Making American Cars Affordable Again?

When the people who hate people take control, their policies always give them away. They make motor and heating fuel, water, food, electricity, rent, almost anything and everything more expensive - while insisting they are fighting for minorities and lower-income “families,” and the middle class - whom they hate most of all.

They hate people, but they hate families more. They take up too much room, and the wrong sorts always tend to have the most planet-killing children. Besides, the concrete cells they have planned in their 15-minute cities aren’t designed to hold more than three people (always uncomfortably).

Photo by Dawn McDonald on Unsplash

And the same people who hate people (rights, liberty, freedom) have failed to silence and censor objectors to these policy goals. The same can be said of objections to radical environmental policies whose glossy tri-fold marketing flyers also insist they are meant to help minorities and the poor while making them poorer, homeless, jobless, foodless, and car-less. They leave that out of the sales pitch.

The proglodytes are also keen to help you commit suicide when their policies become too unbearable (Canada sets that example better than anyone). It’s a kindness, truly, to relive the world of you; I mean, what do you have left to offer after they take it all away?

Mobility is, of course, a detriment to the master plan. I’m honestly surprised the Biden Administration didn’t ban U-Haul and Rider rentals to keep people trapped in deteriorating blue states. Given the ability to do so, humans, even the ones who aided and abetted the culture they now seek to flee, will pack up the family truckster and get the hell of Democrat Dodge. A barrier to this, in the absence of more obvious acts of tyranny, is to make personal transportation illegal or as unaffordable or inoperable as possible.

Electric Vehicles are the frontline answer, especially when you mandate them on a schedule that the generation and infrastructure of electricity needed to charge them can never hope to match. Biden’s Department of Transportation changed the Corporate Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) to force automakers to make cars people didn’t really want. An act of bureaucratic force that began the policy goal of making personal transportation unaffordable.

If you can’t buy a car, you’ll need to put yourself closer to public transportation or near enough to the things you want to do so that using Uber or Lyft is not cost-prohibitive. A defacto demographic shift meant to push people onto urban heat islands doing business as Democrat-Run cities.

They excuse this abuse of power and social engineering with claims that “emissions” from the transportation sector are an enormous threat to the planet. Wrong. China India, and Africa are a colossal emissions threat to the planet - if you buy into that BS in the first place. Crippling American mobility and endangering productivity with unreliable energy mandates and CAFE standards meant to turn Americans into pedestrians will not fix that greater “threat.” It will make us weaker and less capable.

Besides, Democrat-run cities pose a much more significant threat to public health and human wellness than affordable sedans, pickups, and SUVs. And progressive CAFE standards have nothing to do with the planet and everything to do with social engineering—and a national push to diminish your choices, which the new administration is in the process of reversing.

At Donald Trump's direction, newly-minted Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has ordered the NHTSA to review all CAFE standards with an eye toward making American automobiles affordable again. Well, more affordable. More practical. Cars and Trucks people need to do real world, not boutique EV driveway ornaments for the elites who are the only ones who can afford them or - given the rising cost of electricity, charge them (with energy created using gas, oil, and coal).

The memorandum signed by the Secretary directs the Office of the General Counsel, the Office of the Undersecretary for Policy, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to immediately initiate a rulemaking to rescind or replace all existing CAFE standards.

As a result of the regulatory costs, fuel economy standards have diminished the strength of America’s auto industry and denied Americans the full range of affordable vehicles they need.

Add inflation, and we’ve got a big mess.

• From March 2021 to March 2024, the cost of a car increased by a total of 15.5%, from an average of $40,881 to an average of $47,218.

• Current rule requires all passenger cars and light trucks to meet a standard of 50.4 miles per gallon (mpg) in Model Year 2031. This government mandate has dramatically increased the average price of a new car to nearly $48,000, driving up the cost and making it unaffordable for American consumers.

• The price of a car has continued to spiral. In March 2024, of the 275 new-vehicle models available for purchase, only eight had transaction prices below $25,000. By comparison in March 2021, more than 20 vehicles had transaction prices below $25,000.

The downstream benefit of making new cars more affordable is that it should increase the inventory of used vehicles, which have, for the only time in my life, been increasing in value. This inventory issue started with Democrats and Obama (cash for clunkers), made worse by the elevated CAFE standards and EV incentives that distorted the market.

It’s not going to fix itself overnight, and we’ll need a Republican like Trump elected in 2028 to keep things on track. But getting the government out of the way and out of any market is the fastest way to encourage innovation and competition, which lowers prices as those who make things are forced to find efficiencies to retain market share.

And you’d be right to guess that the Democrats don’t care for that either.

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