Looking for a new car under $20,000? Good luck. Your choice has dwindled to just one vehicle
apnews.com
At a time when Americans increasingly want pricey SUVs and trucks rather than small cars, the Mirage remains the lone new vehicle whose average sale price is under 20 grand — a figure that once marked a kind of unofficial threshold of affordability. With prices — new and used — having soared since the pandemic, $20,000 is no longer much of a starting point for a new car.
This current version of the Mirage, which reached U.S. dealerships a decade ago, sold for an average of $19,205 last month, according to data from Cox Automotive. (Though a few other new models have starting prices under $20,000, their actual purchase prices, with options and shipping, exceed that figure.)
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At the current minimum wage ($7.25), it’s takes 2.757.6 hours or nearly 70 40-hour weeks to reach $20,000.
That is over 1.3 years of full time work to equal the one “cheap” car option. And it completely ignores any other costs, like taxes and interest, let alone god-damn housing, food, medical bills, etc.
This economic system is fucked. If you’re not fighting for income and wealth equality, you’re sociopathic.
Don't worry, if you can't afford it in cash you can always take out an 84 month loan at 6.5% if you're lucky, so it's actually only ~$25,000, or 3,448.3 hours/86.2 40hr weeks!
Yes that seems very reasonable. Also why the fuck are you buying a new car on min wage lol
I make about 8x the min wage and I would still probably never buy a new car.
Covid fucked up the car market pretty bad for several years and it's only NOW just barely recovering. People were selling used cars for more than they bought them new. And used shitty cars that used to go for cheap are going for premium prices.
If you're going to pay out the nose anyway, it starts to make a lot of sense to get something new because it's both cheaper and you'll know the full history and have the full warranty.
This assumes no home, food, or fun outside of work beyond daydreaming.
Who has the time or energy to daydream?
Who buys cars with cash??
That's why, if you or someone you know doesn't make enough, you get a used car. Brand new cars are such a waste of money. With that being said, prices across almost everything today is still fucked in the US with housing definitely being the worst offender.
I make enough and I drive a 2007 accord. Fuck paying for a new car.
If you are minimum wage there's no way you are getting full time hours. Minimum wage employers will only schedule works for 20 hours a week to ensure they won't get close to getting benefits.
Very reasonable take. I'm here for it.
Hard pass.
Communists should take a long, hard look at how well communism has worked elsewhere. Capitalism has many problems, and wealth inequality is one of them, but it's the economic system that has worked best so far. The fact is that my surgeon should earn a lot more than my gardener.
Really, the problem stems from the idea of wealth in general. To use a Communist structure like that would require eliminating the concept of non-tangible “wealth” entirely. Because otherwise you get the kind of incongruencies that you describe.
It’s hard though, right? Without wealth, how do you value the work of others? It used to be done by bartering. Or perhaps people did it because they were good at it, and didn’t mind helping out. People worked together.
Obviously this doesn’t fit in the modern era, when people generally work specifically to earn money, rather than for some general purpose. People probably aren’t going to want to do the job they already have in exchange for nothing but goodwill. They have to have a purpose. Our purpose in Capitalism (unless you are very lucky) is to earn Wealth so we can continue to exist, and as a guiding philosophy that does a decent enough job for most people.
You're romanticizing an era that never existed. Even if we can build such an economy, it's absurdly impractical in a modern, complex world. Sure, if we only had to build homes, hunt, and make babies that's fine, but too many modern necessities, such as sanitation, require a reward beyond being good at it or helping out.
Yes, this was my exact point. Money is how we quantify the value of effort in the modern era. It’s why Communism will never work with our current framework. They are fundamentally incompatible. Our purpose in life is to make money, we cannot just start giving everyone equal quantities of it — life would be meaningless. It requires a paradigm shift on how we value effort.
But minimum wage -> minimum effort, right? I have no problem with
no effort => no reward.Not caring about the well-being of others is called Antisocial Personality Disorder i'm afraid
Strawman argument.
It's an ad hominem, not a strawman. Maybe if you actually studied philosophy instead of just parroting people who just want your attention for monetary gain, you'd understand why the minimum wage being dangerously low is bad for everyone.
You're obviously of great education, yet fail to see my point completely. What gives.
You're not doing a good job explaining yourself. It currently reads like you're being a troll who thinks that people should starve.
If I squint, I can maybe see how you're actually trying to aim yourself at the owning class, but your points aren't coherent enough for that to make sense.
Plus, I'm neurodivergent, I can barely parse regular speech half the time, I'm not going to spend much more effort than that on someone who appears to be retaliating rather than explaining their position.
Your mom is a strawman argument.
I'm making way more money as an EE than when I was a teen making minimum wage at a factory. That shit is grueling and far from no effort
Clearly you've put effort into becoming an EE. Clearly it has paid back. I don't see why you're arguing.
I don't see why I wouldn't want my fellow man who is struggling in the system to do better just because I went into huge debt to be an EE
Nobody wants your fellow man struggling in the system whether you went into debt or not. Some fellow men, however, are blood sucking assholes living off others' effort.
Yeah, and those blood suckers are the richest assholes out there
I've worked minimum wage jobs and jobs that pay far more, and I definitely wasn't working harder at the high paying ones