I have had my own automobile (or motorcycle) my entire adult life. I get claustrophobic when it's in the shop. I have never financed any of them; in my income bracket, your car is your life. If you live in the suburbs and lose your job, and then subsequently lose your car due to not being able to make payments, you are well and truly screwed. Conversely, as long as you have your own wheels, you can nearly always find some kind of work, even if it's as humble as using those wheels to deliver pizzas.
PDB takes this theme and waxes eloquent in his scathing condemnation of the "Cash For Clunkers" program:
To own a car is to reduce your personal limits and restrictions. You no longer are limited to the mere distance you can comfortably walk to seek a job or food or entertainment. A person with a car does not have to make do with what’s next door. A person with a car has hope, real hope, because as long as he has the keys and enough money in his pocket for a tank of gas, he can go anywhere else if it’s not working out here.
19 comments:
And that is why the Left hates us.
The cash for the clunkers is societal debt, since it's part of the federal deficit spending.
The additional cost of the new car, over and above the value of the clunker and the cash. is debt. It's created now instead of being deferred to any actual time of need for a new(er) car.
The populace and the government are both in deep financial doo-doo because of the creation of incredibly excessive amounts of debt.
You have to be all eat up with the terminal dumbass to encourage a continuance of the behavior which created the problem in the first place.
Santayana was correct, as to learning from history.
Yeah, the automobile has been freedom, for sure. The current problem is that this was only possible because of cheap transportation fuel. Those days are disappearing. Not quite gone, but going.
So I bought a new 4WD PU. Cash, no trades; I didn't suck up any of your tax dollars. When you're booked on the Titanic, why go steerage?
Art
I ride my bike. I like my bike. It's good exercise, it saves money, I get to spend time outdoors. It's a win-win-win.
But tell me I don't need my car, and I'll laugh in your face. When I can haul four bags of kitty litter and a gallon of milk through a snowstorm on my bicycle ... better yet, when you haul four bags of kitty litter and a gallon of milk through a snowstorm on a bicycle, then I'll believe that I don't need a car. Until then, STFD and STFU.
P. J. O'Rourke, in a foreword to a book of automotive pieces by David E. Davis, Jr.:
"David knows what every sixteen-year-old knows, but what no elected official, self-appointed quality-of-life advocate, or double-domed social visionary seems to — that cars confer upon us the ultimate and most important of human freedoms. We can leave."
If you live in the suburbs...
Surely it has not escaped your noice that leftists hate suburbs as much as they hate cars, largely for the same reasons (see also, Wal-Mart, shopping malls). People leaving the urban rat warrens in search of mobility and home ownership stop being proles.
Freedom to choose is death to statism and collectivism, therefore choice must be restricted.
You will note that these so-called clunkers are all cars that are less than 10 years old.
They don't want to crush old Pintos ... they want to crush the kind of car poor folks buy ( instead of new Auto collective #1 and #2 cars ) when they don't want to drive a piece of shit.
I will admit I don't like my car. I learned to fly before I learned to drive, and never have become comfortable with the latter.
That said, there is no way you could convince me to go back to commuting via bicycle. It's not the hauling groceries and supplies through -45F ice fog, and it's not just the constantly getting sick from commuting through cold fall rain, but rather the sheer amount of time I save by being able to drive to work. I have too many places to go, things to do, and people to see to waste hours a day getting there and back again.
Ride a bike to work and you are a slave. Bikes are for exploration, for fun, for downhills, and for exercise - cars get 'er done.
Not only all that, but consider someone you know, or have known.
He, or more likely she, is a wonderful worker. Pays attention to the job, exceeds expectations- one of those people it's a joy to employ or work beside. An asset to the company.
But they had to, or are always about to let her go, because she's unreliable. There's always some story about transportation. The car is broken, or she's stuck, or she can't afford to fix it.
If you know someone like this, think about how many of them there are. If you don't know someone like this, I'd bet that everyone who supervises more than fifty non degreed employees does.
People to whom reliable transportation would make the difference between a marginal life and a more secure one.
Between pathetic fear and a little independence.
They are crushing the cars poor people use to drive out of poverty.
staghounds,
As somebody who does supervise several non degreed employees, I can tell you sir that you are 100% on the money. The number two reason I get a call in the morning saying that somebody will be late to work?... because something is wrong with the car, motorcycle, their ride to work, etc. (Number 1 is being sick)
The people I supervise are what might be considered the working poor by some standards, and if there was any way I could give them more money I would, but alas because of the current state of the economy, we've been on a wage freeze for a very long time now.
When I look out at the parking lot where everybody parks, I'd say at least 60% or better of the cars fall in the $4,500 or less range.
It's a crying shame to destroy perfectly good running cars in such a manner when there are so many out there that could use them. Hell the government should dispose of the non running vehicles, and the others they could auction back off with the stipulation that they couldn't be traded back in for another $4,500, maybe that would help lighten my tax load a bit.
On the other hand, the cash for clunkers is just an all around clunker IMHO, I won't be buying any new car soon, I can't afford it either since I make it a practice to live within my means.
Another point, many of those "clunkers" were being given to organizations that help the less fortunate get wheels to get the better jobs or get to their jobs more reliably. Now that option is gone, as the clunkers are being destroyed rather than turned over to help people.
The Left loves poor people. That's why they do everything they can to create so many of them.
I can remember when everytime a new job came along we had to move close enough to walk. This was when I was a kid and the housing was usually shotgun houses with no room to roam.
"It is no coincidence that America is the country of the personal automobile and thus Leftists have always hated cars. They’re too wasteful, they permit too much consumption, cars allow people to escape the miserable inner-city hellholes leftists inadvertently create as they try to mold the new Soviet man."
It's not inadvertently done. It's quite purposefully done. That is all I have to say on that.
wv: ampeth--but mine doth go to eleven
Another point, many of those "clunkers" were being given to organizations that help the less fortunate get wheels to get the better jobs or get to their jobs more reliably.
Spot on. My wife works for a good hearted non-profit whose only real star in making money this year is their Cars program. Guess who just cut them off at the knees. Nice one.
There are lots and lots of old cars and trucks out there that look awful, maybe burn a bit of oil, but run pretty reliably otherwise. They can usually be had for under $500. License and insurance on an old junker like that is cheap. If you have only one car, go out and buy another.
Two is one, and one is none.
It is not, perhaps, a coincidence that the garage at Roseholme contains 2.5 cars, 2.5 mo'cycles, and 2 bicycles for only two people.
...and I'm thinking about buying a better bike so that I can use my old one as a loaner or the power source for a genset.
"It is no coincidence that America is the country of the personal automobile and thus Leftists have always hated cars."
True.
"The current problem is that this was only possible because of cheap transportation fuel. Those days are disappearing. Not quite gone, but going."
Pure...Bullshit. They've gotten to you, kid. Fix it. The one and only reason petrol is expensive is the vast minefield of legal restrictions put on it by those who hate freedom and thus hate the automobile. Get their snotty noses and their sticky fingers out of our business and we're good to go. -- Lyle
It's not often I see someone call Art "kid".
(Of course, you may not know him, Lyle. I don't know if Art believes in "Peak Oil" or not, but I'm pretty sure he believes in "Peak Regulation". And if you don't, you're a bigger optimist than me.
"Get their snotty noses and their sticky fingers out of our business..."
...yeah, and get me a gold house and a rocket car while you're at it. ;)
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