re: What Would Happen To The US Economy If Everyone Lived Modest?

I'll always live modestly and bank on being in the minority.

Vehicles are more reliable than ever. You are dumb

People would invest more money and become wealthier or have money for retirement thus eventually leading to a better economy due to smart financial decisions.

Buying shite on credit that loses its value way before the term of the loan is up causes people to drown in debt and hurts their ability to spend on stuff once they max out their credit

We are in between the last 2. I fear the halcyon days are waning. Pain is ahead in the fog of what’s to come.

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By contrast, the "Cash For Clunkers" event under Obama not only didn't really create any additional sales of new cars (it only moved already planned sales forward a few months), it ended up killing the used car market and hurt sales in aftermarket parts that would have been used to maintain those cars.

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As opposed to letting those businesses go under resulting in hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, I think it was a pretty good trade-off.

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I'll always live modestly and bank on being in the minority.

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Most people live below or within their means. The economy would collapse if not. The overwhelming majority of Americans are current on their bills and have good credit.

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Vehicles are more reliable than ever.

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This is true as far as total milage goes but are we better off now and are they really more reliable for the $?...
In 1964 a new Mustang and Corvette had respective manufacturer's suggested retail base prices of approx. $2000 and $4000... ..that would be $16,000 and $33,000 in 2019 money. But today's manufacturer's suggested base prices are $27,000 and $56,000... not quite double the relative cost but getting close. We might expect more milage today but at what cost?... is that at per dollar spent per mile?

Then when you consider the current tangible commodity investment value of 1960's cars today can easily be 10 times or more it's original cost depending on desirability... and simplicity of build lends itself to keeping those cars running for up to 100 years... and then it is doubtful the majority of today's cars will have any worth at all in 50 years... We have a lot more to consider when determining whether or not today's cars... or cars from 50 to 80 years ago are "better".

... no, it didn’t “save” Jack shite.

All it did was move up sales that were going to happen within the next few months to that month, cannibalizing their own sales to get one really good month.


There were only going to be X number of cars sold for that year. That program cost a shite ton of taxpayer money to sell all of them in month 1 rather than across months 1-6.

And on top of that, the companies it ended up benefitting tended to be the foreign automakers like Toyota, Honda, etc, as opposed to domestic automakers like Ford, GM, and Chrysler, the latter two of which had just gotten massive government bailouts from the government in 2008-2009.

Nothing. There are tons of people living for free in this country. So if everyone lived modest, it would just even out.