5 ms·

That's actually a pretty big difference compared to the OP's claim, AND note that this statistic incorporates a delay (we are comparing 1990 vehicles to 2009 ve

That's actually a pretty big difference compared to the OP's claim, AND note that this statistic incorporates a delay (we are comparing 1990 vehicles to 2009 vehicles instead of 1998 to 2020). Granted, we don't know how long 2020 vehicles will last yet. The final caveat being the second point I made about people holding onto their cars longer as inflation rises / changing their preferences, not necessarily because the cars are holding up better.

RC_ITR 4y ago
> The final caveat being the second point I made about people holding onto their cars longer as inflation rises / changing their preferences, not necessarily because the cars are holding up better. I’m sorry but the idea that “we used to junk cars sooner because new cars were cheaper” is a very big stretch to support your bias (much moreso than the concept of hedonic adjustment)
- lend000 4y ago
  > we used to junk cars sooner because new cars were cheaper This is not obvious to you? Look at how many things (especially plastics and electronics) are wasted today while they still function because they are so cheap. How many times have you replaced your smartphone while it still worked fine? The point, again, is that we can do reasonable mental gymnastics to more or less counter-act any hedonic adjustments (which were also mental gymnastics to make inflation seem lower in the first place). A better metric would involve fewer loopholes like this that allow arbitrary mental gymnastics in the first place and instead say "how much does an entry level vehicle cost, amortized with upkeep costs and fuel for the average American." There should be no adjustment for better airbags or bluetooth, nor a reverse adjustment for taking into account improved automation in factories.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    > This is not obvious to you? It is very much not obvious to me because it’s not true. Critical safety features like airbags (required by US law in 1999) and ABS (required by US law in 2000) were not standard in cars back then, which is a huge incentive to junk a car. Since then, mandatory safety features include traction control (2011) and backup cameras (2018), and idk about you, but I’m fine driving a car without Either of those things, but not ABS or Airbags. Honestly, if you’re going to have such strong opinions about cars, maybe do research into them. And to your amortization point, literally amortization means “cost over useful life” so we agree? And please look at the link on my other comment [0] because that is not how car prices are adjusted by the BLS [0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Do you think most people wouldn't get new cars more often if they were free?
    - lend000 4y ago
      It's possible to have many correct points but miss the forest for the trees/argue past each other. I didn't mean that last comment to be condescending, by the way. To my original post (the second part), the BLS primarily measures the spending of people who never save a substantial portion of their income. Vehicles are a necessity for most of these people, so they are going to stretch out the lifetimes of their vehicles if the prices increase relative to their wages. Furthermore, people who might have bought a Camry with some upgrades in 1998 might be relegated to a stock Corolla in 2020. Sure, things are getting nicer all the time, but it's getting easier to make things all the time, too. Technology goes both ways, and at the end of the day, it's still a car. If they took out the rear airbags and removed all of the cheap microcontrollers, would the price really drop 40%? The way the BLS does its survey does not account for preference changes due to price increases. When wealth inequality is constant, it's probably a decent measure. But even then, it's a political metric and the Big Mac index is the best, simple metric we have for true inflation (which has been consistently higher than CPI for decades).

RC_ITR 4y ago

> The final caveat being the second point I made about people holding onto their cars longer as inflation rises / changing their preferences, not necessarily because the cars are holding up better. I’m sorry but the idea that “we used to junk cars sooner because new cars were cheaper” is a very big stretch to support your bias (much moreso than the concept of hedonic adjustment)

lend000 4y ago
> we used to junk cars sooner because new cars were cheaper This is not obvious to you? Look at how many things (especially plastics and electronics) are wasted today while they still function because they are so cheap. How many times have you replaced your smartphone while it still worked fine? The point, again, is that we can do reasonable mental gymnastics to more or less counter-act any hedonic adjustments (which were also mental gymnastics to make inflation seem lower in the first place). A better metric would involve fewer loopholes like this that allow arbitrary mental gymnastics in the first place and instead say "how much does an entry level vehicle cost, amortized with upkeep costs and fuel for the average American." There should be no adjustment for better airbags or bluetooth, nor a reverse adjustment for taking into account improved automation in factories.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  > This is not obvious to you? It is very much not obvious to me because it’s not true. Critical safety features like airbags (required by US law in 1999) and ABS (required by US law in 2000) were not standard in cars back then, which is a huge incentive to junk a car. Since then, mandatory safety features include traction control (2011) and backup cameras (2018), and idk about you, but I’m fine driving a car without Either of those things, but not ABS or Airbags. Honestly, if you’re going to have such strong opinions about cars, maybe do research into them. And to your amortization point, literally amortization means “cost over useful life” so we agree? And please look at the link on my other comment [0] because that is not how car prices are adjusted by the BLS [0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Do you think most people wouldn't get new cars more often if they were free?
  - lend000 4y ago
    It's possible to have many correct points but miss the forest for the trees/argue past each other. I didn't mean that last comment to be condescending, by the way. To my original post (the second part), the BLS primarily measures the spending of people who never save a substantial portion of their income. Vehicles are a necessity for most of these people, so they are going to stretch out the lifetimes of their vehicles if the prices increase relative to their wages. Furthermore, people who might have bought a Camry with some upgrades in 1998 might be relegated to a stock Corolla in 2020. Sure, things are getting nicer all the time, but it's getting easier to make things all the time, too. Technology goes both ways, and at the end of the day, it's still a car. If they took out the rear airbags and removed all of the cheap microcontrollers, would the price really drop 40%? The way the BLS does its survey does not account for preference changes due to price increases. When wealth inequality is constant, it's probably a decent measure. But even then, it's a political metric and the Big Mac index is the best, simple metric we have for true inflation (which has been consistently higher than CPI for decades).