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Americans can no longer afford their cars (www.newsweek.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/personalfinance@lemmy.ml
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[–] 14 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

That which is unsustainable will tend not to be sustained.

$80,000 pickups exist because of farmers’ welfare checks.

There is no real reason for vehicles to cost that much.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I’m confused. Are farmers the ones buying oversized trucks just to drop of the kids and shop at Walmart.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    No, farmers are buying them to do work. His point is that they couldn't afford them if there weren't huge subsidies for farmers. If those subsidies didn't exist, farmers would still need pickups, so the manufacturers would almost have to come up with cheaper models, or they'd lose sales to companies that do.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I know it's edgy and popular to blame farmers for a large number of things. But there aren't enough farmers to buy that many pickup trucks to sustain the sheer number of of them produced.

    Look inward young urbane urbanite.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I wasn't blaming farmers for anything. I was holding them up as an example of someone that legitimately likely needs a pickup. And if tax breaks are available to them, why shouldn't they take advantage of them? You can argue the subsidies shouldn't be there, and perhaps they shouldn't, but they are, and I don't blame people for taking advantage of them.

    Similar situation: Education has gotten so expensive, possibly because student loans are so readily available. If there were no loans available, few people could afford college, so it seems very likely the colleges would find ways to make it less expensive...or a bunch would go out of business.

    I am neither young nor an urbanite.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    A farmer wouldn’t buy an $80k CAD light-duty truck, especially when they start out at $50k CAD, that’s a waste of their money. Any farmer that did that wouldn’t be a farmer for long.

    If a truck cost $80k, I can assure you it would be a heavy-duty diesel flatbed, cargo trailer hauler, or even a dump truck with roll-down windows, no AC, no creature comforts and likely even no radio much less an infotainment system.

    Farmers aren’t morons unless they want to go bankrupt. They get that which can best allow them to do their job, not fancy pavement princesses.

    Source: orchardist. None of my vehicles are newer than two decades old. Nor would I ever buy a modern consumer monstrosity to do the work.

    Over 90% of the pavement princesses I see in the $80-150k CAD range are driven by people who don’t own more than a quarter acre of land in totality. A fair number don’t even own land at all (renters), and lease what they drive. Not a pot to piss in, but they just have to have the biggest penis-extender on the road.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    A Ford King Ranch base model is $76k.

    Go to the USDA and pick a farming state and you can see how many farmers in how many counties are getting between $100k to millions TO NOT FARM! (It’s most of them)

    The local Ford and Chevy dealers will have the trucks lined up when the checks come out.

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