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Americans can no longer afford their cars (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 10 months ago by jack@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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But as things stand, cars are still really expensive for many Americans. Just 10 percent of new car listings are currently priced below $30,000, according to CoPilot. Things are not much better in the used car market, where only 28 percent of listings are currently priced below $20,000.

According to an October report by Market Watch, Americans needed an annual income of at least $100,000 to afford a car, at least if they're following standard budgeting advice, which says you shouldn't spend more than 10 percent of your monthly income on car-related expenses.

That means that more than 60 percent of American households currently cannot afford to buy a new car, based on Census data. For individuals, the numbers are even worse, with 82 percent of people below the $100,000 line.

$100k to afford a car! Wtf.

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[-] regul@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

Obama also got tons of money appropriated for rail. Here's a sympathetic write-up from 2014: https://time.com/3100248/high-speed-rail-barack-obama/

Headline projects were CAHSR, Florida HSR, and Wisconsin HSR. Republican governors sent the money back in Wisconsin and Florida, and that got sent to CAHSR and Acela, mostly.

Some lowlights from projects mentioned in the article:

"it’s bringing trains to the Illinois towns of Geneseo and Moline for the first time since 1978" - still no train despite at least $400m in federal funding
"By 2017, the program will reduce trip times from Chicago to St. Louis by nearly an hour through upgrades that will increase top speeds from 79 to 110 miles per hour" - $1.66bn in federal dollars later travel times are now half an hour shorter as of last year
"Chicago to Detroit will get a similar boost" - 80 miles of Amtrak-owned track were improved from 79mph to 110. It's saved about 20 minutes after over a decade.

The money got spent, but not efficiently and not on anything new. The Obama admin's obsession with spreading the money everywhere out of some awful instinct that it would get them Republican buy-in just resulted in terrible kneecapped projects. Hell, even some of the money that went to states that wanted it (California) mostly got wasted. CAHSR is terribly designed, terribly managed, terribly constructed, and terribly expensive. It has also probably done significant damage to the American political will for HSR.