Right now there is a plain Jane 2008 Kia parked in the garage. It has 266,000+ miles on it.
I've actually found that the options give a vehicle value when it gets older, if maintained.. I don't know about that on a Kia, but on pickups, sportscars, etc, the base model will never sell very well, even in decent condition... Since it's what I drive, I'll take a 2000 era Dodge truck.. If you have a base model Auto, gasser 2wd, you can hardly get anything for it. If you have a loaded leather 6 spd diesel 4x4 in nice shape, you get good money for them even with higher miles.. Yes, the purchase price was higher too of course, but you can get something back
The problem I'm seeing now is that inflation (real inflation, not posted inflation) is far out-stripping wage hikes.. around here, property prices doubling ever 5 years, you just can't save fast enough to ever get a down payment. Friend of mine has a good job, wife works, they have a kid, they don't live an extravagant life, and getting ahead just doesn't happen... The only good thing about renting is if the economy goes to crap, you don't lose the investment in the house, though you might be homeless anyhow
What about farmland? well, around here we bought for $200k in 1990, and we'd be completely stupid to sell for less than 10x that, 6 acre places with a house are 5-800K... Only people that can afford to buy are people who only consider it as an investment, they've got deep pockets from having bought bitcoin or something... bigger places that have commercial viability are being bought up by corporations like Walmart and other mega-families.. Then they play hand in hand with JBS...
The middle class is shrinking, yes, some is from poor money management, but that's not the root cause... the root cause is that even well managed money can't keep up