This is REALLY not the case everywhere.
Toss in like 3 streaming services, which is pretty typical coverage for what most people want to watch, you are at cable costs.
And I dunno if you've been in an Uber lately in a larger city in the US, but literally in the last year we've gone from people driving nice clean modern cars, to people driving late 90s/early 00s hoopties that are dirty, stained, and don't have AC, smell like whatever thing was in there before, etc.