Why are cars – specifically, used cars – so expensive today? They weren't once. In fact, there was once an abundance of used cars so cheap teenagers could commonly afford them.

It was unusual, at one time, for a 16-or-17-year-old to not have his own car. By the time it was time to leave home, pretty much everyone owned a car. Because how else were you going to leave home?

Those old enough to remember . . . remember.

Today, it is not unusual for a 22-year-old to not have a driver's license – never mind a car. The stat bandied about is that roughly half of today's 16-year-olds do not have a driver's license. About fourth of those in the 18-22 bracket do not have one.

Probably because they cannot afford to own or even drive a car. So why bother with the license?

But why is that?

If anything, cars ought to be less expensive and more affordable today than they were back in the '90s and before, when pretty much everyone who was old enough to drive did drive. The car – as such – is a mature technology, as the saying goes. Like computers, and microwave ovens, they ought to have become less rather more expensive. Instead, the reverse.

Readers of this column already know the why about that. It's due to a combination of compliance costs – the costs passed on to car buyers incurred by car manufacturers, who must design cars to be "safe" and "clean" (in air fingers quotation marks to make a point of neither word being the honest word) and a general trend of most people being ok with and signing up for long loans to finance what they can't really afford. Instead of buying within their means. That is the main reason why every new vehicle now comes standard with AC (usually, climate control AC) a well as power everything, all of which was at one time optional so people who could not afford those things did not have to finance those things.