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... And yet if you replaced everyone's wages with the average (which is of course the best redistribution can achieve), $97,962, call it $100k whilst that would be an increase of just shy of $30k per year, minus tax on that ($30k), average rent ($30k), transport ($11k), food ($5k), entertainment ($4k) ... which would leave you with $20k. Note that taxes are progressive, so from a $70k wage you get about $10k "free cash" to spend, whilst a $100k wage gives you the above number of about $20k. So it takes A little over 2.5 years' worth of average full-time wages to buy a car in the US. Therefore I disagree, the problem is the average cost of a new car, expressed in labor (2.5 years average full-time labor), much more than the stratification of US society. I would argue 6 months full-time labor would be quite expensive for a car, and for the value of a car to be that, you'd need to make $170k per year, you'd have to be in the top 10%. Only at a 5% income do the cars this article talks about become reasonably priced. And I do mean reasonably priced. Not cheap. Second problem is if you look at where the problem is, profit ("capitalism") ... is not the problem. GM makes $2,150 per car, the average car manufacturer half that, according to Google. Whilst this amount would move the needle a bit, it would certainly not solve the problem. That would make cars affordable for the top 11% of the population (and that's taking the GM figures), which would be just the tiniest of improvement. According to this article: https://carfromjapan.com/article/industry-knowledge/how-much... Only raw material cost, labor and (barely) tax would make a decent dent (at least 10%) in the cost of a car. Note: numbers all just Googled and taken at face value, maybe converting to per year (from per month) but no more processing. Obviously big mistakes could have happened, although I think not. I could do better but back of the envelope this should be about correct. |