- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars@lemmy.world
If only we had invented and built some sort of alternative mode of collective transportation. Maybe it could be in tunnels and ride on metallic rails. It would serve many people and make periodic stops to the same locations instead of the highway clusterf- we have today. Sad that we don’t, but a man can dream though. A man can dream.
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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.
deleted by creator
Ok, except for sportsball
Politics underpins finance at every level
I feel most of the mod decisions are arbitrary, but there’s also a good reason we don’t all just post everything in an “everything” com.
Yern idiot
I didn’t report it, I’m stating it WAS reported and the reason why.
My post explains why I didn’t remove it. 😉
Nothing like a great self-referential comment
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.
Are the millennials killing car ownership!?
Boomers told me millennials kill everything. Which by its own nature means millennials killed killing everything.
But that means they also killed killing killing everything
Buying a new vehicle hasn’t made sense for about 30 years now.
I’ve been driving for about 30 years and in all that time, I’ve never owned a new vehicle. I kept buying used vehicles for about $2,000 - $3,000 per vehicle. The oldest one I’ve ever had is a 2004 Volvo station wagon and I still maintain it and it’s still running as one of my main vehicles. My other main vehicle is a 2010 GMC Truck which I also maintain. They don’t look new, they show a bit of rust around the edges, but they are still very good vehicles that will last several more years.
Once they break down enough … I’ll buy another used vehicle. In all, over the past 30 years, I’ve spent about $30,000 on multiple vehicles (I think I’ve gone through 8 or 9 in that time).
It has never made sense to me to buy a brand new $40,000 car that will only be used for about five years before you buy the next one.
Speak for yourself.
I have purchased multiple new cars over the last 25 years, and, while they’re more expensive than a used car (although that difference is shinking all the time), I also run them for years because I can keep up with maintenance. My last new car was bought 14 years ago and is pretty much still new condition. I still even have the plastic film over the climate control screen.
I don’t care about depreciation or resale values.
EDIT: Punctuation.
I still even have the plastic film over the climate control screen.
This is how we know this guy is a bot, alien, psychopath or monster.
HOW THE FUCK HAVENT YOU PULLED THAT OFF?!?!?!?!?!?
Ha! 112k miles and still sticking. At this point, it’s like a streak milestone so I’m just seeing how long it goes and curious what the dealership reaction will be if I ever trade it in. Thus far no one in the service department has ever commented on it.
Would you peel it before you sell it if you ever sell it?
Like you could show it to them and peel it off…
Ooh. That’s a good question. Or do I leave it so they can put it as a feature on the car’s listing? :D
Demand an extra $3k for pristine screen with the oldest most satisfying peel off you would ever experience. Feel the 200k miles as you slowly pull it off, or let it grow to 300k for even more vintage plastic value!
I can say this proudly because I live in northern Ontario which basically salts our vehicles for about six months of the year. We might as well live on an ocean coast, we have so much salt on our highways. I do my own undercoating every year (it’s a real pain) and I put it on thick and in every nook and cranny. The work that I do just delays the rust, it doesn’t prevent it because there is just too much salt up here. Mix into that ice and snow and all that stuff just cakes on, falls off, takes away the coating, exposed metal, more salt and repeat all winter long. I’m lucky if I can hold onto a vehicle longer than ten years up here.
I’m in Minnesota and we use salt also, although in recent years it’s been a lot more brine and pre-treatments before it snows rather than just dumping rock salt out like they used to, which has helped. Used to see rust in wheel wells and such all the time, but it’s much more rare these days.
I’ve never seen people more mad that a stranger paid a few thousand extra amortized over 14 years.
I’d really like to know where you are buying 15 year old GMC trucks for $2000-$3000 that presumably run and aren’t beat to shit.
I bought it when it was ten years old and from a friend of a friend who was selling it privately. The only real way to grab a good vehicle is if you know of someone who had a vehicle from new. It’s just constant searching and luck that one is able to find vehicles like this. The guy I bought it from had it from new and took care of it and by the time I got it, it had minimal rust. He knew the truck’s life was limited which is why he wanted to get rid of it. As soon as I took hold of it, the rust started growing on the damned thing and I’ve been fighting to keep it going and away from any further rust as possible. The engine and transmission are good and will last a very long time, its just the rest of the truck, especially everything from the wheel wells down (minus the engine and transmission) that will fall apart first.
Yeah, my current car is an almost 20 year old Mercedes c class, bought it a couple of years ago for 3k. Some of those cars that used to be at the upper end of the price range are pretty affordable when they get older. Mine had a good dealership service history, it’s given me very little trouble, and it’s great to have a nice car. I can’t imagine wanting to buy anything new, even if I could afford to.
Do you know what Henry Ford himself did?
Increased the wages so his own workers would buy his cars…
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.
Not sure we should celebrate that man, but the idea
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!
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.
Good luck finding parts from the 80s though besides pickup trucks since I still lots of those from that era on the road still
Oh there’s a lot of parts for American 80s cars around. And their crude enough you can fab most things to work fine or just get aftermarket if you need to.
Just bring lots of money for gas.
Also, Obama trashed most pre 2000s cars, so Detroit bailouts would work.
Yeah that whole thing really pissed me off. Tons and tons of great old cars destroyed. Further helping the rich and fucking over the poor.
Might I suggest Open Source Repairable Electric Cars, Trains, Trams, Bikes, Bike-Cars, Walking Bikes, Boats, and VTOL’s those would be awesome to get open source alternatives for
Slate EV is open. But watch, no one will buy them.
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.
Trump is bankrupting Americans and America so they can install a technocratic dictatorship
US admin is catering to corporations who only want to suck in everyone’s money.
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
I learned something new today.
Your point about it being a cash-flush industry stands though, a huge chunk of the rich families around come from dealerships. Realtors (another high margin sales job) are smarter about hiding their money from their client base, a lot of them take trips constantly and buy secluded homes. Dealership families building mansions on acres of lawn, visible from the main roads, like castles. Not a smart choice but we’ll see how that plays out.
This got 15 up votes?
Awww. Theyre still not gonna make them one cent less expensive
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.
Sure but one of the problems is North American cities are to sprawled out.
Our cities are fine, they’re just governed by shitheads. It’s the spaces in between that are the hurdle.
So? Let’s compare just one American city to the Netherlands, the entire country. Because an American city isn’t bigger then our entire country.
I live in the centre, in Utrecht. I can take a train to Groningen or Maastricht, the 2 cities furthest away from where I live. I can bring my ebike on the train or take a public transit bike (so rental) at the station I arrive. Or I take the bus for the final part. Or when I go to Amsterdam, I take the subway and/or tram. Or when I go to a rural area, I take the strain, then bus or bike. Within 2 hours I can reach any city in my country with public transportation or 3.5 hours for any rural location. I can reach any part of Berlin in 7 hours. This is on the other side of Germany.
It’s the layers of public transportation which solves issues of being sprawled out or super dense. Sprawled out? Faster transportation, like trains, bus and subway. Super dense? Tram, bus, bike.
I understand many Americans don’t see it as a solution, as they have busses, trains and subways. But these networks are poorly planned. New York for example, all metro lines run to the centre making travel between suburbs a living hell. They have taxis, awesome, but they clutter the already cluttered streets even more. It’s so dumb.
See these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zysL_lkdtys on the design of Tokyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-G-inkkDg on the design of The Netherlands
You might say “but it’s impossible to change our cities to public transit heavy, walking and cycling friendly cities, we’re too far down the drain!”. No. You’re not. We designed Rotterdam, one of our largest cities, as an American city completely focused on cars (after it was wiped from the earth during the Second World War bombing by the nazis). It was shit. They changed the entire city to car unfriendly with the focus on walking and cycling, with public transit to support that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY
