How Poor People Buy Cars, Positive Sum, Abi Olvera, September 10, 2026
Another friend told me he wouldn’t know where to get a $5,000 car.
Everyone knows there’s cultural knowledge in elite circles. How to get your kid into a good college. How to pass a consulting or finance or Google interview.
There’s just as much cultural knowledge to being in the bottom two quintiles. I see it written about much less.
This is a fascinating piece about the social and knowledge networks among working-class communities. It’s a similar theme as my piece on this interesting computer store from yesterday. More from Abi:
For my first car, we went to the part of town where there are a lot of mechanic shops. The lots sell cars from $1,500 to $10,000 and sometimes junkers for parts. A friend of my grandmother’s, Mario, ran one of these.
My parents wanted me to buy a $2,000 Honda Civic. I splurged on a $3,000 car I thought was cuter. I was sixteen and paying with my own earnings.
There was no bank loan or credit check. We paid Mario directly in installments.
My parents knew how to judge cars at this price, and we had a trusted contact. That’s the same combination that gets well-off kids their summer internships.
There’s a lot more in here. Read the whole thing.
Governor Stein Joins the Housing Fray, CityBuilder, Conor Mulderrig, May 28, 2026
This is an exciting executive order with a ton of potential, but its success is entirely dependent on how deep the administration digs and how far they are willing to push agencies to think in new ways. Pushing forward legislative reforms is still vital, and if implemented correctly, this executive order has the potential to accelerate the impacts of reforms.
This is a detailed piece analyzing a housing-related executive order in North Carolina. It’s a good piece of policy writing, if that’s your thing. Check it out.
The restaurant reservation wars show no signs of slowing down, CNN, Jordan Valinsky, March 17, 2026
Resy, while smaller, tends to have trendier and more upscale places on its platform, which is partly why Panjwani ultimately chose it for One40. There’s also its “very competitive” pricing, she said, since Resy charges just a monthly fee while OpenTable also charges a fee per diner.
Weird. We’ve come a long way since you just called a place the night before and then showed up. Or maybe the week before. Then again, most restaurants are still like that. Many, of course, don’t even need reservations.
And this:
“When every seat becomes digital inventory, the restaurant stops behaving like a neighborhood space and starts behaving like a scheduling system,” he said. “That, in my opinion, is the tension underlying all of this competition.”
This is one of those things that makes it feel like “everything is always getting worse.” What causes this? Is it the internet? The social media approach to life? Greed and consumerism? Capitalism? The flattening of culture and the keeping up with the Joneses where everyone wants to be like the ultra-rich? I don’t know. I find it very odd, and symptomatic of a cultural malaise or sickness.
What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America?, The Pudding, June 2026
A very cool interactive photo essay, for some light fare. Check it out.
Related Reading:
“When every seat becomes digital inventory, the restaurant stops behaving like a neighborhood space and starts behaving like a scheduling system,”
That piece of hand-waving makes no specific sense though.
When doctors' and dentists' offices started encouraging patients to schedule themselves online, what did that have to do with the actual experience of my neighborhood doctor or dentist visit?
Did using StubHub to purchase the tickets to tonight's White Sox game somehow degrade the experience for my son and his buddy, compared to when my father took me by going to a physical box office to buy the tickets?
Walk in and get a table, or call and wait for the right staffer to come to the phone to take a reservation, or book yourself into one online, or send a carrier pigeon if you want to -- whatever. Has diddly to do with the quality of the experience of sitting down in that restaurant and having a meal.
Abi Olvera is raining on my car-hating, cars-are-unaffordable parade, but the arguments are interesting and correct. As much as car dependence is an acute stress on household finance, this piece adds some needed nuance. Americans make car dependence and car ownership worse than it needs to be.