That is not a luxury truck. It's an extended cab F-150 with cloth seats, probably an XL. A familiar comparison for someone unused to seeing trucks in ordinary use would be a base model Chevy Malibu. And he's probably underwater on the loan, which makes it hard to sell.
NPR wants you to see that a lot of ordinary people who made ordinary life choices are going bankrupt.
Is your point that he _needs_ a truck for his job? He is a veteran as stated in the article and wife is a medical worker. Why do they need a truck or is this some basic necessity in the US?
Unless you need the carrying capacity to survive, $28,000 for a car is expensive. Buy a low mileage, older sedan for $5000-$7000. It’ll last 10 years and rarely have problems.
Many people finance expensive cars with no money down and are immediately underwater on their loan. In a situation like that, you can’t offload your vehicle easily without also coughing up thousands to cover the difference between the car’s sell value (who is even buying right now?) and the cars loan balance.
I had a friend who kept rolling the negative equity of his previous car loan on to the new one. It's pretty ridiculous what the deals will help you do now. He's since gone bankrupt.
what happens if you crash it first it or ding it up or run it as an uber and have lots of trash passengers? you're talking about leases vehicles which already exist.
I suspect not many people are buying trucks right now, used or not. It would be hard to sell. It may not be bright to buy a truck worth more than your annual income, but I don't think the situation can be entirely blamed on consumers. It's a systematic problem. Trucks like this are the only profitable sector left for US car dealerships, and they have gone to great lengths to get people on the hook for them. The result is pollution, dangerously large vehicles clogging roads, and consumers stuck in over their heads.
One of the comments on the link indicates the actual situation - Truck sales haven't increased, but are now relatively even more popular to other vehicles which have dropped in sales considerably. Most likely, as you say, by the good deals - 0% financing.
That's terrible. That means when the COVID-19 lockdown is all said and done, and we find out that many jobs won't be coming back, many of these folks will be underwater on a truck. I say "jobs won't be coming back" because I've heard that many companies are using this lockdown to let go of divisions and employees they've always wanted to let go of, but never got around to doing.
And that's not even addressing the fact that the entire country went into economic free fall, so "Just sell the X" isn't quite the advice it used to be.
Hiring is very slow at the moment and the beater would likely require a lot of maintenance and have a high price tag although I agree that it’s smart to drive cars that are more economical.
Anecdotal, but I keep hearing about restaurants and other small businesses that can't convince their employees to come back to work. Something about the unemployment benefits + CARES Act bonus being more than they were earning while working...
Also anecdotal, but unemployment + CARES Act did in fact result in one of my housemates bringing in more from the two than they did from their employer. But, they went back to work anyway when their employer called them back from furlough, because 1) in my state, IIRC, refusing an offer for work cancels one's unemployment benefits, 2) they knew they the structure of having a regular job again would be much better for their mental health than not working.
Well maybe that should be a red flag for the economic situation of many many people that should cause some inspection on how we structure and think about work.
A friend of my girlfriend is on that situation, $1600/wk is more than what she earned previously, and isn’t looking forward for the store where she worked on to re-open or looking for a different job.
It gives me a mixed feeling about the policy because it turns out I personally know the one example conservatives would like to point out. However, I’d like to read a deep study about the impact of the measures taken before I form an opinion on them. I want to believe that the policy had a positive effect unless data says otherwise.
All that proves is how deeply underpaid those jobs were.
Say that $1600/wk is perfectly livable for her. That means formerly, she was working at a job that did not pay her enough to live, but she was forced to because the alternative is worse. Arguably, for many people, they could live on even less than that.
Countless people who are forced to be in the job market, slaving away at crappy jobs at the threat of poverty and homelessness. They are forced to be at jobs they hate, propping up industries that survive only because of exploitation of human labor, and they don't even get a proper living wage from it. Human life is very limited. Time is the greatest asset we have and it goes away even when we do nothing. Yet we force so many people to trade their time for a pittance.
If these people were provided a base amount of money they could live on and do something else, then those jobs would either be unfilled (and the industries die off) or the businesses will be forced to raise the wage, thus providing more money to people who are willing to work for it.
It's a temporary stimulus payment anyway. We all paid for it.
It helps a lot of people who really needed it, especially hourly wage workers in the service industry who instantly took a hit from the shutdowns and these workers tend to not have healthcare insurance to begin with due to the low wages. It would be foolish for someone who had a well paying job with benefits to permanently stop working for "more" money on paper temporarily, especially considering you would also risk being unemployable afterward. Does +$600 to your weekly pay outweigh the health benefits that you got while being employed?
Well sure, but I'm still not seeing where this "proves how deeply underpaid those jobs were".
The explicit intention behind CARES was to provide some resemblance of financial security during a very uncertain time. If paying people a couple hundred more dollars per week than they'd earn while working is what achieves that... and it's temporary... ok fine.
But the CARES Act will continue to payout through December... which is a long time from now... and that's if it doesn't become a political wiffle ball and get extended.
None of that has to do with the value an employee brings, or can earn while in the service industry.
Into the weeds, but... With a growing anti-tipping movement, I don't see how we can argue service industry workers can be paid more than they already are. If the market had the appetite for $30 diner burgers, we'd already be paying those rates, no? Wouldn't the business owners raise prices and just pocket the difference if people were willing to pay more?
I think that results in fewer people eating out... which leads to fewer service industry workers, which leads to some other problems.
Way into the weeds - I've long thought the solution isn't just to command more money be paid to service workers. We should instead focus on trade school and education to empower people to seek skilled jobs that pay far better. I'd fully support free or low cost trade schools and community colleges, and would rather pay taxes into that versus a $30 mediocre burger.
That's right. As I said, I prefer those industries to collapse rather than let them continue on, surviving merely due to the exploitation of cheap human labor. Unless they can change and pay better or make work conditions better.
It’s worth keeping in mind that unemployment benefits are around half or less than what one was making. I know someone who’s job was paying him about $600 every two weeks. COVID-19 hit and they furloughed him. His unemployment benefit is about $150/week.
Sure, it’s a rough situation. He lived beyond his means and sank due to the black swan. Now, if the story was about repossessing the truck he needed to drive to a food pantry, I’d have a bit more sympathy.
The loan company should be barred from repossessing for generating subprime auto loans or whatever these are called, but this was still directly caused by lack of financial awareness.
Sell the car, get a cheap used beater, reduce expenses, keep looking for a job. Not sure what NPR wants me to take from this example.