the conservative values of the heartland

[sisyphusshrugged]

so how's your family doing?

By the time 16-year-old Caroline Groom got her driver's license Oct. 3, she had spent a year deluging her father with e-mails about the makes and models of cars she'd like to have -- including her dream vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee. At first, her father resisted, figuring he'd share his car with her and take Metro to work a couple of days a week from their home in Arlington.

But after "a couple of bad fights," Caroline said, he gave in. "It was kind of a matter of wearing him down," she added. Caroline didn't get her Jeep, but two weeks ago, her father bought her a new silver Subaru Legacy.

Nearly every culture has a recognized turning point between childhood and adulthood, when rules must be learned, tests passed, talismans awarded. In the United States, for the past half-century, the iconic rite of passage for a teenager has been this: You take your driver's test. You get your license. You slide behind the wheel and drive into the grown-up world.

In the past, the car in question usually belonged to Mom or Dad, who handed over the keys with a combination of pride and trepidation. Increasingly, however, the cars teenagers drive are their own. Even parents who hadn't planned to buy their children cars feel pressure to do so -- not only from the new drivers in their household, but also from other parents and from their own busy schedules.

But a recent string of fatal traffic accidents in the area involving young drivers has strengthened some parents' resolve to delay giving a teenager the keys to the highway. Julie Sussman of Centreville long ago decided that her son Chad, 15, will wait until he is 17 to apply for his learner's permit. She said she is baffled by parents who say to their child, "You're 15 1/2 -- here are the keys to a car."

According to CNW Marketing Research, which tracks national purchasing trends, 41 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States own cars, up from 23 percent in 1985. The percentage of parents who pay for those cars has also risen. In 1985, 19 percent of teenagers' used cars were paid for by their parents. Today the figure is 40 percent.

One reason parents are willing to spend the money is safety, according to Art Spinella of CNW. If their child is going to have a car, they want it to have air bags and anti-lock brakes. Another reason, he believes, is indulgence.

"Baby boomers are trying as hard as they can to not so much be parents as be friends with their kids," he said. "That translates into buying them a car instead of letting them buy their own car. It translates into buying them a new vehicle instead of getting them a used one and letting them do the work on it."

Not all families can afford cars for their children, and in dense urban areas with subways and limited parking, some teenagers don't want them. But in affluent suburban areas where there is no Metro and bicycle riding is more hobby than transportation, it has become almost odd for a teenager not to have a car.

Your tax cut gave you enough money back to buy a spiffy new car for a sixteen year old, right?

Or does that kind of money represent your yearly family income?

Your government, putting your money to work for Muffy.

edit: and in a dazzling show of economic patriotism, Muffy is trending toward foreign cars

Comments

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

Car vs. College. Reminds me of when I was in high school in Texas. Such status! I'm happy I didn't have a car in high school - or college for that matter.

Ahhhh. such decisions to be made! And to think how high American consumer debt is today. No wonder America's heartland is big on Bush's economic policy. Buy now, pay later, give it to immature kids to fuck it up on their own.

numbers always baffle me

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

I am very bad at them, I underwent math-related trauma for years at school and at home, and I have managed to recover and "reclaim my mathuality" so to speak, a little bit, but I still regard math and stats as dangerous majick, really.

Which is why I can't seem to stay away from them, I guess. I've been trying to figure out for a while how there can be enough rich people to keep the economy going, when there are so few of them and so many poor.

But 10% of 250 million is still a lot of people, I realized, doing the crunching. And if you pull it down to people making over $55k per year, which is the cutoff I've seen, where they break highest for Bush, then that ads a whole lot more to the "rich" bracket, tho' I have no figures or percents for that.

This is also the problem with looking at the avg IQ thing and assuming that it's the poor, dumb" people who voted for Bush. For one thing, IQ is a sham, in large part - it's just another sing of being able to work to test, the way that well-off kids do better on SATs, does anyone reading books and diaries and letters written 100 years ago think we're exponentially smarter and more competent than our ancestors? But beyond that, the average is skewed: looking at the NH breakdown, I saw those towns with median wage of $40k and up, and 25-30% higher degrees going red, all having very dense populations. I also saw the vast tracts of land" having very average-low medians and % of college educated - but when scrutinized, what it turned out to be was a handful of people, some making $100k per year, most making $10k. And the same with college/intel tests.

Some dKossacks, trying to reframe the debate, have just come up with a beauty, to describe the intersection of Theocon and Meocon: "Escalade Evangelicals," which we can add to Garrison's "Lamborghini Libertarians," in defining the opposition.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

Jeeeez. I read that article yesterday and was SO irked.


Of course, in my world, IF you got a car (by no means certain) it was the oldest clunker that some relative could shed, usually somethign of the same model year as your year of birth. And if you were really lucky, you got mom or dad's old car, and they got a new one. YOU never got a brand new car!!

[tully-monster.livejournal.com]

My Illinois taxpayer money, not getting used for our universities or our public schools, going to pay for Little Miss Muffy's new foreign car via her father's tax cut.