Car companies passed a bunch of laws prohibiting competition and alternatives and got trillions in subsidies. Now they’re welfare programs for the nations dumbest and most pampered CEOs.
Maybe stop putting in huge electronic systems I don’t want
Honestly, there have only been a few improvements to vehicles since the year 1990 that I actually appreciate
Tire pressure monitoring becoming standard was peak car.
At no point have cars ever been “inexpensive”, they’ve just been more or less obtainable. Big difference, a car has always been a very large purchase.
Althought this is true, it is also true the industry has shifted to models of cars with higher profit margins, mainly SUVs and light trucks, which follow a loophole claiming they aren’t “passenger vehicles”.
The CAFE fleet loophole, yeah. It’s less of a loophole at this point, more of an 8-lane interstate bypass. Cars have always been expensive items that not everyone can afford but you’re right, the margins between wages and car costs are wider today.
Not only that but its also what you get in a car these days. 50 years ago you had pretty much a drive train, seats, and radios. Now even base models come with touch screens, sensors, cameras, automatic doors etc. Some of which are nice features sure, but they still come at an additional cost.
wow, they turned it into a please for more free trade…
The average transaction price for a new car now sits around $50,000.
I could ride a NYC subway or bus 16,666 times for that, assuming I never do more than 12 rides in a week to trip the “rest of the week is free” condition.
“Make cars cheaper” is a stupid solution that won’t scale well. Cars do tremendous damage to the environment and our society. But I expect everyone subscribed to “Fuck Cars” already knows that.
You can get a decent older, nothing fancy, riding horse for ~$3k and pay about $11k/yr for upkeep, significantly less if you’ve got space for them. Plus, ride the same route to and from the bar and they’ll memorize it- your own personal designated driver who like tips in apples!
In some places you can still get a dui on a horse
Technically one could in my state, but there was a case (granted, 20+ yrs ago) where an old timer got it tossed out because despite being drunk af, he wasn’t on the road but off on the shoulder and there were enough witnesses and history to testify the horse consistently took him home without posing a danger to road safety. A lot of factors went in to that win, old timer, small town, everybody knew him, judge didn’t see him as an issue, so I wouldn’t suggest it for everybody in every situation.
That shoulder point seems like a moot point IMO. If I’m drunk in my car, i still can’t drive on the shoulder. It is also common for people on off road vehicles like atvs and snow mobiles to get DUIs. This 100% sounds like a small town grace thing.
I would guess the case could be made that any motorized vehicle doesn’t operate without a human actively making the choices about what the vehicle does, whereas a horse can take direction but will still “operate” even if the rider is blackout drunk. If you’re not on the road and not “operating” the horse, I think you could attempt to argue down to public intoxication or some other nuisance charge, especially if the horse was out of traffic and could be shown to reliably get you home without causing a disturbance. I’ll be interested to see how the courts deal with DUIs when a self-driving car is involved.
$11k/yr for upkeep
That’s a lot. What’s included?
A horse mostly, they are expensive to keep around nowadays.
Yes, but what’s included for the horse? Food? Vet? Horseshoes? Grooming? Insurance? Apples? Do I still have to visit it daily or for $11/k there’s someone there taking care of him when I’m away?
Food, ferrier, routine healthcare, housing. Your biggest cost is housing, and the cost of that varies wildly by how fancy you want to get with it. I went with the low-mid end of decent amenities, similar to dog boarding. The horse has protection from elements, a bit of human interaction, space to be outside. I did not include insurance. However, ime, horse vets can be drastically less expensive than small animal vets for similar procedures. I have always gotten the impression this is because dog/cat healthcare is a much bigger industry and like human healthcare it jacks up the price because it can. I also didn’t include tack, but that’s also one of those things where the cost is dependent on how fancy one wants to get with it.
That does sound pretty cheap. In southern Spain I see people horse riding all the time. I live very close to a big city and I still pass people on horses on public roads from time to time. I think the biggest issue would be carrying my groceries. I would probably need a donkey too.
I have always gotten the impression this is because dog/cat healthcare is a much bigger industry and like human healthcare it jacks up the price because it can.
I learned from Rick & Morty that it’s because horses have bigger organs so less qualified surgeons can operate on them.
Western US here. I’m in an urban area where a lot of the farmland that turned into housing in the mid-1900s didn’t become modern subdivisions, so we still have sections of the city where people have enough land to keep their own horse, plus stables on the outskirts. Haven’t seen a horse in downtown in a while, but still see them on side roads, on the walking path along the river, and a lot in the hiking trails that run north of the city, which are basically an extension of the town at this point. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there was a bar in the farm town about 6mi outside the city that had a hitching post out front and the cowboys still rode there to drink.
“inexpensive car” is a myth that keep getting repeated. Car can seems cheap up front but it could inflate in cost in the long run due to fuel and maintenance. Not to mention it’s a deprecating asset, doing serious damage to the environment in the long run, dangerous machine that often misused.
“but my fuel is cheap!”
Yeah? Because it’s subsidised, using your tax that’s better used for something else.
You are talking about total cost of ownership.
Car can seems cheap up front
Not anymore, which is the point of this article.
“but my fuel is cheap!”
Don’t forget the “but muh freedom!”. Let them now enjoy their freedom to stay at home since there’s not even sidewalks :-|
I think realistically this is the only way public transport will start to be forced past the car companies that lobby against it. Once the actual labour starts getting hit and affected, they’ll have no choice.
American downtowns used to be sweet.
Most big cities had extensive electric trolleys you could hop on and off of for free. Walkable cities with decent public transportation that didn’t pollute the air!
And we replaced that so we could have a bunch of shitty cars burning leaded gasoline for decades…
Really explains the boomers and silent generation… And hell, Gen X probably grew up with some that sweet leaded gas fumes, and lead paint. And there’s still extensive lead pipes serving water.
There’s an episode of the Little Rascals where the kid wants to be a street car conductor. Not much demand for that job today. Boy, do they pick up the nickels!
For a handful of years, we’d keep lead additive in the truck. Every fill up we’d add lead to the tank. GenX with just a bit of lead in the brain.
Exactly. Lead fuel additives are still sold…
Race cars tend to use them. Explains NASCAR…
Aren’t “lead additives” lead free? My dad had an old car that needed leaded, and I remember he’d put some additive every time he went to refuel. I recently found a bottle in our basement, it pretty clearly said “lead replacement” and at a glance, the ingredients didn’t seem to contain anything that sounded like lead
Some have replaced lead.
Aviation gasoline (avgas) for piston aircraft still contains lead.
Certain racing fuels (off-road, track-only) may contain lead.
Some specialty or legacy industrial uses…
Makes sense. Aviation is all about certification and reliability, racing is performance above all else, and you’ll always find some old industrial machine in the back of a shop that has somehow been running since longer than anyone remembers.
Reminds me of how despite RoHS and all that, leaded solder is still a thing for some applications like (legacy) aviation and repairs (leaded and unleaded solder apparently don’t mix well, or rather, make things corrode or something like that)
I think they call that a galvanic response. Sometimes it’s favorable. Otherwise your support is galvanizing the other. Bad news.
NYTrash is the worst imperial garbage.
Car dependency has always been an unsustainable grift benefiting the most privileged at the cost of the planetary destruction.
Don’t expect these liars to have a clue about this.
A reminder that since it’s original establishment, through multiple changes of ownership, the mission of the NYTimes has always been to advocate for liberal centrism against any and all alternatives. Despite momentarily appearances to the contrary, NYTimes has never been and will never be a ‘progressive’ paper.
“Now”??
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“Back then the amount remained the same” > “Now the amount is growing”. But i get your point and agree cars were always expensive.
It makes sense if you define car ownership in ~2024 as “affordable”
In 1979, when my parents bought a new Dodge Aspen wagon, its price of $5,000 was around the median car price, at about ⅓ of the median annual wage. That’s about $22,000 in 2026 dollars, which is about ⅓ of the median annual wage now. But the median car price is up to $50,000.
That’s about $22,000 in 2026 dollars,
If you believe the inflation numbers…
Well, yeah, inflation numbers are definitionally arbitrary even if you trust the math, since they depend so much on the judgement of the people compiling the data. The important point here is that the cost of a new car has gone up to a whole year’s pay, or more, for a lot of people.
Presumeably the article author has been insulated and didn’t realize that other people outside of their tax bracket exist.
I hear “the white imperial core” thrown around a lot.
This country only works if gas is cheap…and it’s already too late for that. Oopsie daisy I guess.
Or electricity, if we weren’t afraid of change. But even with some of the highest electricity prices in the country, I pay about half what i would for gas
I pay about half what i would for gas
For now… But ultimately EVs are unsustainable too. It’s just kicking the can while the planet burns.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress
Replacing ICE cars with EVs are a solid amount of progress, it’s progress within control of individuals, and it’s progress that can change society in a decade or two.
Transit and walkability would be better but I can’t do anything about that and significant progress would be a century or more.
Nah. With the right reforms, we could make cities walkable in a decade.
- Land value tax
- Carbon tax
- End single use zoning and upzone everything
- End parking minimums and free public parking
- Streamline building permits
- More in-the-weeds zoning reform, like removing minimum lot sizes, removing setbacks, removing aesthetic constraints, etc
- Defacto policy of not removing privately installed speed bumps that people make in front of their houses
Of course, good infrastructure and transit would be nice, too. But these reforms would cost very little money and could be implemented immediately, and would likely result in a city overrun with chaotic, uncontrollable ebike traffic - which I’m okay with.
That only affects new construction. Most places aren’t growing anywhere near fast enough for such a quick change, nor are there anywhere near enough contractors or supplies
My town has most of it (but nowhere should accept individuals impacting road safety and maintainability) and is somewhat walkable but most of that was from being built out before cars.
We did have a recent zoning change to encourage more higher density housing near the center (up to six stories “as of right” == streamlined process) and have several new apartment blocks going up, but there’s no way that’s sustainable and doesn’t help the walkability of the rest of town
The land value and carbon taxes are key here. The carrot is people seeking better, happier lives and developers seeking to turn a profit - the lower bullet points serve to allow these carrots to be attained. But the taxes are the stick. And people tend to move a lot faster when you beat their asses.
A land value tax removes the incentive to speculatively hold onto land. Instead, it charges landowners a heafty fee to hold onto valuable land in or near walkable areas, which sends a clear message - build something (like housing or a business) that will make good use of this valuable land, or give it to someone who will.
Of course, this will light the fire under some asses. Owning valuable land is still valuable with a land value tax - it is just that the value is in the potential profit to be made, which is only realized if you build something. So expect land owners to be ready and willing to pay big sums to import the labor and materials necessary to get their land to a profitable state as soon as possible. And this would also be a strong incentive to use existing unused building space in walkable areas. All those luxury apartments with outrageous rents sitting empty would see steep price drops as owners scrambled to get someone in the door to make the building profitable. Same with all those empty storefronts which have been vacant as the landlord lazily searches for the “perfect” tenant. And all that office space in downtowns, unused since covid? Expect it to be rapidly retrofitted into affordable housing.
So while rents in walkable areas are screaming downwards, the carbon tax creates an additional incentive to move there. Of course, we pair the tax with a dividend, so an average person is actually making money from the tax - but the incentive is clear: the less carbon you emit, the more money you make. Which encourages people to choose less carbon-intensive forms of housing and transportation. Which means more apartments and cycling, and less detached homes and driving.
but there’s no way that’s sustainable
Why not?
Looks like we live in very different areas. You’re describing issues that just don’t exist here. I bet we’re much farther along the path toward walkability (by virtue of being completely built out before cars) and may be looking at different priorities to drive the next phase
but there’s no way that’s sustainable Why not?
When you make any change, such as zoning, you get new development where that particular change makes a difference. It can even be significant new development, but there’s not going to be a continuous pipeline of new stuff. There’s a bunch of development for things where that change makes a difference then such projects get completed and new work tails off back to steady state. Then you need to look at the next bottleneck in zoning/paperwork/process to free up the next batch of projects
Well well well if it isn’t the consequences of our own stupid actions
The Happy Motoring Society was never sustainable
Now people are using electric bikes and scooters.
That… seems good, right?
From an environmental standard, sure, but the true reason for it is genuinely disturbing.
What is disturbing about it? Cars are more expensive now, so we found something else? That’s the only way it would ever happen. People hate change. It is either “cars too expensive, so people change” or “traffic too terrible, so people change” or “cars too full of annoying electronics, so people change.”
Cars should not be so expensive that people have to start using scooters and skate boards to get around. That’s fine for students, but a moral governmental system should be able to offer essential goods at prices that working people can afford. We should be able to manufacture vehicles at an affordable price, and people should make enough income to pay it.
It would mean less profit for the parasites at the top, but I don’t care about that.
Why not? The Netherlands does just fine prioritizing cycling for everyone - on par with the “childish” scooters and skateboards.
I’m pretty anti-car myself. I’ve never had a license. I’ve never had a job. My feet have taken me from town to town. Mix of using public transport as well. I’ve never let not having a vehicle let me not show up to work.
I make the same amount of money as my coworkers yet I save so much not having car insurance, car troubles, a tank to fill.
There’s several reasons why I don’t drive but the older I get the less I regret my choice in life.
The solution is to sells homes to companies so they can be closer to the rest of the homes…some homes will become Walmarts, others could be made into universities or schools or hardware stores or software companies. Blah…none of this we have here in Kenmore WA for example… You can walk to the nearest store during spring. In summer you might die from a heatstroke, in winter you might become a Popsicle before even getting to the store located downhill and to the east along the top of lake Washington. Its no joke. There are no homeless people looking thru my trash ever…because they literally can’t physically make it. There’s no point in collecting enough aluminum cans to eat if you need to eat more than that to collect the cans.
Its a dumb place, I didn’t choose to be here but it was the place I could afford that was closest to work. Hint hint…its nice that the city is charging us like $1000 bucks extra this year to add and repair sidewalks. Continue! Add a bus station nearby and allow people to have business from home…which eventually could become a workplace. Go from a bunch of houses to a variety of buildings. I can dream. I just need to jump off my high horse.
What really sux is oftentimes the more car friendly areas are expensive and the people living their drive cars because they have the money to buy there and have a car. I don’t get why they don’t live out further if they like cars so much but it is what it is.
