[hotlap]

Originally Posted by BlaqWhole

I don't care what you do with your sig.


So when you see someone driving a nice new car, does it somehow make you feel better to think that they got a horrible deal or are gonna regret it in the future? Who GAF what someone else is paying or the terms of their agreement? Heck there are some people who can just flat out buy a $70K, $80K, $90K in cash. To them all of us who finance got a horrible deal. So again, why does it matter soo much to some of you how someone got into a comparable vehicle?

People have been struggling with wages in this country for years. This isn't something new. Before the Pandemic hit I factored that in NJ you would need an income of at least $125 to support a family of 4 while being able to save away a tiny amount. AND you would need really good credit too. AND even at that I bet you'd still fall behind quite often. So if you were out here, $15 an hour, $30 an hour, even $50 an hour ain't crap. So how did such a great divide come between being able to survive in this country in just the past 2 decades? In 98-01 at $15 an hour I would have been doing pretty good at 40 hours a week with benefits as a single guy with a nice used car and in a 1 bedroom apartment. Now in 2021 a crappy 1 bedroom apartment is $1100 a month at the cheapest (and that is IF you can find a place that low) and can soar up into the $1600+ range (same crappy apartment but just somewhere in Northern NJ). Throw in an actually nice apartment in a good section and rent will probably be $1800+. And that is a 1 bedroom. A 3-4 bedroom for a family of 4 is easily $1500-$2000. So at those prices, factor in a $600 car payment which gets you a $30K car (most families need 2 cars), car insurance, daily expenses...you can do the rest of the math.

The problem is that expenses, rent, etc have gone up dramatically and wages have not increased nearly enough to keep up. There were reports done years ago saying that even tho wages have increased over the past few decades, purchasing power has not. Meaning that wages have not increased enough to keep up with inflation. And the reason is that these companies out here want more work for less and more people buying. Before where a father could work a job for 15 years and be making decent money to support his family, now both adults have to be working FT jobs and they still won't be able to keep up. And no I'm not talking about people living beyond their means. I'm talking about people scraping by and barely able to make it. However, in these past few decades, the wealthy have grown much wealthier. That is only possible if they are offering less, charging more, and more people are working multiple jobs to barely make it.

Remember Ross Perot's prediction in 1992 of a "Giant sucking sound"? The American people were promised "free trade". Turned out we needed "fair trade". China wasn't even on the radar then.

I recall someone advocating that position recently.