I’ve seen a lot of economic stuff recently with cars specifically, and I wonder about who is actually making these horrific choices en masse. Obviously every demographic will have a set of people who have zero financial literacy or get very unlucky with the timing of a wreck at a bad financial spot in their lives, but I just can’t imagine that the average working class to middle class White American is the one providing the bulk of stupid car purchases with these awful or predatory loans. The White people in trouble I see are either upper middle class liberal women overextending to flex an electric car (and not doing any research lol) or a lower class White man who wants a big truck that won’t leave the pavement, and they aren’t that big of a group overall.
So are the idiots who support the car market’s insatiable greed composed mostly of financially illiterate immigrants? How much of our economy is based on helping the financially illiterate dig deeper holes?
Accent made me think of something. How much if the supposed constant reliability issues of the Korean cars is down to their owners just totally ignoring any maintenance? It’s the mindset that goes with a lot of the buyers they are going to pick up.
I have had euro cars for close to ten years now. I buy nice used and do a lot of work myself and don’t skimp on things. A lot of people put me down as totally loaded because they are super nice and cool cars, but I own them let someone else depreciate them, and do the bulk of the maintenance work myself. Most of these people commenting are cruising around in a generic SUV they loan or lease and is costing them more than both of mine combined.
There was the old saying about buying luxury cars when they became cheap is the running costs and spare parts are still luxury priced depending on what you got.