But people don't need cars, they mostly need a way to commute, possibly for cheap
Would you say that the policies that San Francisco is implementing now, banning cars from the city centre, are a consequence of the city being dirty poor?
The full cost of owning a car (Purchase price, insurance, maintenance, gas, replacement of tires, filters, storage, parking) in the US is ~2 years of post-tax wages for the average person, every 15 years. That's 4,000 hours at work, or ~266 hours/year.
That is a gross disregard of the value of human time - all because we can't figure out how to properly plan our communities. You drive to work, where you spend the first hour of your day, and much of the second hour, working to pay for the car that drove you to work. It's madness.