People who rollover negative equity on cars

[LSLGuy]

True. But a hell of a lot of people never have a paid off car. It’s sold, traded in, or wrecked before it’s paid off.

The last time I had a paid off car was at least a decade ago, maybe 2.

As to the underlying logic the OP is looking for, I’ll repeat a cite I dug up this morning for another thread. Very clearly a LOT of Americans have no business buying new or even high cost used cars.

@LSLGuy

See Most Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense, report finds - CBS News from early 2025. Trigger warning: The page begins with a big vid of the current criminal wannabe-dictator bloviating. It isn’t self-starting at least the way my browser is configured. But the article itself only mentions him in the sense of doing nothing about the problem to date except lip service and actions likely to make the problem worse, not better.

If you read the cited article, do go to my quoted comment in the other thread and see the subsequent posts for some discussion of the shortcomings in that article.