How is that average calculated though? If everyone switches from buying the $40k Camry to the $85k F150, prices didn't have to change for the "average price of

How is that average calculated though? If everyone switches from buying the $40k Camry to the $85k F150, prices didn't have to change for the "average price of a new car" to increase. This isn't a dismissal since we can compare every model year to the previous and see an increase YoY in prices without serious improvements to the underlying product. We have also seen everyone going from sedans to trucks though. >It would mean financial ruin to borrow two-thirds of your income for a car. The automakers have forgotten Henry Ford's lesson. He payed his workers enough so they could each afford the products he was selling. I agree but the problem is that business owners don't like how much money comes from that system and prefer competing for people's lines of credit, because an economy where everyone has $40k in debt literally has more money sloshing around it than one where everyone buys their car outright, and that means more profit, which is the entire goal of every CEO everywhere, so of course every CEO wants you to go into debt for them. Unfortunately, a lot of people can leverage themselves farther than they can actually afford for long enough that some CEO can extract profit before the entire system collapses. A shitload of profit and CEO salary was made in the run up to 2008, and none of the people who extracted that wealth from the system went to jail, so why are we surprised they're trying to do it again? Scientology managed to distill this down to the bones; They simply had people sign up for credit cards and max them out buying scientology stuff. Since the penalty for debt goes to the people who took it, instead of the place the money the debt went, there's infinite incentive to do this. CEOs look at that system and get extremely jealous.