I liek my car. I like owning my car. I like keeping my random stuff in my car. I like being able to jump in my car and go on a trip if I want. I like having my dog in my car.
How is "oh well you just call for a car" better?
If there was a reasonable alternative to that $10,000 a year luxury that is car ownership, many people would take that alternative. They might take it gladly or take it reluctantly, but they would still take it.
This fundamentally isn't true. I've had a used Camry for almost a decade and the annual cost of ownership including purchase price, maintenance, registration and insurance is around 2,500 dollars. It has given me a place to store my things when I have limited housing, it is always ready with all my effects when I want to leave, and I am very much in tune with how the car should feel when it is on the road which gives me considerable comfort. Politically, expect any sort of legislation trying to force "legacy" cars off the road as being anti-poor, because it is. Cars don't have to be expensive.
As of 2103 the average yearly cost of ownership was $9000. I doubt it's gone done since.
If you own the car outright and aren’t planning on selling it, this is effectively zero.
There are different amounts of depreciation between a 2-year-lease of a new vehicle, a purchase of a 50k mile vehicle sold at 150k, and the purchase of a 200k mile vehicle that's sold to the scrapyard to be melted down for steel...but it's all depreciation.
To a business, depreciation is a real thing that affects their tax return. The Canada Revenue Agency has a lot of rules around how to depreciate assets and how they affect income. I'm sure the IRS has similar rules.
To a person, this is not the case. If I have a $10,000 car loan on a $20,000 car, the only things that matter are the down payment of $10,000 and the regular loan payments. If I pay the loan off over five years but the car has a 10 year useful life, those last five years are effectively free.
Yes, from a pure accounting perspective I would debit the asset account for my car, credit cash for the down payment, and credit a liability account for the car loan. But in reality, that doesn't actually matter. There is no impact on my taxes by amortizing my car over 10 years vs 5 years. The only impacts are how the down payment affected my savings and how the loan payments affect my cash flow.
Whether you can then sell that car for $8,000 (and thus finance your next vehicle down payment with it) or have to scrap it for $500 has a huge impact on your total cost of owning a vehicle. The loan payments are factored into our sum of car payments, registration, insurance, gas, and maintenance already, yes, but some of your down payment should be factored into the annual cost. Not all of it, because then you'd be ignoring the value of the car when you sell it. The resulting factor in the sum is equal to the depreciation of the vehicle.
But I think we need to draw a distinction between legislation legislation intended to effect a result against the poor, or motivated by that ideology, and ordinary cause-and-effect which has consequences that disproportionately harm the poor.
If a safer, cheaper alternative to cars becomes available, legacy cars will eventually be forced off the road. It's easy to envision gas stations becoming few and far between, parts becoming less available, auto mechanic shops becoming less profitable. Owning a legacy car will become as difficult as owning a horse is today.
Your ability to drive is predicated on an enormous, organically and accidentally developed economic system comprising an automobile industry and culture that, for example, required someone else to buy that Camry and pay for its development and engineering and quality construction at a high list price, then sell it to you as a used vehicle after steep depreciation.
That accident of history that lets you own a car for $2500 a year will not stay the same forever, the industry will continue to change as technology and culture move on. And no amount of politics will protect it when economics are slanted hard against it.
Personally, I'm driving an old vehicle and the total annual cost has been about half that, but on the average people are spending that much.
With that ideology, you are already ready to give up control of the vehicle. It's not much of a jump from there to give up ownership, especially if that means only paying for what you use and not having to constantly maintain it.