Fewer young people can afford to have a car

Because of regulations cars are too expensive and too hard to work on.

 

Why, FreshAir?
Is it because you think with interest rates going up, it will be harder to buy a car through loan financing?

 

agree with that too, too much digital junk in current cars, that increases price and the cost of repairs and insurance

let's go back to what cars were in the 80's and 90's

 

exactly...

 

A lot of that digital junk is there due to fuel efficiency and safety regulations, which the government has been tightening in recent years.

But maybe we should just go back to how things were in the year 2000 or 2005.

 

agree, some are, but I also agree we need to make cars that are not so digital, most people can not afford it

 

I don't think that the fedgov will allow us to.

 

I have a very very old car and I am NEVER going to get rid of it.

 

there is much that doesn't need to be in cars

the reality is, many carmakers are trying to move to a subscription service and that requires cars to be digital - they are not doing this for the consumer

for example, car makers want to add heated seats to EVERY car, then allow you to subscribe to heated seats, that is the future they want to move to - why, cause it costs more to only install heated seats in some cars, it's become too cheap

 

If people are having trouble affording a car because they cannot afford to borrow the money to buy that car, maybe the real problem is much deeper than the issue of it being harder to borrow money.

I see a mentality with many people that they think the solution to something being unaffordable is to borrow money.
This seems kind of irresponsible.
That seems like just taking from the future to pay for now.

If people are buying less cars because they are borrowing less money, maybe that is a good thing.

 

same here, over 20 years old, do not want the new junk...

lane assist and stuff is neat... but the cost to repair even a simple mirror is ridiculous due to all the sensors - will all that stuff still work for 20 years like a older car? could one afford to repair it?

 

interest is one of many issues as we are seeing in this thread

 

There are two components to interest rates going up. One is that interest rates are going up to keep up with inflation, and the other is that due to recent increases in inflation, the Fed cannot afford to keep lending out money trying to continue to hold interest rates down, because that would contribute to more inflation.

 

Not really... actually, what we've seen especially since the Industrial Revolution began about 200 years ago, is less and less measurable relationship between what a worker "produces" and that worker's compensation.

Crude but simple example: long ago, say, a field worker goes out and picks 500 pounds of corn in a day. Today a field worker gets in a mechanized corn harvester and picks many times that amount. Technology has changed everything in many different fields of human activity!

 

Not to get into the idea of "the worth of a person", but in the market a person sells things. A worker sells their skill/expertise/labor for an agreed upon price. That is what the worker earns. The employer could hire the worker to smash rocks, producing nothing worthwhile. The worker gets paid their wage regardless of the management or mismanagement of the hiring entity.

 

Maybe we should start a separate thread if we want to discuss that.

(You can leave the link here if you want)

 

So in addition to your meaningless straw man, you come up with some further meaningless projection... How very progressive of you.

 

I don't agree with you. Parents today---even if both are working---are often busy with taking their kids to sports events. I'm pretty shocked how time involved parent are for sports in this day and age...and its fine and good....but the point is that parents make a way to accommodate kids when they want to. That same type of accommodation can happen to help out kids with part-time jobs. My kids walked to their work after school and I picked them up in the evening. Schools are often near fast food, restaurants and stores........ The three beneficial things about teens working at fast food entities is that these places accommodate schedules, they ARE desperate for dependable workers and fast food teaches kids how to deal with the public---something that future higher tier employers appreciate. A kid doesn't have to work too many hours if they don't want to. And if they are heavily involved in afterschool activities or sports--they probably shouldn't work--but expect them to get a car later then sooner.

 

No, a worker is worth the value of what s/he produces. What s/he DOES with it is what affects what s/he pockets for it. In capitalism the owner decides what to do with it. In socialism the worker would decide what to do with it.

Supply and demand affect the exchange value, which is what the worker is interested in, and it alone affects what s/he can spend on a car.

 

You’re being silly. You know damned well that you wouldn’t live on rice and beans. Are you actually say “**** them, let them eat rice and only rice”?

 

Rice and beans have kept people alive for millenia.

 

Yuh, and if that worker owns the land and the tractor and operates as a sole proprietorship, that worker owns everything he produces and therefore s/he decides what to do with it: how much goes to amortizing the tractor, how much goes to fuel, how much to property taxes, water, seed, etc. etc. etc. or whether to sell the farm and start a feed store.

 

Or the worker runs a sole proprietorship, or operates as a contractor. Then they make all the decisions on what to do with the full value received for their work.

 

You already got into it in post 43, and I replied.

 

The full value is what they agree to work for.