I write and talk about one subject too much -- cars -- and yet on some days I think I don't get angry enough.
I've spent many, many days thinking about cars. Should I buy a new car? Should I rent a car for when I need a car. Both my kids are having problems with cars. Both kids are in the high risk insurance category. One has gotten into several accidents in several years, the other has a driving under the influence ticket.
Have you any idea how much we three, my family, is paying to car insurance companies? And how much I, and they are paying, in repair bills, and gas bills. And if I get rid of my car and rent one when I need one, I will still pay thousands of dollars every year for the convenience of a car.
Yes, it is convenient. Yes, cars are wonderful. But why are there no other alternatives except busses or airplanes -- and one is too expensive, the other too slow. Why aren't there high speed trains between cities? Why isn't there wonderful Public transportation within cities.
We are prisoners. We are pawns. We are peons. Powerful people manipulated matters so we are stuck in a corner. We common folk must work hard to support enormously expensive, private, personal vehicles. Vehicles that kill 50,000 of us every year. Vehicles that consume resources, consume time -- consume money that flows from us to great big, rich, insurance companies.
I am ready to scream bloody murder. Why do we accept our fate? Why do we acquiesce to the status quo -- a country criss crossed by roads, a population chained for life to cars. We must own them. We must use them. we must take care of them and we must, must, insure them.
The cost of cars is warping my life -- warping the life of my children. It is a central part of our existence. We may never own a home. We can always rent an apartment. But we all end up owning cars -- and I just remembered a statistic I heard the other day: one third of all cars are leased.
There used to be a time when you hoped to own a home, which was expensive, so you rented an apartment or a house, until you could afford to own your own home.
Has it come to the point that cars are so expensive, that now we rent cars--until the day we can actually afford to own one?
A car now costs more than a home used to cost -- and a home was often a once in a lifetime deal, perhaps a twice in a lifetime purchase. Cars, however deteriorate rapidly: built in obsolescence. We may end up buying ten cars, perhaps twenty cars, in one lifetime. Have we gotten to the point that we can't afford to buy, so we rent?
How did we get in this deep, deep hole: dependant on cars, dependant on money sucking vehicles. Car companies destroyed public transportation and simultaneously convinced that we love cars, that we can't exist without cars. We are fools. Cars have benefits, but currently the drawbacks to a society that caters to cars seem far greater than the benefits cars confer.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein