New cars are just for rich people now
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
I wanted to cheap, small, 2wd pickup to toss rocks and woodchips and the like into for around the town chores which I seem to do a lot of. Does not exist, somewhere along the line everyone decided a pickup truck is some sort of luxury vehicle with all kinds of bells and whistles. While base model trucks are affordable, I cannot find one anywhere, only high-level trims are available. And a used truck with 100k miles is still outrageously expensive and I have shell shock from the Jeep engine blowing up at that milage.
Some years ago, 'above median' didn't count as 'rich'. There were 'the masses' maybe like 90% then a bourgeoisie maybe the next ones above that, then less than 1% aristocracy and nobles. Also social class wasn't determined solely by net worth or income. Maybe we will go back to that kind of situation where the median will be considered squarely in 'the masses' class and nowhere near 'rich'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Price_and_product...
> I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.
This is a legal myth:
> The case still most often used in law schools to illustrate a director’s obligation is Dodge v. Ford Motor (1919)—even though an important 2008 paper by Lynn A. Stout explains that it’s bad law, now largely ignored by the courts. It has been cited in only one decision by Delaware courts in the past 30 years.
* https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism
The Stout paper, "Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford":
> This Essay argues that Dodge v. Fordis indeed bad law, at least when cited for the proposition that the corporate purpose is, or should be, maximizing shareholder wealth. Dodge v. Ford is a mistake, a judicial "sport," a doctrinal oddity largely irrelevant to corporate law and corporate practice. What is more, courts and legislatures alike treat it as irrelevant. In the past thirty years, the Delaware courts have cited Dodge v. Ford as authorint in only one unpublished case, and then not on the subject of corporate purpose, but on another legal question entirely.15
By the way, SWE consultancy co-op are a thing and in my experience pay 15% more than regular consultancy.
EDIT: Also, people today would be calling Ford as literally communist
He was a strong anti-Semite, a conspiracy theorist who railed against "international Jewry", who paid to print the fabricated 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' in the US. He was absolutely against unions. His private police force used violent opposition against unionization, like the Ford Hunger March and the Battle of the Overpass. And he admired Nazi Germany, and was literally praised by Hitler in Mein Kampf.
they would call him a communist, and also an anti-semite
People use "communist" as a generic slur - there's probably people who called Joseph McCarthy a communist too.
Is that really the point you're trying to make? That calling someone "communist" has no meaning these days?
Otherwise, you can read how in 1923 Ford wrote that communism has failed. In his own words, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.260931/page/n1...
"As soon as [Russia] began to run her factories by committees, they went to rack and ruin; there was more debate than production. .. The fanatics talked the people into starvation. ... Bolshevism is now crying for the brains and experience which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. All that “reform” did to Russia was to block production. ... The same influence that drove the brains, experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in raising prejudice here."
"The reason why Bolshevism did not work, and cannot work, is not economic. It does not matter whether industry is privately managed or socially controlled; it does not matter whether you call the workers’ share “wages” or “dividends”; it does not matter whether you regimentalize the people as to food, clothing, and shelter, or whether you allow them to eat, dress, and live as they like. Those are mere matters of detail. The incapacity of the Bolshevist leaders is indicated by the fuss they made over such details. Bolshevism failed because it was both unnatural and immoral."
Shortly afterwards is his philosophy:
There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal. Most certainly all men are not equal, and any democratic conception which strives to make men equal is only an effort to block progress. ... It is the larger men who give the leadership to the community and enable the smaller men to live with less effort."
He believed him to be one of those larger men, and his methods the way to get smaller men to live with less effort. Which included being able buy his cars.
That's not communism, that's the utopian paternalism of American technocracy.
What is this supposed to mean? I'm not sure if I'm being obtuse or its too profound for me to understand.
My son is still living at our farm but he is starting his first real job. We’ve looked at options for his first car, he is interested in getting an early 1990s Buick or something like that (which can be had under $4000), the kind of used car that I find attractive (a 2010-2020 Honda) is pretty expensive ($13-$18k). We’re leaning towards taking our chances with the bucket.
Raising the wages directly for labor-related issues makes more sense.
You have to remember that rich people like Henry Ford and their estate/descendants (e.g. the Ford Foundation) like to manufacture an image for themselves. It's a nice story if instead of spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, Henry Ford was a great friend to the workers with a nonsensical business concept.
"Indeed, as a vocal antisemite, he used his status as one of America's most well-known and trusted business leaders to systematically spread conspiracy theories about Jews. His screeds against Jewish people became so well-known at home and abroad that he is the only American whom Adolf Hitler compliments by name in Mein Kampf.
...
But while it dramatically reduced manufacturing time—from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes per car, allowing mass production of up to 10,000 Model T cars a day by 1925—it also made his workers’ jobs more monotonous and unsatisfying. The turnover rate at Ford’s Highland Park, Michigan factory soared to 370 percent.
To solve the problem, Ford realized it would be cheaper to raise wages (which at the time were competitive with those at other auto companies) than to continue hiring and training new people at the same pace. So on January 5, 1914, he announced that his company would double wages to $5 a day. The move proved seismic: By prompting wage hikes across the car industry, historians say, it gave American factory workers a crucial boost into the middle class, allowing many to afford their own Model Ts.
...
While $5 a day was a generous factory wage at the time, it came with a substantial catch. Technically, workers’ pay remained less than or near $2.50 a day, and the extra money was a bonus they had to earn. The year Ford introduced the bonus, he established a company Sociological Department that sent inspectors to the homes of his employees—at this point, mostly male immigrants—to make sure they were living in a way Ford approved of. Workers were denied the full $5 a day if their wives worked outside the home, if their homes were unclean, if they displayed signs of drinking or gambling, if they took in boarders or if they didn’t contribute to a savings account. "
https://www.history.com/news/henry-ford-antisemitism-worker-...
Worth noting that American companies did stuff like this in South America too. The population generally doesn't want to work on the terms of the corporation, so they "terraform" the place until they have a compliant population. Shredding extended family ties, religions, etc. Anything that would interfere with the relationship between a man and his boss.
We're already there. American society has stratified into three groups over the last 20 years. There's the 99th percentile elite who have hoarded over half of all overall wealth, the 90th percentile bourgeois (tech workers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) that are able to maintain a modicum of security and prosperity through real wage growth, and then the masses below who are desperately working themselves to death for near starvation wages to service the above two classes, with zero chance of economic mobility.
Note that taxes are progressive, so from a $70k wage you get about $10k "free cash" to spend, whilst a $100k wage gives you the above number of about $20k.
So it takes A little over 2.5 years' worth of average full-time wages to buy a car in the US.
Therefore I disagree, the problem is the average cost of a new car, expressed in labor (2.5 years average full-time labor), much more than the stratification of US society.
I would argue 6 months full-time labor would be quite expensive for a car, and for the value of a car to be that, you'd need to make $170k per year, you'd have to be in the top 10%. Only at a 5% income do the cars this article talks about become reasonably priced. And I do mean reasonably priced. Not cheap.
Second problem is if you look at where the problem is, profit ("capitalism") ... is not the problem. GM makes $2,150 per car, the average car manufacturer half that, according to Google. Whilst this amount would move the needle a bit, it would certainly not solve the problem. That would make cars affordable for the top 11% of the population (and that's taking the GM figures), which would be just the tiniest of improvement.
According to this article:
https://carfromjapan.com/article/industry-knowledge/how-much...
Only raw material cost, labor and (barely) tax would make a decent dent (at least 10%) in the cost of a car.
Note: numbers all just Googled and taken at face value, maybe converting to per year (from per month) but no more processing. Obviously big mistakes could have happened, although I think not. I could do better but back of the envelope this should be about correct.
But what they did was, they killed the Fit in the US. So now the cheapest Honda car you can get is the Civic. Which isn't the small car it used to be.
I mean also, how much does this tech cost really? A backup camera? You really gonna claim that cars are unaffordable because of a $20 LCD and $10 camera installed into the bumper?
Pre-collision warnings, blind spot monitoring, it's all 20 year old tech now. And it comes in everything.
Yes. An automotive-grade LCD that will last years, plus a camera that will survive the elements, not mention the unreliable power supplies on which these must operate. Then 10+ feet of cable. Then the dozen little plastic clips to keep that cable secure. Then the manpower to install all of this. Yes. That camera system is more expensive than an injection-molded mirror bolted to the exterior of a car or glued to a windscreen. Multiply that by dozens of similar little things and it does result in more expensive vehicles.
The irony is that vehicles are now ridiculously safe in comparison to decades past. Regulators who for years improved safety by leaps and bounds (seat belts, crumple zones, anti-lock breaks etc) are now forced to playing at the margins. Every incremental improvement now comes at greater and greater complexity/mass/cost. Rear view and side mirrors are going away soon, to be replaced by backup cameras. Also are coming anti-drunk features. There is serious talk about interlock breathalyzers being built into all steering wheels. This is going to get much worse.
For those who cannot afford a car but still need to travel the distances, there is always motorcycles. New two-wheeled vehicles are still cheap.
The downsides, however, is that while the car part of the car is more durable and long-lasting than ever, the software/computer parts of the car are hamstrung by terrible decisions that are sure to age very poorly. This will only get worse when GM decides they want to turn the infotainment screen into a data-harvesting cash cow.
Also, this will slow down the transition to EVs. And it ends up saturating the used car market with cars designed with the tastes of show-boating new-car buyers in mind. This screws over people who just want a humble, reliable, practical vehicle instead of an overspecced, oversized, brodozer.
From a purely carbon perspective, new cars are always cleaner than old cars. This is simply due to less wear and tear, and technology improvements.
https://insideevs.com/news/666533/average-ev-transaction-pri...
The average EV price is not yet less than the average internal combustion vehicle price, but it's getting close. TCO for the average EV is almost certainly less than TCO for the average ICE vehicle.
Both ICE & EV went up about $10K, but the EV price has dropped back and the ICE hasn't.
$21k in Jan 2017 is nearly $26k Jan 2023. There seems to be plenty of new cars that cost that amount.
The other change I wonder is just the longevity of cars (which could counteract impact from cash for clunkers). My father used to buy a new car every 3-4 years in the 90s because cars sucked. Cars are more expensive now, but last much longer. My 7 year old car is as good as new still, my dad kept his last car 10 years.
Is a product that lasts triple the amount of time for less than triple the old price actually more expensive? No, but it IS now contradictingly unaffordable. It becomes the rich people and shoes trope. Poor people can only afford cheap shoes that wear out more often. When I could afford nice italian boots that lasted longer and were amazingly more comfortable I actually spent less on shoes, but I had to be able to shell out $500 for boots. Now I can only afford $40 for junk. Heck I have shirts from Nordstroms from 10 years ago that I still get complimented on but can't replace and am forced to slowly replace with cheap garbage shirts than wear out in a year because I'm broke and am sad to see myself fall into that trap knowing I am throwing away money to the benefit of looking worse for more $$$ spent over time.
All that said having moved down about 10 social economic groups the people I know have 2 daily struggles that keep them in constant anxiety. Housing and keeping their cars running. The system is not going to hold if this keeps up. People can't live in this constant stress and anxiety with no hope and are going to look to some way out. In the past in other countries that's been far left or far right political charlatans. Yet the people up high still expect the status quo to hold and are doing nothing to make things better.
https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore
Note you can tweak specific rebates and/or gas prices, mileage per year, length of ownership etc. in the advanced options and they have presets for each state.
My electric company just introduced a 2.9c/kWh overnight rate. At 4 miles/kWh, that works out $1450 for 200,000 miles.
The link goes to the Launch Edition. But you can edit the options to reduce the sticker price to $25,600.
However, the All-Wheel option is tempting. Nobody needs a 0-60MPH in 3.5 seconds car, but it's very cool, anyway.
Depending on your commuting needs and sun availability in your area you might not need to recharge, ever.
In short, both cars themselves and car-financing are more expensive.
E.g. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/interest-free-car...
https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/93...
>> doesn't comport with the available evidence of today's economy.
it doesn't?
>> the idea that firms are capitalizing on their market power by raising their prices higher and faster than the growth in their production costs.
You think this is a plausible explanation in a competitive capitalist economy rather than the problem being trillions of dollars having been printed which devalues all money which makes prices go up which makes the corporations look like they made record profits because you HAVE to charge more money because all money is worth less and every input costs more? I'm not saying they didn't necessarily make record profits, btw, but if they did then good on them and that smells like a blood in the water type of business opportunity.
> Ramirez, 33, and his wife Angelica Castro-Calle really want a new, small SUV with a little space for camping and paddleboarding gear
> Johnny Loredo and his wife paid $38,000 for a new Nissan Frontier truck
> If they hadn’t had a used Suburban to trade in
Yeaah. That could be the issue. People aren’t looking to buy cars anymore, but tanks.
And the first part of the quote describes a small SUV for another couple. Everyone’s definition of “small SUV” will vary, but I’m not sure many would infer tank.
Of course, your definition of tank could be very different to mine.
[1] https://economics.td.com/us-vehicle-sales [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ALTSALES
Well that used to be true, the actual painful thing going on with the car market right now is that in some ridiculous twist of events is that used costs more than new for a lot of vehicles. So yes new cars are more expensive, but used cars are a lot more expensive which hollows out the market that serves the average car buyer.
Kia Rio starting at $32k, with median salary 15% lower than the US.
But if you want to look like a _____ in a lifted dodge ram, well, we'll be happy to give you plenty of room on the road to roll your coal.
However, they're rolling right back off the lots too, after 3+ years of shortages.
But even then, Dodge does offer their 3500 at a base trim that's only a bit over the $40k bar I set (about $45k for the Tradesman trim). And you'll be foregoing electric for a few more years (or purchasing specialized construction equipment).
I have to say though, this is a bit of a different usecase than a family purchasing a car. Such a vehicle is going to be more of a work expense, after all.
20,000 pounds is well into medium or heavy duty truck territory.
But in the end, I'll take a pretentious prick over a malicious prick.
Cars as a whole are massively much more reliable for a lot longer than they used to, making used cars way more viable for most people.
Even the traditionally less-reliable brands are not exploding at 70k miles like they did 15 or 20 years ago.
Assuming that's true, then this whole chip shortage would have been a great time for someone to bring a software-less, low-tech vehicle to the market. I've personally been wanting that as our last vehicle completely shit the bed when the digital transmission encountered an error. Plus I hate touch screens in cars.
A linux car seems a fun twist.
2023 Nissan Versa - $17,366 2023 Kia Rio - $18,371 2023 Mitsubishi Mirage - $17,140
Just sayin....
The story here is just “inflation happened”
And now they want to gate features in my car behind yearly subscriptions, they can fuck right off. I'm not even tempted to buy new. I'm more likely to start buying older I don't want my car getting random software bugs and phoning home to turn of my heated seats.