Here’s mine:
Interactive: Visualizing Median Income For All 3,000+ U.S. Counties - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-median-income-u... (blue is better, red is worse)
(assume 45k-$50k new vehicle price in the US, back out to the income needed to support a payment at current interest rates on a 5-7 year term, which is roughly $500-$1000/month, which is why auto loans are currently defaulting at record highs)
/r/dataisbeautiful: USA auto loan delinquency rate from 2000 to 2025 - https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ueked2/oc...
[–] michaelt 1 day ago
Seriously though, everywhere I've lived there have been at least some doctors, dentists, college professors, business owners and suchlike; even Mississippi has hospitals, or so I'm told.
[–] toomuchtodo 1 day ago
Fundamentally, if we expect Rural America to buy affordable EVs (which, imho, they will need to do, and we should crank on policy to achieve), someone will have to force them to be affordable. Allow cheap, high quality Chinese imports, or nationalize an automaker as they approach failure. But right now, Rural America is captive to a parasite US auto industry profitmaxxing by minimizing production and maxing their profits, protected by tariffs. You cannot compel them to make affordable cars currently, but if you don’t, Rural America is fucked.
“You can just do things.”
(no current TSLA exposure, out long ago around “420 funding secured,” but still own a handful of Teslas out of sentimental reasons)
[–] _heimdall 20 hours ago
We should watch how poorly its going trying to have NYC own something as simple as a few grocery stores. If the government is stepping in to make things cheaper they're destroying competition in the entire industry. They either inadvertently end up owning the entire industry by driving out all privately owned companies, or they subsidize those private companies so they can compete with the state owned ones.
[–] toomuchtodo 14 hours ago
Mamdani has a ~70% approval rating, and a long list of wins, New York City is doing phenomenal. There is strong evidence this was a contributing factor in more democratic socialist being elected across the country (“Mamdani Effect”), including the mayor of LA. If you think it isn’t, well, you’re ignoring reality. That’s a choice. Do so at your own peril.
In this specific context around auto manufacturing, it is clear there is no competition, and US tariff policy is keeping competition out to benefit legacy auto management and their shareholders. We could flip the switch on tariff policy, and they would immediately have competition, but they can’t handle it. The evidence is clear they are already doing poorly for the US consumer, and they have no intentions to change.
https://newrepublic.com/post/217572/dsa-candidates-won-elect...
Old people, fond of capitalism, keep dying every day, and young people who believe in socialism keep entering the electorate. Only time will tell, but rough trajectory is clear. The time to prepare for the next election cycle has already begun.
[–] _heimdall 12 hours ago
Mamdani's approval rating is beside my point. My point was simply that we have a current example of a government in the US attempting to nationalize (well its in a city but I don't know what that form of the term would be) a portion of an industry and it already ran aground. The publicly owned version can be run not for profit, meaning it beats a competition in price. Either the competition all leave or the state ends up having to subsidize their entire profit margin so they can compete.
People can approve of Mamdani and the city as a whole can be doing very well under his leadership. That doesn't change the outcome of the grocery store program of the topic.
I do agree though, time will tell if this fresh round of socialism fairs better than past attempts. History shows it fails miserably every time it is attempted, if the US were to make it work they would be the first.
[–] toomuchtodo 11 hours ago
Typically, the people who complain about socialism and communism are the ones looking for a right to exploit others under an economic system for their own economic gain, as socialism and communism would cram down what these exploiters would be able to achieve while achieving a more solid floor under the poorest and most disadvantaged. A tale as old as time.
If capitalism is so good, why is everyone so unhappy and suffering while a select few get and stay wealthy, mostly out of luck and/or inheritance?
[–] _heimdall 11 hours ago
Exploitation is always a challenge. As you said, those today often yelling for capitalism are actually wanting to exploit those not paying attention or small enough to he steamrolled. In socialism, its those at the top that end up exploiting the rest of the country.
Here's a table of states with median, top 20%, and top 5% figures: https://beforeview.com/income-percentile/state
Mississippi, the lowest one on the list, has a top 5% at over $200,000/year. That's ~150,000 people in households who can comfortably afford a nice new EV, in just one small, poor state.
The states defined by the Census Bureau as being in "the midwest" (a subset of "flyover states") contain about 70 million people. The top 5% would be 3.5 million people who can afford a nice new EV. And this is conservative: someone in the top 6% can probably afford one too, but I'm not counting them, and there's plenty of "flyover state" territory beyond the midwest.
California is big enough and rich enough to have a huge amount of market power. But it's not so big and rich that it makes 100+ million Americans in the middle of the country completely irrelevant and ignorable.