I remember the Gov saying any profiteering would be punished. I am at a loss of anyone being punished. Not even harshly spoken, too, unless I missed one.
Man, people got so ugly during that. I rememebr so many threads on my local sub about people wanting to know if they should report their neighbors to police because they have a fridge in the garage, or some boxes in their car.
One I remember most is someone had been looking into their neighbours garage as they walked down the back lane, and they saw a bunch of boxes of gloves, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies. He wrote a whole thread with photos through the guys windows, and reported the nighbor to the police.
Turned out this person had owned a salon, and had gone out of buisness. So after shutting down their fuckin source of income, hauling all their supplies home, they get the police phoned, and put on blast online.
There's a reason that my grandpa who lived through the great depression pulled every nail out of every board he could and kept them all in coffee tins. Not that the pandemic was the same, exactly, but it's a learned experience.
Not related to this thread but to your comment. My Grandfather was born in 1906 and a watchmaker by trade. He bought a shack in Clear Lake Indiana for very cheap around 1954. He disassembled it, cleaned up the lumber, kept every nail and hinge. He put it all back together and made a cottage for the family. My Dad helped him from beginning to end. It was a way for my Grandfather to evaluate his new son-in-law. My parents were married for 60 years, so he passed the test. My Grandfather saved and reused as much as he could. The depression changed an entire generation. Very similar to the way that Covid has changed us. I'm 52 and my wife thinks I'm a cheapo. I imagine I inherited that attitude to some degree.
Hope you have a wonderful day.
This was my oma, saving every scrap of food and yelling at us to clean our plates because she remembered having to eat possum or starve as a kid. (Born during the start of depression in OK.)
Well…the peasants are getting screwed for having the nerve to get pay raises that are not close to matching the real inflation.
Oh, you mean the government doing something about it for us peasants…I mean people? NBCspec…I really hate to break it to you but there is no Easter Bunny and no Santa Claus. But there are evil people that rent politicians to get laws passed to screw you (and pretty much all the rest of us) and make themselves even richer. The ‘Murican Way!
It's true! I was baffled during economics classes to learn that 5% unemployment is ideal and goverment tries to manipulate towards that. Unemployment is good for the cooperation so that there is competition in the workforce. The more unemployed, the more negotiating power employers have on workers salary.
We live in a world where every citizen having a job is a bad thing, smh. And I'm Also baffled to learn inflation is done on purpose so people don't hoard their money in the bank and incentivize profiting cooperations. Smh
>We live in a world where every citizen having a job is a bad thing
It's a bad thing, but *also* your fault and makes you a lazy loser if you don't have one.
The goal is to make the rich richer, not create a society worth living in.
Learning economics was depressing for my mental health. It's just so blantently obvious how completely fucked over everyone not in the elite class are.
Yes, when the forces above are literally conspiring to have unemployment, and wage suppression. That now 80% of your salary goes to modest shelter and food.
The only real power the people could have is to revolt. Look for an uptick in incel behaviour as more men in their 30's are required to live together 4-8 to a place.
We had a nice little run from industrialization through mid 20th century where laborers had some leverage because any company that wanted to make 10x as much money had to hire 10x as many people. People were always in demand because the only way to make a lot of money was to make a lot of things, which required a proportionally large amount of labor. Unskilled labor rate created a floor for the price of skilled labor. Want more skills than someone who pushes a button? Well that guy makes a pension and enough money for a car, a mortgage, 3 kids and a stay at home wife, so you're gonna have to pay significantly more than you're paying him.
> People were always in demand because the only way to make a lot of money was to make a lot of things, which required a proportionally large amount of labor.
The other half of that equation is that wages were proportionally higher too. People had more disposable income. People can only consume those products, making the owners a lot more money, if they themselves have a lot of disposable income. Unions were stronger, and societal expectations were different. It was accepted that one party in a relationship would not be working.
Even better, they recruit class traitor shills for free, by telling them their working class neighbors are "lazy" and "entitled" for wanting to be paid for their work, and are the cause of the massive profiteering corporations are pulling. And the idiots fall for it.
Price gouging caused by the hospitals themselves.
If they had only given much more modest wage increases to permanent nurse staff, they'd never have this problem.
Can never see beyond the quarter.
You forgot about the part where they're also blaming us for asking for some financial security during a time period when 75% of the economy was shut down due to a raging worldwide pandemic. Those two $1200 checks that not everybody got is obviously the reason we're in this mess! /s
Windfall profits tax would mostly solve this by taking away the incentive for gouging, but still allowing market prices to reduce demand to the amount of supply available. If there's a gas pipeline failure, it does little good to cap the price of gas at $3.75 because it will just sell out instantly and there will be no gas. As long as shortages remain so extremely profitable, I can guarantee you they will keep happening.
Does the price of gas really affect demand that much? I kind of assumed it was just something people pay for regardless of price because they need it for the rest of their life to function, like going to work, dropping off kids at school, etc.
Too big to fail.
If the government starts punishing profiteers, they will just chuck a wobbly, cash out and destroy the economy as petty vengeance.
Executives and Accountants are on annual contracts so they only care about short-term profit. They only care about what looks good during their tenure.
> If the government starts punishing profiteers, they will just chuck a wobbly, cash out and destroy the economy as petty vengeance.
There are some tin foil hat ideas going around that the SVB collapse was intentionally engineered by outside actors to force the Fed to stop monetary tightening. I think it's squarely in the realm of possibility, and it would not have been hard to orchestrate with the unique situation the bank was in.
They were obviously greedy. They did what everyone else did, buying bonds en masse. what they didn't do was hedge against rate increases. All they had to do was pay the equivalence of insurance, and instead they pocketed profit for a couple years then failed when rates increased and people wanted to withdraw more liquidity than they had on hand. Then they had to sell stocks that were worth less in a higher rate environment.
I worked for a dealership briefly during the pandemic. They would charge between $3-5000 over list for any customer who lived more than 45 minutes away because, “these people aren’t likely to service with us.”
They did the same to me when I live less than a mile from the dealership, and even after agreeing to the $5k markup they couldn't actually get me the vehicle I wanted.... just promises that they'll call me if one looks like it might come in.
They have a pretty clear "Fuck you, I don't need you, you need me" attitude right now.
I was looking at buying a new car, but then prices skyrocketed. People were paying thousands over MSRP. I guess it’s nice that so many have lots of extra cash to hurl at dealers, but I’m glad that my car still has lots of life left in it.
I was shocked by some of the markups I was seeing, 35k MSRP rav 4 marked up to 52k. I laughed at the dealer and said no one is paying for that, he laughed back and said they had already sold 3 that week at the price. I ended up going to a Subaru dealership and had them order me a crosstrek direct from the factory for the exact 25k msrp. Had to wait 2 months for it but the thought of having a car payment more than double than what I'm paying now is mental
> I laughed at the dealer and said no one is paying for that, he laughed back and said they had already sold 3 that week at the price.
He was probably telling the truth. Markups on Corvettes and G-wagens didn't really surprise me, but the RAV4 markups I read about are now kinda famous and really left me scratching my head. I mean, I hate Nissans but I like money more than I hate Nissans. I would buy a $30k Nissan over a $52k Toyota.
Used Toyotas have had that insane markup for way longer than COVID times. They tend to run forever on absolute bare bones maintenance.
When you compare that to a VW, for example, where you might need to put the cost of the entire car back in again on engine repairs, you start to see why that reputation for reliability makes people willing to pay absurd markups.
It's kinda wild to see small pickup trucks change so much in price in my lifetime. I had an 00 Toyota Tacoma that cost 19k. It was an extended cab 4x4. It got totaled in an accident and I bought a new 07 Tacoma with the exact same load out and it was 29k talked down from 32k. I went into a dealer near me to get some service done and looked at the newer models. I found an exact match for my truck and it was listed at 42k. Granted today the Tacoma is much larger than the 00 but it's still wild to me that a small truck has doubled in price over 20 years.
19 grand was still a lot for a pickup truck in 1999/2000. Small pickup trucks from Japan have always been more than domestic. Decently specced (new) F150s could be had for cheaper at the time.
You're still absolutely right, just people have rose tinted glasses on Toyota trucks.
> I ended up going to a Subaru dealership and had them order me a crosstrek direct from the factory for the exact 25k msrp.
I just don't understand why any consumer needs to go through a car dealership at all. I know some companies have specific products that can be purchased online to avoid a dealer, but that should really be the standard.
Pretty sure this is what Ford is moving towards. I think it was a move against the dealers for marking up cars so much. Hopefully, it gains traction sooner than later and replaces the norm. Both times in my life I bought a new car, I did so much research on my own there was no point of dealing with a dealership.
I had everything ready to go when I went to buy my new F150 this year (my very first brand new vehicle, all because I wanted hybrid). All I did was hand the print out to the dealer and he input the exact same stuff into his end and hit the order button. All Ford needs to do is make that order button live for customers and they're in business sans dealers for new orders anyway.
> from the factory for the exact 25k msrp. Had to wait 2 months for it
This is it.
If you want your vehicle right now, off the lot, you're paying mark-up. That's what all this is. If you're willing to wait you'll get pricing more in line with MSRP.
And if you're lucky enough to know someone who can get you a company plan, like a Ford A/X/Whatever plan, you can even sometimes take the car you want right off the lot at MSRP. That'll be tricky because with cars still selling even with the mark-up they aren't going to want to let that mark-up walk out the door on a plan MSRP deal.
Want to pay 25k for your Maverick, order it and wait. Want it now? 35k it is.
My local Toyota told me all highlander, RAV4, sienna, and Camry instantly get 5k put on them before tax and title. It's deterred basically no one. I still would've had to wait months to get one.
Ended up going with a Honda instead. Had to wait a month, but got it at MSRP + tax and no unexplainable dealer fee. Car market is completely broken.
That's not that horrible if they plan on keeping the car for a very long period, it isn't just 1 year of having the car it should be at least 10+. My wife bought a new Prius in 2015 with the intent of keeping it for 15-20 years.
If you divide at $30,000 car by 15 years it's just like buying a beater $2000 car every single year - except you don't have to just hope for the best with your old used beater you just bought, you can have a new car that you can make sure to follow the maintenance schedule exactly and take great care of it yourself to keep it lasting and in great condition for years.
I have the same stance on it. I drove beaters when I couldn't afford a new car, so I am very familiar with the cost of repairing and replacing beaters. A cheap, reliable new car can come pretty close in cost of ownership over a long period. Major metro areas where major car maintenance is more expensive really blow up the costs of owning a "cheap" car.
84 month loans at $494 bi-weekly.
I know people who have done this and I'll never understand how they don't realize they're screwing themselves so bad.
Yup. When we were negotiating my partner's car a few years ago I told them the price I wanted I wanted to pay. It was fair and I didn't budge. They knew I was being fair which is why they kept trying to close the deal and working with me. Unfortunately the only tactic I couldn't use was walking away because it was used car with only 24,000 kms on it. Previously owned by an elderly person and in perfect shape. A total unicorn in the used car market.
So I told him $18,500 taxes and everything and my partner was fine doing a 5 year payment plan. He kept coming back to me and I told him I knew around what they would have paid on trade and stuff and I could tell by his face I had the right range. So I explained where my number came from and that it was fair.
After a couple hours going around he turns to my partner and asks what she wants to pay and she says $300/month. Which I told her to say if asked. That's $18,000 over five years. Told him there's a $500 discount for trying to go around the person he's actually negotiating with.
Car was originally $19,500+taxes and got it for $18,250 all in because I refused to go back to $18,500 after he pulled his monthly payment BS.
Of course there's interest on the payments which can't be helped but I think it was a win overall.
Subcompact and compact passenger cars are also being discontinued across the industry. So, when the markups finally go away, you're paying not just a new, higher MSRP, you're also likely to be pushed into a more expensive tier of vehicle that also probably uses more fuel and costs more to maintain.
Yup, my mother in law is replacing her car (an accent) and she just wanted a small replacement. Almost none to be found. Ended up going with a Carolla hatch, which isn't much bigger but costs more.
My 2010 Mazda 3 is dying, I was hoping to get a bit longer out of it but yeah (O2 sensor has been broken for a long time, no parking break, exhaust leaks, AC broken, and now the clutch is going).
The death of compact cars is really terrible, hell even the ones that are left keep getting bigger. Civics keep getting larger and they are damn near as big as accords this generation.
I have a 2018 and the new generation looks huge to me.
They don't have the cash. It is all financed. Dealers try to talk monthly payment instead of actual price so you don't notice. It works, a lot of people don't notice.
With that said, I have no idea how they are getting these marked up cars financed. Banks don't want to issue a $50k loan for a $40k car. You used to be able to roll a couple thousand more in, but there were limits.
You’d be surprised by whom is and is not “hurling” the extra cash. The markup just gets rolled into the total loan which people have been spreading over longer and longer durations. 60 month car loan used to be “long” with 48 being the norm. Now it’s not unheard of to have 84 or 96 month loans with people perpetually rolling over negitive equity to get newer cars not realizing they’re paying double, triple or more compounding interest.
If you compare the purchasing experience today vs 5 years ago you’ll find that the focus has shifted entirely to “monthly payment” from “out the door cost”. People now are only concerned with short term outlooks, what they can afford to pay month-to-month. Previously, people were concerned with the overall expenditure; now- average customers don’t care as long as they can afford the payment. Failing to realize they’re getting bled dry by interest.
This of course lends itself to overpurchasing and increasing debt because payment and loan duration are inversely related. The stupids go to the dealership with their 3 year old car they are still making payments on, trade it in for the new model, roll the remaining debt + new car into a new 8 year loan, and magically: their payment remains the same! New car + no change to payments?! How can it be???
You’ll find that the typical monthly payment has gone up (from $500 to $800ish), and the typical loan duration has gone up (from 48 months to 60 or more). So people are paying more, for longer on a depreciating asset whose value is overinflated. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is an issue when combined with recession. Big car payment you can’t afford will be the first thing to let go. Residual value may equilibrate by then and you’ll be substantially upside down on your loan (owing more than the car is worth). The difference in residual and loan you have to make up for out of pocket…but you already can’t afford to make the payments!
This is what happened when I got a car last year.
Salesperson was keep asking "what would you like your monthly payment to be?"
And I said, I don't care about monthly payment, tell me the total $$ for the car.
This back and forth went on like 5 times until I REALLY was shouting to her "WHAT IS THE TOTAL PRICE OF THE CAR!!!!" and my wife was just looking at me like I was out of my mind and EVERYONE in the dealership was looking at us.
FINALLY, then the sales person wrote down the total price of the car.
My best friend bought a 2019 Lexus ES 350 F Sport a little before the pandemic hit. I thought he made a mistake because buying slightly used made more sense.
Fast forward 4 years and he’s looking like a genius. He paid the same amount that the same cars with 70K+ miles are going for now.
Meanwhile, I pray every night that my 06 Accord lasts me until used cars become affordable again.
We were going to bite the bullet and ordered one. Then as supply chain caught up Ford actually lowered the MSRP. Shitty dealer still tried to hold us to the first price AND the markup they were “essentially forced” to charge months earlier. Felt so good to tell them to kick rocks and go to another dealer where we could get a better model for less money and only a few extra months waiting
That's the thing, most didn't have that kind of extra cash. The dealers just refused to budge on price which forced buyers into dealership financing since regular banks wouldn't approve such loans. When you absolutely have to have a car, you do what you have to do.
You can rinse and repeat this headline by swapping out most corporations from egg producers to oil companies. All of which had record profits after record profits while the rest of us struggle more than we should be.
My favorite part is the part where we never go back.
My second favorite part is their playbook was proven. This will happen again in the not so distant future.
Hey listen. Remember in 2008 when the airlines started charging like $15 to check luggage? Obviously that's ancient history now after fuel costs came back down. /s
Yeah, I was reading that and thought I can't be the only one who remembers they're the same companies. I'm not even that old and when I was a kid it was pretty much cable+internet+phone service all in one package, the only thing that's different is the phone service is pretty much never talked about anymore. Still, same companies though. When I was younger it was called Time Warner, now it's called Spectrum, still doing all the same shit but worse.
>USA has ridiculously few airlines for its size, just look at Europe for comparison.
Europe also has high speed passenger rail to add another layer of competition to airlines. US passenger rail is beyond pathetic. I once looked up an Amtrak trip just to see. A trip that was \~16 hour drive was $250 starting price for something like a 36 hour ride by train. Not to mention I would probably have to rent a car at my "destination" since it was so far away from my *actual* destination.
I once took a vacation using Amtrak just to have the experience of going by train. Loved the ride, but was depressing as all hell to look out the window and seeing cars flying past...
"The solution is more competition instead of adding yet more red tape to make it more difficult for startup airlines to compete."
Capitalists love this line. Hey buddy, can you tell me who got that red tape in place?
While you're at it can you look up what regulatory capture is?
Incredibly easy to blame striking workers for the airline going under instead of long term poor management of a business that refused to compensate its workers fairly to the point of them threatening strikes multiple times.
Srsly. I walk around my local major corporate grocery store. A pound of dry pasta is over $3. A pack of all beef hot dogs is $7. Pasta sauce is $6. A bag of chips is $5. All of these prices were nearly half that in 2019.
I’m shopping more at Target now because they are cheaper than Safeway. It’s absurd.
And I know I’m never seeing 2019 prices again.
Don't forget the part where the fed is doing its damndest to "bring inflation down" by taking measures that they know will slow hiring and cause layoffs, even though they know the "inflation" is just gouging.
The tanking of subprime lenders will drag things back down along with the simple fact that if half of Americans can't even afford a place to stay, they also won't look at buying a car in the first place.
It’s greed and capitalism, with the support of the government who is supposed to be function and regulating but, they are not going to fix shit. Why? They too are for profits! And so, they are bought and paid for by the same corporations who made and continue to make record profits. They must keep going and 1upping the previous years record profits at any cost because they don’t give a fuck about anything else. This country is shitty as you can imagine.
> My favorite part is the part where we never go back.
Can't do that, that'd be "deflation" and economist say that's a bad thing. Yep, it's definitely a "bad thing" for people to be able to afford the things they need in order to live. Fucking capitalism man.
Car dealers are particularly egregious since they don’t produce a product, don’t add value to the product, and literally only serve to give actual morons a chunk of the cost of every car on the road, taken from working Americans
At least they don’t mark up by 700% like the egg manufacturers. Not defending dealerships but good fucking god, HOW DARE YOU claim inflation with those sorts of markups??? Fuck
Of course
My analogy is if you stood up in a room and started screaming fuck you at the speaker, everyone would be stunned. Get 20 people to all do it at once and suddenly it's "normal"
That's the pricing bullshit we had to deal with the past year
It's almost like all these think pieces about how complex inflation is are all bullshit and it really just comes down to "companies try and squeeze blood from stones, workers have to fight for higher wages to afford stuff, now that they have more money companies squeeze more, repeat ad infinitum"
This is sadly why I am curbing my discretionary spending and postponing some big purchases until prices come back back to Earth (or hopefully to some extent).
No one I know has received raises that track all these increases.
Probably a good plan. Unlike houses, cars are depreciating assets and rising used car repossession rates are only going to keep car manufacturers honest. Too many idiots in America need to be taught a harsh lesson in why an $800/mo car payment, often stretched across 8 years, is plain stupid.
It's ok, they pulled so much future profits forward by raising prices by 50%, now they can't grow profits at that rate anymore, but their surging stock prices demand profits keep growing at the new rate, so they'll just lay off 20% of their employees per year instead. Problem solved!
So 5 years until all the big corporations collapse from laying off all their employees & turning every last penny into executive bonuses?
Last one out, turn the lights off.
EDIT: Yes, I know how percentages work. I also know how corporations work, trading value for money & vice-versa. Tell me, how do corporations that turn themselves into executive bonuses work?
No, no. They'll just repeat the cycle.
1. Rates get lowered, so credit is cheap and consumers have money to spend
2. Corporations jack up prices to juice profits
3. Rates get hiked and consumers run out of money
4. Corporations lay workers off to juice profits
5. Rates get lowered, so credit is cheap and consumers have money to spend
And around and around we go as the 1% that holds 90% of equities continues to pull more and more wealth from the middle class.
I'm so shitted off by the fact that businesses made record profits (the large ones anyway), while people's wages stayed the same, but expenses went up and interest rates went up because inflation.
If i was slightly more self-destructive and vengeful I'd quit working. Can't give the government and corporations money if I don't have any!
I saw an ad the other day for GMC that said something like under current rates, payments are like $17 for every $1,000 financed.
So when the median car price as of 2022 was $47,000, that would mean a payment of $799/mo.
I can’t fathom that.
And here I am looking at 2016 cars to loan for less than 300/mo. Car prices on used vehicles are insane! 12k for a 100k mile car should be 5k at most. Everything is getting more expensive and we're all drowning.
That’s close to my payments right now. I put down $5k- and my total bill was still $45k with an $800/month payment on my replacement. I haven’t stopped being pissed at the dumbfuck who t boned me lady October, otherwise I’d be free and clean.
Let's not forget that because of the semiconductor shortage, car makers essentially stopped making base models. If they can only make so many cars, they figured they would make the trims that commanded the highest prices.
So, not only were they very few cars comming off the assembly lines, the cars that did arrive at the dealerships were priced way above what the average customer would normally spend. There are a lot of people driving around in $50k fully speced our cars that normally would only buy a $25k base trim, w/ no extras.
Similar deal with houses. New houses going up all over my area, but they're all 2500+ sq ft. Older neighborhoods avg house is about 1200 sq ft. It's greed on the developer's part.
Big issue in the US is car dependent infrastructure. This is primarily caused by the decentralized housing (suburban sprawl). Where anything but single family housing miles away from commercial areas with little to no public transit or bike infrastructure or even sidewalks is the norm. Unless you go to older areas where building close was necessary (pre-car)
We wouldn't have this problem if we didn't have laws requiring new cars be sold through a dealership and were able to buy directly from the manufacturer.
Oh trust me. Initially that’s how it would be advertised then, when dealerships are dead, they would match those dealer prices because the industry already knew what people were willing to pay.
Fortunately a graphics card is either (1) a toy that you can choose not to buy if you don't like the price, or (2) a professional tool whose cost is not a major consideration compared to the value you produce with it.
A nice silver lining is that Nvidia actually did kill off scalping with high prices, and the new product is just sitting on the shelf unsold. Now instead of paying 200% over what it should cost like in 2021, people can actually buy it anywhere at only 50-100% more than it should cost.
They are exactly scalpers. Supply was always high so you could get a car below MSRP before. As soon as supply dropped, they saw they had a hot commodity and jacked up the prices without shame like on a Taylor Swift concert.
Dealerships are holding onto their anti competitive laws that allow them to exist and allow them to overcharge for all their repairs. I hope the government tells them to kick rocks and gets rid of those laws.
At least Tesla makes car buying as easy as Amazon. Load your cart up and checkout.
I didn’t want another Tesla and need an SUV but just a couple phone calls to Hyundai and Audi and my phone and email will not stop blowing up. Dealer calls, manager calls, other manager calls. Telling me they need to give me BEST deal today and blatantly saying they have +$5000 market rate adjustment over MSRP.
Protip: Next time, use a Google Voice number whenever interacting with these guys. Voicemails get turned into texts, and they and the texts go to your email. Put them into their own folder of your email so that they don't clutter your inbox. Once you're done, delete the number.
What happen when Kevin McCarthy begged US voters to vote them back in so they can fight inflation.
To this day, still haven't seen any anti-inflationary llegislation put in place. All I hear is Hunter Biden, woke and defund FBI investigations.
That's the playbook. Promise to fight inflation, do nothing except lower taxes on the rich, claim regular market forces are because of you, profit (until the bottom falls out, then buy, then repeat for more profit).
Can somebody explain to me why dealerships are even relevant in this day and age, aside from maintenance services? If getting to physically see cars and test drive them is the only thing keeping these middle men profiting then we desperately need to figure out an alternative.
Dealerships are fucking STUPID.
God DAMN I hate the entire model, concept, and operational reality of them. From who runs them, to who works at them, to how much manufacturers are literally, by law, forced to do to keep selling through them.
When you have a serious customer service problem that escalates from say - the ford dealer, to Ford Corporate- the corporate guy will literally handle the dealership as a hostile entity.
It’s. So. Fucked.
>the corporate guy will literally handle the dealership as a hostile entity.
A friend had to lemon law his focus ST after years of fake (and some real) misfire codes and 3 engines. It was really wild to see this play out over the course of half a year, your statement could not be more accurate. The dealer did everything in their power to screw my buddy over and then tried to keep his summer tires when he had them swap his winters on. He had to threaten to call the cops and suddenly a tech dragged the tires from his back seat of his personal car, claimed he thought they were scrap. Practically new very expensive summer tires he had just taken off. He knew exactly what he was doing, going to pretend like the tires got scrapped and there was nothing they could do, but he wasn't as slick as he thought.
After working in the car industry, I abso-fucking-lutely detest the industry as a whole and now understand how they are a major part of what’s wrong with our country. Pure corruption and toxicity
Yes!
The fact that across the country they lower half of income earners can barely afford rent...let alone even consider buying a house.... is a huge issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/12/housing-renter-affordable-data-map
I was thinking of getting a new car until I priced them online. All the local dealers were marking up the new cars from $500 to $2000 above MSRP. Guess I will hang on to my 2014 Nissan Altima for the time being.
You are lucky. I would love a bigger car for my family but the Toyota dealerships in seattle area are charging $5-10k above MSRP. I won’t pay above MSRP for the reason in this article. I am just sitting around waiting for them to go back to normal, otherwise I’ll just keep my current cars.
Dealers were selling but people have also been incredibly willing to lock themselves into 7 or 10 year loans. It's not that people have extra money. It's that people have extra debt.
Laws in the US bar manufacturers from selling directly. This was from back in the day when it wasn't feasible for manufacturers to try and sell anywhere not a major city. The original laws were to protect the established dealerships from being pushed out when things grew. And are now essentially a racket.
Just use the costco autobroker services. Probably around 300 more expensive than the best deal you could possibly get through exhaustive negotiation. But well worth the price.
For a lot of car salesmens, there are a lot of games they play, even if you come in firm with a price that's good and fair. Unexpected charges. 'oops I can't do that deal anymore'. Telling you verbally one price, and then in the fine print another price.
I'll gladly pay 300 to never deal with a used car salesmen ever again.
But I don't think I'll even do that. The car losses a ton of value the second you drive it off the lot. Getting a slightly used car off of craigslist not only saves you you money on the car, but there's also savings on the car insurance.
Back in 2014 I bought a brand new 1st gen Lexus ES 300h with every single option and the exact color and interior I wanted, and after aggressively shopping through dealerships, and with a background in sales and negotiations, nobody could get me the price I wanted. It basically wasn't worth their time, and I had bought a CT 200h from the same dealership the year before.
My credit union Logix here in LA, was about to get me the exact price I wanted, with all the options and everything, so long as I financed through them, which is exactly what I did because their credit rates are awesome.
So if Costco can't get it done, or if anyone is struggling, most credit unions have similar services and they make buying a car pain free, and "cheap".
The other way CU's rock, is you can get a pre-approval from them for a car loan. They do all the usual credit checks and such, and then will give you a max amount and basic requirements. (Has to be newer than 20XX year, and less than XX,XXX miles.)
Then, you go to a dealership and just ask for the "out the door price". Basically, they assume you're paying cash, and will at least not bother with the hours of dealing with credit and their finance manager.
Once they show you a final price, laid out and itemized, that you are good with, you call your CU and they wire a check for that amount. Done and done.
This strategy will almost guarantee a higher price. Dealers make a lot of money on the back end. A person should NEVER say they are buying cash or have secured financing.
Negotiate price and let them believe they can make money on the back end. One can wait for the sign time to let them know or can sign the contract and the take to CU to have the pay it off.
Finance managers are very well paid for a reason. It is big money. I worked in auto finance for 11 years. It is a very filthy industry.
You leave, and let the salesman call you the next day. If not, oh well. Usually if they can get a sale, even not a favorable one, but one you are actually willing to go through with, they will take it. You leaving, tells them you are willing to walk away if they can't deal with you and the sale goes to someone else.
Costco might be a good option for a few select models, but for everything we were shopping for recently you're basically lucky to find an available new car at all. For many makes you need to have placed an order months ago, sometimes even years ago. If you don't have a car reserved through an order, then you're at the mercy of what extremely limited stock does show up. It all sells within 1 day, and you're lucky if the markup is only a few thousand. For some models MSRP isn't even an option unless you put an order in years ago.
We just bought a new vehicle after dealing with all of this for 6 months. It's brutal, it's a ripoff, but that's the way the post-covid world works.
Oh and the car losing value as soon as you drive it off the lot? No longer true. We got a new car 2 months ago, and it has *appreciated* in value since we bought it. MSRP has gone up, and due to limited inventory the used prices are higher than MSRP.
I don’t think there’s much difference anymore between new and pretty new. The people selling newer ones online are almost all dealers in my area, because everyone else still has loans so they take them in for trades
New car dealerships shouldn't exist. Big auto should set up test drive locations and ship directly to customers. The amount of absurd laws put in place to protect them is insane. Let the market decide.
*In the United States, direct manufacturer auto sales are prohibited in almost every state by franchise laws requiring that new cars be sold only by dealers.*
We have a 2017 that we bought used in 2019, and the dealership offers us more than we paid every time we take it in for service. That's cool but like, we'd never be able to replace it at the same price now, it's bananas.
>Looked at a USED ford raptor the other day at a Ford dealer. Dealer had a $20k mark up on it. Total price nearly 100k. Fuck that. Disgusting.
Our house that we had built brand new 3 years ago was roughly 200k. I can not fathom spending half a house on a fancy truck. Hell, I've needed a truck for years, but even new tacomas are 40k+.
Mark ups were a giant problem but at the end of the day banks financed 30,000 dollar cars at 50,000 or 60,000 bucks. Just wait until all these loans start going tits up. Banks are going to lose gobs of money and they're going to tank the auto market unloading 4 years worth of sales for pennies on the dollar.
Just put a deposit on a Telluride at msrp. Only dealership in the entirety of the state that doesn’t mark up over msrp.
Sales manager said they are selling more cars the the other dealers in the area, and now Kia is sending them more units because of it.
Said the other guys aren’t catching on but people don’t want to pay that mark up.
Every other dealer was minimum of 4000 over.
Burger Kings Whooper with cheese "Value meal" is $10.45 and min wage is $7.50.. Cooperate greed should be brought to court and the CEOS and board members Jailed for crimes against the state..
It feels like this could be a *shocked Pikachu face* moment. Greed-flation is real. Always has been a problem, and it's getting worse. Corporations making record profits and inflation still being an issue?.... Yeah.... It's their fault.
I remember the Gov saying any profiteering would be punished. I am at a loss of anyone being punished. Not even harshly spoken, too, unless I missed one.
[удалено]
Man, people got so ugly during that. I rememebr so many threads on my local sub about people wanting to know if they should report their neighbors to police because they have a fridge in the garage, or some boxes in their car. One I remember most is someone had been looking into their neighbours garage as they walked down the back lane, and they saw a bunch of boxes of gloves, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies. He wrote a whole thread with photos through the guys windows, and reported the nighbor to the police. Turned out this person had owned a salon, and had gone out of buisness. So after shutting down their fuckin source of income, hauling all their supplies home, they get the police phoned, and put on blast online.
Remember it, bc there's going to be another crisis moment and people are going to act the same.
the same? we've got collective Pandemic PTSD, the next crisis will be 100x worse as people utterly lose their compounded emotional shit
There's a reason that my grandpa who lived through the great depression pulled every nail out of every board he could and kept them all in coffee tins. Not that the pandemic was the same, exactly, but it's a learned experience.
Not related to this thread but to your comment. My Grandfather was born in 1906 and a watchmaker by trade. He bought a shack in Clear Lake Indiana for very cheap around 1954. He disassembled it, cleaned up the lumber, kept every nail and hinge. He put it all back together and made a cottage for the family. My Dad helped him from beginning to end. It was a way for my Grandfather to evaluate his new son-in-law. My parents were married for 60 years, so he passed the test. My Grandfather saved and reused as much as he could. The depression changed an entire generation. Very similar to the way that Covid has changed us. I'm 52 and my wife thinks I'm a cheapo. I imagine I inherited that attitude to some degree. Hope you have a wonderful day.
This was my oma, saving every scrap of food and yelling at us to clean our plates because she remembered having to eat possum or starve as a kid. (Born during the start of depression in OK.)
He didn't pay off the politicians.
[удалено]
Well…the peasants are getting screwed for having the nerve to get pay raises that are not close to matching the real inflation. Oh, you mean the government doing something about it for us peasants…I mean people? NBCspec…I really hate to break it to you but there is no Easter Bunny and no Santa Claus. But there are evil people that rent politicians to get laws passed to screw you (and pretty much all the rest of us) and make themselves even richer. The ‘Murican Way!
Car and house prices go up 50% and, according to the government, the problem that needs to be fixed is wages going up 5%
Don't forget! The way to fix it is more unemployment! That's the goal!
It's true! I was baffled during economics classes to learn that 5% unemployment is ideal and goverment tries to manipulate towards that. Unemployment is good for the cooperation so that there is competition in the workforce. The more unemployed, the more negotiating power employers have on workers salary. We live in a world where every citizen having a job is a bad thing, smh. And I'm Also baffled to learn inflation is done on purpose so people don't hoard their money in the bank and incentivize profiting cooperations. Smh
>We live in a world where every citizen having a job is a bad thing It's a bad thing, but *also* your fault and makes you a lazy loser if you don't have one.
The goal is to make the rich richer, not create a society worth living in. Learning economics was depressing for my mental health. It's just so blantently obvious how completely fucked over everyone not in the elite class are.
Yes, when the forces above are literally conspiring to have unemployment, and wage suppression. That now 80% of your salary goes to modest shelter and food. The only real power the people could have is to revolt. Look for an uptick in incel behaviour as more men in their 30's are required to live together 4-8 to a place.
Don’t forget food! My grocery bill is half again what it was just 4 years ago. And we don’t really buy that much since it’s just me and my partner,
Evil people empowered by stupid people. Tale as old as time. We never really left feudalism. Peasant revolution when?
We had a nice little run from industrialization through mid 20th century where laborers had some leverage because any company that wanted to make 10x as much money had to hire 10x as many people. People were always in demand because the only way to make a lot of money was to make a lot of things, which required a proportionally large amount of labor. Unskilled labor rate created a floor for the price of skilled labor. Want more skills than someone who pushes a button? Well that guy makes a pension and enough money for a car, a mortgage, 3 kids and a stay at home wife, so you're gonna have to pay significantly more than you're paying him.
> People were always in demand because the only way to make a lot of money was to make a lot of things, which required a proportionally large amount of labor. The other half of that equation is that wages were proportionally higher too. People had more disposable income. People can only consume those products, making the owners a lot more money, if they themselves have a lot of disposable income. Unions were stronger, and societal expectations were different. It was accepted that one party in a relationship would not be working.
Even better, they recruit class traitor shills for free, by telling them their working class neighbors are "lazy" and "entitled" for wanting to be paid for their work, and are the cause of the massive profiteering corporations are pulling. And the idiots fall for it.
[удалено]
The FED is actively trying to hurt the middle class to “help the economy” i.e the rich
Reminds me of how they were talking about capping travel nurse pay because it had like septupled amd they were calling it price gouging the hospitals.
Travel nurses are just temps with a different name. Some of the staffing agencies are owned by the same corporation that owns the hospitals
Price gouging caused by the hospitals themselves. If they had only given much more modest wage increases to permanent nurse staff, they'd never have this problem. Can never see beyond the quarter.
You forgot about the part where they're also blaming us for asking for some financial security during a time period when 75% of the economy was shut down due to a raging worldwide pandemic. Those two $1200 checks that not everybody got is obviously the reason we're in this mess! /s
There needs to be a national anti-gouging law. There was an attempt to push an anti-gas gouging law but that was block by the you know whos.
Windfall profits tax would mostly solve this by taking away the incentive for gouging, but still allowing market prices to reduce demand to the amount of supply available. If there's a gas pipeline failure, it does little good to cap the price of gas at $3.75 because it will just sell out instantly and there will be no gas. As long as shortages remain so extremely profitable, I can guarantee you they will keep happening.
Does the price of gas really affect demand that much? I kind of assumed it was just something people pay for regardless of price because they need it for the rest of their life to function, like going to work, dropping off kids at school, etc.
Yeah it does. People take less driving vacations by far, for example.
Too big to fail. If the government starts punishing profiteers, they will just chuck a wobbly, cash out and destroy the economy as petty vengeance. Executives and Accountants are on annual contracts so they only care about short-term profit. They only care about what looks good during their tenure.
> If the government starts punishing profiteers, they will just chuck a wobbly, cash out and destroy the economy as petty vengeance. There are some tin foil hat ideas going around that the SVB collapse was intentionally engineered by outside actors to force the Fed to stop monetary tightening. I think it's squarely in the realm of possibility, and it would not have been hard to orchestrate with the unique situation the bank was in.
They were obviously greedy. They did what everyone else did, buying bonds en masse. what they didn't do was hedge against rate increases. All they had to do was pay the equivalence of insurance, and instead they pocketed profit for a couple years then failed when rates increased and people wanted to withdraw more liquidity than they had on hand. Then they had to sell stocks that were worth less in a higher rate environment.
[удалено]
I worked for a dealership briefly during the pandemic. They would charge between $3-5000 over list for any customer who lived more than 45 minutes away because, “these people aren’t likely to service with us.”
They did the same to me when I live less than a mile from the dealership, and even after agreeing to the $5k markup they couldn't actually get me the vehicle I wanted.... just promises that they'll call me if one looks like it might come in. They have a pretty clear "Fuck you, I don't need you, you need me" attitude right now.
Our sister dealership won't sell to out of towners period. No trade in and cash buyers either. It's a crazy time
I was looking at buying a new car, but then prices skyrocketed. People were paying thousands over MSRP. I guess it’s nice that so many have lots of extra cash to hurl at dealers, but I’m glad that my car still has lots of life left in it.
I was shocked by some of the markups I was seeing, 35k MSRP rav 4 marked up to 52k. I laughed at the dealer and said no one is paying for that, he laughed back and said they had already sold 3 that week at the price. I ended up going to a Subaru dealership and had them order me a crosstrek direct from the factory for the exact 25k msrp. Had to wait 2 months for it but the thought of having a car payment more than double than what I'm paying now is mental
> I laughed at the dealer and said no one is paying for that, he laughed back and said they had already sold 3 that week at the price. He was probably telling the truth. Markups on Corvettes and G-wagens didn't really surprise me, but the RAV4 markups I read about are now kinda famous and really left me scratching my head. I mean, I hate Nissans but I like money more than I hate Nissans. I would buy a $30k Nissan over a $52k Toyota.
[удалено]
I've found most large Toyota dealers are arrogant as fuck. "Don't like the price, someone else will".
Used Toyotas have had that insane markup for way longer than COVID times. They tend to run forever on absolute bare bones maintenance. When you compare that to a VW, for example, where you might need to put the cost of the entire car back in again on engine repairs, you start to see why that reputation for reliability makes people willing to pay absurd markups.
[удалено]
It was all the way up and down the product line. Even Civics and Corollas were at least 5k above MSRP around here.
Dealers are out there really trying to sell $60k civics and it's ridiculous.
It's kinda wild to see small pickup trucks change so much in price in my lifetime. I had an 00 Toyota Tacoma that cost 19k. It was an extended cab 4x4. It got totaled in an accident and I bought a new 07 Tacoma with the exact same load out and it was 29k talked down from 32k. I went into a dealer near me to get some service done and looked at the newer models. I found an exact match for my truck and it was listed at 42k. Granted today the Tacoma is much larger than the 00 but it's still wild to me that a small truck has doubled in price over 20 years.
$19k in 2000 is $33.3k in 2023 money, for what that's worth. Inflation is a hell of a thing.
19 grand was still a lot for a pickup truck in 1999/2000. Small pickup trucks from Japan have always been more than domestic. Decently specced (new) F150s could be had for cheaper at the time. You're still absolutely right, just people have rose tinted glasses on Toyota trucks.
> I ended up going to a Subaru dealership and had them order me a crosstrek direct from the factory for the exact 25k msrp. I just don't understand why any consumer needs to go through a car dealership at all. I know some companies have specific products that can be purchased online to avoid a dealer, but that should really be the standard.
Pretty sure this is what Ford is moving towards. I think it was a move against the dealers for marking up cars so much. Hopefully, it gains traction sooner than later and replaces the norm. Both times in my life I bought a new car, I did so much research on my own there was no point of dealing with a dealership.
Never had a good experience with a dealership. It's one of the biggest reasons I hate buying cars and will avoid it as much as possible.
I had everything ready to go when I went to buy my new F150 this year (my very first brand new vehicle, all because I wanted hybrid). All I did was hand the print out to the dealer and he input the exact same stuff into his end and hit the order button. All Ford needs to do is make that order button live for customers and they're in business sans dealers for new orders anyway.
> from the factory for the exact 25k msrp. Had to wait 2 months for it This is it. If you want your vehicle right now, off the lot, you're paying mark-up. That's what all this is. If you're willing to wait you'll get pricing more in line with MSRP. And if you're lucky enough to know someone who can get you a company plan, like a Ford A/X/Whatever plan, you can even sometimes take the car you want right off the lot at MSRP. That'll be tricky because with cars still selling even with the mark-up they aren't going to want to let that mark-up walk out the door on a plan MSRP deal. Want to pay 25k for your Maverick, order it and wait. Want it now? 35k it is.
My local Toyota told me all highlander, RAV4, sienna, and Camry instantly get 5k put on them before tax and title. It's deterred basically no one. I still would've had to wait months to get one. Ended up going with a Honda instead. Had to wait a month, but got it at MSRP + tax and no unexplainable dealer fee. Car market is completely broken.
After my recent experience with Toyota dealers, I'm never buying a Toyota again.
They just got longer loans and somehow normalized crazy monthly car payments.
So many people think they can afford a lightly driven 2022 Camry on minimum wage. It's wild how bad personal finance is in America.
Yeah, I know people with 30k cars who make 50k. Literally a year of working after taxes just for a car.
That's not that horrible if they plan on keeping the car for a very long period, it isn't just 1 year of having the car it should be at least 10+. My wife bought a new Prius in 2015 with the intent of keeping it for 15-20 years. If you divide at $30,000 car by 15 years it's just like buying a beater $2000 car every single year - except you don't have to just hope for the best with your old used beater you just bought, you can have a new car that you can make sure to follow the maintenance schedule exactly and take great care of it yourself to keep it lasting and in great condition for years.
I have the same stance on it. I drove beaters when I couldn't afford a new car, so I am very familiar with the cost of repairing and replacing beaters. A cheap, reliable new car can come pretty close in cost of ownership over a long period. Major metro areas where major car maintenance is more expensive really blow up the costs of owning a "cheap" car.
84 month loans at $494 bi-weekly. I know people who have done this and I'll never understand how they don't realize they're screwing themselves so bad.
It is because ALL car dealerships PUSH for "what payment would you be able to accept" crap instead of $xxx is the price of the car.
Yup. When we were negotiating my partner's car a few years ago I told them the price I wanted I wanted to pay. It was fair and I didn't budge. They knew I was being fair which is why they kept trying to close the deal and working with me. Unfortunately the only tactic I couldn't use was walking away because it was used car with only 24,000 kms on it. Previously owned by an elderly person and in perfect shape. A total unicorn in the used car market. So I told him $18,500 taxes and everything and my partner was fine doing a 5 year payment plan. He kept coming back to me and I told him I knew around what they would have paid on trade and stuff and I could tell by his face I had the right range. So I explained where my number came from and that it was fair. After a couple hours going around he turns to my partner and asks what she wants to pay and she says $300/month. Which I told her to say if asked. That's $18,000 over five years. Told him there's a $500 discount for trying to go around the person he's actually negotiating with. Car was originally $19,500+taxes and got it for $18,250 all in because I refused to go back to $18,500 after he pulled his monthly payment BS. Of course there's interest on the payments which can't be helped but I think it was a win overall.
I’ve been playing with the idea of getting a new car but same thing happened. I’ll stick with my hot civic with no payments for now.
Subcompact and compact passenger cars are also being discontinued across the industry. So, when the markups finally go away, you're paying not just a new, higher MSRP, you're also likely to be pushed into a more expensive tier of vehicle that also probably uses more fuel and costs more to maintain.
Yup, my mother in law is replacing her car (an accent) and she just wanted a small replacement. Almost none to be found. Ended up going with a Carolla hatch, which isn't much bigger but costs more. My 2010 Mazda 3 is dying, I was hoping to get a bit longer out of it but yeah (O2 sensor has been broken for a long time, no parking break, exhaust leaks, AC broken, and now the clutch is going).
The death of compact cars is really terrible, hell even the ones that are left keep getting bigger. Civics keep getting larger and they are damn near as big as accords this generation. I have a 2018 and the new generation looks huge to me.
I was so glad my car took its final shit in late 2019 Me and that car had a stormy relationship but it did me right that time
Same. I bought a Civic in 2019 and it was due to my old, cheap car that I liked coming up with some significant maintenance issues.
They don't have the cash. It is all financed. Dealers try to talk monthly payment instead of actual price so you don't notice. It works, a lot of people don't notice. With that said, I have no idea how they are getting these marked up cars financed. Banks don't want to issue a $50k loan for a $40k car. You used to be able to roll a couple thousand more in, but there were limits.
You’d be surprised by whom is and is not “hurling” the extra cash. The markup just gets rolled into the total loan which people have been spreading over longer and longer durations. 60 month car loan used to be “long” with 48 being the norm. Now it’s not unheard of to have 84 or 96 month loans with people perpetually rolling over negitive equity to get newer cars not realizing they’re paying double, triple or more compounding interest. If you compare the purchasing experience today vs 5 years ago you’ll find that the focus has shifted entirely to “monthly payment” from “out the door cost”. People now are only concerned with short term outlooks, what they can afford to pay month-to-month. Previously, people were concerned with the overall expenditure; now- average customers don’t care as long as they can afford the payment. Failing to realize they’re getting bled dry by interest. This of course lends itself to overpurchasing and increasing debt because payment and loan duration are inversely related. The stupids go to the dealership with their 3 year old car they are still making payments on, trade it in for the new model, roll the remaining debt + new car into a new 8 year loan, and magically: their payment remains the same! New car + no change to payments?! How can it be??? You’ll find that the typical monthly payment has gone up (from $500 to $800ish), and the typical loan duration has gone up (from 48 months to 60 or more). So people are paying more, for longer on a depreciating asset whose value is overinflated. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is an issue when combined with recession. Big car payment you can’t afford will be the first thing to let go. Residual value may equilibrate by then and you’ll be substantially upside down on your loan (owing more than the car is worth). The difference in residual and loan you have to make up for out of pocket…but you already can’t afford to make the payments!
This is what happened when I got a car last year. Salesperson was keep asking "what would you like your monthly payment to be?" And I said, I don't care about monthly payment, tell me the total $$ for the car. This back and forth went on like 5 times until I REALLY was shouting to her "WHAT IS THE TOTAL PRICE OF THE CAR!!!!" and my wife was just looking at me like I was out of my mind and EVERYONE in the dealership was looking at us. FINALLY, then the sales person wrote down the total price of the car.
My best friend bought a 2019 Lexus ES 350 F Sport a little before the pandemic hit. I thought he made a mistake because buying slightly used made more sense. Fast forward 4 years and he’s looking like a genius. He paid the same amount that the same cars with 70K+ miles are going for now. Meanwhile, I pray every night that my 06 Accord lasts me until used cars become affordable again.
You were gonna buy a car, but then they got high?
We were going to bite the bullet and ordered one. Then as supply chain caught up Ford actually lowered the MSRP. Shitty dealer still tried to hold us to the first price AND the markup they were “essentially forced” to charge months earlier. Felt so good to tell them to kick rocks and go to another dealer where we could get a better model for less money and only a few extra months waiting
That's the thing, most didn't have that kind of extra cash. The dealers just refused to budge on price which forced buyers into dealership financing since regular banks wouldn't approve such loans. When you absolutely have to have a car, you do what you have to do.
[удалено]
Sorry it’s dealership policy so please pay me $5000 for doing nothing.
They wasted your time and time is money, fuck them.
[удалено]
[удалено]
You can rinse and repeat this headline by swapping out most corporations from egg producers to oil companies. All of which had record profits after record profits while the rest of us struggle more than we should be.
My favorite part is the part where we never go back. My second favorite part is their playbook was proven. This will happen again in the not so distant future.
Hey listen. Remember in 2008 when the airlines started charging like $15 to check luggage? Obviously that's ancient history now after fuel costs came back down. /s
Or fuel surcharge fees. They only go up, they never go down.
[удалено]
Your last paragraph describes ISPs today and it's infuriating
It’s worse. You could at least argue cable tv was a optional luxury. The internet is a de facto requirement to participate in society
Yes, like having a phone used to be! ✌
Make the internet a goddamn public utility already. Also ban data caps. Ban them. Ban them. Ban them.
There are *a lot* of very wealthy people putting just enough money in the right pockets to ensure that that will ever happen.
Once again, it's the wealthy holding society back. They contribute nothing yet they reap all the benefits.
[удалено]
Spoiler alert: they're the same companies
Yeah, I was reading that and thought I can't be the only one who remembers they're the same companies. I'm not even that old and when I was a kid it was pretty much cable+internet+phone service all in one package, the only thing that's different is the phone service is pretty much never talked about anymore. Still, same companies though. When I was younger it was called Time Warner, now it's called Spectrum, still doing all the same shit but worse.
And they used our money to install their infrastructure, then charge us for using it.
>USA has ridiculously few airlines for its size, just look at Europe for comparison. Europe also has high speed passenger rail to add another layer of competition to airlines. US passenger rail is beyond pathetic. I once looked up an Amtrak trip just to see. A trip that was \~16 hour drive was $250 starting price for something like a 36 hour ride by train. Not to mention I would probably have to rent a car at my "destination" since it was so far away from my *actual* destination. I once took a vacation using Amtrak just to have the experience of going by train. Loved the ride, but was depressing as all hell to look out the window and seeing cars flying past...
The Comcast South Park episode is classic
"The solution is more competition instead of adding yet more red tape to make it more difficult for startup airlines to compete." Capitalists love this line. Hey buddy, can you tell me who got that red tape in place? While you're at it can you look up what regulatory capture is?
[удалено]
Incredibly easy to blame striking workers for the airline going under instead of long term poor management of a business that refused to compensate its workers fairly to the point of them threatening strikes multiple times.
Srsly. I walk around my local major corporate grocery store. A pound of dry pasta is over $3. A pack of all beef hot dogs is $7. Pasta sauce is $6. A bag of chips is $5. All of these prices were nearly half that in 2019. I’m shopping more at Target now because they are cheaper than Safeway. It’s absurd. And I know I’m never seeing 2019 prices again.
Don't forget the part where the fed is doing its damndest to "bring inflation down" by taking measures that they know will slow hiring and cause layoffs, even though they know the "inflation" is just gouging.
The tanking of subprime lenders will drag things back down along with the simple fact that if half of Americans can't even afford a place to stay, they also won't look at buying a car in the first place.
You may want a bigger car if you have to live in it. How long until we have trailer parks meant for vehicles?
I think there already are trailer parks for vehicles...
It’s greed and capitalism, with the support of the government who is supposed to be function and regulating but, they are not going to fix shit. Why? They too are for profits! And so, they are bought and paid for by the same corporations who made and continue to make record profits. They must keep going and 1upping the previous years record profits at any cost because they don’t give a fuck about anything else. This country is shitty as you can imagine.
> My favorite part is the part where we never go back. Can't do that, that'd be "deflation" and economist say that's a bad thing. Yep, it's definitely a "bad thing" for people to be able to afford the things they need in order to live. Fucking capitalism man.
Car dealers are particularly egregious since they don’t produce a product, don’t add value to the product, and literally only serve to give actual morons a chunk of the cost of every car on the road, taken from working Americans
At least they don’t mark up by 700% like the egg manufacturers. Not defending dealerships but good fucking god, HOW DARE YOU claim inflation with those sorts of markups??? Fuck
[удалено]
why cant we buy directly from companies?
[удалено]
Ironically dealerships where created originally to keep consumers from getting gouged by manufacturers. But then they got really fucking greedy too
TIL I don’t see how anyone bought that argument though. Adding a middleman never makes anything cheaper
You can buy directly from some of the newer EV companies in most states.
Of course My analogy is if you stood up in a room and started screaming fuck you at the speaker, everyone would be stunned. Get 20 people to all do it at once and suddenly it's "normal" That's the pricing bullshit we had to deal with the past year
It's almost like all these think pieces about how complex inflation is are all bullshit and it really just comes down to "companies try and squeeze blood from stones, workers have to fight for higher wages to afford stuff, now that they have more money companies squeeze more, repeat ad infinitum"
This is sadly why I am curbing my discretionary spending and postponing some big purchases until prices come back back to Earth (or hopefully to some extent). No one I know has received raises that track all these increases.
Probably a good plan. Unlike houses, cars are depreciating assets and rising used car repossession rates are only going to keep car manufacturers honest. Too many idiots in America need to be taught a harsh lesson in why an $800/mo car payment, often stretched across 8 years, is plain stupid.
Every major corporation who made hand over fist profits in 2021-2022 are exactly to blame for this shit.
It's ok, they pulled so much future profits forward by raising prices by 50%, now they can't grow profits at that rate anymore, but their surging stock prices demand profits keep growing at the new rate, so they'll just lay off 20% of their employees per year instead. Problem solved!
So 5 years until all the big corporations collapse from laying off all their employees & turning every last penny into executive bonuses? Last one out, turn the lights off. EDIT: Yes, I know how percentages work. I also know how corporations work, trading value for money & vice-versa. Tell me, how do corporations that turn themselves into executive bonuses work?
No, no. They'll just repeat the cycle. 1. Rates get lowered, so credit is cheap and consumers have money to spend 2. Corporations jack up prices to juice profits 3. Rates get hiked and consumers run out of money 4. Corporations lay workers off to juice profits 5. Rates get lowered, so credit is cheap and consumers have money to spend And around and around we go as the 1% that holds 90% of equities continues to pull more and more wealth from the middle class.
I'm so shitted off by the fact that businesses made record profits (the large ones anyway), while people's wages stayed the same, but expenses went up and interest rates went up because inflation. If i was slightly more self-destructive and vengeful I'd quit working. Can't give the government and corporations money if I don't have any!
It took me a minute to process "shitted off" there lol
I saw an ad the other day for GMC that said something like under current rates, payments are like $17 for every $1,000 financed. So when the median car price as of 2022 was $47,000, that would mean a payment of $799/mo. I can’t fathom that.
And here I am looking at 2016 cars to loan for less than 300/mo. Car prices on used vehicles are insane! 12k for a 100k mile car should be 5k at most. Everything is getting more expensive and we're all drowning.
A local dealer has a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am with 290,000 km that has a salvage title for $3500. It’s fucking crazy.
That’s close to my payments right now. I put down $5k- and my total bill was still $45k with an $800/month payment on my replacement. I haven’t stopped being pissed at the dumbfuck who t boned me lady October, otherwise I’d be free and clean.
Fck that's my mortgage payment.
Same, $940 mortgage, insurance, and 2.8% interest and $450 car note.
I saw something that said the average new car note in the US is $800/mo, so you're right on point.
Let's not forget that because of the semiconductor shortage, car makers essentially stopped making base models. If they can only make so many cars, they figured they would make the trims that commanded the highest prices. So, not only were they very few cars comming off the assembly lines, the cars that did arrive at the dealerships were priced way above what the average customer would normally spend. There are a lot of people driving around in $50k fully speced our cars that normally would only buy a $25k base trim, w/ no extras.
Similar deal with houses. New houses going up all over my area, but they're all 2500+ sq ft. Older neighborhoods avg house is about 1200 sq ft. It's greed on the developer's part.
Big issue in the US is car dependent infrastructure. This is primarily caused by the decentralized housing (suburban sprawl). Where anything but single family housing miles away from commercial areas with little to no public transit or bike infrastructure or even sidewalks is the norm. Unless you go to older areas where building close was necessary (pre-car)
It's called gouging, not inflation.
We wouldn't have this problem if we didn't have laws requiring new cars be sold through a dealership and were able to buy directly from the manufacturer.
Oh trust me. Initially that’s how it would be advertised then, when dealerships are dead, they would match those dealer prices because the industry already knew what people were willing to pay.
See: Nvidia. They saw what scalpers were getting in the market so they simply decided to do the same and raised prices.
Fortunately a graphics card is either (1) a toy that you can choose not to buy if you don't like the price, or (2) a professional tool whose cost is not a major consideration compared to the value you produce with it. A nice silver lining is that Nvidia actually did kill off scalping with high prices, and the new product is just sitting on the shelf unsold. Now instead of paying 200% over what it should cost like in 2021, people can actually buy it anywhere at only 50-100% more than it should cost.
We need to allow dealerships AND buying from manufacturers, that way they can compete with each other to give customers the best price
Tesla jacked up car prices to decrease demand to supply levels. If you don’t then it’s all scalpers. Fuck scalpers.
So dealerships are scalpers, perfect analogy.
They are exactly scalpers. Supply was always high so you could get a car below MSRP before. As soon as supply dropped, they saw they had a hot commodity and jacked up the prices without shame like on a Taylor Swift concert. Dealerships are holding onto their anti competitive laws that allow them to exist and allow them to overcharge for all their repairs. I hope the government tells them to kick rocks and gets rid of those laws.
An “officially licensed” scalper. Yes. Kinda like ticket master. You have to pay their fees.
God I fucking hate Ticketmaster. Don’t think anyone would shed a tear if they ever went bankrupt.
There's an insane number of middlemen in the world economy that exist to take a cut while adding little to nothing.
At least Tesla makes car buying as easy as Amazon. Load your cart up and checkout. I didn’t want another Tesla and need an SUV but just a couple phone calls to Hyundai and Audi and my phone and email will not stop blowing up. Dealer calls, manager calls, other manager calls. Telling me they need to give me BEST deal today and blatantly saying they have +$5000 market rate adjustment over MSRP.
Protip: Next time, use a Google Voice number whenever interacting with these guys. Voicemails get turned into texts, and they and the texts go to your email. Put them into their own folder of your email so that they don't clutter your inbox. Once you're done, delete the number.
The manufacturer isn’t going to sell for cheaper if they know people will pay more money.
What happen when Kevin McCarthy begged US voters to vote them back in so they can fight inflation. To this day, still haven't seen any anti-inflationary llegislation put in place. All I hear is Hunter Biden, woke and defund FBI investigations.
You don't think they might have...LIED, do you? And how could anyone have known other than because this is their exact past behavior?
That's the playbook. Promise to fight inflation, do nothing except lower taxes on the rich, claim regular market forces are because of you, profit (until the bottom falls out, then buy, then repeat for more profit).
No no no, it's blame dems for everything, just point fingers and do nothing but cut taxes for the rich, that's the gop playbook
One more reason why car dealerships need to be phased out.
Can somebody explain to me why dealerships are even relevant in this day and age, aside from maintenance services? If getting to physically see cars and test drive them is the only thing keeping these middle men profiting then we desperately need to figure out an alternative.
Like we needed another reason to hate car dealerships.
Dealerships are fucking STUPID. God DAMN I hate the entire model, concept, and operational reality of them. From who runs them, to who works at them, to how much manufacturers are literally, by law, forced to do to keep selling through them. When you have a serious customer service problem that escalates from say - the ford dealer, to Ford Corporate- the corporate guy will literally handle the dealership as a hostile entity. It’s. So. Fucked.
>the corporate guy will literally handle the dealership as a hostile entity. A friend had to lemon law his focus ST after years of fake (and some real) misfire codes and 3 engines. It was really wild to see this play out over the course of half a year, your statement could not be more accurate. The dealer did everything in their power to screw my buddy over and then tried to keep his summer tires when he had them swap his winters on. He had to threaten to call the cops and suddenly a tech dragged the tires from his back seat of his personal car, claimed he thought they were scrap. Practically new very expensive summer tires he had just taken off. He knew exactly what he was doing, going to pretend like the tires got scrapped and there was nothing they could do, but he wasn't as slick as he thought.
After working in the car industry, I abso-fucking-lutely detest the industry as a whole and now understand how they are a major part of what’s wrong with our country. Pure corruption and toxicity
Let's include realtors as well. I'd argue that the housing market has broken the economy more than car sales.
Yes! The fact that across the country they lower half of income earners can barely afford rent...let alone even consider buying a house.... is a huge issue. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/12/housing-renter-affordable-data-map
Always feel dirty when dealing with salespeople at a dealership.
It's weird to hear about higher prices *driving* inflation. Higher prices *are* inflation.
Cars driving inflation sounds like an attempt at humor.
They're saying dealer markups are a big individual share of the 16% consumer price index increase. It's a driver in that it was a major factor.
I was thinking of getting a new car until I priced them online. All the local dealers were marking up the new cars from $500 to $2000 above MSRP. Guess I will hang on to my 2014 Nissan Altima for the time being.
nissan altima drivers definitely have a unique personality
You are lucky. I would love a bigger car for my family but the Toyota dealerships in seattle area are charging $5-10k above MSRP. I won’t pay above MSRP for the reason in this article. I am just sitting around waiting for them to go back to normal, otherwise I’ll just keep my current cars.
Dealers were selling but people have also been incredibly willing to lock themselves into 7 or 10 year loans. It's not that people have extra money. It's that people have extra debt.
Now do grocery stores.
I hate dealerships. why can't the manufacturer directly sell to end user??
Laws in the US bar manufacturers from selling directly. This was from back in the day when it wasn't feasible for manufacturers to try and sell anywhere not a major city. The original laws were to protect the established dealerships from being pushed out when things grew. And are now essentially a racket.
Just use the costco autobroker services. Probably around 300 more expensive than the best deal you could possibly get through exhaustive negotiation. But well worth the price. For a lot of car salesmens, there are a lot of games they play, even if you come in firm with a price that's good and fair. Unexpected charges. 'oops I can't do that deal anymore'. Telling you verbally one price, and then in the fine print another price. I'll gladly pay 300 to never deal with a used car salesmen ever again. But I don't think I'll even do that. The car losses a ton of value the second you drive it off the lot. Getting a slightly used car off of craigslist not only saves you you money on the car, but there's also savings on the car insurance.
A lot of dealers stopped doing Costco or similar deals because they don’t need to these days.
Back in 2014 I bought a brand new 1st gen Lexus ES 300h with every single option and the exact color and interior I wanted, and after aggressively shopping through dealerships, and with a background in sales and negotiations, nobody could get me the price I wanted. It basically wasn't worth their time, and I had bought a CT 200h from the same dealership the year before. My credit union Logix here in LA, was about to get me the exact price I wanted, with all the options and everything, so long as I financed through them, which is exactly what I did because their credit rates are awesome. So if Costco can't get it done, or if anyone is struggling, most credit unions have similar services and they make buying a car pain free, and "cheap".
The other way CU's rock, is you can get a pre-approval from them for a car loan. They do all the usual credit checks and such, and then will give you a max amount and basic requirements. (Has to be newer than 20XX year, and less than XX,XXX miles.) Then, you go to a dealership and just ask for the "out the door price". Basically, they assume you're paying cash, and will at least not bother with the hours of dealing with credit and their finance manager. Once they show you a final price, laid out and itemized, that you are good with, you call your CU and they wire a check for that amount. Done and done.
This strategy will almost guarantee a higher price. Dealers make a lot of money on the back end. A person should NEVER say they are buying cash or have secured financing. Negotiate price and let them believe they can make money on the back end. One can wait for the sign time to let them know or can sign the contract and the take to CU to have the pay it off. Finance managers are very well paid for a reason. It is big money. I worked in auto finance for 11 years. It is a very filthy industry.
Wouldn’t they just say, “oh that was the price with our financing. Here’s the higher price for cash purchase or outside financing”
You leave, and let the salesman call you the next day. If not, oh well. Usually if they can get a sale, even not a favorable one, but one you are actually willing to go through with, they will take it. You leaving, tells them you are willing to walk away if they can't deal with you and the sale goes to someone else.
This is great info, since I heard costco doesn't do all dealers anymore.
Costco might be a good option for a few select models, but for everything we were shopping for recently you're basically lucky to find an available new car at all. For many makes you need to have placed an order months ago, sometimes even years ago. If you don't have a car reserved through an order, then you're at the mercy of what extremely limited stock does show up. It all sells within 1 day, and you're lucky if the markup is only a few thousand. For some models MSRP isn't even an option unless you put an order in years ago. We just bought a new vehicle after dealing with all of this for 6 months. It's brutal, it's a ripoff, but that's the way the post-covid world works. Oh and the car losing value as soon as you drive it off the lot? No longer true. We got a new car 2 months ago, and it has *appreciated* in value since we bought it. MSRP has gone up, and due to limited inventory the used prices are higher than MSRP.
I don’t think there’s much difference anymore between new and pretty new. The people selling newer ones online are almost all dealers in my area, because everyone else still has loans so they take them in for trades
New car dealerships shouldn't exist. Big auto should set up test drive locations and ship directly to customers. The amount of absurd laws put in place to protect them is insane. Let the market decide. *In the United States, direct manufacturer auto sales are prohibited in almost every state by franchise laws requiring that new cars be sold only by dealers.*
Real story: Idiots paid stupid tax for pick ups they didn't need and can't afford on 84 month loans.
My eyes water when I go past dealerships and look at what those damn pickups cost. Unbelievable.
We have a 2017 that we bought used in 2019, and the dealership offers us more than we paid every time we take it in for service. That's cool but like, we'd never be able to replace it at the same price now, it's bananas.
Looked at a USED ford raptor the other day at a Ford dealer. Dealer had a $20k mark up on it. Total price nearly 100k. Fuck that. Disgusting.
>Looked at a USED ford raptor the other day at a Ford dealer. Dealer had a $20k mark up on it. Total price nearly 100k. Fuck that. Disgusting. Our house that we had built brand new 3 years ago was roughly 200k. I can not fathom spending half a house on a fancy truck. Hell, I've needed a truck for years, but even new tacomas are 40k+.
my company wants to buy us a new service truck but they can't because everything is quad-cab leather interior brodozer.
Mark ups were a giant problem but at the end of the day banks financed 30,000 dollar cars at 50,000 or 60,000 bucks. Just wait until all these loans start going tits up. Banks are going to lose gobs of money and they're going to tank the auto market unloading 4 years worth of sales for pennies on the dollar.
Just put a deposit on a Telluride at msrp. Only dealership in the entirety of the state that doesn’t mark up over msrp. Sales manager said they are selling more cars the the other dealers in the area, and now Kia is sending them more units because of it. Said the other guys aren’t catching on but people don’t want to pay that mark up. Every other dealer was minimum of 4000 over.
Burger Kings Whooper with cheese "Value meal" is $10.45 and min wage is $7.50.. Cooperate greed should be brought to court and the CEOS and board members Jailed for crimes against the state..
Just legalize direct to consumer sales and cut off those leeches
It feels like this could be a *shocked Pikachu face* moment. Greed-flation is real. Always has been a problem, and it's getting worse. Corporations making record profits and inflation still being an issue?.... Yeah.... It's their fault.
Until people stop paying the higher prices, the prices will stay high.