Maybe everyone shouldn't have a car anyway. Turn on the satellite layer in Google maps sometime, and you'll see how it's affected everything about how we organize society. Life for most humans is just sitting in various boxes only accessible by car, interspersed by car rides between them.
We're a species of motile organisms. Not only do we have legs, to not use them is actively unhealthy. If we're going to just sit in chairs all the time, we might as well get rid of all this useless leg biomass and redesign our houses and offices accordingly.
It's worse than this though, because that's just the physical dimension to our existence. The car is a mediating apparatus that alienates man from his social field. Man is a social animal, and needs sociality to maintain mental stability. If there's always a car between you and members of your own species, intersubjective experiences will simply occur less, which is exactly what happened when everyone got one.
It’s surprising to me how expensive cars are. There was the Covid spike, but prices have stayed high. I suppose the manufacturers understand demand enough, but I’ve had friends buy cars recently and they didn’t even consider new cars.
$30k for a new Honda Covic seems off. $25k for a 10 year old civic seems even crazier.
This just isn’t true.
Offering someone $1k to junk a $5k car does nothing. The only time it matters is when a $2k car needs more than $1k of repair like a transmission replacement. The program kept the most problematic cars off the road generally increasing the reliability of everything on the market.
The used car market is alive and well.
Cars are not expensive. A $60,000 car, when calculated for inflation, costs the same as a $30,000 care did in 2000. What's not kept up is wages, including the minimum wage, for most of America. Had the Epstein class allowed wages to grow alongside inflation, as had been done since 1950, nobody would be complaining about affordability.
Total employee compensation has increased a lot during that period but most of that has gone towards employer contributions to group health insurance rather than cash wages.
That too. I did a comparison with my brother recently, who lives in France. His effective net tax rate in France was 39%, my effective net tax rate in the US was 43%. That includes all taxes, what he gets from healthcare, etc. We really don't get a good deal here in the US, what we save in taxes gets eaten up by corporations.
> Many new models come with parking sensors, forward-looking radar and cameras, and blind-spot monitoring.
> While those devices make driving safer, they also raise the cost of repairing cars.
I love the passive tense, as if all those things just happened, in a vacuum, not as if politicians we voted for mandated all of that, despite warnings of costs it would incur
The case they gave us to consider is a guy thinking of replacing a 2020 model?
Jeez, and here I am thinking my 2012 still does everything I need it to do.
Yeah exactly, I'm in construction as well. I drive a 2016 f150 I'm only looking at used f2/350s for more towing.
Sides you show up on my site in a brand new truck, I expect your prices to reflect that, and I'll be looking at your competition. Other equipment is a different story, but a truck yeah no.
We also drive a 2012 model car, that we bought second hand in 2014 (ex-lease). Not many fancy electronic systems in it, but also no major mechanical problems. Still going strong!
It should be noted that a significant reason that the average selling price (in constant dollars) is so much higher now ($50000 according to the article) than it was many years ago is that people are buying a higher percentage of large cars and/or luxury cars.
If today you are buying something equivalent to what you would have bought in the past there is a good chance you will be paying a similar amount in constant dollars.
The article links to a site that gives a list of the cheapest new cars right now. Here they are. These all include the destination charge.
I bought a Honda Civic in 1989. According to the bls.gov inflation calculator the $25890 for a 2026 Civic LX would have been $9600 in 1989. The MSRP for an 89 Civic LX was ~$10200.
Guess what the average selling price of a new car was in 1989? $12000, which using the bls.gov calculator would be around $32000 today. In 1989 a car like the Civic was a lot closer to what the average car buyer bought than it is today.
Note: the bls.gov inflation calculator is based on the consumer price index. It might be better to compare using the Social Security index factors, which is what the Social Security Administration uses to normalize earnings from different years when calculation benefits. Using SS index factors $25890 today would be $7450 in 1989.
I've done similar calculations for my 2006 Honda CR-V with similar results. Same for the Sentra I had before the Civic.
Considering how much more safety and driver assist features are in these cars compared to the same models from even only 10 years ago, the price being nearly the same in constant dollars is actually great remarkable.
For those of us who prefer cars that are just big enough for our actual passenger/cargo carrying needs or big enough to not feel cramped (whichever is larger) the last 40+ years have been great. We pay about the same in constant dollars or a little less each time we get a new car, and it has better fuel efficiency, better safety, and better driver assist.
You are comparing new car to new car, which is fair to you, but you probably aren't in the class getting squeezed yet.
At least my country, the issue is with used car prices. The first car i bought, i bought for 300€ (+200€ of repair i knew about beforehand), in a garage, around 2010. If i want to buy a car in a garage (not using the craiglist equivalent), the minimum i have to pay is 4k, and 1k of repairs. The inflation in europe is _not_ close to x10 in 15 year. Even if i use the local craiglist, the first option i have is a car that can't start at 1.3k (it's a nice model though, easily 12k if it worked).
I can easily afford to buy a 22k new car, so i'm not the one who really suffer from it (i need cargo space for my windurf, and i got it), but for those who are still working minimum wage jobs, and need a car to go to that job, you can't bet on a 5k car. You will either have to go to a very basic new car (9-10k) or a 6-7k used car that you're sure don't need any work for the next 15 months (so that you will have finished paying your car before you have to pay for fixing stuff).
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 45.1 ms ] threadWe're a species of motile organisms. Not only do we have legs, to not use them is actively unhealthy. If we're going to just sit in chairs all the time, we might as well get rid of all this useless leg biomass and redesign our houses and offices accordingly.
It's worse than this though, because that's just the physical dimension to our existence. The car is a mediating apparatus that alienates man from his social field. Man is a social animal, and needs sociality to maintain mental stability. If there's always a car between you and members of your own species, intersubjective experiences will simply occur less, which is exactly what happened when everyone got one.
$30k for a new Honda Covic seems off. $25k for a 10 year old civic seems even crazier.
My understanding is that the used car market was gutted by "cash for clunkers" style government programs
Used to be more used cars on lots, so used cars were more affordable
May not be the whole story but it seems likely it played a part
> While those devices make driving safer, they also raise the cost of repairing cars.
I love the passive tense, as if all those things just happened, in a vacuum, not as if politicians we voted for mandated all of that, despite warnings of costs it would incur
Sides you show up on my site in a brand new truck, I expect your prices to reflect that, and I'll be looking at your competition. Other equipment is a different story, but a truck yeah no.
Son's daily driver is a 1963.
We also drive a 2012 model car, that we bought second hand in 2014 (ex-lease). Not many fancy electronic systems in it, but also no major mechanical problems. Still going strong!
If today you are buying something equivalent to what you would have bought in the past there is a good chance you will be paying a similar amount in constant dollars.
The article links to a site that gives a list of the cheapest new cars right now. Here they are. These all include the destination charge.
I bought a Honda Civic in 1989. According to the bls.gov inflation calculator the $25890 for a 2026 Civic LX would have been $9600 in 1989. The MSRP for an 89 Civic LX was ~$10200.Guess what the average selling price of a new car was in 1989? $12000, which using the bls.gov calculator would be around $32000 today. In 1989 a car like the Civic was a lot closer to what the average car buyer bought than it is today.
Note: the bls.gov inflation calculator is based on the consumer price index. It might be better to compare using the Social Security index factors, which is what the Social Security Administration uses to normalize earnings from different years when calculation benefits. Using SS index factors $25890 today would be $7450 in 1989.
I've done similar calculations for my 2006 Honda CR-V with similar results. Same for the Sentra I had before the Civic.
Considering how much more safety and driver assist features are in these cars compared to the same models from even only 10 years ago, the price being nearly the same in constant dollars is actually great remarkable.
For those of us who prefer cars that are just big enough for our actual passenger/cargo carrying needs or big enough to not feel cramped (whichever is larger) the last 40+ years have been great. We pay about the same in constant dollars or a little less each time we get a new car, and it has better fuel efficiency, better safety, and better driver assist.
At least my country, the issue is with used car prices. The first car i bought, i bought for 300€ (+200€ of repair i knew about beforehand), in a garage, around 2010. If i want to buy a car in a garage (not using the craiglist equivalent), the minimum i have to pay is 4k, and 1k of repairs. The inflation in europe is _not_ close to x10 in 15 year. Even if i use the local craiglist, the first option i have is a car that can't start at 1.3k (it's a nice model though, easily 12k if it worked).
I can easily afford to buy a 22k new car, so i'm not the one who really suffer from it (i need cargo space for my windurf, and i got it), but for those who are still working minimum wage jobs, and need a car to go to that job, you can't bet on a 5k car. You will either have to go to a very basic new car (9-10k) or a 6-7k used car that you're sure don't need any work for the next 15 months (so that you will have finished paying your car before you have to pay for fixing stuff).