I recall back in the 1980’s, driving past this house off 31st street (1 block south of Lake Street) in Minneapolis and on the corner there was this tiny, run down rat trap house. This big black brand new Cadillac pulls into the drive and this guy gets out looking for all the world like the stereotypical pimp. Black suit, a motherfucking cape for Og’s sake and a cane. I remember thinking “that car costs more than that house”.
To some degree it’s a status thing. I saw a similar thing when I worked at the inner-city cellphone store. People would drive up in the worst POS cars imaginable, then walk in and pay off their family’s $300 a month cell phone bill, then look at and talk about getting the latest and greatest most expensive phones to replace the 3-6 month old formerly top of the line phones they currently had. It made zero goddamned sense, but that’s what was important to these people - to show they had the best [del]phone[/del] status symbol around.
I could make the same argument about that Camry, though. You can get a nice late model Kia with a 4 cylinder and fewer miles for the same price. The Camry buyer might say that they wanted V6 power, Toyota piece of mind, or just that the Kia feels too cheap, but at the end of the day the Camry would be a worse decision from a strictly financial perspective. Yet nobody starts threads about seeing 10 year old V6 Camrys in low income areas. Why is that?
As a rule of thumb, the poor are less educated and less able to manage finances. Poor decisions about which car to buy and whether or not they can afford it are a reflection of this. It is far less likely they’ve perused Consumer Reports to figure out which car is the best value for reliability and depreciation, along with operating costs.
The recent mortgage crisis was a spectacular proof of how poor budgeting concepts are across the entire spectrum of society, and worse among the lowest income. In the case of cars, the repossession mechanism is much simpler than for a home, so in many ways it’s a safer loan on the seller side. Moreover, the monthly payment is small enough to be realistic, and “owning” something tangible which says to others, “I am successful” is a powerful driver to put a nice-looking car at the top of the budget.
In the area of the south where my family lives, another perception is common: that poor folks will pool money to buy a luxury vehicle and essentially share in the cost of ownership. I do not have any studies to know if this is true or not, but I do know that socially speaking, a luxury car is an important public statement, along with things like styled hair, certain jewelry and clothes, and items such as shoes or jackets among the young. It seems to be a common source of friction that someone buying groceries with food stamps has a $100 hairdo and a luxury car in which to drive away.
Another point is that BMW and Mercedes and similar “luxury” vehicles tend to have very high repair bills - whereas a Cadillac likely is not much more expensive to keep going than its poorer cousins.
Oh I’m in agreement with you completely. But if you’re destitute in a neighborhood full of destitutes, I would imagine you need something material in your life to prove to yourself (and posssibly others) that you’re not doing so badly. A luxurious Escalade speaks to that more readily than a sensible Toyota.
ISTR an Escalade is basically a Chevy Alalanche with different badging. Sort of like Talon = Eclipse, Taurus = Sable, etc.
I can’t really speak to anybody’s experiences except my own and possibly people I know, and we are pretty different, demographically, from your average ghetto dweller. But I do live in a low-income urban area. What I do know is that nobody I know pays full price for car repairs. Either you have a friend who is a mechanic, or you can fix it yourself, or you pay your mechanically inclined alcoholic uncle a couple hundred bucks to do it. You might pay $150 for a new BMW part instead of $50 for a Ford one, or go to a junkyard.
As far as rural unemployed people having nice trucks, a pickup is pretty much essential for a lot of semi-skilled and day labor. When my boyfriend was unemployed recently, he had to turn down quite a few short-term jobs because we don’t own a truck.
They are trying to impress people in their social circle, not you. You’d be laughable without these status symbols, if you don’t care about that you’re either autistic or in another social strata where there are different and equally stupid status symbols like what private school your kids go to, better advertize it with a bumper sticker.
If you’re a single guy think of something you do or buy just to hopefully impress women and get laid, same thing just the specifics are different.
People like to imagine they are above this kind of stuff, but they aren’t they have different social rules.
I can’t say anything about you in particular, but there’s no shortage of status symbols for middle-class 30 somethings. Nice house in the suburbs, moving to the “good school district” for your kids, new car, expensive hobbies, organic food, consumer electronics, prestigious degrees… other posters can add to the list. Hell, even a good job is a status symbol. You are a professional, so you don’t have to worry about mere external trappings! If you lived in a trailer, bought your clothes at Walmart, and drove a rusted out old beater, your friends and co-workers would definitely think you odd.
In this very thread, a lot of posters (me included!) are tripping over themselves to say how they would never waste their money on something flashy like an Escalade. Rather, this board is full of people who are smart and well educated and able to devote their time and money to making rational economic decisions! That, in itself, is something of a status symbol.
