Cars are expensive. I don't even know how much it's worth to bother having them. I used to think living in a city would be the worst, but I think if I could live in a place that had decent public transportation and that I could simply rent a car whenever I wanted to take a vacation or visit family a few states away, it would be better than dealing with the cost of having cars. Let's take a look.

A quick Google search gave me an estimate of about $28,400 for the average price of a new car bought in the United States. Let's couple that with the average gross income: $42,000. Given a standard 40-hour workweek and 52 weeks in a year, the standard person probably works close to 2,080 hours a year. Let's subtract 120 because of time off, vacation, etc., spanning about three weeks. That's 1,960 hours, meaning that each hour spent working earns the standard American $21.43 per hour. That's pretty close to what I would have guessed without Googling standards, so I feel assured that it's a good estimate.

Given that number, the standard American needs to work 1,325 and a quarter hours in order to earn enough to pay for that car. That is 67% of the annual earnings. Of course, the car lasts more than a year, but people have a tendency to continue buying things that take longer than a year to pay off. It all adds up. You know what else adds up? Gas.

Another quick Google search showed the average miles driven by any one person or vehicle to be about 15,000. That's the number used on fueleconomy.gov to compare fuel savings between vehicles. Another estimate I saw on the first page of results was 12,000, so for the sake of being conservative, let's use that number. The average fuel economy of US cars was, five years ago, about 19 miles a gallon. Automakers have upped that number of course, so I'll bump that number up to about 25. It's probably a very liberal bump. So the average car will go use about 480 gallons of gas each year. Multiply that by about three bucks and you're spending $1,440 on gas each year you own that car.

You know what else you spend on that car? Necessary maintenance and repairs. If you're doing what you should, you'll get oil changes four times a year, for a total of about $100 if you do it yourself. Add tires every once in a while (another $300-400), brakes (maybe $100), and the likelihood of having something else happen (add an emergency budget of maybe $500). You won't spend all that every year, but every few years you will have to put in another investment to keep your car going safely.

Oh, and did we forget insurance and registration? Approximately $100 a month, if you're lucky, and you're spending an extra $1,200 a year. And that's a very low price. But Google tells me the average is more like $1800.

All told, you're looking at about $32,600 in one year on a car. Of course, each year you own the car divides $28,400 of that cost into another way (the second year divides it in two, the third year in three, and so on). However, each year also adds gas, insurance, registration, and service/maintenance.

Google results are actually giving me varying opinions on how long people keep the same car, but the range is from four to 17 years. I can't believe 17 years myself, and a lot of the answers are around five or seven. We'll go with seven. Which means you get to spend quite a bit less on that car per year (28,400 divided by 7 is 4,057), but add approximately $29,400 to that cost over the total of seven years. That's seven multiplied by $4,200, which is the difference between $32,600 and $28,400.

In case you didn't realize, the indirect cost of the car over the course of its time under one owner is enough to buy another car again. That's kind of crazy and rather sobering on its own. Which means that, okay, you spread the direct cost of the car, $28,400, over a period of seven years, but you've doubled its total cost, meaning that you're effectively paying for the car in the equivalent of three and a half years. The price over three-point-five years is $8,114 per year, meaning 378 hours of the year spending working toward paying off the car. That's slightly more than 19% of your work time. Effectively a fifth. That means when you clock in at work at nine o'clock in the morning, every minute you spend until 10:36 is spent working toward your car. Or from the end of your lunch break at one until 2:36. Or from 3:24 until you clock out at five. Doesn't matter which 96 minutes you pick. Just pick 96 minutes of your workday and think to yourself during that time, "Right now, I'm earning my car."

Did I mention interest? People don't go to a car dealer and drop down $28,400 for a new car. No. They get auto loans. They get to have interest added to their bill at the average rate of about 5% continually compounded over five years. A loan calculator tells me that this adds about $3,756 to the cost of the car because of interest.

Once you realize the enormity of this, and then realize that cars are only one of many high-price items that can be broken down this way, then you will realize how impossible and misleading the American dream is. And you might just realize how the system has already won. You are its slave, and there is almost no way out. You lose.

Note: Yes. Many people do not buy new cars. But if you're buying a used car, you probably aren't any better off, comparatively, than the person who can "afford" to purchase one straight off the assembly line. And you don't very often keep used cars for as long as new ones. Also, do you make $21.43 an hour? I didn't think so.

Ashley and I were shopping at a store. She couldn't find what she wanted until a cashier dude came by and, I guess having heard her say something about the sizes, said to her, Oh, we have that one in more sizes. So she went with him to the register and, just like with movie rental stores, he grabbed the item in her size from a drawer. During the transaction I took a few last moments to look for something for me to wear. I didn't find anything, and when I looked up, Ashley was gone.

The man told me which direction she went. (This part of the store, or this store itself, was at the corner sort of. There were two directions, diagonally, to go, left or right.) I went right, and found her. I called out, "Brittany!" She didn't respond. Then I realized that that was my sister's name, so I called Ashley but she didn't respond. I think she went into the bathroom. And I tried to look and wait for her, but it wasn't working, and I started to panic. It was like she had disappeared.

In my dream I was also working on my project papers. But instead of project papers, they were weird reports. The one for Dr. Jones Gray and Dr. Pittman included a section on dairy. So I was trying to write that. I was trying to do some research, but I was also trying to get some firsthand knowledge from this store hotel megaplex thing in the dream, where I had lost Ashley. It was huge and we sort of lived there.

The strangest part of the dream was when I was actually in a mostly-recognizable place: the English Department. I was sitting at the Table, and perhaps the department itself was a slightly different size or shape, but the Table was there, and Dr. Closser's office was where it should be. It'd very odd for me to have dreams in real places.

As I worked, at the Table, on my project papers, Dr. Closser was talking to me. He said a lot of things and showed me a lot of things, including a bunch of gifts he had made for various people for the holidays. He gave me a bag and said it was my family's gift. Sure enough, there were six cups, each with a name on it. Four of them were for my parents, I guess, as a sign of respect for elders or something. The other two were for Ashley and me. I drank mine there. It was beer Dr. Closser had brewed himself.

Later in the dream I realized I hadn't brought the rest of the gift home so I had to do that. Also, I needed to take a shower (at the hotel store megaplex thing) and I went back to my room to get a towel, and I realized that I hadn't been there a couple of days because of some (adventure? assignment? day trip?) reason. I stepped on a towel or something and thought how amazingly soft it was, prompting me to think, What have I been doing that a towel seems like the most luxurious thing in the world?