>Not necessarily, but it would go a long way. Incidentally, giving
>working class people cars is not some fantastic notion plucked out of a
>future socialist programme. It's what is happening, in Britain at least,
>and I suspect in the US, right now. Working class people are buying
>cars. Middle class people resent that, and wish that they could take
>them away from the working class people.
James, sometimes you say things that leave me almost speechless. The anti-car crowd in the U.S., in the immortal words of former In These Times editor Jimmy Weinstein, consists of about a dozen weirdos who live in New York & San Francisco. The U.S. working and middle classes are buying cars like crazy. In fact almost half the vehicles sold in the U.S. now are SUVs, which make mere cars seem gentle and quaint. Vehicle-miles traveled continues to boom. My friend Dan Lazare, one of the dozen weirdos that Weinstein directed his comment at, says the average U.S. suburban household makes 11 car trips a day. A shopping center consultant quoted in Joel Garreau's awful book Edge City said the average American will walk only 300 feet before wanting to get in her [sic] car.
Doug