers rolled out in 2009 followed by Obama and Romney arguing over an automotive bailout in the 2012 election.
Also the reason you can’t buy a new Mercury/Pontiac
Indeed and that mofo is going to be steam roller too.
Ban cars from populated areas? That is anti-freedom! This fantastic game lets you explore they joys and freedoms of car ownership: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3031880/Car_Park_Capital/
Honestly they just need to make car parking a real constraint in sim city games. That would do more to show people what a blight cars are than anything else.
These threads are always full of people saying, “why don’t you just…” The problem is you are suggesting coping methods for a plethora of problems, in a vacuum individually. You’re failing to put all of the problems of cars, trucks, and their requisite infrastructure together as the awful, smothering whole that it is.
The US auto industry is absolutely to blame for pushing gigantic gas guzzlers on people. But the people who buy those monstrosities and get hugely into debt to do it are very much to blame too.
I think its the EPA for not regulating truck emissions as stringently as they do for normal cars.
DOT is in charge of CAFE regulations. The original law specified standards that were for “passenger vehicles” and “automobiles which are not passenger automobiles”.
DOT interpreted that as trucks, which made sense back then. Unfortunately, every manufacturer just declared their cars to be trucks (invention of the SUV) and the DOT let them.
Then they made it worse by scaling fuel economy to vehicle size, so manufactures just made cars have a larger footprint to be allowed to have worse fuel economy.
It’s also the auto industry for regulatory-capture of the EPA. It’s an ouroboros of corruption with plenty of blame to go around.
They passed a fuel economy law that had to do with vehicle weight, auto industry response was make bigger heavier vehicles to get around new fuel economy requirements. That’s the reason all of the reasonably sized personal trucks got massive like 15 years ago.
I’ve seen quite a few videos about “rolling negative equity” and didn’t even know it was a thing. Also, you hear someone threatening the car dealer for suggesting they buy a car for ONLY $20K when he’s never been seen something in less than a beamer and being in debt so they have to take a loan for the down payment (which doesn’t even make sense to me)… I hope these videos are fake 😢
The first time I heard about rolling negative equity I gasped audibly.
Cars are a depreciating asset unless they’re very rare. They’re always going to have negative equity. This is financial flim-flammery disguised with fancy corpo words.
Negative equity just means you owe more on something than it’s worth. So whether you have negative equity on a car loan is a “it depends”. On a new car, probably yes because of the big deprecation hit as soon as the car is driven off the lot, but on a car where the loan is almost paid off probably not.
I just want a manual awd wagon. But I’m not allowed. Wrx was the last one. America gets shit for cars.
Look for a VW Alltrack they were made from 2017-2019
Definitely look for that. I had a Rabbit before so the Alltrack was a tempting next step, but was able to get a new 2021 Crosstrek with a manual. It’s somewhere between a lifted hatch and a wagon. Managed to fit some 8ft 2x2s in there so I’d say it’s pretty functional.
Shit how awesome didnt know this existed. May have to sell my car and get one
I’ve had mine for four or five years, its my forever car since you just can’t get cars like it anymore
amazingly they seem to still be normally priced!
They weren’t when I bought mine so act if you find one you like
Yes, it’s the victim’s faults! They had no choice but to buy these things thanks to lack of alternatives , therefore they are to blame!
Aw, those poor people had no choice but to buy that F-150!
The other guys at the construction site will make fun of them if they aren’t in six-figure debt for a truck that never tows or hauls anything!
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, but judging by the replies it seems like everyone is assuming that by “people have no choice but to buy a personally-owned vehicle” you must have meant “people have no choice but to buy a giant gas-guzzling truck.”
It’s a crazy leap and a strawman and precisely the kind of lack of nuance that makes it all but impossible to have intelligent discussions about issues that matter. But then again, this is the internet…
I was specifically talking about gigantic gas guzzlers in my original comment. Not even in the US do all cars fall into that category. People do have choices and they choose the monstrosities. I was not in any way trying to blame people for owning a car.
Okay I get it, I was reading the comment in light of the post which talked about “mandatory expensive vehicle in order to be employable because we abandoned trains.”
Like, you’re right, nobody needs those giant trucks.
But also, even relying on smaller, more efficient POVs as a society is still a bad thing, and being required to buy something in that category is still an injustice that individual people don’t have much agency in, at least if they want to be able to get a job without uprooting their lives (and usually living somewhere more expensive in order to have pedestrian access to public transit)
No argument there. I was just pointing out that people do have choices and unfortunately many people make dumb choices.
Yeah I mean I’m down with making fun of truck owners. Just not with blaming individual drivers for systemic urban planning issues that were deliberately ratfucked by industry to begin with
Yeah you can always just buy a civic
I mean, given the comment the reply is to it’s not a crazy leap in logic or strawman considering the comment itself specifically was talking about gas guzzling vehicles and not having sympathy for people who bought them.
Perhaps as a reply to the original post it would be read differently but the context it’s in makes it so it reads the way it does.
Ah, yeah, I read it as if it were a top-level comment. I see the connection now.
I’ll still give her the benefit of the doubt and say she likely meant it in the broader sense, because her takes are usually fairly reasonable.
But yeah, the giant trucks are unnecessary in probably 98% of cases. Honestly even in the 2% where one is needed, a smaller one will do. But those are harder to find these days.
The problem of compulsory POV ownership more broadly though is systemic in the US, and people trapped in that situation don’t really have an alternative option.
Ban cars from
populatedareas.Or ban cars from Gaia.
A lot of people choose a car even when it is just worse.
My bike ride to work is 8km and takes 20-25 mins. Yet I know people who live and work near me who drive the same route which takes almost twice as long mostly sat in traffic. They spend more on their car than I do on my mortgage and that is before maintenance, insurance, oh and fuel too because despite choosing such an expensive car and never driving over 10km, oh yeah gotta go for ICE.
Suppose at least with such short distances driven that fuel lasts a while. Doesn’t stop them moaning about it though. I should start responding with the cost of Cornish pasties to power my bike.
This was kinda the reason I went back to cycling to work when I lived in London (I had lived in The Netherlands before and there it was pretty normal to do so) - it turns out that it was faster to just cycle through half of Zones 1 and 2 than to walk to an catch the tube (at least London actually has a subway, by car it would’ve been even worse because of traffic, not to mention parking).
This was back when cycling facilities there were a bit of a joke and there were but a few people doing the same as I did.
Further, even though I was doing it in a big city (so air polution was a consideration), my health actually improved from it (more so when I discovered a site with a polution map of London and switched to a route that minimized time in big avenues with lots of traffic and polution).
I would if i could. I hate driving, but I would get killed if i biked to work. Hell, I’d possibly die just trying to get to the nearest grocery store. I need a bike lane.
There’s the trick. Cyclists know that.
We’re just making our hate for existing on this planet a bit more honest.
Used to cycle a lot, first in The Netherlands, later in London (Britain), but where I am now (Portugal) it’s very dangerous because drivers here are in my experience some of the worst in Europe (let’s just say that, for example, most won’t signal their intention to change direction when turning right, which is very dangerous for cyclists), but in a way I’m in a priviledged position, so I chose to live in a small city close where I work, so I just walk to work (about 15 minutes each way) which even has the upside that I’m guaranteed my 30m+ exercise each day, which a study some years ago showed decreases the risk of cardio-vascular problems by 70%.
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Sounds like a lot of people were convinced to borrow way more than they could afford for a status symbol no one should care about. Financial literacy should be taught in middle school.
I have 20k in debt just buying a Toyota corolla. I think there is a lot of people who bought status symbols, but there are a lot of people who just need a car that isn’t going to break. If I bought used and something happens that would cost me 5k, which can easily happen, Im screwed. I dont know what the answer is. A few years ago, I had a job two blocks away, now I have a job 50 min away. I have to get there somehow and its not like my job is going to be ok with me saying “I need a week off because my car broke”
Never in my live did I expect to live through an Economic Crash related to Penis Compensation Devices …
“We destroyed?” - it was car industry, no? I remember there was something about car industry buying public transport just to shut them down late.r
That is indeed the case; I believe “we” here refers to society, and functions as a synecdoche for the auto industry
Synecdoche. Haven’t come across a good new word in a while, thanks!
Eisenhower interstate system in the US was the start of the downfall. It’s a very cool system, but it cost us the trains. I dont know that it can be justified. I like driving and having the freedom to do so, but I would also like to not have to: plus there are a shit load more people who directly suffer because they simply can not drive.
I hope the next wave of logistical genius incorporates more mass public transit, while still supporting some highway network.
Hub style, like airport parking esque, but for bullet trains and light rail. New building would need to require parking as part of the footprint (incorporated decks) to save on space that can be used for public benefit.
Easy to expand on, the counter argument is always “but the cost?!” Like wtf do you think a highway costs per foot? The answer is up to $2,000 per god damn foot. You can buy a lot with that.
Sucks to be you if you’re spending 50k to buy a car, buy used.
While I agree that buying used is the more prudent option, I don’t think we should be distracted from the fact that there are new base model cars close to the 50k range, which is ridiculous
For less than $25k you can buy a new Nissan Sentra, Hyundai Elantra, Toyota Corolla, Volkswagen Jetta, Mazda 3, or a Subaru Impreza. I’m sure there are others.
People just don’t seem that interested in buying cars anymore and consumers seem much more interested in projecting status
Nissan Sentra cost us 27k including the tax and interests. The marked price was 21k. That was 3 years ago. Made us feel very poor because we couldn’t just pay for it, and had to pay more overall for not having that money outright. We didn’t have any other debts.
So I don’t think people with other debts can afford a car outright either, so end up paying more. Rich people can avoid all that. Or they can take that loan, make more money from the money they already have (higher returns than loan interest rate), and avoid taxes on loan money, and get richer
Indeed, the boots theory of poverty. So many things are cheaper even in absolute terms if you have enough money to get things cheaper or get better things for not much more money that will way outlast the cheap stuff. Also people are more excited to just give you money when you have money (higher interest rate, even for very safe savings accounts).
Oh, I am certainly not advocating for buying new. I’m just trying to say that cheaper options are out there, even if consumers aren’t interested in them. It blows my mind that average transaction prices are north of $50k while everyone is seemingly broke.
People can’t afford to own a car, that’s why. It’s not just public transportation infrastructure being fucked.
People can’t find used cars because everyone wants a car that’ll last a long time but then the job market is shit and people get high aprs and then ruin their credit, it’s a lot of shit to get a car but people fuck themselves so hard buying one because they don’t know how to navigate the financial aspect. … That’s at least how I see it.
You also gotta make compromises with what you want vs what you can afford.
Too many people with bad credit bitch about high aprs that lock them down. I feel like if we had a better understanding of the financial demographics they’re basing the research off of, we’d know who’s not driving because they can’t afford it vs lack of infrastructure by state.
The cheap used car market today was largely killed by cash for clunkers. Intentionally seized (literally, destroying perfectly running vehicles) engines to get them off the road. Near a quarter million perfectly running driving cars were intentionally destroyed. That had a short term affect on used car market sure, but more so it fucked people in this particular time for GOOD and CHEAPPP cars. I remember beating the shit out of 500$ bmws the night I got them off craigslist now I cant get a fucking civic for 3 grand that doesn’t need another 2 in repairs
Well once there’s a glut of cars they’ll either shoot the price down and tell nobody, rich private sellers will scalp the cheap glut or they’ll pull 👇
Intentionally seized (literally, destroying perfectly running vehicles) engines to get them off the road. Near a quarter million perfectly running driving cars were intentionally destroyed.
again and then we can all start complaining about public transportation twice as hard, with no results on our end but more profits on theirs…
Edit: holy shit they’ll destroy the for insurance money if they’re able to or they’ll sell them back to their manufacturers and lose contracts potentially going out of business but it’s more like the glut not being advertised is where it gets fucked and we need to put limits on how many vehicles someone can own. Rich people buying cars and selling them at scalping prices happens.
Even 25k is ridiculous for those models though. You used to be able to get a base model Corolla for like half that
“But what if someone likes me less for not spending as much money (mostly) frivolously?”
… then you tell them to go fuck themselves?
It’s frivolous when you’re buying a car to buy a car. When you’re pissing away money just to do it. When you need a car for life purposes, it’s not frivolous.
You can absolutely tell someone to fuck off if they don’t like you for how much you spend on a vehicle. 😏 Anyone can.
You completely misread my comment. I wasn’t saying buying a car is frivolous.
All Cars Are Bad 🦔
