@ItsAFake @davel Funny how the failure of capitalism is causing people to “choose” not to follow the overconsumptive lifestyle patterns the capitalists insist we must aspire to. A failed system will fall apart one way or another, even if it has convinced most people not to want it to fail.
Anarchist communism
News in UK today said car insurance for young drivers is now £3000 a year on average ($4000USD)
Exactly the point of this post
Yup, at UK minimum wage 17 year olds would have to work 9 hours a week just to pay for car insurance. Then there is road tax, fuel, MOT, repairs, and buying the car in the first place.
I guess you can check the median age of people getting their driving license first time. If is getting higher, is probably because younger people don't care enough to get it, because past generations couldn't afford cars ar 16 neither.
Agreed. Moreover, I'd like some more insight in the consumer patterns of Gen Z. A pie chart would be nice including groups like eduction, healthcare, subscription services, entertainment, etc.
I have a feeling, without the data, that a lot of young people are spending way more on novelty and entertainment things than ever before while they're complaining about not being able to afford things.
IDK why, but this reads like just about what every generation says about a younger generation: bad decisions, worse with money etc.
Even if Gen z were spending a larger percent of their income on luxury items, I'm certain it pales in comparison so their lower average income and higher average housing costs.
Everything I've seen has said that Millenials and younger are spending more on experiences and less on things, but also that their purchasing power is much weaker than their parents' was at the same age. Millenials, I think, have about half the purchasing power as the Baby Boomers did in their 30s and 40s.
Also of note that I just saw the other day is that the price of cars has jumped up about 30% since 2021.
So, not exactly what you're looking for, but some of the stuff I've seen/heard that probably plays contributing factors to this.
Entertainment Things Are cheaper than they were decades ago whereas housing and Health Care are way the fuck more expensive. Back in your day a computer equivalent to an iPhone cost as much as a house whereas today even a basic house cost what a supercomputer did back in 1965
Now hopefully they start voting in their local elections for politicians who will build transit, bike lanes, and support walkability.
We had a really promising, progressive city councillor run for Mayor who basically tanked their campaign by making investment in cycling infrastructure one of their main platforms.
So, instead, we got a business-as-usual developper friendly mayor who will continue to do nothing to address public transit issues, or improvr cycling infrastructure besides painting a few lines on busy roads.
I think the major issue is that most people see bike lanes as removing their choice to drive, rather than adding alternatives to make driving easier. These people pushing for change need to look at the MAYA principal principle, meaning they use the Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable vocabulary to ease in the transition.
Anyone who wants to platform for biking and making better urbanism needs to instead focus their campaign on being fiscally responsible and tackling traffic concerns. If pressed, they can say that there are lots of data showing that small, cheap changes to the road infrastructure can make a large impact in both traffics and taxes.
Principal?
Well yeah, you gotta school them 😜
It is sad but many who want this kind of change end up having their careers ruined as it goes against "the status quo" and the "character of the neighbourhood"
I and my brother did some math about cars.
We both work and have money for car but just insurance, technical and emissions control... is more expensive than public transport ticket (for one year in our city). And we didn't count in petrol and parking.
In short for us it just doesn't make economical sense to own one.
Because it's expensive and sucks if you live in a city. Also, most can't afford a house out in the suburbs anyways.
according to McKinsey. "And for those Gen Zers who decide that driving just isn't for them, they can keep themselves busy with TikTok in the passenger seat—or get behind the wheel in the metaverse."
Be a good consumer and accept our thought control.
@loutr @Phoenix3875 "get behind the wheel in the metaverse" a phrase used by the utterly deranged
Great question - but semi related, I really enjoy sim racing despite rarely driving a car in real life (maybe once a fortnight).
The metaverse doesn't appeal to me, or most people, but there's something to be said about jumping in VR and taking a car to a track virtually with a good force feedback wheel, nice load cell pedals and a H-pattern shifter.
Heck I even enjoy euro truck simulator from time to time.
Mark Zucc, maybe a few investors' kids
what about a regular car?
Ebikes will get you a good chunk of the way there in a lot of places. Other than that, if you live in a city then vote like hell and go to city council meeting as often as possible to demand bike lanes. Local voting actually matters and can change (some) things.
If you live in the country... Eh... Start sabotaging gas stations I guess? I don't even know where to begin with a constructive answer. Rural folks are basically forced in to cars and there isn't much to do about it without massive changes. In the Netherlands even small towns get train stations, but in the US and Canada and even a lot of Europe rural folks are just screwed.
At least here in Illinois rural towns have okay train access and can easily accommodate bike infrastructure. Many rural towns with a university have decent bike networks already. It's North American suburbs that are more hopelessly designed around private vehicles.
I lived in rural California and Oregon for a while and there was just nothing. You had a car or you couldn't live. Wanna get groceries? Drive, because it's too far to bike and even if you did you'd probably get killed by a car. Wanna get your mail? Drive to the post office. Don't bike because you'll get hit by a semi. Wanna go see a movie in a theatre? Yeah, drive for at least half an hour to get to the closest one. But both of the towns I spent the most time in burned to the ground in wildfires so... Yeah...
But it's good to hear not all of the US is hopeless and some of it is almost functional. I hope at least some parts survive, because there's a whole lot that just can't exist without cars and cars can't exist forever.
Exact same here. The amount of money cars cost is fucking ridiculous. I would pay more and wait longer to not have to deal with the bullshit of owning a car, but I can’t even do that because American public transit is worse than Mordor.
Literally same. My entire life has been striving to build a life where I don't need a car. (mainly out of frustration with NJ's toxic surcharge program).
Sadly, no one in NY was hiring and my dumbass moved to Austin. Now my drive is to get back to NY where there actually is a hope of using public transit.
You could say Gen Z "chooses" a lot of things. Gen Z "chooses" not to buy houses (we can't afford them) Gen Z "chooses" to be mentally ill (not even 10 years ago, "autism" was just "the weird kid") Gen Z "chooses" to rent Gen Z "chooses" not to buy food Gen Z "chooses" to let climate change fuck the earth Gen Z "chooses" to not have kids (although here we actually don't want them, but also couldn't afford them) and so on.
Are you sure they can't afford them?
Gen Zers are tracking ahead of their parents’ homeownership rate: 30% of 25-year olds owned their home in 2022, higher than the 27% rate for Gen Xers when they were the same age.
If you're working from home then ubering everywhere is cheaper than insurance for a new driver and once you put gas plus the cost of the car into the equation I totally understand this.
That's because you own the number one most stolen car in the world.
61% of Stolen Cars were Hyundai and Kia (same company). Thefts are up 2400% in New York. You basically own a Free Use Cab.
Interesting article but
Thefts are up 2400% in New York
isn't true. Rochester has a ton of crime compared to other cities in the Northeast.
I dropped driving 20 years ago. Way too expensive if you don't earn money with it in some fashion. I'm not a home-worker, but I live in a city. Having a car in a city... That just doesn't feel right. They should be used to bring stuff into a city. Cites should provide their own means of getting around. The few times when I actually needed a car, I rented one. Way cheaper than owning a car.
It's like owning a golf course to play golf once a week. Well. Something like that.
Insurance rates vary greatly with zip code in Canada. I moved just before I was going to buy a car and when I got quoted over $700 CAD per month to insure a Fiat 500 (new driver over 30) I quickly calculated that taking Uber to and from work daily is going to be much cheaper than insurance alone..
This is an easy thing to say, but ride-sharing apps price gouge ridiculously. Have you done the math on this for the average person's annual needs, or does it just "feel" true? Also I assume your groceries and other regular shopping needs are all getting delivered in this scenario, so need to work all the delivery overhead in annual costs as well. I wish we could get rid of individual cars, but not sure this adds up...
Also, curious on the reality of this in big cities versus more rural areas
If you live within 1 mile of a grocery store you could easily walk, and you don't need anything else on a regular basis. Use a bicycle and 5 miles becomes just as easy. People lived thousands of years without cars. The problem is our cities are built around cars, and they're built poorly because of it.
You could easily walk there, yes. But walking back again? With 15kg of groceries? That gets tiresome.
Instacart bro. Groceries are the easiest thing to get
The fact that it feels tiresome is worrying me. That should feel like nothing. 15 kg is not all that much (initially wrote "a joke", didn't realize that might sound disrespectful to some), unless you are either 12, 92, or really out of shape.
I pay about 12-20 dollars for a trip to or from the airport in my city. Let's be quite generous and say I only need to take a trip like that once a week, and all my other needs can be met via public transportation.
That's comically untrue in the Midwest but it holds true in places like Baltimore at least for some.
It would take 9 months of similar rides to equal what I spend on my car in a single month, including the loan, gas, and insurance.
Even if I took an under to and from work every single day which incidentally is about the same as a trip to the airport, it would cost half of what I put in to my car.
That's true for me, but probably not everyone. I have a newer, upper mid range car that's not great on gas mileage. And of course, I need my car a lot more frequently than just the ten trips a week. But there's a string argument to be made in cities where public transit is even halfway decent for ditching a car all together and ubering when you need to get somewhere the bus doesn't stop.
I don't work from home but my sister does and yes she did some thorough calculations. And yeah she's getting her groceries delivered and Ubers/lyfts pretty much everywhere else. There are also local buses that she takes if they're useful depending on where she's going. For example there's a mall that's about half an hour away but there's a bus that goes from half a mile down the road to the mall.
We do the same. Having things delivered or using public transport. Takes a bit longer sometimes. Not a problem. Saves us hundreds of bucks per quarter.
Living in a city should mean exactly that. Cars are for place with poorly developed infrastructure. Grossly generalized.
I'm going to download the uber app when I'm not on some miserably slow internet connection and do the math, because I'm curious if it's cheaper or not.
Right now, worst case scenario is if I have to drive my Samurai to work. It gets ~20 mpg. With insurance and gas and maintainence put together I'm spending about $4.13 to drive to work for one day.
I'm right there with them. I spent 7-8 years in a larger city and enjoyed not having a car the entire time. No renting a parking spot or fighting over who gets to block in who with the upstairs or downstairs neighbors. No snow shoveling or scrambling to park on one side for street sweeping.
I'm now temporarily in a place where buses are at an hour interval and only go to 1 place so I took one of the family cars. Despite the car being "free" I'm paying more than an unlimited transit pass on insurance alone, and I have a great rate at the expense of having to let my insurance track my accelerating / braking through GPS/accelerometer (at least for a few weeks before I can uninstall the app and enjoy the lower rate). I've had to pay for an inspections, tags, fixing a tint that was legal at home but illegal where I am now (over $100 even if I just had them remove it), and I'm still needing to spend on extras like oil to top up in between oil changes, new wipers, coolant, and it's looking like it's almost due for tire rotations, brake and transmission flush, and other regular maintenance which is just another expense.
The car was free and it's so expensive still. I miss being able to hop on a bus and zone out too.
Who wants to pay 9%+ interest on a car .
My wife purchased a Subaru Legacy Premium new in 2018 with a MSRP of $23,000 and we looked at the exact same model but in 2024 because they added some safety features. The exact trim Premium for 2024 has a MSRP of $31,000k. That's a 39% increase in 6 years. Same motor, looks nearly identical, just has collision detection and a better center console screen. We could have got those in the top trim in 2018 for $5k more.
We're getting shafted at all industries.
Didn't really have to but it was at sweet spot for trade in, $15k, was at the point it need new tires and registration. Tires $600+ and registration in Washington $300.
It was actually seeing $15k trade in that got me thinking about it since it was pretty close to our purchase price. Stupid MSRP went way up.
The key thing here is cost. Employers don't want to pay, and everything is so damn expensive.
Imagine that! I wonder why.
Lol cause no one can afford to live let alone buy a car..
My dad in a conversation with other parents:
"When I was their age, a car meant freedom. It meant you could take yourself to a place your friends were and your parents weren't, anytime you wanted. To them, the Internet means freedom, and they don't really see the point."
You know what true freedom is? Not requiring a car to get to places by having decently designed neighbourhoods where people can walk or cycle. For longer distances good quality transit could be available. No massive investment or lisence needed to travel.
For real, the amount of freedom I get here without a driver's license in the Netherlands is insane. I walk to the train station and can get anywhere in the country and even to a lot of other places in Europe.
Then I can just decide on a whim to walk to the grocery store, take a bike ride to visit my parents, go to a movie theater, whatever you can think of.
If there's one thing I have pride in with my country, it's the infrastructure we have. I find it very hard to imagine moving out of this country because of it.
I really don't agree. Young people still like to be able to move around freely and "the internet" is not the same as phisically going to bar, roadtrip, etc. In my opinion, nowadays people mostly don't buy cars because A) they can't afford it and B) we're more nevorinmentally conscious.
Is that because the costs of cars has vastly exceeded inflation while wages have mostly stagnated until mid 2021? (please note: beating inflation by a bit for 2 years in no way makes up for the prior 40+)
And car dealers (car mafia) make their money primarily through financing now. Some won't even let you pay cash for a new car.
They can't prevent you from purchasing with cash, that is the whole Legal Tender thing. Rather they dissuade you from not taking their financing. Very very different things.
Any business has the right to refuse to sell you something
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"Maybe they don't want to drive because they're looking for a sustainable option, such as public transportation, ride-sharing, or e-scooters," McKinsey analysts wrote.
"It's also possible that a sputtering economy and inflation tinged their entry into adulthood, discouraging spending on big-ticket items such as cars," McKinsey said.
But McKinsey analysts point out that previous generations of Americans had also appeared less interested in driving but went behind the wheel of cars eventually.
"It's too early to tell whether the no-driving trend will hold with Gen Z, especially given the changes happening in the mobility and automotive markets," McKinsey analysts pointed out.
The automotive industry is changing with the mainstreaming of the so-called shared mobility market, which includes car ride-sharing, scooters, and in the future, self-driving automobiles.
"And for those Gen Zers who decide that driving just isn't for them, they can keep themselves busy with TikTok in the passenger seat—or get behind the wheel in the metaverse."
The original article contains 459 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh my God that last quote is so cringe
Horses.
@lemmy.ml
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
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@lemmy.ml
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
go to feed...
“Choosing” is doing some heavy lifting here when gen-z ain’t got no money.
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