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Americans can no longer afford their cars (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

And they are. $30k today is about $18k 20 years ago. You get a ton of safety features and whatnot in even base model cars these days. A base 2004 Camry was ~$18k new, and a base Camry today is ~$30k. Prices really haven't changed much relative to inflation.

[–] whereisk 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What about relative to wages?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Median individual income:

2003: $27,000 - inflation adjusted to 2023: $43,928.51
2023: $50,000

Median household income:

2003: $42,381.00 - inflation adjusted to 2023: $68,953.12
2023: $74,202

So the average American (i.e. 50% earned more, 50% earned less) earned more in 2023 than in 2003, even accounting for inflation. There are a ton of ways to calculate "relative to wages" (i.e. are we talking minimum wage, median, average?), but it looks like people are better off today than 20 years ago, and prices for cars are about the same.

[–] whereisk 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Median seems a much better metric than average.

The census.gov data for 2021 has median individual income at about $35k - much smaller than your sources for 23.

Did it really increase nearly 50% in 2 years?

Source

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I'm not sure where that data is coming from, here's what I found (source). This data set in particular (Excel file) shows the following:

That's for 2021 and 2022, and the median seems to be $49k in 2021 and $48k in 2022. $50k in 2023 seems plausible.