Are Some Haters Of Government Sensing The Looming Regeneracy?

[beechnut79]

(03-18-2017, 01:30 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(03-18-2017, 11:01 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(03-17-2017, 04:43 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(03-17-2017, 04:34 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Rags....

You want Mass Transit?  Leave that to the states and to the cities.  Interstate rail and air transport can be left with the DOT.  

I'd include Fannie and Freddie.  There is more than enough fat to trim.

As to the DOD yeah, it has a lot of bullshit that has to be wrapped up too.  An aggressive withdrawal back to our Hemisphere will do much to aid in that.

Yes, I think the USA has an auto fetish. Autos belch out a lot of pollution. Also, in rural states like Oklahoma, I whistle stops along current rail lines would be nice. At present, if you want to fly, you have to drive more than 70 miles to hit the closest airport. I also like to pull any lever to get rid of the addiction to foreign oil.  I'd love to see what happens to  oil price once the externalities of defending oil imports gets tacked on.

Does anybody on board here really think that the days of our auto-centric culture are about numbered? This theory has been floated around from time to time even since the long gasoline lines of 1973-74. But not much has changed since, and if anything we have, with the exception of in a few large older cities, become even more auto dependent since then. I believe our love affair with the auto will have to end, but as I am now 72, I don't expect it to happen while I am still alive.

Not to speak for anyone else, but it seems to me that anything that is unsustainable will eventually come to an end.  The question is do we have the will to implement those things necessary to have an orderly transition from now, to a transportation network that is distinctly not now.

At present we have Boomers (and some Xers) who are blocking progress in this area because they've completely bought into the whole notion that cars and driving are freedom.  A notion I've never fully understood.  Personally I'm not to fond of driving, and would rather wait on a bus or street car or some other conveyance.

But you no doubt are the exception rather than the rule. Millennials seem to have embrace the more urban, transit-oriented lifestyle for now, but will they do an about-face once they really begin to start families? Or will they revert to embracing the car-dependent suburbs just as Boomers did? Recall that Boomers too were more urban friendly in their youthful mostly single days as well. Cars and driving do mean freedom, yes. But don't all the huge expenses associated with car driving (gas, insurance (now required by law just about everywhere), maintenance, licensing, parking fees, and most notably financing as almost all of us have to purchase them on time, negate much of the convenience factor? Apparently not enough to make very much of a dent. But this should be happening simply because most people's income is not nearly as secure as it was in the days following WWII when the car culture really took off. So far we don't seem to have the will; you are right on that. Again, it most likely would take a fallout just as bad or worse than the Great Depression.