- FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE - Daniel Greenfield - APRIL 11, 2023 -
The New York Timesreported that the Biden administration will abuse EPA regulations to eliminate most real car sales by 2030. The plan is to force 67% of car sales to be electric by 2032. Most Americans won’t be able to afford them, but they’ll have no other options.
The new poor will be anyone who can’t afford an electric car
Even the cheapest electric cars, which are still far more expensive than their real car counterparts and are just one battery problem away from turning into mostly unusable junk, are out of the price range of the majority of Americans who need an income of $80,000 to make an EV auto loan work. That’s fine in Washington D.C. where the median income of $83,567 is the highest in the nation, but will entirely price much of the country out of the new car market.
53% of Americans earn less than $75,000. Some of the 16% who earn from $50,000 to $75,000 may be able to make an electric vehicle purchase work if they squeeze, cut back on food and clothes for the kids, but the remaining 37% will be completely locked out. And, unable to own a car, they’ll have even bigger monthly payments or, with no transportation, be unable to work.
The new poor will be anyone who can’t afford an electric car. And that’s 53% of Americans.
This isn’t class warfare: it’s class genocide. The Biden administration is moving to reserve car ownership privileges for the Tesla class while eliminating working class ownership and the social mobility and the economic possibilities that come with it under the guise of environmentalism.
Steadily raising emissions standards has pushed the price of a new car toward $50,000. Obama’s emissions standards raised the cost by thousands of dollars, and California, as one of the largest markets in the country, further distorted costs for car buyers nationwide. Prices rose steadily and, when combined with runaway inflationary government spending, shot up wildly.
The average cost of a non-luxury car last year nearly hit $45,000. Since people only have so much money to spend, sales also dropped by 9% and millions fewer cars were sold. Even as America’s population has continued growing, its car sales have been falling.
Who is going to be shut out of Biden’s new banned car market?
The median income of 47 of the 52 states fall below the amount needed to buy an electric car.
The Biden administration is fixated on racial equity, but its ban on cars cuts off the vast majority of black people, Latinos and for that matter white people from car ownership. With a median income of $46,400, black people would either have to dedicate a fifth of their pre-tax incomes to car payments or spend most of their annual salary on a car. With a $55,321 median income, Latinos won’t have an easy time of it and even with a $74,932 median income, white people will be left behind.
The new equity will mean that hardly anyone will be able to afford to buy a car.