Comment by kjkjadksj

And the parking angle.

Europe builds apartment complexes which are ~3 to ~10 stories tall, the US builds sprawling suburbs, zoned so that there's no grocery store in sight.

If you're packed 3 to an apartment in a 10-story complex, it's unlikely there's enough parking for all of you.

Many more households could afford it then want to afford it. Its just a huge waste of money. Cars are assets that massively deprecate in value and are utilized a extreme minimum of time. They are a horrible investment of large amounts of money.

In the rare cases where you need a second car, you can rent one extremely easily.

> Even if you are poor in the US cars are remarkably accessible. You can finance a used car with no credit and a couple dozen dollars a month.

This partly true but also really ignores a lot of issue that it creates.

The amount of car debt in the US is crazy. Lots of people get cars at absolutely absurd interest rates because their credit is bad and the need a car. Stretching out payment over many, many years. Its extremely predatory.

And then because of the arms race where everybody needs an ever bigger car or get killed, people buy more and more expensive cars all the time.

And of course because of the lack of safety inspections, people driving these really badly maintained crap cars that cause issues for everybody.

And even worse, people are so afraid of being without a car that people rather give up their homes and live in their cars then the other way around. Letting people slip into homelessness because if they want any hope in the future they need a car.

People paying interest on car loans rather then investing in their 401k isn't a great deal for society.

So yeah, my parents could defiantly afford two cars, but very, very rarely did we have 2 cars. And the only in special circumstances where that second car would be shared with some other people as well. Its just bad business and not that useful.