Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain
Finger Lakes, New York State, USA
12.58pm
Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain
In three days I spent more money fixing my car than I spent on a month of travel in India.
This fact is difficult for my brain to reconcile.
In general I am still going through sticker shock in the U.S. When I converted Filipino pesos in Manila and realized I was spending over six dollars for a Wendy's combo meal, I thought perhaps there was a markup since it was overseas. But now I walk into a Wendy's here and see that it is the same price. I have been caught in a time warp for fourteen months and when I see the prices of ordinary consumer goods here I notice the inflation over that time because it jars with my idea of what prices ought to be. (Prices ought to be what they were fourteen months ago when I left!)
Maintaining an automobile is a big money drain in the U.S. (and in the rest of North America and Europe, I conject). In India, Thailand, and the Philippines most people don't maintain a car. This is not by choice - most cannot afford to own and maintain an automobile. However, because most cannot have automobiles, there are alternate modes of transportation. With a combination of bus and taxi you can get just about anywhere.
Most Americans probably do not want to admit the economic drain of the automobile or, more likely, do not even think about it. A car is considered a necessity. In many ways it is. We have built an infrastructure here where you really cannot go anywhere without an automobile; not only that, you need to own your own personal automobile. Granted, it is a big country with a lot of open space. But I am sure there is a silent minority (or perhaps majority) who are breaking their budget every month with the automobile loan and maintenance as one of the principal culprits.
The other zinger about maintaining an automobile is that repairs can be a crapshoot. You may go for months without a repair and then suddenly get zapped with several. Using busses and taxis are a more constant and plan-able expense. And if you don't have the money, you just don't make the trip -- and you don't have a fifteen thousand dollar white elephant sitting in your parking space.
In words of Ivan Illich and other critics of the development project, the technological transportation conundrum I just described is known as the "social construction of scarcity". Because of societal and economic decisions about transportation infrastructure, transportation becomes scarce and thus expensive.
I found that describing the cost of living in the U.S. to people I met in Asia usually went nowhere; there were few points of reference. The best I could do was say that even though some people in the U.S. made more money, houses, cars, food, and other costs were more expensive. This usually did not mean a lot to the person with whom I was speaking. And in the end, I was the one who could afford to visit their country and not vice versa, right?
Fixing my car: feeling the economic pain
