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Comment by thatfrenchguy | Hacker News Reader

I think this “a car give you freedom” American thing to be somewhat funny because to me it’s the opposite: a car is a huge investment, it costs you a ton of money per year, puts you down in one place (and thus prevents you from moving to another place easily), makes you mostly sit in traffic while going to work while contributing heavily to destroying the planet. I personally enjoy taking a train to where I’m going much more, especially in places where it’s convenient.

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I hear people make this argument all the time, but it makes no sense to me.

How does a car "put you down in one place" or "prevent you from moving easily"? A house prevents you from moving, a car literally moves you to many places. Cars are inherently mobile, that's kind of the whole point.

Similarly, a car is not a huge investment. A house is a huge investment. College is a huge investment. Any trip to a hospital in the US is a huge investment. Cars are cheap, all things considered. It's a climate-controlled, roll-cage-protected closet, with a built in luxury couch + radio + satnav system + emergency cellular connection, that can also propel itself quickly and reliably for hours at a time. And the total cost of ownership for most people is somewhere less than $300/month or so (even when including a loan payment for the upfront price). That's pretty darn cheap.

I could own 5 extra cars, for less than the cost of a single tiny 1bed apartment. I could own 3 extra cars, for less than the cost of daycare for one child. I could own 3.5 extra cars, for less than the cost of health insurance. Cars are pretty cheap, all things considered.

And unfortunately, there's literally nothing that can match that on comfort/speed/reliability/coverage right now. Just to get those same trips out of a train or airplane would easily cost 5x to 10x higher price. Busing can occasionally be cheaper (because a bus is literally just a shared car), but it only does that by making huge sacrifices on comfort/speed/reliability/coverage.

> I personally enjoy taking a train to where I’m going much more

I mean, I totally get that. I love trains too. (I ride Seattle Light Rail, just for fun, and we take Amtrak to Chicago semi-regularly). Trains are fun. Trains are cool.

But trains aren't really good at transportation of people. Trains go almost nowhere, almost no one has access to trains in the first place, and the cost of trains is significantly higher than cars (both on what a single person has to pay to ride either, and on what the total infrastructure costs are for the entire system). It's pretty understandable how a car would give people a lot of real-world freedom, in a way that a train never could.

I could own 5 extra cars, for less than the cost of a single tiny 1bed apartment.

Not every place in the US is ridiculously expensive. The median price of a home is $200K (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/29/what-the-median-home-price-o...) and anyone with barely passable credit can get an FHA loan with 3.5% down. Most lenders are going to be wary about you having more than two car notes.

I could own 3 extra cars, for less than the cost of daycare for one child.

The average cost of child care is between $5000 - $15000 a year (https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/)

I could own 3.5 extra cars, for less than the cost of health insurance. Cars are pretty cheap, all things considered.

The average cost of family medical insurance is a little over $14K (https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/affordable-care-a...)

I'm not really sure what your getting at. I agree with all of your numbers, that's what all of my figures were already based off of in my original post.

(For example, a $200k home on a 30yr 3.5% down mortgage is roughly $1500/month, which is equal to the average total monthly ownership cost of about 4 to 5 cars)

I don't really understand why people think cars are so expensive. Sure, they can be, but that's true of anything. In 20 years, I've never owned a car worth more $4000. Hardly seems like a huge investment. I have friends with bicycles worth more than my current vehicle.

You still have to consider maintenance, insurance, etc.

It's definitely very American, but the feeling of cruising down an empty highway in a piece of "Detroit iron" is something that has to be experienced to be understood --- if all you've ever driven or ridden in are smaller or less comfortable vehicles, I can see how you would think driving isn't very enjoyable. Even with lots of traffic around, I still think that sitting in my own "personal lounge" is better than sharing a cramped train or bus with all sorts of strangers.

The train doesn't need to be cramped. And if you aren't occupied with controlling a vehicle, you can actually use your time for something useful or enjoyable.

And while cruising down an empty hightway might be very nice, it's excedingly rare for anyones daily commute to be like that.

> you can actually use your time for something useful or enjoyable

I'm doing something enjoyable. I'm cruising down the freeway with the windows open, good tunes on the radio, and I can choose to go anywhere I desire.

That is not a commute. That you can do what you describe on holidays and weekends when the weather is fair and there isn't much traffic is not a good reason to create traffic, destroy the climate and the local environment, waste your own money and being frustrated in traffic jam.

People are buying cars because they believe in the commercials where the car means freedom. But people use cars to waste their lives in traffic.

It's only cramped if you destroy public transportation infrastructure to boost car sales.

A car does not tie you down in one place in America, if anything it's the opposite. The places where you can easily live without a car are limited, especially if you aren't from the area and don't know which areas have good transit service between them. And if it's not a major area, it might not have any real options for getting into it besides car anyway. I looked into bussing to my hometown recently, and it takes 15 hours and over $200 in bus tickets to cover what would otherwise be a 6 hour drive.

I was told, "you don't own a car, a car owns you," as a teen and it has stuck with me.

You can buy a car for cash, many teens do. Whoever told you this probably leased a car well above their means to own outright.

That doesn’t include car insurance (which is high for a teenager), maintenance and repairs.

Indeed, also gas and registration.

$200-$600/month.

12-35% of minimum full-time wage.

And most teenagers don’t work more than 20-25 hours a week.

They would bring home around $600 a month after FICA if they had no other taxes taken out.

For the typical middle class family where the teenager either gets an old beater or a hand me down car where the parents buy a new car, the money they make from working is a wash and the parents let them/make them get a job to foster a work ethic.

Maintenance is usually higher too, since they are often using older cars.

> makes you mostly sit in traffic while going to work

Cherry picking this part of your argument: the last time I switched jobs this is what I told myself to rationalize commuting 50 mins one way (plus 15 mins last mile stuff). It works out _terribly_ if the mode of transport is not super reliable.

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