Read on Twitter
Breaking this out into it's own thread. Car dealers are engines of Trumpy reaction, a GOP donor base and a unproductive middleman in our economic system. What are some short-term policy ideas for causing them pain that Dems could realistically implement? https://twitter.com/mtsw/status/1325506983592488960
Something I'd add is that the economic bread and butter of car dealerships isn't sales but maintenance and repair, and the basically-inevitable-at-this-point proliferation of electric vehicles is going to completely wreck them even if we do nothing, but why not accelerate it?
Normally I find Elon Musk and Tesla's hooting crowd of fanboys exasperating and insufferable but, to their credit, they also hate the franchise dealership model and would be valuable allies in this fight.
endorse. keep 'em coming https://twitter.com/BartenderHemry/status/1325510412461355009
yes its worth noting that the medium-term planning for US automakers (lots of EVs) is also directly at odds at what's in the best interest of the dealers https://twitter.com/TheMacNaughton/status/1325512976195936261
another excellent idea https://twitter.com/JoshNH4H/status/1325513425708052485
The idea is less to reduce car sales (though that would be rad) but to allow OEMs to sell direct-to-consumer and cut out the middleman. I don't think there'd be a big negative shock to overall tax revenue, https://twitter.com/andreamatranga/status/1325514161531441153
Lower number of overall dealerships (would especially be true of big 3) probably means it makes taxes more concentrated and would screw over some small municipalities that are reliant on a cluster of dealerships. But we should be discouraging existence of small munis anyway!
