Hard disagree on this. $26.50 sounds like a nightmare 10 years ago, let alone now. There's a lot of places in the US where having a car is essentially mandatory (actually, most places). If you can't afford a car, that limits where you can live to mostly urban areas, which then pushes the housing cost up.. and by the way, housing costs are always going up, and no, you won't be able to invest in a home, you've been priced out by developers and speculators.
Not to mention you need to be able to save money for unemployment and rainy days..
It’s obviously not required based on the evidence of many people who live and thrive without.
$9000/year is a ton more than just having a car.
I think you're ignoring how much poor people rely on each other and relatives to get by. That's our societies "safety net". That doesn't mean they're "thriving" or even comfortable, nor is it even sustainable (what happens when mom/pop die or require assistance and can't help their kids anymore?).
9000/yr for a car alone isn't crazy at all, just look at average car prices. I just had to do my vehicle renewal today and it was $500 for a 5 year old car that's not particularly expensive! If I look at insurance and car payments, I easily spend over 700 a month. This is on a 30k car, so it's not like I went and bought the biggest luxury vehicle possible.
The flip side is that the people being relied upon are performing uncompensated labor or providing other unpaid services, which is not a healthy state of things. This very dynamic can end up trapping these people in poverty and hinder their access to more productive arrangements.
The average total cost of car ownership in the US in 2025 was about $12,000. $9,000 is already a huge underestimate of what the average person is paying.
That US average includes a lot of new, loaded, financed, comprehensively insured F150’s, not some reasonable minimum.
I lived in a blizzard ridden area using just a 250cc motorcycle, year round, including riding it on the interstate. Layer enough layers, use heated gloves, etc you can easily get by with just a ninja 250, you're not going to burn more than $3-4k a year on that no matter hard you try.
You don't actually need a car unless you have a child or a tradesmen with tools or something like that, a small displacement motorcycle will still take you to 99.9% of the jobs in the lower 48.
"You don't need money if you just do this recklessly dangerous and uncomfortable thing."
(don't worry about how to pay the ambulance bill when you hit some black ice..)