The major causes of inflation that people dont realize or talk about

[uihawk82]

Cause #1: Credit Cards, credit crazy financial institutions, people who spend money they do not have: Credit cards, as we know, are not real money unless you have the dough to pay off your monthly charges. I remember the credit card industry and major loan institutions coming on in the late '60s and '70s. College kids and people were bombarded with mailings to get your revolving credit account going and build your "credit history". But what this did was create a fake amount of demand, demand based on plastic which chased goods and that spells trouble in Inflation River City.

Credit to any and all people is an artificial demand. And so many people defaulted on their credit cards so the rest of us had to pay for that problem and financial institutions and retailers also raised interest rates and prices to cover their losses on not being able to get paid. Pres Carter was right back in the 1970's to go on TV and tell people that unfettered credit without the ability to pay was pushing prices higher and helping to fuel inflation more than it needed to rise.

Cause #2: Changes and leniency in bankruptcy laws. I remember hearing my parents talk about companies and individuals filing for bankruptcy back in the late 1950's and 60's and how bad it was. How the entity going bankrupt would lose about everything and couldn't get credit for multiple years. I cant remember when those laws were changed, in the 70's iirc, but again with these changes people could borrow and the default and go bankrupt without hardly any consequences. All that money that was lost or written off at 20 cents on the dollar has to be made up somewhere. And it was made up by inflated prices and the majority paying for bad money policy of others.

It took the Fed Reserve and economists a few years or a decade or two to wrangle and strangle down the inflation rate, much of which is caused by artificial demand.

 

[Fryowa]

This is so far off the mark in left field I don’t even know how to reply to it.

There is no such thing as “artificial demand” in any economic sense. There is either demand for something, or lack of demand for something.

You’d do well to take micro and macroeconomics, they’re freshman level courses that to be honest should be required of everyone by age 16. It would stop a lot of stupid internet treatises and time wasted punching keys on a keyboard.

 

[uihawk82]

I would say buying something without the money to pay for it is artificial demand. This artificially higher demand pushes up prices, that is Supply and Demand pricing graph 101, the increases in prices is inflation. Or tell me what you think it is???

 

[Fryowa]

I would say buying something without the money to pay for it is artificial demand. This artificially higher demand pushes up prices, that is Supply and Demand pricing graph 101, the increases in prices is inflation. Or tell me what you think it is???

Nothing artificial about it.

Buying something without the money for it is just a stupid personal choice unless it’s a car or house. Not some kind of made up “artificial demand.”

If someone wants to buy something that’s demand. It has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a poor choice or not and it has nothing to do with the resulting consequences

 

[okeefe4prez]

Cause #1: Credit Cards, credit crazy financial institutions, people who spend money they do not have: Credit cards, as we know, are not real money unless you have the dough to pay off your monthly charges. I remember the credit card industry and major loan institutions coming on in the late '60s and '70s. College kids and people were bombarded with mailings to get your revolving credit account going and build your "credit history". But what this did was create a fake amount of demand, demand based on plastic which chased goods and that spells trouble in Inflation River City.

Credit to any and all people is an artificial demand. And so many people defaulted on their credit cards so the rest of us had to pay for that problem and financial institutions and retailers also raised interest rates and prices to cover their losses on not being able to get paid. Pres Carter was right back in the 1970's to go on TV and tell people that unfettered credit without the ability to pay was pushing prices higher and helping to fuel inflation more than it needed to rise.

Cause #2: Changes and leniency in bankruptcy laws. I remember hearing my parents talk about companies and individuals filing for bankruptcy back in the late 1950's and 60's and how bad it was. How the entity going bankrupt would lose about everything and couldn't get credit for multiple years. I cant remember when those laws were changed, in the 70's iirc, but again with these changes people could borrow and the default and go bankrupt without hardly any consequences. All that money that was lost or written off at 20 cents on the dollar has to be made up somewhere. And it was made up by inflated prices and the majority paying for bad money policy of others.

It took the Fed Reserve and economists a few years or a decade or two to wrangle and strangle down the inflation rate, much of which is caused by artificial demand.

LMAO. Yes, the Fed printing five fucking trillion dollars in 2020 and 2021 had absolutely no effect on inflation. And the US Treasury sitting on nearly $30 trillion of debt, not including long tail liabilities like Social Security and Medicare, has no effect on inflation. It's the damned $900 billion in credit card debt. Yep, that's it.

The Bankruptcy Code was changed in 2005 when the Uniparty sold your ass out to big business (your boy Joe Biden, whose dead kid was a lobbyist for credit card companies, even voted for this gift to big business, but he still cares about the little guy). They made it much more difficult to file for Chapter 7 and pushed anyone with decent income into Chapter 13 and turned Uncle Sugar into the debt collection arm of JPMorgan. Yep, that's a huge cause of inflation. And if a company files for bankruptcy, 99 times out of 100, the equity is wiped out. That was why Ford levered themselves to the gills in 2007. They saw what was coming and had to avoid bankruptcy because bankruptcy would have wiped out the Ford Foundation and the family. Anyway, despite this supposed "leniency" in bankruptcy laws, interest rates on debts have steadily trended down for 40 years.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I call BS on this. CC have been around forever. This is just another left attempt to move the goal posts or focus of what is happening due to political decisions.

 

[HawkGold]

Cause #1: Credit Cards, credit crazy financial institutions, people who spend money they do not have: Credit cards, as we know, are not real money unless you have the dough to pay off your monthly charges. I remember the credit card industry and major loan institutions coming on in the late '60s and '70s. College kids and people were bombarded with mailings to get your revolving credit account going and build your "credit history". But what this did was create a fake amount of demand, demand based on plastic which chased goods and that spells trouble in Inflation River City.

Credit to any and all people is an artificial demand. And so many people defaulted on their credit cards so the rest of us had to pay for that problem and financial institutions and retailers also raised interest rates and prices to cover their losses on not being able to get paid. Pres Carter was right back in the 1970's to go on TV and tell people that unfettered credit without the ability to pay was pushing prices higher and helping to fuel inflation more than it needed to rise.

Cause #2: Changes and leniency in bankruptcy laws. I remember hearing my parents talk about companies and individuals filing for bankruptcy back in the late 1950's and 60's and how bad it was. How the entity going bankrupt would lose about everything and couldn't get credit for multiple years. I cant remember when those laws were changed, in the 70's iirc, but again with these changes people could borrow and the default and go bankrupt without hardly any consequences. All that money that was lost or written off at 20 cents on the dollar has to be made up somewhere. And it was made up by inflated prices and the majority paying for bad money policy of others.

It took the Fed Reserve and economists a few years or a decade or two to wrangle and strangle down the inflation rate, much of which is caused by artificial demand.

Not even close.

You can take any of these and rank them in different order, but these are the real issues.

Causes of inflation.

#1 Roe and attitudes toward family including lack of tax incentives for having kids.

#2 Unlimited stimulus from the Great Recession and now COVID

#3 Artificially low interest rates

#4 Bank bail outs (No bank bankruptcies anymore)

#5 Lowering of Cap Gains and Death Taxes

#6 Fed determination to keep markets and thus pensions going up up up.

#7 Endless streams of war by both parties.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Not even close.

You can take any of these and rank them in different order, but these are the real issues.

Causes of inflation.

#1 Roe and attitudes toward family including lack of tax incentives for having kids.

#2 Unlimited stimulus from the Great Recession and now COVID

#3 Artificially low interest rates

#4 Bank bail outs (No bank bankruptcies anymore)

#5 Lowering of Cap Gains and Death Taxes

#6 Fed determination to keep markets and thus pensions going up up up.

#7 Endless streams of war by both parties.

Many of these are correct, but Roe has no impact on inflation. It is also important to remember that Nixon removed the US from the gold standard, which laid the groundwork for the massive inflation in the '70's and even today. It is also important to notice how the industries that get the most federal subsidies, including health care, higher education and housing have all experienced rates of price increases that vastly exceed the rate of inflation. Inflation has been kept in check over the past few decades through massive cuts to labor prices achieved through offshoring manufacturing and back office functions and by bringing in immigrant labor that will work for low wages. It is possible that as a society we have "picked all the low hanging fruit" for cost cutting and price levels will just be higher going forward. A lot will depend on how much oil prices come down. Oil prices have really been immune from generalized inflation for the most part over the past few decades because technology has vastly improved many steps in the oil extraction, logistics, refining and distribution business.

 

[HawkGold]

Many of these are correct, but Roe has no impact on inflation. It is also important to remember that Nixon removed the US from the gold standard, which laid the groundwork for the massive inflation in the '70's and even today. It is also important to notice how the industries that get the most federal subsidies, including health care, higher education and housing have all experienced rates of price increases that vastly exceed the rate of inflation. Inflation has been kept in check over the past few decades through massive cuts to labor prices achieved through offshoring manufacturing and back office functions and by bringing in immigrant labor that will work for low wages. It is possible that as a society we have "picked all the low hanging fruit" for cost cutting and price levels will just be higher going forward. A lot will depend on how much oil prices come down. Oil prices have really been immune from generalized inflation for the most part over the past few decades because technology has vastly improved many steps in the oil extraction, logistics, refining and distribution business.

More defined, the fact we have fewer workers does contribute directly to inflation and health care costs put on society for aging populations with few at the base is maybe the biggest problem. We need a pyramid society structure but we have a curvy figure with a slim waste which came about right when abortion was a big topic. we likely have minimally 50 million people less due to attitudes about kids that would be about 50 on down now.

The Gold standard issue isn't the problem. Yes, it was an economic reset just like 07-09 and COVID.

Modern economies can't really function on the gold standard. Gold no longer has much worth other than jewelry. It has no real value, just like the "dollar" created by the Fed and Bretton Woods. So that theory is false.

We were removed from the Gold Standard in 1914. What we had was a dollar pegged to gold which makes no sense what so ever.

That said, it opens economies up to manipulation which can be good, unless it's done for greed, which is the capitalist way. We now how oligarch's in control of about everything.

Russia would be an economic giant if Gold was key. Russia and China combines could really dictate world policy.

In the end, what we have is a defacto oil standard (where Russian oligarch's make a lot of money) which will become a lot more volatile as we head toward 2040 with international economic chaos.

The US if it wants to remain an economic giant during the oil demise and post, needs to spend more on education and infrastructure and remove systemic bias which will also include more and more non educated whites.

Look at Russia and Ukraine to get a glimpse into the future of the US.

If we keep ratcheting up death and cap gains tax exemptions, we for sure will look like those two mafia states that place little value on human life.

 

[uihawk82]

Not even close.

You can take any of these and rank them in different order, but these are the real issues.

Causes of inflation.

#1 Roe and attitudes toward family including lack of tax incentives for having kids.

#2 Unlimited stimulus from the Great Recession and now COVID

#3 Artificially low interest rates

#4 Bank bail outs (No bank bankruptcies anymore)

#5 Lowering of Cap Gains and Death Taxes

#6 Fed determination to keep markets and thus pensions going up up up.

#7 Endless streams of war by both parties.

Well if you read the title of the thread it basically says a couple of items hardly anyone talks about or thinks about or knows about.

In your list there are many that are talked about, unlimited stimulus yes because that puts a bunch of extra money and therefore demand into the economy and covid caused supply shortages which also makes prices rise. People and the news talk about very low interest rates all the time, lowering of taxes puts more money into the spending demand stream and it is talked about a lot. You did mention bank bail outs and bankruptcies which most people do not mention

Endless streams of wars, people talk about that but in some respects wars take the buying of butter and turns it into govt buying guns therefore that can usually cool and slow down consumer demand. Wars many times cause austerity but really Iraq and Afghan wars were localized but expensive the way we do wars. The US sent so much plywood and other building materials to Afghan that the prices inflated like crazy here for those goods, but not so much for milk, bread etc that we didnt ship there.

 

[HawkGold]

Well if you read the title of the thread it basically says a couple of items hardly anyone talks about or thinks about or knows about.

In your list there are many that are talked about, unlimited stimulus yes because that puts a bunch of extra money and therefore demand into the economy and covid caused supply shortages which also makes prices rise. People and the news talk about very low interest rates all the time, lowering of taxes puts more money into the spending demand stream and it is talked about a lot. You did mention bank bail outs and bankruptcies which most people do not mention

Endless streams of wars, people talk about that but in some respects wars take the buying of butter and turns it into govt buying guns therefore that can usually cool and slow down consumer demand. Wars many times cause austerity but really Iraq and Afghan wars were localized but expensive the way we do wars. The US sent so much plywood and other building materials to Afghan that the prices inflated like crazy here for those goods, but not so much for milk, bread etc that we didnt ship there.

Really only two of the seven I listed are talked about. It's just hard to discuss inflation without bringing those in. The wars are expensive and lead to more deficit spending which then gets back to monetary policy.

Credit cards to me are a shell game and not that inflationary. Cashing out your house is. But, it is a lesser reason. We could also include using the wife's income on housing loans as well. Per war we don't really do traditional wars anymore.

The amount of arms flowing into Ukraine is astronomical. NATA is sending nearly 300 more tanks on top of the self propelled howitzers. Russia in changing tactics makes it so manpads aren't as effective. In true Soviet fashion they are blowing the hell out of an area and moving troops and tanks in after the area has been blown up. It's a crawl, but the Russians are winning where it counts.

 

[uihawk82]

The amount of arms flowing into Ukraine is astronomical. NATA is sending nearly 300 more tanks on top of the self propelled howitzers. Russia in changing tactics makes it so manpads aren't as effective. In true Soviet fashion they are blowing the hell out of an area and moving troops and tanks in after the area has been blown up. It's a crawl, but the Russians are winning where it counts.

Yep, the russians are crawling, they are obliterating towns and cities, and then they move in to control a bunch of rubble. Now that is what I call a good plan which is taking over areas of debris that they have to rebuild in order to use.

 

[HawkGold]

Yep, the russians are crawling, they are obliterating towns and cities, and then they move in to control a bunch of rubble. Now that is what I call a good plan which is taking over areas of debris that they have to rebuild in order to use.

I don't think they intend to use it. They are destroying their main gas/oil competition and Joe Biden's investments as a side note.

 

[Fryowa]

The US if it wants to remain an economic giant during the oil demise and post, needs to spend more on education and infrastructure and remove systemic bias which will also include more and more non educated whites.

The fossil fuel demise isn’t going to happen as rapidly as people think. It will be much, much slower and at least a couple generations away. There is quite literally no method of using the amount of electricity required to start moving away from fossil fuels. People are putting the cart before the horse. If even 10% of the oil energy used just driving cars (not trucking, not industry, not home heating) got converted to electric right now it'd completely cripple the distribution system. As a power distribution guy in my former life, I can tell you that almost all of our grid at the distribution level (20KV and below) was installed pre 1950 and just maintained, not upgraded. You go and take a city like Chicago and make 10% of just cars electric getting charged overnight and you'd completely shut down the system. You can generate all the KWh's you want, but without a system that can handle the distribution of it you're not gonna do jack squat.

There are just under 600,000 miles of transmission lines in the US (this is super high voltage on the primary side of substations) and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines (this is the "medium" voltage from the substation to your neighbor hoods and transformers on the poles outside your home), most of it installed in the 1950s and prior.

Climate change folks are pretty spot on about the changes coming because of carbon, and they're spot on that we need to move away from fossil fuels. But what they should've pushed was modernization of our electrical system first, and electric technology for consumption such as vehicles, home heating, etc last. Like crops, you can triple your production or whatever, but unless there are roads and carts and buildings to get it to market and store it, it's going to rot. The electrical grid in this country was designed to deliver the amount of power that businesses, homes, and factories have typically used over the course of time, and that amount has been relatively stable since the 50s. It's actually very, very close because as products have gotten more efficient, we use more of them now. And since it was designed and built to handle a certain amount of capacity, you can't just all of a sudden say (even over the course of decades), "Ok, now were going to use 10, 20, 50% more electricity." It'd be like saying all of a sudden every house in town needs 60psi of water at 10 gallons a minute. It's a great idea in theory but impossible without a bigger water tower, bigger mains, bigger feeders, bigger plumbing, and bigger fixtures in your house, that's not only higher volume, but higher pressure as well. Now multiply that by 5.5 million miles of underground and overhead wiring and infrastructure. Even if it was doable, how many trillion dollars would it cost?

Absolutely and dumbfoundingly terrible miss by people promoting the move to electric. These are the most brilliant minds we have who either got caught up in the tech and money to be made from it and didn't think about what needs to happen first, or they simply are oblivious to the logistics. My guess is a combination of both.

 

[HawkGold]

The fossil fuel demise isn’t going to happen as rapidly as people think. It will be much, much slower and at least a couple generations away. There is quite literally no method of using the amount of electricity required to start moving away from fossil fuels. People are putting the cart before the horse. If even 10% of the oil energy used just driving cars (not trucking, not industry, not home heating) got converted to electric right now it'd completely cripple the distribution system. As a power distribution guy in my former life, I can tell you that almost all of our grid at the distribution level (20KV and below) was installed pre 1950 and just maintained, not upgraded. You go and take a city like Chicago and make 10% of just cars electric getting charged overnight and you'd completely shut down the system. You can generate all the KWh's you want, but without a system that can handle the distribution of it you're not gonna do jack squat.

There are just under 600,000 miles of transmission lines in the US (this is super high voltage on the primary side of substations) and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines (this is the "medium" voltage from the substation to your neighbor hoods and transformers on the poles outside your home), most of it installed in the 1950s and prior.

Climate change folks are pretty spot on about the changes coming because of carbon, and they're spot on that we need to move away from fossil fuels. But what they should've pushed was modernization of our electrical system first, and electric technology for consumption such as vehicles, home heating, etc last. Like crops, you can triple your production or whatever, but unless there are roads and carts and buildings to get it to market and store it, it's going to rot. The electrical grid in this country was designed to deliver the amount of power that businesses, homes, and factories have typically used over the course of time, and that amount has been relatively stable since the 50s. It's actually very, very close because as products have gotten more efficient, we use more of them now. And since it was designed and built to handle a certain amount of capacity, you can't just all of a sudden say (even over the course of decades), "Ok, now were going to use 10, 20, 50% more electricity." It'd be like saying all of a sudden every house in town needs 60psi of water at 10 gallons a minute. It's a great idea in theory but impossible without a bigger water tower, bigger mains, bigger feeders, bigger plumbing, and bigger fixtures in your house, that's not only higher volume, but higher pressure as well. Now multiply that by 5.5 million miles of underground and overhead wiring and infrastructure. Even if it was doable, how many trillion dollars would it cost?

Absolutely and dumbfoundingly terrible miss by people promoting the move to electric. These are the most brilliant minds we have who either got caught up in the tech and money to be made from it and didn't think about what needs to happen first, or they simply are oblivious to the logistics. My guess is a combination of both.

Spot on.
What you are describing is the human condition, unless you are Duke BB or Alabama Football prior to now.

It's amazing the number of knob and tube systems still used.

 

[okeefe4prez]

The fossil fuel demise isn’t going to happen as rapidly as people think. It will be much, much slower and at least a couple generations away. There is quite literally no method of using the amount of electricity required to start moving away from fossil fuels. People are putting the cart before the horse. If even 10% of the oil energy used just driving cars (not trucking, not industry, not home heating) got converted to electric right now it'd completely cripple the distribution system. As a power distribution guy in my former life, I can tell you that almost all of our grid at the distribution level (20KV and below) was installed pre 1950 and just maintained, not upgraded. You go and take a city like Chicago and make 10% of just cars electric getting charged overnight and you'd completely shut down the system. You can generate all the KWh's you want, but without a system that can handle the distribution of it you're not gonna do jack squat.

There are just under 600,000 miles of transmission lines in the US (this is super high voltage on the primary side of substations) and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines (this is the "medium" voltage from the substation to your neighbor hoods and transformers on the poles outside your home), most of it installed in the 1950s and prior.

Climate change folks are pretty spot on about the changes coming because of carbon, and they're spot on that we need to move away from fossil fuels. But what they should've pushed was modernization of our electrical system first, and electric technology for consumption such as vehicles, home heating, etc last. Like crops, you can triple your production or whatever, but unless there are roads and carts and buildings to get it to market and store it, it's going to rot. The electrical grid in this country was designed to deliver the amount of power that businesses, homes, and factories have typically used over the course of time, and that amount has been relatively stable since the 50s. It's actually very, very close because as products have gotten more efficient, we use more of them now. And since it was designed and built to handle a certain amount of capacity, you can't just all of a sudden say (even over the course of decades), "Ok, now were going to use 10, 20, 50% more electricity." It'd be like saying all of a sudden every house in town needs 60psi of water at 10 gallons a minute. It's a great idea in theory but impossible without a bigger water tower, bigger mains, bigger feeders, bigger plumbing, and bigger fixtures in your house, that's not only higher volume, but higher pressure as well. Now multiply that by 5.5 million miles of underground and overhead wiring and infrastructure. Even if it was doable, how many trillion dollars would it cost?

Absolutely and dumbfoundingly terrible miss by people promoting the move to electric. These are the most brilliant minds we have who either got caught up in the tech and money to be made from it and didn't think about what needs to happen first, or they simply are oblivious to the logistics. My guess is a combination of both.

This is an epic post right here. Electricity is a physics problem. My neighbor got a plug in hybrid and Duke Power pays him a thousand dollars a year to only charge it at night. They said they do not have capacity for even the EVs on the road today to charge during the day in summer because the draw from A/Cs running is so massive. And oh by the way, the beautiful nuclear plant out at Lake Keowee that uses two massive lakes as a "battery" (pumps water to higher lake at night and then runs it over a hydro dam during the day) is nearing end of life because it was built in the '70's.

But that's just capacity. Once you get into neighborhoods it won't take many EVs to absolutely blow the transformers sky high. They're walking a tightrope now. If we hit something like 20% EV market share it would be a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and the clusterfuck in the neighborhoods is a decades' long issue, not like a 2026 issue.

People realized this shit years ago. Obama passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which was designed to start improving the grid. I worked on a piece of it and to say it looked like a gravy train with biscuit wheels style of handout to big business is an understatement.

And again, even if you flipped out the whole passenger fleet, you still have to run refineries balls to the wall to make jet fuel and diesel fuel and shipping fuel. Electrifying the truck fleet will be an even bigger clusterfuck than the residential grid because you'll need bigger truck stops and mega mega mega power sources getting to them. Imagine the equivalent of Walcott, Iowa in western South Carolina. Iowa has the jet stream, very good for generating wind so maybe you can electrify Walcott sufficiently (so long as you assume away any need for a base load), but you can't do that shit in a lot of places where wind simply isn't viable. And if you're drawing baseload from hydrocarbons, you're probably losing by electrifying because so much electricity is lost in transmission.

 

[JoeyLabasForPresident]

F me, I can't believe I was on hiatus for this gem of a thread. Good work all around, gents.

 

[eyekwah]

I would cite government regulations as a hidden culprit. In the costs for producing a good or service the burden of regulations influences the costs to produce. In some cases the rules and regulations are only affordable by the largest firms and puts competitors out of business. In turn that reduces competition and the large firm is able to pass on the costs to the consumers. I believe the trucking industry has been affected by new regulations and is a contributing factor in the transport of goods.

Just my observation.

 

[okeefe4prez]

I would cite government regulations as a hidden culprit. In the costs for producing a good or service the burden of regulations influences the costs to produce. In some cases the rules and regulations are only affordable by the largest firms and puts competitors out of business. In turn that reduces competition and the large firm is able to pass on the costs to the consumers. I believe the trucking industry has been affected by new regulations and is a contributing factor in the transport of goods.

Just my observation.

Jonah Goldberg wrote a book about this roughly a decade ago called Liberal Fascism. It basically argued that large corporations have a vested interest in creating a byzantine regulatory state because they can afford giant legal and compliance departments that smaller competitors cannot afford, so while it raises the marginal cost of the large companies, it raises the marginal cost of smaller companies much more and pushes the trend toward limited competition markets even faster.

The trucking business was heavily regulated from roughly the '30's through the '70's. Very few trucks could actually move in interstate commerce and so an ICC license was a goldmine, akin to a New York City taxi medallion (before Uber crushed the value of those). The folks who owned those licenses made a fortune to the detriment of the broader economy.

 

[HawkGold]

I would cite government regulations as a hidden culprit. In the costs for producing a good or service the burden of regulations influences the costs to produce. In some cases the rules and regulations are only affordable by the largest firms and puts competitors out of business. In turn that reduces competition and the large firm is able to pass on the costs to the consumers. I believe the trucking industry has been affected by new regulations and is a contributing factor in the transport of goods.

Just my observation.

Pfizer would say that Govt made it harder to make a profit on vaxes. Govt regs are necessary to protect society. Unfortunately we don't live is a pure world of virtue.

Go buy a car made in Ukraine. Your car will be rusted out before 5 years. You will find a gas filter over the exhaust manifold under the hood and so on.