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As an economist, I always have to think about what is the benefit people are paying for. What is their motivation? And what I come up with is the arms race concept. It kinda has two parts: One, once SUVs became common, people felt unsafe in their little cars sharing the road with these massive cars, so of course they bought the tanks to be safe too, so then there were more SUVs, so more people in small cars felt unsafe, so they bought more SUVs, and so on and so on. Two, its the same thing, just with image. As I said, in America we default to the assumption that bigger is better, so if you don't have the biggest vehicle you can possibly afford, then you're not as good as the guy who does. So you have to get one bigger than the Joneses next door. So everyone is ignoring the best economic decision making tools for buying a car and instead are buying into the economics of fear and jealousy. That is what annoys me.
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