does American car culture make life tough for people on low salaries?

45 comments

1. That depends on where they live. For some yes, for others, such as myself, living in a city on the East Coast means that I can take the bus or walk and not feel burdened without a car.

2. While most people, even low income families, have a car, it would be a lot easier on them if they didn’t need to pay for the car/insurance/gas. It is also a lower percentage of car ownership for lower income families, which often means they have to work close to home or they won’t be able to get there. Better public transport would open up many job opportunities for these people.

3. I’m not sure what you mean by “car culture.”

   We’re pretty spread out. If you can’t afford a car, it’s certainly best to live in a place with some kind of public transit system. If you don’t, it’s tough. I live in a suburb that was pretty rural just a few years ago. You see people riding bikes or walking several miles, but there’s no bus system.

4. I think some of this is the cost of a vehicle is seen as a necessary cost, its just an assumed part of life that for most of us, one adult needs a personal vehicle to function.

   When I was working on the lower end of jobs like food service and retail and driving a beater, one major car repair would be a huge dent in my budget. I never went into debt, but it would at times wipe out my savings.

   Now I’m in a more stable career environment, and living with a long term partner we’re able to get by with just one car. It is a signifigant savings, especially since she earns more than me. Could I purchase a car? Sure. But a down payment would take a huge chunk of my cash savings away, and a monthly expense for insurance, loan repayment, etc… would be a not-fun burden.

   It was a mild inconvenience pre-COVID but we live close to my work so it was never really a burden. And post-COVID we’re both mostly remote so we hardly drive the thing at all. A tank can last us a full month.

   But yeah personal vehicles are a huge cost, but at the same time, so is not having one. Waiting for the bus and all that may be cheaper fiscally, but you’ll be sinking a lot of time into that.

5. It’s one of the reasons I never learned how to drive. And once I got a taste for city living I haven’t yet left.

   For me growing up cars were a money sink. They sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Gas money was more important than heating oil money. Fixing the car was more important than having a telephone line. Not fixing the car meant you could not get food, go to work, get medicine, or anything else. You were marooned without a car.

   Awesome, down voted for being raised by a single father of three making ~34k at a labor job, a guy who had zero extra money for anything for his children let alone $$$ to begin their car habit.

6. Vastly depends on where you live. Many places (no not as much as other countries) do have some public transportation (trains, buses). People may choose to get ride from friends and family, bike or walk.

   Some people do have an issue due to how large America is and will need a car to get around. That does make life harder for some people. But there are alternatives depending on what city you live in and what resources you have access to.

7. IMO, not really. Moving to a place where you don’t need a car could easily double your rent.

   Our first car was around $20k, adjusting for inflation. I don’t know how we would have survived without it. Moving in/out of apartments, doing grocery hauls, visiting friends in other cities, etc.

   We also live in an area where public transportation would make 0 sense and I would challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to explain how they would implement it. We already have busses but barely anyone rides them because they take a long time and its always easier to just hop in a car for most people. I worked with the county and saw the ridership stats. I think something like 0.001% of the county used them.

8. Poorer people usually gravitate towards cities so they don’t have to be dependent on cars.

9. Depends on where you live.

   There are plenty of cities that offer robust public transportation like NYC, Chicago, Boston, DC, Seattle, etc. But of course, these places can be very expensive as is – so poor people have greater stress with housing than transit.

   But pretty much every metro has at least a bus network, which is a lifeline for poor, elderly and disabled people who don’t drive. Reliability varies – some are great, others are dogwater.

   The further you live from *other people*, the more likely you are to rely on a car. That’s about all there is to it.

10. It just depends. Some places have reliable public transportation. And even people in poverty are able to afford some type of motor vehicle (but with the added cost of maintenance if it’s a clunker which it likely will be).

    We do have a serious car culture as our cities have gotten less and less walkable over the years. Shopping has moved from downtown areas to out in the suburbs where you need to park in multiple parking lots throughout the day to get essentials.

    Free parking is the biggest scam in America. Stores with free parking still have to pay to pave, maintain, and pay taxes on their massive parking lots. The cost is still passed onto the consumer through the products. You just don’t acknowledge it like you would acknowledge putting coins in parking meters.

11. Where I live yes, you literally cant do ANYTHING without a car, and theres also no public transportation either.

12. Where I’m (rural Montana) absolutely.

13. If by “car culture” you mean that we tend to build our cities and infrastructure with the assumption that everyone owns a car (outside of a few notable exceptions), then yeah, it certainly makes it harder for people with low salaries to have to drop multiple thousands of dollars in order to not rely on infrequent public transportation just to get food or go to work.

14. Yes, car’s are expensive to buy and maintain

    Also not cheap to Uber back and forth everywhere

15. Yes, in many areas.

    Services vary though. Even lots of small towns in Massachusetts are connected by bus. We have senior centers with vans that will bring elderly to appointments and to the senior center for things like dance classes and lunch.

    Buying a car and having insurance is pretty pricey. So is fixing a car. A car can mean the difference between keeping a good job and being unemployed- but I am sure that is not unique to this country.

16. There are a spectrum of answers and situations here. Yes, much of the country is reliant on cars as the form of transportation. Some lower income folks buy inexpensive cars and maintain them themselves. Some lower income folks finance cars. Some people finance a more expensive car than they should based on their financial situation.

    Can it make life tough? Yes. Is it inevitable? No.

    Using a car isn’t optional in many places. There’s no political or social will to change that in many places.

17. Yes, and no. Its complicated.

    I know a lot of people who through having no other choice in regards to following their passion, became excellent at wrenching on their car. Its tough, but it leads to a lot of really hard working gearheads.

    Now, as far as me personally scrolling through Cars & Bids on Youtube looking at cars that aren’t even gonna bid for more than $10,000 and *still* knowing I can’t afford it but still want it? Yeah its tough.

18. Yes, very much so.

    Car payments, insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc. are extreme burdens.

    Nearly every American outside of very select areas of some major cities needs a car to realistically function, and those places with public transportation suffer from infrequent schedules. And places in cities with good public transportation suffer from high housing and higher cost of living.

    American car culture is destructive to not just poor people but also everyone else. We’d all be better off without this car culture bullshit.

19. It can be difficult if public transportation in your region is unavailable, unsafe, or unreliable.

    I used to ride a bus to work. It made a commute that was about seven minutes by car about 45 minutes (there was a transfer in the middle iirc). I got to the point where I’d just walk it if the weather was decent.

20. It’s generally a trade off. Do you want to live in the suburbs or rural area where housing is cheaper, but you need to own a car to get everywhere? Or do you want to live in an urban area where you might not need a car but housing is much more expensive?

21. I think it’s the low salaries that make things tough for people on low salaries.

    Reddit tends to exaggerate most of the country’s problems and I think this is a perfect example.

22. It’s not car culture that’s the issue is the obsession with making everything revolve around cars even when other methods would be appropriate. Rural America wouldn’t survive without cars they are a necessity but many towns of all sizes could make their downtowns easier to traverse by foot or bike and it has been shown that focus can actually reduce traffic which would be good for drivers. I live a mile from downtown if I didnt feel concerned for my or my families safety we could bike there effectively taking a car off the street. Unfortunately the roads are built exclusively for cars with no safeguards for anyone else that’s the core of the issue.

    I dont even think people are asking for equality here just a greater consideration for alternative methods as we don’t have trains, trolley, or the ability to even walk in most places.

23. Most everything makes life tough for people on low salaries, they don’t have much power to do anything about it.

24. Yes. Just like anything else, where the cost burden is shared as a public good, poor people benefit as they don’t pay a proportionate cost for their use. When the cost burden is more on the individual, poor people have it harder.

25. Regardless of what country I was in, if I lived in a small town like I do here in the US a car would be necessary.

26. I specifically don’t have my driver’s license because I can’t afford the coats that surround getting it or using it.

27. In my area, yes. If you can’t afford a car you’re borderline unemployable. Advice is given to people who are struggling to pay their car note before their rent – you can sleep in your car, but you can’t drive your house to work. If you have to lose one, the car is more valuable.

28. Depending on your city and state, you may have high car ownership taxes too.

29. Except in very urban areas, yes. However, it is cheaper to own a car in most parts of the US compared to most of like Europe.

30. I don’t know what car culture would entail but most families do have cars and there are options for people on low salaries. There are a multitude of dealers who cater directly to low income and bad credit customers; and many times they finance directly. All you have to do is pay the bill. Used vehicles are also plentiful here and easy to find.

31. Absolutely, 100%. I experienced this in college along with friends. We wanted to apply to jobs around the college (i.e. walking distance) and in every interview, they always asked if we had “reliable transportation.” Apparently, our feet aren’t reliable enough but somehow a car is. The fact that you have to sink tens of thousands of dollars into a tool to let you participate in society is an expense most people just write off without realizing how expensive it actually is.

32. no, why would it?

33. Yeah absolutely. I remember when I was younger and saving money working while in college my old Honda would always get into problems that were expensive (for a broke college student) to fix. Just getting a newer car was not an option.

34. Yep. A cheap used car may well end up needing additional repairs and then what? Plus fuel/insurance/gas/parking means the costs add up.

35. Someone will get grumpy with me about this so: The below applies to areas of the country without well developed and long established transit systems. I know they exist but they are exception more than rule.

    Certainly can, yeah. We have a healthy used car market and always have, but it’s not exactly a one-time expense. The ownership costs. Most people make it work and get a car anyway but it’s kind of a constant drain no matter who you are. If you’re unemployed and trying to get back on your feet, trying to claw out of homelessness, have issues getting something that pays decently even if you can work etc….that kind of thing it can be a big barrier.

    In a lot of the country, public transit and cheap intercity travel like buses are pretty much the domain of the poor and homeless. The cities aren’t built around the transit, it’s kind of plugged in after, so it really sharply limits where those people can get work and where they can live, making it harder to get good options for the people who rely on it. I mentioned before MOST people, even low paid, make getting a car work. This means in a lot of places residents may actively resist getting public transit because they view it not as opening up a good option for themselves but instead making their area an option for the poor and homeless. Arlington, TX is kind of the poster-child for this problem because it’s so large but it plays into why so many areas don’t provision for transit as they’re expanding.

    On the other hand, some areas have kind of the opposite problem. Where the idea of transit and walkability are catching on more, the areas around existing lines become more desirable. Desirable means money. Some cities are seeing gentrification up and down their lines, pushing the people that NEED rather than WANT transit farther away from the existing network by simple price.

    ​

    Point is, in either direction you’re limiting the options of those who can’t afford a car, either by resisting expansion of current lines or by targeting the areas around them for development into the trendy, young-professional targeted mixed use apartment complexes or the degree-demanding business parks they tend to work in.

36. I’ve never had a car, nor did my family growing up. 32 years so far without one. I don’t really think it has, but that’s probably because of where I’ve lived (northern Arizona, southwest Colorado, and Southern Arizona). I’m pretty used to having to rely on public transit, bikes, or walking, so I account for that. If groceries were needed then we’d just make sure to bring insulated bags for cold stuff. I don’t know any different so I can’t really say how tough it’s been without a car lol

37. Yes. You should see the beat up shit boxes people drive because they can’t afford to fix it. No car, no job.

38. Hard to say.

    On the one hand, having your own car means you can go where you want when you want. So it opens up your potential locations for work and where to living. It no longer has to be places that are convenient for public transit.

    On the other hand, cars are expensive. Especially now. Back when I first got my license at 16 in 2000 you could get a fairly decent (but old) car for $500 fairly often. For my 15th birthday my mother got me a 15 year old car that she paid $500 bucks for. The car ran great, it was just old.

    These were also very simple older cars. Parts to fix them were cheap and plentiful and you could fix the vast majority of issues with them with a few hand tools easily. Auto shop class in high school mostly taught you everything you needed to know. So maintenance on cars like this wasn’t that bad cost wise either.

    Cars like that are gone these days. A lot of people blame cash for clunkers but realistically speaking age would have done them in eventually anyway. These days a 10-15 year old used car costs more like 7-10K instead of $500. They also aren’t nearly as cheap or easy to repair as they were in the past.

39. Just throwing in my own thoughts…

    assuming “car culture” in this case means the fact that we all kind of -have to- own vehicles , yeah it makes life tough.

    I’m a mech. engineer and live in the middle of Illinois, about 2 hrs from chicago. There are still a decent number of engineering/manufacturing jobs down in this area , but most of them require at least a 20 minute drive, my current workplace is 45 miles from my house. Before the pandemic, this meant driving to and from work, 90 miles per day, 5 days a week. That’s approximately 22,500 miles a year give or take. Assuming my car gets 40mpg on the highway (which it does if I’m not driving too agressively) , that’s 563 gallons of gas per year which at current pricing (lets say $3.30 a gallon) would cost me $1856 dollars a year in commuting expenses alone… That doesn’t factor in tax, increased oil changes, etc. so really you’re looking at over $2k per year of my salary going directly to transportation expenses to and from my workplace. Factor in all the other driving we have to do (I live in a small town with a small grocery store, Dollar General (for those outside the US, its like a mini walmart that’s the size of a small grocery store?) and a couple of restaurants. The groceries in town are usually more expensive than Aldi though so we either pay extra to drive less, or drive more to pay less. Most of the things we need to drive for (drs appointments, trips to big box stores, etc.) are a 20+ minute drive from here so if we’re not careful it turns into a lot of trips (I calculated something like 3-4 dollars in gas per trip) , and our gas expenses (myself and my wife) end up being 200+ dollars per month.

40. Yes. Growing up poor in a car dependent place with no car (we were at the mercy of my dad who didn’t live with us and mom’s family) was ROUGH. And the fact that my mom is the kind of person who never doesn’t find a reason to be paranoid compounds that.

41. Excluding cities, car ownership is not prohibitively expensive. You have to be able to save up a few grand once for a cheap car. Which ok, I agree that might take you some time if you have every reason in the world why you can’t get that done. But once that is done and you own the cheap car, gas, liability insurance, maintenance for the entire year should cost $3k to $4k a year max. The mental cost of being forced to walk in the cold or using the shit public transit we have available is much higher

42. This really depends on the area. in the West (outside of the coastal California cities, and then only recently) almost everyone has a car. If you’re poor, you have a beat up or barely running car… but you have a car as soon as you can possibly get one.

    The problem in recent years, and in some areas in particular, is that some political ideologies are trying to dissuade people from driving cars or having cars by raising taxes. This makes life much more difficult for those folks with lower salaries who need them. Used car prices and gas prices together are a one-two punch against people with lower salaries having transportation independence.

    America had generally had a very strong used car market with cars available at all sorts of price points. The further we’ve gotten away from that, the harder things have become for those who are struggling. (And the increased interest rates now being used to tamp down inflation are not helping.)

    Fundamentally, geography in rural California (or really, anywhere in California outside of a few specific neighborhoods in a few specific cities) necessitates a car for daily errands and getting around. Hopefully saner heads take control and we’re able to get car prices back down soon. Getting your first car remains a rite of passage here, and it shouldn’t be as difficult as it now is.

43. I live in Missouri and only two cities in the entire state who have public transportation and they are both very spotty

44. It can in the sense you need a car in every city outside of the northeast, San Francisco and Chicago. Doesn’t help too that our cities aren’t good for walking.

45. Yes.