Not to pick sides, but just to answer your question:
Carbon Credits
Vast Government agencies to oversee environmental regulations
Alternative fuel research and corporations
Grants and associated kickbacks for "green" and "clean" industry

Not just that, but warranty and aftermarket maintenance are performed by the dealerships as well. Without a dealership presence in the state, if your car is busted, then you are just out of luck, or you have to have your car shipped to the manufacturer to get it fixed.

I recently ran into a brand contract deal at a ridiculously low level, at the concession stand for our junior high. Apparently, we can't sell Gatorade because the district has a contract with Coca-Cola. We have to sell Powerade. Honestly, I don't know how one is supposed to keep track of all of the products sold or owned by the Coca-Cola franchise so you can make sure you don't accidentally sell a competing product. It is not like they actually are supplying the Powerade either. We have to buy it at retail prices from stores in the area. I figure if they are not selling it to you wholesale, they shouldn't be able to dictate what you can sell. But I suppose a legal contract is a legal contract, even if there is no benefit for one side of that contract. Technically, I guess maybe there is a benefit in that somewhere there is an administrator driving a new car furnished by the Coca-Cola company.

It will probably work like the one on my phone. I have caught it having not updated for about 45 minutes, and it once got m some strange looks when I had the time wrong by half an hour. Then if I click a button or something, it suddenly jumps to the right time.

5k? Luxury! I live in Oklahoma and mine are that high. My dad lives in unincorporated DuPage county in Illinois and his are over $12,000.

Caddies are pretty popular among lower income minorities as well, especially the Escalade.

Sounds like a Heads Up Display would be better than cruise control.
I've never really liked cruise control anyway. I would much prefer a throttle control than a cruise control. I don't want my car to downshift three gears just to try to keep the car going the same speed up a large hill. Just to keep the same throttle setting and let the speed fluctuate. Much better for the gas mileage and saves wear and tear on the engine and transmission.

Well, common sense tells me that people will see it as some sort of autonomous driving and not pay attention to the road if given this feature, and so therefore if the feature is not fit for autonomous driving, then it should not be released as advanced cruise control either. It is irresponsible.

The cruise lines also treat people like royalty, even more so than the Asian airlines. Also, the cruise lines are cheaper and include foo, lodging and entertainment. And the make money.
Somehow, airlines have managed to cut salaries by 2/3, raised prices by over 3 times, all but eliminated meals, charge for every extra, and with most other factors like fuel costs, being the same, have managed to lose money while doing it. It is an incredible phenomenon, and some enterprising PhD student could probably figure out how to prove 1=0 if they could apply the business model of airlines to mathematics.

All true, except that prices have gone up. I used to fly back and forth to Chicago, it was $100 round trip. Now it is $350 at best and $800 for standard fare. I went 10 Paris 10 years ago. it was $400 round trip. Now it is $1300.

Can't being the operative word in this case. In some cases, you don't get to choose which seat you are in. Some planes don't have assigned seating. The ones that do are overbooked and sometimes they will not let you sit in the seat that you had a written agreement backed by a large amount of money to sit in. Many times travel is arrange by a corporate travel department that cares nothing for your needs and only cares about the bottom line. I always wondered why they call it business class when no business I have ever been involved with has ever paid for a business class ticket.

You can't stretch your legs on an airplane unless you are maybe under 5'6". I am unable to move my legs at all when I am in the seat, and getting up is not really an option on the regional jets, which is what I seem to end up flying on most of the time.

Definitely not dropping where I live. The very cheapest fare is 3 times what it was 10 years ago, and the normal fare is 8 times what it was 10 years ago. And inflation shouldn't count unless wages go up with it, which they don't. I make less than half what I did 10 years ago. Of course, one data point is not a statistics, but in general, everybody seems to make about the same as 10 years ago. And one thing the government average wage statistics don't bother to take into consideration is the amount that unemployed people get paid, which is nothing.

Maintaining the code of others? Heck, I have found in perl, that it was easier to rewrite a program than try to debug it even if I wrote the original program.

I think it is the opposite of outdated. It used to be that jsmith was jsmith. Now, with all this fancy Windows Authentication, you can be guaranteed no end of hassle. For instance, at my company, our laptops are on a different domain than production, for some sort of security reason. However, one of the database servers is set up with windows authentication, which means, yup, you can't log into it from your laptop. You have to first remote desktop into something on the production domain, and then run SQL enterprise manager from there.