Reported as not really being politics, and I could see it as being more !news@lemmy.world or even !business@lemmy.world
But pocket book issues like this impact politics.
"It's the economy, stupid!" and all that.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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politics
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Politics underpins finance at every level
Everything is politics.
The only way you can escape politics is to live alone on an uninhabited planet.
Even then, I'm sure someone would figure out a way to have conflicting ideas that need to be argued out. There's a reason Tom Hanks invented Wilson (and the real-life stories such concepts are based on), we NEED other people to engage with, to debate with, to argue with, for validation and support and to negotiate with in order for our ideas to sharpen and for our minds to stay stable. Without this, we lose our minds or even die.
So not only is everything politics, we can't live without it.
I think about this every time I see someone whinging about politics in entertainment.
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Can't we have affordable repairable cars AND reliable public transport? That would sure be nice.
Many places in America at least are just too spread out. But we dont need a super mega duper feed f teenthousand to drive around. Shit like the Slate would be amazing if it could exist (I realize bezos funded it. Still doesn't keep it from being a bad idea).
Thats why I will argue old cars were undeniably better. You could actually repair them and they weren't rolling spyware with a subscription.
1990 to about 2014 is the perfect spot for cars. Before that is archaic for most people (i prefer 80s cars myself) and newer than that its just a corpo bot on wheels.
Good luck finding parts from the 80s though besides pickup trucks since I still lots of those from that era on the road still
Oh there's a lot of parts for American 80s cars around. And their crude enough you can fab most things to work fine or just get aftermarket if you need to.
Might I suggest Open Source Repairable Cars, Trains, Trams, Bikes, Bike-Cars, and VTOL's those would be awesome to get open source alternatives for
Sure. An eroded economy. Stagnant wages for many long with decreasing buying power. Price hikes thanks to tariffs, increasing insurance costs, rising subscription costs, etc. Cars bought at inflated prices and high interest for extended payment schedules during the covid price gouging, and just generally way too expensive these days anyway, are all draining bank accounts far more quickly than ever.
Bet any repos don’t go back on lots for resale, they’ll park them in the desert somewhere just to prop up scarcity and new car prices.
can we make city streets public transportation only and resort personal vehicles to the outer parts? Like we dont got trolleys going down our cities' broad streets/broadways these days, but lets get a shitton of busses goin up and down with no worry of joe in his civic.
Cars and Wall Street and the American people for that matter can all go fuck themselves. Can't we just have free and accessible public transit and walkable cities for fuck sake?
But the stock holders . . ..
/s
Awww. Theyre still not gonna make them one cent less expensive
So happy mine are paid off.
Once living in your car became a viable housing alternative, they had to take that away, too.
Wait until they figure out we need food to live.
t.b.f the reporting is more about whether these companies have hidden loans (including possibly loans that other lenders don't know about), which could have happened within railway companies just as easily as in car companies!
This is not a singular issue. That’s still millions who prefer the US to be car centric, and they fight to keep it that way. Just move to Europe
How much do you use the train? I spent 8 years without a car, and let me tell you this, getting that 4 to 5 hours back that I was wasting on the bus, commuting, shopping, going to entertainment, Eric, that's something I don't ever want to do again. Bus and train combo with a bike still was hours to do a commute that takes maybe 30 minutes by car.
It's a drag, but that's just an example of a poorly planned city. I've lived in places like that, but it doesn't have to be that way. I saw a you tube video about a city in the Netherlands I think it was where every house was within a 5 minute bike ride of a train station, and you could get around the city on a bike just fine, but if you wanted to drive, you'd have to go around to a road that looped the outside of a city. https://youtu.be/r-TuGAHR78w
That's not really an inherent problem to buses or trains, but rather a problem with poor implementations of them. Build out mass transit and fund it properly, and they largely go away. At rush hour, I have 3 different train options that would get me from my neighborhood to the city center faster than I could by car, and cheaper on top of it.
If we keep on saying, "Well, it's not good enough now, so forget about it," we'll just be having this conversation again in a few years, lamenting the fact that we didn't take the chance to build out now, but probably with more people having even more cars.
Well, Shaun, lemme tell ya; I didn't mind the 4 to 5 hours a week I spent on the train or the bus. Partly, because sometimes I got to meet genuinely lovely and hilarious strangers, and even make friends with people I never would have met otherwise. Or help people that needed help, being in the right place at the right time. I kinda miss that, having chances at being a kind stranger.
And you know, there is the savings to consider. Not having to spend the extra 30 hours at a job I hate to pay for an $800 expense I don't need was worth the extra commute time, in my opinion. All that extra free time that I wasn't driving or working to afford driving, I could use to read books. Or write books.
Beyond that, it was nice to have the cheapest and most freeing exercise I'd get. That's more money I didn't spend on a gym membership, owning a bicycle and taking it to visit my friends or getting groceries. And when the weather got bad and I needed a car, I'd just call a taxi. Or set up a carpool with a coworker, offer to pay for gas. It was still cheaper than owning a car. It was nice to have a chance to make friends with my coworkers too.
How much effort did it take to plan my entire life around the logistics of taking my bike/the bus/the train? About as much effort as it did planning my life around owning a car.
The only time I ever needed a car, Shaun, was when I lived in the middle of nowhere and there was no public transit. Because the local government designed the infrastructure that way.
Well I don't know where you getting the name Shaun. But when I say 4 to 5 hours I don't mean 4 to 5 hours a week I mean 4 to 5 hours a day. I would get up and on the bus by 3:30 in the morning to be to work by 6:15 I would then get off work and I wouldn't be home until sometimes 5:00 or 6:00 at night and if there were a delay could be as late as 7:00 at night. I too had great experiences with people I met on the bus I'm at a lot of great people I took homeless people out to eat I became friends with quite a few people the bus drivers hell my next door neighbor that ended up moving in I knew him because he was a bus driver before he moved in. However there is a limit to how much we need to be able to do.
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US admin is catering to corporations who only want to suck in everyone's money.
The new corporate objective is to have everyone die penniless, with no inheritance for their children.
Except for the wealthy, of course. They know how to handle money responsibly, by investing it properly, and not blowing every last penny on fleeting pleasures like food, housing, and transportation.
When someone says family comes first, they often mean their family over yours.
The name of my local mall is prefaced by "Cadillac Fairview (CF)". Cars have been overpriced for a long time now and the auto industry is investing in real estate. I think they may price themselves out of customers, just like the theater chains but at least they'll get a bailout.
CF has no relation to Cadillac the car company. Fun fact, it's parent company is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan
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You mean there is a flaw in the capitalistic idea of infinite profit growth. I am shocked.
Have they Tried RAISING Prices while DROPPING Wages? That might help!
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My truck is 25 years old 139k miles and runs great. It will probably last another 80-100k and we just paid off my wife's car. We have no intention of taking on debt for a new vehicle unless it's necessary.
I'm round 250k miles on my car (admittedly, not American so it's actually a bit over 400k km) and it's not even the most kilometers I've had on a car.
Buy something with an engine and transmission that are known to last that doesn't have known rust issues, take care of it, and it will take care of you. You of course seem to have realized it already.
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Don't forget proper bike infrastructure, trams, subway, busses. Like in most European countries. You'll end up with smaller roads, lower speeds, less accidents, cleaner air, faster transportation, less car parks so more room for development of huises, more jobs, less waste. Or you could widen the roads, remove sidewalks and force people to drive cars on a road crowded with massive trucks which will crush you like a tank when hit. Hard choice.
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Do you know what Henry Ford himself did?
Increased the wages so his own workers would buy his cars...
Henry Ford was a capitalist, racist, eugenicist asshole, but he had one thing the current capitalist, racist, eugencist assholes in power today don't: long term economic planning.
It's literally just supply side economics. If you have the power to increase the buying power of your customers, your customers can and will spend more money. Also more free time means people will want to spend more money on things to do and things to own, meanwhile if they're stuck spending 60-80 hours a week purely focused on work they'll be too tired to want anything other than food in their belly and a bed to sleep in
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