151–160 of 615 posts
1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes? 2) If the problem is that subscription users aren’t paying local sales taxes, why not charge property taxes? (or, Land Value Tax!)
> There are four full-service car washes in town, with a fifth on the way; three are bunched up on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Route 14. Social media complaints about car wash overkill spurred town leaders to take action. Four (or even five) doesn't sound that much? What's the actual problem here? How is a local politican supposed to determine what is the correct density of any particular type of service within her…
This is a big thing in the UK, too. The official narrative here is modern slavery with undocumented migrants. It's the same with sex work, with which is harder to separate between conservative propaganda and reality. I expect the main difference between the US and UK versions are that the latter are typically set up in disused urban plots with pop-up tents and temporary chain-link fences rather than having any invest…
> There are four full-service car washes in town, with a fifth on the way; three are bunched up on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Route 14. There's actually a game theory explantation for this called Hotelling's Law: https://sciencetheory.net/hotellings-law-1929/
> Especially true in the American two-party system, political parties want to maximize vote allocated to their candidate. Political parties will adjust their platform to comply with the median voters’ demand. The Comparative Midpoints Model represents this idea best: Both political parties will get as close to the competing party’s platform while preserving its own identity
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I've often wondered how legit those 'hand car washes' are. Legit or not, I'm sure it is hard work for crappy money.
They're legit, and they make big tips when they work hard.
Automated ones are fine, but what I've really missed since I moved to New England have been the ones where a team vacuums the inside, hoses off your mats, wipes your windows and dashboard inside, etc. Growing up in the West and Midwest, these things were absolutely normal for the first 30 years of my life. Some of them would even change the oil too. But I haven't found anywhere within 50 miles of me that will do it h…
Year after Year, I kept thinking this was a fad and would crash. But years go by, and now they are calling it a 'boom'. 14 billion dollar market. For Car Washes? Isn't this an indicator that economy is fine, people are fine, since they can spend this type of money on car washes? How can something this worthless be booming, if people are struggling.
If you live in a place where roads are salted, washing your car is generally recommended to reduce rusting and paint damage. I don't go to the car wash often and I only use the one at my local gas station, but it's rare that I go there and there aren't already at least two cars in line. And I live in a very low population density area. At 1 car every 14 minutes on average, a single bay will easily clear $1,000/day of…
There is a federal write off for car washes, so no real surprise. https://engineeredtaxservices.com/the-unique-benefits-of-cos...
Depreciation is available for any company that purchases equipment; the "unique" thing as described in that article is simply that most of the value for car washes is in the equipment, so depreciation strategies are very important, but any business can and should write off equipment, or any other expense against net profits.
There is an accelerated depreciate for car washes that runs out in 2026 I think.
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My local car was has a $20/month subscription for unlimited washes. These aren't exactly luxury services--they're priced similar to a Netflix plan. If you have a car, it's worth it if you value our time at all.
But if you value your time, why would you wash your car multiple times per month?