Biden/Harris: Amid Higher Costs, It's Becoming Harder To Get--and Keep--a Car

Amid Higher Costs, It's Becoming Harder To Get--and Keep--a Car

They swore that they could pass those $Trillion Boondoggles and not ignite inflation.
Then they swore that the high prices would be "transitory".

Well, 3.5 years later, folks are drowning the Biden/Harris economy.

'Cars or trucks are lifelines for many Americans, but after three-plus years of painfully high inflation and now a slowing economy, they’ve become liabilities.'

'Delinquencies are climbing at rates not seen since the Great Recession, defaults have grown and repossessions have jumped 23% from last year, new Cox Automotive data shows.'

Government workers with those nice COLA's don't even feel inflation, so they would appreciate it the rest of us would just shut the hell up about it.

'And buying a car is no cakewalk either: Credit is increasingly harder to come by and rejection rates are spiking.'

Repossessions are rising
'Through the first half of this year, car repossessions are up 23% from the first six months of 2023 and 14% from 2019 levels, according to Cox Automotive data released earlier this month.'

It's getting more and more ugly. Everyone is trying to hang on until November.

Please discuss.

 

I think one problem is people seemed to have forgot you can buy used cars. I have friends who make about half of what I make and they drive a fancier car than I do because they are willing to spend 1/3 of their paycheck on car payments each month. Then with that super expensive car, your insurance payments are higher too.

I drive a 10 year old easy to repair car that I've kept going. Does it look great? No. But I don't have car payments, the piece of junk is actually mine, and my insurance is pretty dang low too.

 

Exactly. Too many people live beyond their means and then wonder why they are always having to scrape by. My truck is 12 yrs old and given that it's a Toyota wouldn't surprise me to have it at least another 10 years.

 

You are telling it like it is. We have a nice Toyota Tacoma we bought in 2014, less than a year old for about $28K. Now 10 years later it's still low mileage- but it's still worth the price we paid for it- but in inflated dollars. The inflation literally overtook the depreciation and added mileage. People are now paying the new prices of a decade ago for well-used cars. Houses- same thing.

A side effect of this is important too. The cost of taxes depends on market value- so they increase. The cost of insurance rises with the cost of inflation and repairs, so that goes up too.
All the costs of owning a vehicle, not just the cost to buy it- have increased along with it.

 

They certainly have.

After 5 years of stable new car prices, Biden/Harris come in, and prices shoot up over 20%



Prices for new cars rose more in 3 and half years of Biden/Harris than in the previous 31 years, combined!

Which is inconvenient for the Left, so they would like us all to just shut up about it.

 

Beware that the price index uses "Quality Adjusted" prices. I don't believe that actual selling prices went down from 1996 to 2008.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.htm

Quality Adjustment in the CPI: New Vehicles

To maintain a constant quality index, the CPI applies quality adjustments during model year changeovers using data received by BLS from automobile manufacturers. Quality adjustments are based on costs provided by manufacturers in categories such as reliability, durability, safety, fuel economy, maneuverability, speed, acceleration/deceleration, carrying capacity, and comfort or convenience. Adjustments are also made when equipment is added or deleted from the tracked model.
...

 

We are living in a kind of political circus right now, like a soap opera on the left. And it's dangerous, for many reasons besides the incompetence of the current administration.
It's dangerous because the erratic logic at the top and those most influencing it has lowered the bar in government, of what the people in these offices demand of themselves in terms of performance and loyalty.

It's allowed the worst of people's motives to become acceptable- in many government agencies, and in congress too. Things are happening that would have promptly ended careers in the governments of 30-40 years ago, now getting mixed responses and confusion instead of action. The head of the Secret Service for example. It's a decline in moral and professional standards that could be deadly to the naton.

In the last 30 days, the democrats have gone from declaring Biden is just fine to demanding, driving him off the ticket- shifting positions 100%, despite the fact that the conditions of the president at the debate were pretty much the everyday conditions that had existed while they lauded him. Not exactly being honest with themselves, let alone the American people. They are even pressing him to leave office now, talking about the 25th amendment... If he's not fit to run again, he's not fit to finish the term? That didn't bother them before the debate. So- why press that now?

Because it puts Harris in the office of president and makes her the incumbent, which is strong political advantage. No matter that many key democrats were telling Biden not to endorse Harris; once he did and she became the most viable candidate, they rolled over like trained dogs.

Aside from the many conflicts with reason, judgment and ethics that litter the history of Kamala Harris- One thing should be remembered. Harris climbed the political ladder in California....
The most erratic and radical state in the nation, which has been so liberal in laws and taxes that it has created an environment so unhealthy that life-long residents are giving up and moving out- where major corporations have decided they can no longer survive there and are leaving, where cities are virtually dying from a variety of ills government has precipitated by promoting or failing in social and economic challenges. San Francisco, once the jewel of the west coast and a magnet for tourism from around the world- is gone. San Francisco of today has lost population in recent years at a rate even greater than that of Detroit at it's worst. It's a kind of horror story- but one rooted in the political mindset that rules California, and the politicians that have cultivated it. Politicians there spend their time talking about defunding police, abolishing rent, abolishing prisons, and demanding that if Whole Foods is to be allowed to develop a grocery store in a vacant building in the city, it must include affordable housing. The crumbling of a great city is happening all round them, and they have no idea they are the cause of it.

Kamala Harris- was part of that. Trained in that, practiced and grew her career in it. Imagine- the California political mind running the nation. The democrats know this, just as they knew Biden had lost his capacity- but denied it and covered for it until it collapsed in public and became undeniable. The chaos of the democratic party today is without question- the product of their own doing. And yet, they have no idea they are the cause of it. The worst pandemic in America today- is that kind of thinking. We have got to do better. Raise the bar, refuse to tolerate the politicians willing to diminish America.
There have been many great democrats- and I've voted for several as presidents. But that class of people didn't leave the democratic party.. the party left them. California syndrome. Coming to you soon, brought by the democratic party.

 

They claim that they are being generous to us, when they are impovershing us.

Debt service on the national debt now gobbles up 46% of all the personal taxes we send into the US Treasury.



Frugality vs the 'generosity' of a spendthrift government:

'Since a government can't be generous and show it without putting itself at risk, if it's sensible it won't mind getting a reputation for frugality. With time, when people see that the frugality means they don't need to raise taxes and can defend the country against attack and embark on campaigns without putting a burden on the people, they'll increasingly be seen as generous -- generous to those they take nothing from, which is to say almost everybody.'

'Nothing consumes itself so much as generosity, because while you practice it you're losing the wherewithal to go on practicing it. Either you fall into poverty and are despised for it, or, to avoid poverty, you become grasping and hateful. Above all else a government must guard against being despised and hated. Generosity leads to both. It's far more sensible to keep a reputation for frugality, which carries a stigma but doesn't rouse people's hatred, than to strive to be seen as generous and find at the end of the day that you're thought of as grasping, something that carries a stigma and gets you hated too.'

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/two-tidbits-timeless-political-wisdom-machiavelli