this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
979 points (98.4% liked)
Fuck Cars
16839 readers
1444 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why don’t poor people just buy more money?
The meme is overstating the price of a new car a bit, but the fact is that buying a used car can almost be just as much. You’re just paying for regular maintenance vs. a car payment
New cars need regular maintenance too.
The upside is you "know the history" and can reasonably assume that if you do the maintenance the car will last a reasonable time. And if not the warranty and laws (lemon law) gives you some way out.
Buying used you do not have the knowledge of maintenance, nor the lemon law protections, nor the warranty protections (third party warranties are pretty much scam). So you're relying on the gamble that the car you are buying will last, or you can make it last.
People with knowledge of vehicles and ability to repair have a leg up in that gamble, but it's still a gamble.