• 2 Posts
  • 2.53K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle
  • As somebody from one of the related industries: The problem is federal grants in the US. Every year thousands of municipal and state government employees write to the feds grants for funding transportation. The money available until the infrastructure investment act was all money for roads. Even now with money for commuter rail is still very small in comparison and stipulations like requiring nearby travel lanes for other types of vehicles still mean that elevated and tunneled train systems are not being adequately funded.

    The effect is obvious: Do you as a munucipal/state government administrator build a free new federally funded road to make people feel like a problem is being addressed and then blame the unaddressed problems on the next elected person or do you raise taxes to fund a light rail system that is infinitely more costly despite the fact nobody else will build public rail links to connect it to. Planning departments usually do know what transit will work best, but getting funding for trains has been nearly impossible.

    The feds have, I think since the 50s, discouraged new public rail and we are paying that price over and over again. Say what you will about biden but him being a train guy is probably the only thing that has improved the number of light rail projects in the states and we won’t see those benefits for years.

    The rest of the problem lies in urban sprawl and parking lot minimums. Which is a similar problem where its impossible to not create unwalkable sprawl.


  • it also creates response tariffs. There’s a number of industries in the US that export products and are subsidized who are prime targets for foreign retaliatory tariffs: Farmers, auto workers, forestry, mining, etc. Not to mention limitations on raw material sales these industries buy

    I just don’t think Trump is clever enough to win on any international playing field. Look at how Russia and Israel play him like a fiddle. China can easily do the same with response tariffs, and they already retaliated bad enough on farmers that they needed emergency subsidies.









  • yeah its called capital accumulation, here’s how it works:

    A cabal conservative institution of international rich people don’t want to pay taxes on their enormous wealth so they’re spending some of their money to prop up nazis, religious freaks, and insane conspiracy theorists to drown out common sense economic policy and pin the blame on minorities and a departure from religious orthodoxy.

    Obviously persecuting people on these grounds makes the situation worse and people don’t want to be the next scapegoat so they fall in line (face eating leopard logic, etc.) but because we’re removing the most exploitable workers from the economy the economy spirals, creating the need for more scapegoats. Fascism in a nutshell.

    In the long term its self destructive to every society that allows it but in the short term they get another hour of power.