> What would be a good number for average commute, instead of 12 miles?
> Is it just fetishism of lawns and nice smelling air that
> causes factory and farm workers to desire to live 12 miles
> from where they work?
>
I do not think there is any magic number o miles - it really depends on the land use and transportation infrastructure. But I think phrasing the problem this way really puts the cart before the horse and obscures the larger issue why people move further and further away from the cities. I think it is a fundamental problem that cannot be reduced to "fetishism of lawns and nice smelling air" - in fact, suburbia can be as noisy and polluted by the ubiquitous lawn mowers as cities. The basic push factor is the crime, grime and lack of services that plague the US cities, while eth pull factor is the subsidized development of the farmland by developers who practically own many local governments.
The bottom line is that cities were made unlivable, mainly by social engineering of the 1950s, which pushed people to leave cities, whereas artificially cheap development - due to shoddy construction, criminal energy inefficiency, and government subsidies - lured them to the suburbs. As a result, people were stuck with a really expensive and wasteful life style - high transportation and energy cost, high mortgage - basically by decisions made for them by the cabal of real estate speculators, unscrupulous developers and venal politicians and government officials. No alternatives tried elsewhere (such as cooperative housing or higher density residential areas) were seriously considered, the public were basically herded from the cities to the most costly and inefficient way of living that could be invented.
So anyone seriously concerned with the plight of working people should start with that point - that the working people are already stuck with the most costly and inefficient arrangement possible that sucks them dry while fattening the pockets of middlemen, speculators, developers oil and car producers, etc. From that standpoint, moving people away from that arrangement will only benefit them in the long run, even though the way of getting there may involve some cost. This is just like with health care - would anyone seriously argue that sick poor people should not receive medical treatment because that would cost them money? Of course not! So why is it OK to argue that maintaining the extremely wasteful and costly to working people life style should continue unabated because changing it would pose some cost to these people?
I understand that economic considerations are only a part of the issue - other parts involve perceived social status, identity, racism, consumerism, keeping up with the Joneses, the American dream and kindred delusions that form the false consciousness of the American people which allows social control by manipulation and appeals rather than by force. I also understand that changing that false consciousness is as important as changing the economics of the wasteful lifestyle imposed on this country. I suspect that the resistance to any economic measures - such as paying driving cost via gasoline taxes - is rooted in the fact that even professed progressives and lefties are committed more to their American dream and their identity as consumers of the American life style, that to socialism, internationalism, justice or social change.
Finally, a more personal remark. I do not know how I would react if I were born in this country - perhaps I would too be attached to the American life style first. Or perhaps not. But I was not born here, and quite honestly , it is easy for me to discount all the claims and values that the US-ers hold dear. I am an internationalist, and a traveled one on the top of it, and view the US as a tiny but noisy and pesky part of a much larger world. So each time a pampered US-er complains about the hardship of $5 per gallon of gas - I am not only unimpressed but feel like saying stop whining and go around the world and see how other people live, how much resources they use, and then think what difference in the lives of these people would it make if the resources that you so casually, thoughtlessly and needlessly waste would be available to them. Unless you do not give a flying fuck about anyone but yourself - that is.
In fact I do believe that the day of reckoning will come sooner or later, probably during our life time. US-ers can either face it pro-actively by implementing more rational land and energy use policies - or in a typical gringo fashion do nothing until somebody throws a stone into their glass house on the hill and then start lashing out at the world and electing fascists promising the return of the old glory. Either way, I think I can manage, either by joining the movement for a change (I already opted out of the American dream by living in a city, moving to a coop, and riding transit) or by buying a one way ticket to EU (where I have citizenship rights). Ergo - I am quite comfortable with $5 or more per gallon, and any whining about gas prices not only fall on my deaf ears, but give me a sense of schadenfreude .
Wojtek