PRIOR CONVICTION
Matt Prior
What if we didn’t buy any new cars for a year? That’s a thought experiment suggested by Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick, writing to the Financial Times last week.
Oswald used data from the RAC Foundation and Autocar to estimate that UK buyers will spend £80 billion on new cars this year. Which is, technically speaking, a shedload of money. Relatively, we won’t spend vastly greater sums on public services like education (£110bn) or health and social care (£190bn) – both public expenditures that the government may be looking to trim.
Will we really spend that much on cars? Possibly. We’d need to buy two million at £40k a pop to total £80bn. We bought (or registered) 1.9 million last year. But for the purposes of the experiment, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a bit over or under: it’s still a ton of money.