--- Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Charles A. Grimes wrote:
> > It's a little hard to believe you can't find an
> affortable apartment
> > in the basin. I suspect the question is
> neighborhood and not housing.
> >
> I'm also surprised that it's cheaper to pay for
> gas/car maintenance
> required by four hour daily commute than it is to
> pay a little extra rent.
>
[WS:] I am not sure about actual price differences, but spending on gas/car maintenance somewhow appears "cheaper" than spending on rent. I think it has a lot to do with how the expense is structured - one shells a relatively large amount on rent every month, but one nickle and dimes on gas expenses throughout the month, and one simply ignores car maaintenance until one has no choice.
Similar principle operates with comparing public transit to car commute. For example, monthly pass for a Baltimore- Washington commute would cost me $240, about a half of which would be pre-tax, so the actual cost would be closer to $210 $220. Gas costs me about $30 a week (a bit more recently) or about $140 a month. I spent about $1,500 on car maintenance last year ($125 per month on average) and about $60 per month on insurance, so the total cost of car commute is about $325 a month.
Yet, shelling $240 on a commuter pass every month appears more expensive than the avergae of $325 per month spread out between weekly gas purchases and the "sunk cost" of insurance and car repairs. I think that people who live from paycheck to paycheck find it even more difficult to spend $240 upfornt every month than $30 on gas every week.
And then there is the mythology of automobile in the Amerikan kultur. Not only car is a symbol of personal freedom, but it also offers an illusion of a "safe personal space" insulated from the outside world - especially the "public space" of the bus, the train or the street perceived to be "dangerous." So if the choice is to live in an apartment in a "dangerous" urban area, or a car commute to the supposedly "less dangerous" suburbia, many Amerikans opt for the latter, no matter what the actual cost of these options are.
Amerika is a thoroughly fucked up society, and this is reflected in the choices people make in their everyday lives.
Wojtek
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