If you read the forums you’ll see people discussing deals or you can post stuff you’ve found and people will shame you for paying too much
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This is a pretty good article from Vox on inflation and inflation targeting monetary policy.
I think a key item they miss in explaining 1980 vs. 2020 is that the baby boomer demographic bubble was still entering the workforce at that time, creating lots of workers which is good for creating economic growth combined with low wages. In 2020 the boomers are exiting the workforce and driving much of the undersupply of labor.
The situation is definitely calling out for mass immigration into North America to increase the labor supply, goosing economic growth and suppressing wages. Regretfully, immigrants are mostly rapists and murderers and drug dealers, it is known.
I think policy maker Plan B here will be “if we help big corporations crack down on wages of pesky workers, that will both increase corporate profits and suppress wages leading to less inflation”. It’s win-win!
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Thanks! It would have to be an insane deal for me to lease instead of buying a 2-3 year old CPO in cash, but it sounds like an insane deal is possible if I’m not too picky!
Meanwhile, Hoover institute and WSJ are pushing deficit hawkism
My Dad’s number one voting issue is illegal immigration, so every time he complains about inflation, I just hit him with “Yeah that labor shortage keeps driving wages up. If only there were, like, millions of people who wanted to come here and work! That would solve it! If only!”
It usually leads to awkward silence as we both process the fact that that’s a non-starter for him, which blows up his “I love legal immigration!” bullshit and exposes the racism beneath.
I’m with the conservatives here, let’s tax billionaires and slash ineffective military and police spending to reduce the deficit. I assume that’s what they are recommending.
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That’s Fed plan A, they are pretty close to explicit about it.
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Sure, I meant “Plan B” after a theoretical plan that doesn’t involve crushing workers under the thumb of billionaires. You know, “unrealistic” policy.
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How is it so low? $650 * 12 * 6 years = $46,800.
$20k trade-in and zero interest?
It was a 36 or 38 month lease at fairly low mileage. Payments are based on the difference between purchase price and the residual value of the car when the lease ends along with some other more complicated stuff.
Leasing is good for my wife because she likes getting a different car fairly frequently, she doesn’t want to own it for 10+ years and she buys luxury brands that are expensive to fix and maintain. With leasing you can avoid any maintenance expenses besides oil changes and other basic stuff.
One of my sisters is like this, she just loves to have the new car model each and every year so just leases constantly and changes cars all the time. I can kind of get it, it’s not the most economical thing obviously but I can at least understand the appeal. Our 10 year old car is a fine but the time and cost that goes into keeping it going now vs. Year 1 is definitely an ongoing headache.
Sorry, I thought you meant car payment like monthly interest + principal.
It’s definitely nice driving a new car, but this has gotta be one of the worst things you can possibly do for the environment.
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It definitely feels “wasteful” but it’s not like they take her 1 year old cars out back and Old Yeller them. They get used by someone else. It’s an interesting question though, what is more environmentally destructive, changing cars every year vs. just being a person that drives a lot (new or old car).
I’ve bought certified pre-owned cars that are 2-3 years old twice now, and a lot of them are former leases. The sweet spot is finding one that has like 40-50K miles on it, driving it until it hits about 90K miles, then selling it and rotating back into the next 2-3 year old CPO. It’s the lowest cost-to-own strategy I’ve been able to find. You avoid the significant drop in value driving a new car off the lot and the first 2-3 years, you still get a good warranty (usually 2 or 3 years worth of miles), and you avoid the disproportional drop in value at 100K miles.
This time I may end up going over 100K because of the current prices of used cars.
I haven’t owned a car for most of my adult life. Wish that were easier to do in more places.
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Right, they don’t Old Yeller them, but it creates huge demand for new cars to do this, as it shifts consumer preference starkly in favor of driving new cars and against driving a beater with 100k miles, even though if properly maintained it can go to 200-250k miles.
I’ll grant that it’s enormously complex to account for what happens to the car after it’s sold, but the scale of the initial manufacture of a luxury vehicle probably squashes such considerations regardless. Probably a decent guideline is manufacture of the car is worth about 2 years of operating the car in CO2 emissions, and that is pretty narrow and not taking into account the dealership network and stuff, which almost entirely is fed by new cars.
Luxury is much worse. Reports have CO2 emissions of a luxury SUV at around 35 tons, which is about 2 years of a normal person’s CO2 emissions from all sources. Also people who do this tend to drive luxury cars that are more expensive to maintain and aren’t as viable as used cars. Even if they were, flooding the market with used cars leads to more affordable cost of driving for everyone, with all its compounded effects.
And a lot of US used cars (probably like 10%) are also exported to other countries where they are well-maintained and thus driving extensively for many years, clogging roads and using yet more gas, degrading public transit, and fueling suburbanization in places like Mexico.
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These are all good points. On the last one, I would chalk that up as more of an urban planning failure than a direct result of American consumer culture. When cities are designed to be less car dependent, then people use fewer cars. Cheaper access to more cars clearly doesn’t help, but I think it’s a secondary factor.
People wanting to own cars and live in detached single family houses is the dog. Urban planning is the tail that gets wagged to build those environments.
I will never understand why people tie themselves into expensive leasing agreements for years when there are hundreds of perfectly good cars that people just leave on the street.
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