>I like money staying local, seeing kids sports teams sponsored by Bob's Ford
In theory that sponsorship money could stay local, if the people who saved money by buying cars direct from Ford gave it personally to the local sports teams instead of giving it to Bob first.
bob sponsors a kids sports team to advertise the local dealership to the parents.
tesla's advertising campaign is unlikely to sponsor a local sports team, because the scale is too small and there's too many local sports teams for a corporate to deal with.
The parents themselves will not see value in doing a local sports team sponsorship - they might donate just to keep it alive, but if that was possible, the sports team would not have needed sponsorship in the first place!
Under no scenario would the parents who saved some money from buying a car would give that savings to the local sports team the same way a sponsor would.
If only there was some way to collect money from car sales & use it to maintain local youth programs. Or better yet: A percentage of every transaction. We could call it "sales tax." ;)
and yet, a lot of people are opposed to sales tax due to it's regressive nature (they tax the poor proportionally more than the rich - which then is "fixed" up by adding exemptions to sales tax for goods that the gov't considers the poor to need, such as food etc).
In theory that sponsorship money could stay local, if the people who saved money by buying cars direct from Ford gave it personally to the local sports teams instead of giving it to Bob first.