Bon Voyager

Out on the road yesterday, I didn't see a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, but I did see a paper temporary license plate on a Plymouth Voyager minivan like this one.

"So?" you're wondering.  I don't have time for a longer post about more relevant topics today, but this little observation ties in with something I'll talk about later, which is employers' inability to fill newly open jobs.  What's significant about seeing a Plymouth with a temporary license plate is that Plymouths haven't been made in twenty years.  

I noted that a lot of people keep cars more than a decade old, sometimes more than two decades old, because new cars are so damn expensive - and it's becoming obvious that late-model used cars are also pretty damn expensive too.  Americans are not only keeping their older cars, they're still buying them!  Because the jobs that are coming back don't pay well enough for them to afford anything else.

And I'll expand on that last point later.