The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year. It's expected that 2026 will have an equal dollar devaluation. This is the best-possible interpretation of the goals of this administration, the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord that is somehow supposed to help some part of the economy. It's unclear who or how, to me.

>> In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet

But it's good. There is no way to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US while dollar is strong.

Also high inflation may make housing more affordable.

>Crashing the economy is obviously very politically unpopular.

But not something one worries or cares about if one doesn't worry about having to be elected and/or is willing to use the military to suppress dissent...

So tanking the economy is a way to keep and maintain power...

>The COVID pandemic was a good example of this. The working class got thrown a $2,000 check while there was billions given to bail out businesses/lots of fraud.

A lot of people were paid more to not work during COVID restrictions than they earned before or after. $653 billion in federal funds for unemployment programs.

People were getting $600 per week from the feds for a while, then $300/week. Not a single $2000 check, $2400 per month. About the bottom 25 percentile were brought up to 25th percentile income.

> In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet.

It already has. It's down ~12% vs the EUR. It's even down 4% vs CAD, and Canada's on the front line of having its economy destroyed by Trumponomics. When the global markets have more confidence in the Canadian dollar than the American one, good luck...

Remember when "unicorn" companies were a big deal. Billion was significant amount of valuation and money. Lately it really feels like billion is pretty much nothing anymore. There has been inflation, but not that much to really make billion to be small sum.

Oooh any public ones?

edit: OMG. I will be shorting these.

Hey now, you can't say they don't have any product. We got a machine which can factor number 15 now. (with a preparation time for this calculation of only a few month) Isn't that amazing? We will be breaking RSA2048 any day now. Let's invest a few hundred billions into changing encryption everywhere! /s

> if you are above that curve

Is it possible to know if you're above 'that' curve? Does above the curve mean your assets are increasing in value faster than inflation?

Historically, this has ultimately led to revolutions.

Exactly. This is going to come off as incredibly privileged, but I'm not a huge fan of car loans. In fact, I'm not a huge fan of leveraging to afford any asset unless it's appreciating in value or generating income. I buy and drive old, nearly junker cars because I can't afford a $40K new car. I can "afford" the monthly payments on a $40K car, but it's just a terrible financial idea. Totally nutty. A $750 monthly payment (I don't even want to know the term) for something that is losing value every day is absolutely bonkers.

The amount of debt Americans routinely and causally take on is honestly ridiculous.

If the Volvo us well taken care of, it will probably last decades more.

> Many of my neighbors [...] think we're poor because of it.

How do you know that? They told you outright?

Cities could create bus and bike lanes literally overnight. Load up a truck with concrete parking curbs and cones and drop them. No one is going to bike until the infrastructure makes it safe and convenient. Like safe enough to let a kid or 65 year old woman bike.

We just choose to continue subsidizing a triangle of car dependency. The government finances toll-free roads, mandates parking minimums, and enforces restrictive zoning. Businesses and real estate consumers pick up the tab on the real cost of free parking (higher rents and mortgages, parking garage construction costs). Drivers pour money into car loans, insurance, maintenance, and fuel.

Cities are artificially expensive becuase we ban them in nearly every location in the US, and ban new housing in cities.

It would have been an easy fix 10+ years ago, but as the housing crisis got worse and the working class was priced out, building got a lot more expensive and we have a huge labor crisis in addition to the regulatory crisis.

All solvable, but the political establishment and the political power base (homeowners and landlords) are dead set against solving it.

Depends on the city.

Chicago is cheaper than car dependent LA in terms of rent.

You can do very well on a modest salary.

I live in Malmö which is across the bridge from Copenhagen.

It's not comparable to the US in terms of Salary, but if I compare to the same size City in the UK (Coventry), it's not more expensive to live here than there. Coventry has a decent amount of car dependency for its size.

If we're comparing to a US City, I guess Orlando is pretty close (Orlando has a lower population than Malmö), but home prices are higher. However, there are only larger houses available making the comparison a bit squiff.

Housing and transportation should be considered a single budget category. If you can get rid of a second car but pay $500/mo more in rent it could be a wash.

Depends when you got into it. If you're an older gen, you got into that city early and are likely unburdened by high dwelling costs - instead, you've got a windfall of appreciation ahead of you.

Reality is, outside of housing, city life is generally cheaper because it's much more accessible and the tax base is better suited to covering those expenses. So, older generations get the best of all worlds, per usual.

You don’t have to be in a large or even a medium sized city for car dependency to be alleviated. There’s a not just bikes video about this exact thing.

https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg

It's only privileged because I'm living in a city that has actively prioritised other modes of transport.

I invite you to compare Orlando and Malmo.

If you have the opportunity to visit both, I would recommend it. They have the same population size (actually, Malmo has more people in it, but, close enough) yet in one it's impossible to get across the street without a car, even to go to the grocery store, and the other has entire portions of the city where cars aren't even able to go. -- Yet everyone manages to get around, and most people would consider it very convenient to do so.

The cycle of car costs, repairs, and impacts of breakdowns for under-privileged people is a pretty serious poverty trap in places that have no other options. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/trump-tariffs-used-car...

That beater car in Dallas is also a financial millstone around its owners neck, and odds are, he's already living hand to mouth, and has zero redundancy for it.

If that weren't so often the case, people wouldn't lose their shit whenever gas goes up 50 cents/gallon.

Isn't America literally the country with longest average and median commutes to work? Like, that was always an American thing - the long commute.

Also, you cant do work in car either. You have to drive and actually pay attention. You cant (or should not) just listen to podcast or loosing yourself in the music. You dont get health benefits of walking a bit or of popping int the store on the way to buy food quickly.

My point here is that if public transport and city are semi reasonably organized, the car has to be actually seriously faster to be worth it.

Due to the aforementioned car dependence: points of interest are further apart from each other than in other cities with solid cycling infrastructure (in Europe for example).

Enormous car-lots several times larger than the buildings that they serve for example, sprawling 6-lane roads that take 20s to clear a junction on a slow moving bicycle, these things contribute to it being infeasible for more poeple.

Connecting the bike lanes is not a problem, though people will fight it tooth and nail because they wan't all infrastructure spending to go to cars... hence, reinforcing the issue, because when all you have is a hammer...

You need to find a new mechanic if it is taking them an entire day to replace tires or do an oil change.

This is my favorite thing about getting an EV; effectively zero maintenance except for tires.

I haven't done it myself but isn't a tire change suppose to be pretty easy thing to do, certainly better than sitting the whole day in the shop?

The tire shop near me (America's Tire) has changed all four tires, with zero advance notice, in one hour.

Lower end jobs tend to be unforgiving on not planting your butt in seat at the scheduled time. I find the higher end your job the less BS you are forced to endure. e.g. No drug tests, no doctor's note to justify sick leave. If there's a layoff there's severance. Flex time.

There are some accommodations for poor drivers. Politicians loath to raise fuel tax. This shifts costs of roads from drivers onto general taxpayers. Car insurance limits are the same as in the 1970s. This shifts cost of accidents from poor drivers onto accident victims who are not fully compensated. Emissions testing and safety testing is either not done at all or waived for drivers who claim hardship.

Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to pay.

It's a game of musical chairs. Very fun until the music stops!

Yeah loan covenants lock you in like that. But banks don’t want to manage or sell big commercial properties. If it gets dicey for property owners, they’ll work out a deal with their bank.

Remember Getty:

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem.

If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

You are factually incorrect. Documented means that they are legally allowed to be in the country which is why they have received work permits and that they have received social security numbers. They have a legal status which is why they are documented as being here. To say that they dealt in all cash is a factual lie. Where are you getting your data. I'm getting my data first hand from someone who was picked up and also had first hand accounts of hundreds of people in detention. All with work permits all with social security cards all who had legal jobs at the time of their detention. All of them were engaging in the normal commerce of a USA citizen which is to have a debt load and a credit rating. Do you think they had cash to pay for those vehicles? Do you think they had cash to pay for those houses? Do you think apartments don't run credit ratings? You are absolutely foolish to think that this is some massive 30 million people with a cash based underground. Modern banking doesn't work that way, almost no jobs pay that way. No jobs that you're going to get with a work permit and a social security card which is the vast majority of jobs. You think these people just pick your lettuce in the field. That's absolutely insane you really need to educate yourself because you have believed the lies that were told.

The law does not consider them illegal aliens. ICE does not classify them as illegal aliens. Only red-headed political ideologues that are looking for a boogeyman consider them illegal aliens.

You can say that it is a miniscule number of them having credit and debt but you need some evidence to back up your claims. Increasing housing supply at the cost of a greater burden for everyone else isn't a good way to do it. Because these were functioning taxpayer members of society. Then they became burdens to society because they were housed in detention facilities at an extraordinary cost along with the money lost for the proper eviction procedures and debt recovery procedures and everything else.

It is absolutely foolish to take people who were following the legal process and we're legally documented as being here putting them into tension centers causing them to default on their mortgages or their leases. Causing them to default on their car loans and their credit card debt. For you to act like it's a good thing is absolutely insane.

Because you believed the lies that these were illegal criminals that weren't allowed to be here. Go and read the lies of the news media. That's how it was presented. It only takes a small bit of logic to say if they were actually criminals that were not allowed to be here then they wouldn't know where they are. Because there would be no documentation. The fact that they could go get them so quickly was because they were allowed to be here and they were arbitrarily revoking parole statuses and other statuses of people that were granted permission to be here following the processes laid out in the law.

Now you will bear the financial burden for it. Because fools like you think that they were criminal illegal aliens. When they were not they were legal aliens. I highly suggest you go and review the actual many immigration statuses that are granted. Because there are many statuses where you are legally allowed to be in this country as an alien without being granted a visa. Once you have reviewed those I will await your apology.

I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels, there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole ride something you don't want to experience often if possible.

Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"?

A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose, but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways). Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal with.

I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them, but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways for me I guess.

I think it has more to do with stagnating wages which haven't kept up with inflation (or for that matter productivity) than it does with irresponsible spending. The growing number of people who can barely keep the lights on aren't spending all their income on door dash. They're cutting back on groceries, going to food banks (who have seen record demand) and being forced to resort to Buy Now Pay Later loans for regular groceries (14% more than they were last year https://www.cbsnews.com/news/buy-now-pay-later-bnpl-loans-gr...)

Automakers realized during the pandemic they could increase prices and reduce production and come out ahead. Import tariffs means you are, as a consumer, held captive by a domestic market to extract from you for your potentially non discretionary personal transportation needs. If you must have a car, the price is the price.

This has slowly been changing as of recently, but now tariffs are eating into automaker balance sheets to the tune of ~$30B, which will have to come from somewhere in transaction volume.

Or it's the only thing available.

A few years ago my car was totaled by an uninsured illegal in a hit and run, and I was forced to get another one (bought used). This was back when the bubble was even worse, and since I lived on dirt roads, I needed a 4x4. Literally the only thing I could find not clapped out were luxury models, because rich people were about the only people at the time dumping cars that weren't completely clapped out.

No, the average is high because we've lost a lot of our cheap 'new' cars.

10 years ago you could go onto a lot and buy a brand new Dodge Dart for around $17,000.

Today, the cheapest Dodge is a Hornet SUV/CUV for $31,000+; the cheapest Jeep is $27,000.

We just don't have new car choices under $20k -- we're all forced into extremely high loans for 'new', or extremely screwed rates for 'used'.

The borrower didn't have the money to pay. Being "on the hook" doesn't mean much if you simply don't have any money.

It's a mini sub-prime in the making.