alt Hacker NewsPeople keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.
We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.
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jerlam • today at 6:27 AM
I wonder how much of this ridiculous car money was previously buy-a-house money. If you don't think you'll ever buy a house, you might as well spend it on a car.
JumpCrisscross • today at 3:52 AM
> There is a car-debt crisis
To what degree is this caused by car prices versus Americans' compulsion to keep buying new cars? Anecdotally, the folks I know struggling with car payments are almost exclusively in the latter bucket. But I'm open to having my mind changed with data.
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I also believe this $50,000 stat is the mean car price which is likely to be pushed up by luxury car sales that cost 2-4x what a typical car costs, whereas a median price would give a better indication of what most people are actually spending. I did a quick Google search and wasn't able to find any data on median price, though.