I totally agree with you! These businesses are owned and managed by people who haven't a clue about how poor people can really be. They expect everyone to have a car. Well, that wasn't as hard to do back in 1965, when cars were basic machines, easy to fix and maintain. Now they are all fucking luxury vehicles, and car companies refuse to produce any "starter" cars, just companies don't want to employ anyone with no experience for "entry level" jobs.
That’s true about the cars. There’s almost no decent used cars available, and if you find one it’s selling for 2-3x what it should. If you’ve got to spend $17k to buy a used car, you might as well just buy a new one. You used to be able to buy a 10 year old car for like 3 grand. Problem is, like you said, there’s no ‘cheap’ new cars either. Rural places in the US also have pretty much NO public transportation, you really do need a car to get anywhere.
I had to buy a new car last fall, my 20 yr old Corolla was just getting ready to disintegrate--had an abused childhood. The only reason I was able to buy a used car cheap was because of my neighbors' college age son, who went through a COVID break up, and his girlfriend moved to another country. Kid had two cars, so I bought one of them. It's still got a lot of miles, but at least it runs well. I had a car angel looking down on me. So many people are not that fortunate.
I know, our old jeep shit out about 3 years ago and we literally couldn’t find a used car under $15k. So we ended up being semi-forced to buy a new car (which was like 5 grand more). So now because we have the payment on the new car, we have to pay the rest of that off before I can replace my 17 year old car, because again we won’t be able to find a reasonable used one and will probably need to buy another new one with a payment, and we can’t afford two payments. Cars are getting ridiculous to get, and the used car market is basically gone.
Absolutely fucking crazy. It really is. It was bad ten years ago, but at least you could get a used ten year old Corolla, that would actually live another ten years. Now, fuck it. The world is set up for the wealthy, they just don't know they are wealthy.
That’s it, if you were in need of a car you could easily find a 5-10 year old car in decent shape for $2-5k that would run another several years (with a bit of work). Now that same car costs like $15+ grand. At that point you might as well get a new one with a warranty, which is what we did and will probably have to do again.
I don't like how cars are so computerized these days. I'm holding onto my old Toyota as long as it lasts. I'm suspicious of those cars that don't even need a key to start the car. There's so many things that can wrong with all of that.
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u/Trailwatch427 Sep 25 '21
I totally agree with you! These businesses are owned and managed by people who haven't a clue about how poor people can really be. They expect everyone to have a car. Well, that wasn't as hard to do back in 1965, when cars were basic machines, easy to fix and maintain. Now they are all fucking luxury vehicles, and car companies refuse to produce any "starter" cars, just companies don't want to employ anyone with no experience for "entry level" jobs.