people have just accepted a car payment as "normal", so they don't see anything wrong it. there's lots of commenters who publish these nonsense metrics about what percentage of your income is ok to spend on a car payment.

couple that with increasing car prices - particularly with respect to trucks, but also the increasing prevalence of "luxury" cars - and this is what you get.

if you pay cash for cars, it completely changes your mindset. my 10 year old jeep grand cherokee has 140,000 miles and is just about dying on me, but i just bought my wife a new car, so i'm not in a hurry to write another $50k check. if i were splitting the pain up into 84 easy monthly payments, it'd be a lot easier to just pull the trigger.