What will poor people drive ?

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Kjmack said:
Like Eddie Albert said " Gimme that countryside " . That's from Green Acres .
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LMAO:ROFLMAO: The wife absolutely loves that show. She says.... "put that ****ed news paper down. Get out of that book! Turn off the ****ed history Channel and get your butt on the sofa in here and watch some mindless humor with me and stop all that 24x7 news stuff! LOL

It is funny as hell AND it is mindless humor!
 
measureman said:
I can afford a car payment on a 5 year old Mercedes.
But I can't afford to pay for the repairs nor would I want to.
I would spend the same payment on a brand new Chevy,Toyota etc.
This would be the same for people buying used electric cars.
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Just what exactly do you think the repair costs on a 5 year old Mercedes will be? I bought mine at about 6 years old at about 1/3 of list price. I don't think I paid too much more than normal for repairs/maintenance although the big ticket items so far has been rims/tires and springs/struts. Although I don't think the springs/struts were that bad considering that I had to buy OEM springs and Bilstein struts. Spent close to 1k for that combo up front including OEM parts like the strut mounts, bumper stop and other OEM strut hardware. Just wanted new stuff, might have been able to reuse the old stuff but didn't want to get stuck in case I couldn't so bought all new stuff that I could have just returned instead. I think on any other car, oem springs/struts will run you at least $500-750 installed anyway. Also if you buy a 5 year Mercedes, you can always get a CPO one and you could get up to 3 years of coverage on a CPO warranty. And at about 7.5 years later, it's worth at least half of what I paid for it and I put on 75k on it. Of course the car markets aren't normal now, probably more like 1/3 of what I paid 7.5 years later in a normal market. As the old saying goes, it's not your father's Mercedes anymore, at least not when it comes to repairs. Have only had to go the dealer for warranty work and firmware updates.
 
Kjmack said:
20 years from now what are poor people going to drive. Now they have their clunkers that they nurse around.
This whole electric vehicle business is really going to affect them the hardest. In big cities you see apartment complex after apartment complex with huge parking lots, how can it be feasible to put electric to all those spots. There's not even enough money to fix the roads let alone the infrastructure it will take to make electric vehicles viable in the next 20 years. And as far as repairing electric vehicles it's going to take a pro not a backyard handyman to keep these vehicles running. Just some thoughts
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That is an excellent question. Where I live its insane. Every time I see a Rolls, an Audi, BMW, Bentley, Charger.... Challenger, Corvette, Hummer..... all these expensive cars all around the area... behind the wheel seems to be young folks.... folks who look like they are not even late 20s yet!? I also see young guys pull up to gas pumps in MONSTER size / Industrial looking pick up trucks with lift kits etc... 4 wheel drive. I think "thank GOD I am not paying to fill that monster up.! But it always makes me wonder.... how the hell they can afford not only the car note / or lease but then I wonder ... it cost me and the wife about $900 every 6 months to insure a 2018 and a 2009 Honda Accord so.... hmmmm I know they insurance people rape young people with insurance fees so what on earth? how do all these young folks afford the cars + the insurance. I rarely see an older person in one of those expesnive vehicles you would think would be in a better position in life to afford. Retired or later in working career making a good salary....? Just glad I am not paying the notes plus the insurance fees.
 
Wolf359 said:
Just what exactly do you think the repair costs on a 5 year old Mercedes will be? I bought mine at about 6 years old at about 1/3 of list price. I don't think I paid too much more than normal for repairs/maintenance although the big ticket items so far has been rims/tires and springs/struts. Although I don't think the springs/struts were that bad considering that I had to buy OEM springs and Bilstein struts. Spent close to 1k for that combo up front including OEM parts like the strut mounts, bumper stop and other OEM strut hardware. Just wanted new stuff, might have been able to reuse the old stuff but didn't want to get stuck in case I couldn't so bought all new stuff that I could have just returned instead. I think on any other car, oem springs/struts will run you at least $500-750 installed anyway. Also if you buy a 5 year Mercedes, you can always get a CPO one and you could get up to 3 years of coverage on a CPO warranty. And at about 7.5 years later, it's worth at least half of what I paid for it and I put on 75k on it. Of course the car markets aren't normal now, probably more like 1/3 of what I paid 7.5 years later in a normal market. As the old saying goes, it's not your father's Mercedes anymore, at least not when it comes to repairs. Have only had to go the dealer for warranty work and firmware updates.
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It was just an example,not literal.
Calm down.
 
DwightFrye said:
Some of you are assuming that we will still have "poor" people in the near future. If things continue the way they are headed, we won't. Everyone will be equal and those "poor" people will drive the same cars as everyone else, except they won't be paying their "fair share" for the car, the insurance or the gas or electricity needed to run it. The rest of us will pay for it in order to achieve equality and equity. That is the government solution to the problem.
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There will always be poor people because we will always have finite resources.

Poor people's definition back then was not enough food, our poor people today have too much empty calories. Poor people today also own cars, because they have to live far away from work and commute long distance. In the future poor people will have other definition, may have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard or other useless degree from elsewhere, and some 500k of student loan they can never pay back so they cannot borrow money to buy a house or a car, only renting and leasing.
 
javacontour said:
We've had the "War on Poverty" in the US since 1965. We still have plenty of poor, so the war hasn't seemed to put a dent in the problem.

Seeing a pattern? War on poverty, war on terror, war on drugs, all have largely failed.
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It is never good to wage a war on human nature.
 
Dave Hess said:
No incentive to work if ______ will take care of you from cradle to grave.

Why work ???
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Because in reality it is "if ______ will ______ you from ______ to _____".

I've dealt with enough section 8 people and they all work, and they are all trying to get their next generation off the program because chicken scratch after the pork was taken out by corruption is so little, going to school earn a degree and work a respectable job makes much more.

One of my tenant's daughter now work as a coworker of mine, she probably make just as much as I do now, and her parents are off the program and are going on vacation annually. Couldn't afford that staying on the program forever.
 
javacontour said:
But today we have places offering $15/hour and still not getting workers. The last I checked, there were over 11 million job openings in the US. They are not all minimum wage jobs.

If a job is paying minimum wage, it must not have high skill demands or there are a lot of folks willing to work it. The last time I worked a minimum wage job was in college as my work-study job that was part of my financial aid package.

People say we need to spend more on education. Yet when I compare Chicago Public Schools district 299 to the state averages, CPS spends 25% more per student compared to state averages and doesn't get outcomes as high as state averages.

Downstate, we are told that Chicago supports the state. But CPS299 doesn't even locally fund at levels that meet state averages. The state average is about 75% local funding for education where state and federal funds make up the other approximately 25%

CPS299 is closer to 50% local funding, ranging from 48-52% depending on the year examined, with the other half of the 25% above average spending coming from other taxpayers. Not only are other taxpayers supporting the city as much if not more than they support themselves, in many cases, external taxpayers are expected to send more to CPS299 than they provide for their own district.

CPS299 makes up 20% of the Illinois student population, so they skew the numbers being such a large slice of the pie.

People want to throw money at problems when they are really more complex. If parents don't care about education, no volume of cubic dollars is going to make the children care. And the cycle continues. How much do people care if they are not throwing their own money into the system?

I'm not going to say there are not inequities. But to suggest that taxpayers haven't been supportive doesn't hold up when we look at the money spent to help folks catch up.

We keep hearing about the social responsibility of the rich and corporations. Okay, what about the social responsibility of those receiving the assistance?

At some point, they have to WANT to catch up. No amount of cubic taxpayer or corporate dollars are going to make some want to catch up.
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I am in a "diverse" school district but kids are in a good school. It has probably about 10 elementary, 2 middle, and 2 high schools. As you know the boundary are drawn for each school in the US so you go to the one your house is in.

So, we have the same funding, same staff rotating around them, same management, but different parents and therefore different income level and cultural background.

You probably knows what the result look like and I will not need to say anything that will involve politics. Yes there's overlap and there are people who care in the low income under-achieving group who raised their children correctly, yet the statistics is that in our society (at least in US), parenting is a huge problem, and resources parents spend for their children vary wildly (parenting time, whether there's a housewife at home, tutoring and enrichment courses, coaching on college admission letters, whether parents teach the kids about finance and investment early, whether the parents have disciplines themselves, whether the parents divorce, whether the parents are abusive, whether the parents have addiction problem, etc).

We cannot throw money at school to get result without fixing the parents, unless you want to pay teachers to parent the kids, then you get into all sorts of political problems.
 
Dave Hess said:
No incentive to work if ______ will take care of you from cradle to grave.

Why work ???
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I’ll write my own destiny and pave my own way. Thanks.

I’ve worked with far too many people who would be in a world of hurt if things stopped flowing for them.

(I know you’re giving an example and don’t actually think this btw You post job listings all the time.)
 
SammyChevelleTypeS3 said:
That is an excellent question. Where I live its insane. Every time I see a Rolls, an Audi, BMW, Bentley, Charger.... Challenger, Corvette, Hummer..... all these expensive cars all around the area... behind the wheel seems to be young folks.... folks who look like they are not even late 20s yet!? I also see young guys pull up to gas pumps in MONSTER size / Industrial looking pick up trucks with lift kits etc... 4 wheel drive. I think "thank GOD I am not paying to fill that monster up.! But it always makes me wonder.... how the hell they can afford not only the car note / or lease but then I wonder ... it cost me and the wife about $900 every 6 months to insure a 2018 and a 2009 Honda Accord so.... hmmmm I know they insurance people rape young people with insurance fees so what on earth? how do all these young folks afford the cars + the insurance. I rarely see an older person in one of those expesnive vehicles you would think would be in a better position in life to afford. Retired or later in working career making a good salary....? Just glad I am not paying the notes plus the insurance fees.
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I can only tell you what my friends did back then when they were 18. My parents brought me a "modest" car instead.

They spend all their money on their cars, and they work part time to pay for that addiction. They don't have to work full time and pay for all sorts of things yet, not much tax, no mortgage, live with roommates or girlfriends, cheap food, no medical insurance outside of their parents, no retirement savings, no savings in the bank, not yet starting their student loan payment, no kids.

Yeah, they only need that toy cars to last a few years so they can get laid, then when they graduate they either got busy and sell them or grew out of it, or the cars broke down and crushed.
 
PandaBear said:
There will always be poor people because we will always have finite resources.

Poor people's definition back then was not enough food, our poor people today have too much empty calories. Poor people today also own cars, because they have to live far away from work and commute long distance. In the future poor people will have other definition, may have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard or other useless degree from elsewhere, and some 500k of student loan they can never pay back so they cannot borrow money to buy a house or a car, only renting and leasing.
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The beggars on the street probably have a higher net worth than the college students they're begging money from, but the college students have potentially greater earning power in the future.
 
Kjmack said:
20 years from now what are poor people going to drive. Now they have their clunkers that they nurse around.
This whole electric vehicle business is really going to affect them the hardest. In big cities you see apartment complex after apartment complex with huge parking lots, how can it be feasible to put electric to all those spots. There's not even enough money to fix the roads let alone the infrastructure it will take to make electric vehicles viable in the next 20 years. And as far as repairing electric vehicles it's going to take a pro not a backyard handyman to keep these vehicles running. Just some thoughts
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There's always enough money. It's a lack of will. Apartments/Condos are going to add chargers. ICE will be around for a long time. Repairing electric cars? I suspect there's going to be less which breaks and needs repairing. Sure on the margins there are going to be people who won't be able to nurse a vehicle to 300k miles but they are the exception.
 
Smart poor/thrifty people will drive old Corollas, Camries, Avalons (paid for in cash, for about $3k or less in today’s money) or whatever they inherit, and do basic maintenance to the best of their abilities.

Foolish poor people will driving 6-12 year old vehicles, financed at a god-awful rate for twice what it was worth at Shady Motors. Then those cars will get repo’d after they get wrecked (and no insurance, of course) or the transmission fails, etc.
 
ChrisMU said:
Smart poor/thrifty people will drive old Corollas, Camries, Avalons (paid for in cash, for about $3k or less in today’s money) or whatever they inherit, and do basic maintenance to the best of their abilities.

Foolish poor people will driving 6-12 year old vehicles, financed at a god-awful rate for twice what it was worth at Shady Motors. Then those cars will get repo’d after they get wrecked (and no insurance, of course) or the transmission fails, etc.
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There's a lot of uncertainty in old cars, hence that affects their resell value, and why good reliable boring small engine used cars are selling for more than delicate luxury cars with iffy design and big thirsty engines.

EVs battery life is "predictable" and "detectable", buyers know how much a car is worth not by historical reputation but by checking what is left on the dashboard. So that would take a lot of the risk out of buying a used car.

Poor people tend to have worse luck buying a commuter than rich folks, but need more of the reliability for their income. I think other than range, EV (can be managed if you know what you are buying or where to charge after a commute) can be a poor people's car, or after market battery is developed and financing available (new battery, old car with a lien on the title, will repo if monthly payment not made). Still need a reputable company to back that up (like Toyota or Honda?) instead of some startup using cryto manipulation to get funding to build the next model or the next factory, long term reliability may not be their focus.

The "problem" with old cars, EV or gas, is the labor to repair stuff. Engine and transmission are not cheap to fix in old cars, and are the reason most old cars are scrap outside of accidents. EVs may extend that if battery is cheap to install and comes with a warranty. Remember we are already seeing 220/hr labor rate in some dealers, any cars with delicate engine or transmission will not be worth fixing very quickly.
 
PandaBear said:
I can only tell you what my friends did back then when they were 18. My parents brought me a "modest" car instead.

They spend all their money on their cars, and they work part time to pay for that addiction. They don't have to work full time and pay for all sorts of things yet, not much tax, no mortgage, live with roommates or girlfriends, cheap food, no medical insurance outside of their parents, no retirement savings, no savings in the bank, not yet starting their student loan payment, no kids.

Yeah, they only need that toy cars to last a few years so they can get laid, then when they graduate they either got busy and sell them or grew out of it, or the cars broke down and crushed.
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(y)
 
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