From dhenwood at panix.com Wed Sep 22 10:04:09 1999
[Quoting ...]
The subsidy issue is particularly pungent in New York,
where 30% of households statewide -- and 56% of households
in NYC -- don't own cars. Nationwide, only 16% of households
are car-less.
This is a dumb argument; I lived in NYC without a car and I "used cars and the roads" -- do you buy cereal at A&P? A truck brought it there ... nice that you can walk the last 3 blocks to forage in aisle 7, but the infrastructure required to allow you the luxury of "walking to the store" (as though that's all there is to food gathering, like walking to the buffalo range). The same goes for your refrigerator: how did it get to your 4th floor walkup? Take cabs? Sure are glad they can get across the Manhattan bridge. And finally: all those people who ride the bus are no longer in your face on the F line.
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This new idea of individualy accounting for these "costs" is really starting to give me a pain; hey, I don't have kids, but I get a big benefit out of paying for public schools.
The other great example is smoking: oh smokers "cost" so much, but it's already been shown that the decrease in life expectancy and the interaction with the insurance and pension industries means that smokers present a net gain to non-smokers; but that wouldn't go over well on the front page, would it?
All these poeple trying to do the math forget to do the math.
/jordan