> is having a car really so essential to holding down a job and accessing services in most of America (etc.) that taking out a loan to acquire a car becomes a n

> is having a car really so essential to holding down a job and accessing services in most of America (etc.) that taking out a loan to acquire a car becomes a necessary evil? US public transit is really bad outside of major urban areas. In the (medium-sized) city I live in, the only public transit is an unreliable bus service that only covers a few areas of the city with really limited routes. We don't really have taxis, either, and there's enough sprawl that you can't bike to places easily, so your options are to either use uber/lyft for everything and hope you can get a ride reliably, or buy your own car. Median household income in the US is only around $60k/year [1], which makes it pretty difficult to afford a car without some form of loan. If you save up pretty far in advance, and buy a cheaper used car, it's probably doable, but most people don't want to do that (and if everyone tried to do that, used car prices would likely go up to almost the price of a new car anyway). [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/