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I mean this is very Anti-HN zeitgeist, but it's a way to preserve easily accessible middle class jobs and prevent local profit pools from accruing to corporatio
by RC_ITR 5y ago
I mean this is very Anti-HN zeitgeist, but it's a way to preserve easily accessible middle class jobs and prevent local profit pools from accruing to corporations headquartered elsewhere.
From a consumer perspective it reduces welfare (like most worker protections do), but similar to real estate agents, car dealerships are very active in lobbying local governments (in part b/c the amount of jobs they 'create').
- coredog64 5y agoNot just jobs, but also sales tax revenue. Cities have their own sales taxes and/or get a cut of the overall take. Better to have that come from a local business to maximize your take.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoFor every $500k we spend subsidizing dealers (according to economic studies), we waste resources that could be used to grow the middle class.
- lmm 5y ago"Could be" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Maybe this is actually the most efficient politically doable way to grow the middle class with those dollars.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThat’s an interesting point, but usually rent seeking like this adds a lot of friction to the economy which reduces the velocity of money and makes people on average poorer. The bigger problem is that taxes are so low, and that manual labor jobs (which the rich outsourced to other countries), just don’t exist at scale anymore. The best solution is probably something like taxing productivity gains and then bending the benefit curve towards the workers who have received none of the gains by, eg, paying for their kids health and educational expenses, letting them have free training, giving them stipends to travel, etc. The biggest problem has been that all the productivity gains have gone to the 1% essentially.
- RC_ITR 5y ago>The biggest problem has been that all the productivity gains have gone to the 1% essentially. Going back to the other commenters note on wishful thinking: your situation requires a major refactoring of American politics and governance. 'Subsidizing' car dealerships at it's worse makes cars slightly more expensive, which is probably a societal good (yes even electric cars).
- mensetmanusman 5y agoYes, if one is privileged I can imagine why one would say that a more expensive cars is a societal good. For the majority of humans, this is not the view.
- RC_ITR 5y agoUmmm, as a non-car-owner it would be nice if there were more people/voters forced to care about public transit, but yeah I guess that is a privledged place to be.
- lmm 5y agoYou've got that backwards. The majority of humans are harmed more than helped by increasing car ownership. The people who own cars, or are close enough that cheaper cars would plausibly make the difference, are the privileged ones.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoHmmm, I see where you are coming from. In the eyes of the humans of the world, would they want a car that is 100x cheaper so that they could afford one? I’m guessing yes, but it sounds like you are arguing that it is in their best interest to not have that desire play out. This type of paternalism is common, especially for people that like to make decisions for others :)
- lmm 5y ago
- KoftaBob 5y ago> a way to preserve easily accessible middle class jobs Wouldn't direct sales locations/showrooms operated by the manufacturers still need to hire salespeople, as well as automotive technicians to do the maintenance? It seems that the jobs wouldn't necessarily be affected, the owners of the dealerships are the ones who would lose out on revenue.