Government social program for low income families regarding automobiles

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obviously transportation policy needs to take into account the needs of people who live in sparsely-populated or far-flung areas, and obviously most of those people need and will continue to need individual vehicles. To pretend that this somehow means that people who do live in densely-populated areas shouldn't be enabled and encouraged to rely primarily on mass transportation is chimerical.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obviously transportation policy needs to take into account the needs of people who live in sparsely-populated or far-flung areas, and obviously most of those people need and will continue to need individual vehicles. To pretend that this somehow means that people who do live in densely-populated areas shouldn't be enabled and encouraged to rely primarily on mass transportation is chimerical.

That wasn't what I was saying, for the record. I just thought that the idea that public transportation alone isn't the solution to the this issue which seemed implied by previous posts. It's part of the solution but there are vast swaths of lower-income Americans who will not be helped by it and their needs should also be taken into consideration when dealing with transportation-enabling policy.

I know, and I agree. The person I thought might be (disingenuously as always) making that claim was AggregateDemand.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I know, and I agree. The person I thought might be (disingenuously as always) making that claim was AggregateDemand.

I said non-cash benefits are inappropriate. I avoid the tragedy of the plebs altogether by adhering to modern economic virtue of decentralized decision-making.

That isn't the only thing you said in this thread.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The money would be better invested in the development of affordable public transportation.

This and perhaps there be ways, if possible, to encourage/subsidize the rural poor to relocate to more developed areas.

Or we could identify and pursue policies that genuinely help rural areas, instead of encouraging rural communities and cultures to (continue to) self-destruct because rectifying their problems seems too hard. The more I think about the subject matter of this thread the more I come around to the subsidized ride-sharing concept, for example. Comparatively well-settled countryside--as in, northwestern Massachusetts and east-central Iowa rather than northern Maine or western Kansas--could also sure as the sunrise have better bus service than it generally does; trains aren't the only kind of mass transportation available. The unsustainable environment that ought to be crusaded against is, and I think traininthedistance (who's the only real expert on transportation policy I'd say we have here) would agree with me on this, the cul-de-sac, not Rural Route Insert-Number-Here or the holler. Not that this is where suburban development in this country actually originated conceptually, but 'eliminating the distinction between town and country' was one of the ideas where Marx, while well-intentioned, went disastrously wrong.