[lbo-talk] A Case for a Higher Gasoline Tax

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> David Roediger has some good stuff in his latest, Working Towards  
> Whiteness, about how "home" ownership was an important way for  
> Eastern and Southern European immigrants in the early 20th century  
> to become white. They often made themselves far worse off in  
> material terms for the psychological payoff of racial promotion -  
> and at the same time, cities became identified as dark and inferior.
>
> Doug

To sweeten the pot, workers who move back to cities do not  
necessarily have to give up the joy of homeownership.  Look at a  
great majority of American cities -- especially in the Midwest.  Most  
of them look pretty vacant.  Half to three quarters of perfectly good  
downtown lots are occupied by boarded-up houses and businesses that  
_once existed there_.  (Cf.  <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/ 
lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050530/011156.html>.)  Use eminent domain, and  
give them away to workers and small business owners, and give them  
also grants and/or cheap credit to rehabilitate them.  That in itself  
will also create jobs.

Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://montages.blogspot.com>
<http://monthlyreview.org>
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