Truckers demand congressional cap on gas prices. Admittedly, this could be a good idea for truckers since when we need to start rationing gas I bet they'd get preferential treatment. Then again, I sort of despair of persuading people to adopt reasonable policies like congestion pricing and -- yes -- higher gas taxes, so maybe price controls, shortages, and rationing is the way to get us thinking about ways to get folks out of their cars and onto sidewalks, bikes, buses, trains, etc.
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Department of Bad Ideas
29 Apr 2008 01:11 pm
Comments (43)
Matt:
I actually think that this might make sense. First of all, without Truckers, we would have some huge supply distribution problems when it comes to our very basics.
BUt beyond that - isn't rationing actually maybe the BETTER ecomonic method when it comes to energy?
Why - due to the very nature of gas and energy. People are going to conitnue to spend more and more of their money on energy, until they are literally tapped out. At the end of the day, the effect of rising prices or rationing is the same (less gas for everyone). The only difference is that rationing actually keeps money in the pockets of consumers, since they cannot continue to poor more and more money into energy.
Because we are so addicted to energy, rising prices is going to cause a lot of consumers to die (financially) trying to keep up their lifestyles. But by rationing, you force people to give up their lifestyles with a whole lot more $$$ in their pockets.
Whatever the hell happened to the usual laws of economics and commerce? Trucker fuel prices go up. Freight consequently costs more to haul per mile. Trucking firms react accordingly and raise rates to the people needing goods moved. Those people raise the price (or absorb the costs, or a mixture of both) to the end consumer of the hauled goods. Pretty simple. How the hell does artificially capping fuel costs get injected into the process? How about we suggest capping the final cost of the goods? Or the cost of the truck itself? Or the price of the raw materials used in manufacturing the items needing trucked? Where does it stop?
How about building some more refineries, scrapping the tariff on Brazilian sugarcane-derived ethanol, and opening up some of our offshore oil fields and ANWR for drilling? By keeping most of our own energy resources off limits we are artificially increasing the price of oil and gas, and we are preventing the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-paying blue collar jobs in our domestic energy sector.
Cars aren't a luxury for most people -- they are the most rational transportation choice. For example, even with the recent increase in gas prices, it's still cheaper for my girlfriend to drive 40 minutes to work than to take the train and light rail.
Matt:
I actually think that this might make sense. First of all, without Truckers, we would have some huge supply distribution problems when it comes to our very basics.
BUt beyond that - isn't rationing actually maybe the BETTER ecomonic method when it comes to energy?
Why - due to the very nature of gas and energy. People are going to conitnue to spend more and more of their money on energy, until they are literally tapped out. At the end of the day, the effect of rising prices or rationing is the same (less gas for everyone). The only difference is that rationing actually keeps money in the pockets of consumers, since they cannot continue to pour more and more money into energy.
Because we are so addicted to energy, rising prices are going to cause a lot of consumers to die (financially) trying to keep up their lifestyles. But by rationing, you force people to give up their lifestyles with a whole lot more $$$ in their pockets.
This is because consumers are not exactly rationale when it comes to these choices. Rather than wake up today and say to themselves - you know what - this is rediculous, I just cannot keep on paying for this rising fuel cost, I am going to commute, they continue to pay more and more and more to commute. They will stop only when they are so financial strapped as to now be effectively unable to contribute to the rest of the cosumer marketplace.
Rationing stops us before we are broke.
Matt:
I actually think that this might make sense. First of all, without Truckers, we would have some huge supply distribution problems when it comes to our very basics.
BUt beyond that - isn't rationing actually maybe the BETTER ecomonic method when it comes to energy?
Why - due to the very nature of gas and energy. People are going to conitnue to spend more and more of their money on energy, until they are literally tapped out. At the end of the day, the effect of rising prices or rationing is the same (less gas for everyone). The only difference is that rationing actually keeps money in the pockets of consumers, since they cannot continue to pour more and more money into energy.
Because we are so addicted to energy, rising prices are going to cause a lot of consumers to die (financially) trying to keep up their lifestyles. But by rationing, you force people to give up their lifestyles with a whole lot more $$$ in their pockets.
This is because consumers are not exactly rationale when it comes to these choices. Rather than wake up today and say to themselves - you know what - this is rediculous, I just cannot keep on paying for this rising fuel cost, I am going to commute, they continue to pay more and more and more to commute. They will stop only when they are so financial strapped as to now be effectively unable to contribute to the rest of the cosumer marketplace.
Rationing stops us before we are broke.
Sorry about the duplicate posts.
Yep, except for rationing. Higher prices always change behavior, once they get high enough, and assuming supply is the same. Higher prices will destroy demand, which is what we need if we want the price to go down. The problem with oil now is that every barrel we do not buy because of higher prices gets purchased by China or India as they grow their economies, so higher prices destroying demand here will not result in supply increases (which would cause the price to go down).
Wars get fought over this stuff.
But if people are forced to reduce driving because of cost, there could be benefits: lower pollution, lower congestion, increased health benefits, marginalization of the oil sheiks, less cheap shit imported from China, etc.
Lotsa other consequences for all, of course. I'm ready if that happens, but I can handle the fallout, as many of the comfortable and relatively wealthy can afford gas at many times the price it is now. Others, not so much.
Just as wars get fought over access to commodities, we'll have blood in the streets here if gas prices double.
Maybe Richard Steven Hack will get his revolution after all.
Why don't truckers just increase their rates? No, you say, many of them don't have the leverage for that. Fine, those who can raise prices can find other work, and those who can will find themselves with less competition, which in turn bolsters their ability to raise prices. Yes, of course the consumer will pay in the end. But this sounds a whole lot more efficient than having Congress decide who can buy how much fuel.
"BUt beyond that - isn't rationing actually maybe the BETTER ecomonic method when it comes to energy?"
Well, I'm not a professional economist or anything, but I do know the answer to this question:
No.
Would it not make sense simply to argue that truck-shipping is becoming an uneconomical means of transport and letting the marginally-competitive truckers go out of business, allowing ones with better economies of scale and rail-shippers to thrive?
Didn't we try to keep prices artificially low in the 70s, which lead to shortages and gas lines? And did that cause an increase in mass transit useage, walkable developments, dense zoning, etc? Nope. Instead, the 70s were a bleak period for mass transit (see the huge cuts in the CTA's service and the problems the NY metro had in the 70s and early 80s).
It is much better to let the prices do what they will than to subsidize truckers. After all, with the higher prices the truckers lose business to freight rail, which is 3x more efficient per mile. Which means less road congestion, less co2 emission, less oil wasted, etc.
It's hilarious when people on opposite sides of the political spectrum - I'm talking about Brad and Fred - both make idiotic statements based upon a server misunderstanding of economics.
Does the Department of Bad Ideas have its own division for the employment of dishonest chickenhawk neocons?
LarryM:
I am normally against rationing - when there are substitute products or when the product has a fairly elastic demand.
But energy is quite a different beast. It is more akin to drugs - we are addicted. So when I state that economically it will make it better to cap and ration, I am coming from the standpoint that currently, the decline in consumer demand is driven by the rise in energy prices eating up the cosumer dollar.
At the end of the day, rationing and higher prices get you to the same place (less fuel is used). The difference is:
A - should the poor suffer?
B - Which policy will leave more money in the hands of consumer to buy other goods?
Truckers are just the first group starting to feel the pain as we shift over to a less energy-intensive model for, well, everything. We'll see this same sort of debate over and over as important pieces of our national infrastructure come under stress from the increase in the relative cost of energy. Always there will be some doomed plan to try to hang on to the status quo, whether it's transportation, food production and distribution, or even just land use. But it won't matter - cheap energy is over and with it an era of history. Come back in 30 years and you won't recognize this country.
Cap on gas prices: normally I'm a free market person, but what the heck - why not try it? What's the worst that happens - it doesn't work out and we have to scrap it? And the bad part of that is...?
Frankly I'm not sure if the price rise is more due to supply-demand or due to speculation. If it due to speculation, the cap would screw the speculators, which is fine by me.
Cap on gas prices: normally I'm a free market person, but what the heck - why not try it? What's the worst that happens - it doesn't work out and we have to scrap it? And the bad part of that is...?
Nixon's and Ford's energy cock-ups pretty much created stagflation and stagflation grew into the inflation woes of the late 70s and early 80s. Maybe you're young and don't remember it, but you don't want those days back. But since we're due for horrifying inflation in a couple of years after Bernanke Bucks start zooming through the economy, maybe a horrifying morass is just what the doctor ordered!
Price controls were implemented under Wilson to protect suppliers and investors from competitively pricing each other into bankruptcy. It was a way to protect the health of markets while ensuring sufficient profit. So the view has some merit, even if the early twentieth century case isnt strictly analogous.
A more effective way to control price, however, may be to regulate an oil companies profit as we do with electricity and natural gas providers. 20% return seems sufficient to keep capitalism functioning smoothly.
Brad,
People will ration themselves. If they can get by without it, they'll decide how to spend their money. If they can't, who are you to decide how much people use.
I think libertarian economist who try to apply John Smith economics on highly pervasive, inelastic products set-up a disastrous situation. Sure - price caps suck from the standpoint of moderately well-to-do people, as they have to wait in line with the rest of the folks.
But right now, we have a situation where energy is sucking dry our economy, because people are not rationale, and too many are willing to spend everything on energy, essentially removing them from the consumer population.
In essence, the rationing is the Government putting everyone on an energy budget (since most consumers are unable to properly budget for energy, since they will stop spending on everything else before they stop spending on energy). BUt the problem is that our economy cannot survive if we spend all resources on acquiring energy alone.
So the question is this~ do you change behavior by allowing the country to go broke? Or do you legislate the change in behavior, leaving more money for all sorts of other consumer activities?
normally I agree with you. The problem is energy is an inelastic product, pervasive to our very lifestyles. People are not able to make the same rationale choices as they would say, for a new piece of furniture.
Instead, most people end up spending all excess earnings on energy (which is occurring now), leaving our economy (of which 2/3 is dependent on consumer spending) without the consumers to keep it chugging along.
We each want the same thing (less energy use and changed behaviors from an energy use standpoint). The difference is that my approach leaves more money in the hands of consumers.
Then again, I sort of despair of persuading people to adopt reasonable policies like direct government regulation and -- yes -- excess profit taxes.
I find it interesting, though frustrating, that the younger generation of self-styled progressive opinion makers have simply absorbed a certain brand of naive market fundamentalism that simply ignores how real world commerce operates.
The notion that the relation between price, supply and demand is a simple one, that by increasing price you lower demand even where the mechanism small changes at the margin ignores real world changes in gasoline prices and their relation to driving behavior. If this theory were right current gas prices would already be radically changing behavior, well except for effects at the margins I don't see it. Prices have doubled in a very short period of time and behavior is not moving in tandem. Same with food, people are still eating, at least most of us.
In real world marketing the price of anything is set by the old saying 'what the market will bear', in other words pricing power. Certainly the market reacts to supply and demand to some degree, at some level substitution sets in, or production ramps up, but in between marketers will endeavor to manipulate supply and demand directly by metering the supply of goods they release and by various types of marketing. Fiddling around with a few cents here or there is not going to change the demand for high end Nikes or Manolo shoes, the pricing power there comes from whole other angles.
Gas prices, like drug prices are where they are because the respective industries are convinced they have enough pricing power to maintain their respective profit margins. And they are right, they do. But a lot more of that has to do with advertising, political contributions, and lobbying than it does with simplistic supply/demand considerations.
Policy proposals that start from some sort of cartoon version of Econ 101, the 'magic of the markets' approach are simply to give in to the people who would actually retain pricing power under the new conditions. Which for most of this seems to be a case of 'New Boss, same as the Old Boss'.
Friends 'Big government is not the solution, big government is the problem' is not in fact an operating principle guiding the whole universe, it is a bunch of hooey sold on ideological grounds to a lot of gullible kids in the 80's and 90's. I didn't say 'dumb', some of these kids are very, very sharp. They have just been inveigled in internalizing myths about markets and relative government effectiveness that just are not grounded in actual historical reality.
In the 1960s and 1970s when we finally decided to get serious about issues like pollution and energy consumption the policy choices didn't immediately resolve to which market solution we would adopt. That is the debate was not on the order of 'consumption tax' or 'cap and trade' as if the only question was where to apply market discipline, instead we told the polluters to cut back their emissions to this level, or else. And we told the car makers they needed to get their CAFE to this level or else.
And pretty much it worked or at least better than recent efforts to turn everything over to markets with governments role simply to decide whether they want to effect the result through taxes. The government is not just the tax man, it also has police powers that allow it to, in the words of the preamble 'provide for the General Welfare' and properly designed this can happen by direct government intervention.
The Interstate Highway system didn't come out of nowhere, public Universities didn't just pop up like daisies, for that matter even ostensible wonders of capitalism like the railroads were in reality nothing more than government contracts paid for in land grants rather than cash. But somehow this by and large successful history of government direct intervention though regulation and direct infrastructure got thrown on the dust heap. Well I think after 25 years of failed Reaganism built on cartoon market fundamentalism, it is time to dust off the New Deal and for that matter the Great Society. They just were not the categorical failures that right propagandists would have you believe.
those who can't raise prices can find other work, and those who can will find themselves with less competition, which in turn bolsters their ability to raise prices.
It's not simply a matter of finding other work. Most of these guys probably have huge loans on their equipment, so the "other work" is on the other side of bankruptcy. (And, of course, the sellers of the equipment, and the banks that financed it, are looking into the pit as well.)
(Anybody else remember when the farmers came to town with their combines and shut down DC for a week or so? I think that was 1979. Similar things are going to happen.)
Bruce:
very well put. I am so sick of someone reading the cliff Notes version to Adam Smith and thinking that somehow, a simple supply demand curve on an X/Y Axis graph explains everything.
I think you were incorrect in ONE key area. You state that the rise in fuel prices has not changed behavior. It has - consumers dropped off a cliff, and have stopped spending on most consumables. Again - they have decided to spend more money on energy then other goods, resulting in us falling into a deep recession. We will eventually reach the saturation point, where even consumers can no longer afford energy. But at what cost to the rest of the economy?
We put caps on other energy souces (ever hear of a public utility board?).
Why is that? Because the government has determined that there this consumable good (electricity) is important enough to the economy as well as an underlying need for all, that without government control, there could be both wide-spread abuse as well as negative externalities resulting from rapid increases in prices. This includes both the unfair advantage markets provide to wealthier citizens, as well as the risk that all other economic activity will be eliminated in order to continue to procure the basics.
Brad,
Didn't Zimbabwe try to use price controls on food for exactly that same argument? And did it work? No, of course not. Poor people will get by without cheap gas. The very poor don't drive anyways, so this won't really affect them. Instead the lower middle class will be stuck waiting an hour for gas. I think most people would rather a modest increase in prices than gas lines and shortages. I know I would.
Al,
You forget that price controls on gas was tried previously, and was a miserable failure. Why repeat past mistakes?
It is called the market. Gas prices will go up, then people will either pay more or use less. People will move to places that don't require as much driving or buy more fuel efficient cars. Price contols have been used many times, and always a failure. That is why the market works and why the Soviet Union isn't around anymore.
And what those of us who don't live in a city where sidewalks, bikes, buses, trains, etc., are viable alternatives?
In KC, it is literally impossible for me to take any type of public transportation from my home to within a mile of my office. And since it's 30 miles, no way I can walk or ride a bike.
So while those are all dandy in places like DC and New York, it won't work in most cities.
Personally, I'd like to see us come up with something other than gasoline to fuel our cars. Hell, we've been using internal combustion engines for what, 100 years now?
One would think we could come up with a better alternative, since higher taxes or rationing -- or even destroying ANWR -- aren't actually going to solve the problem.
Mark D,
Typically conservates react to a question like yours with the statement that one should "vote with their feet" and would tell you that if you don't like the school or pollution in your town, move somewhere else. I'm not so naive, so I'll say that you should perhaps save for a more fuel efficient car (those Toyota Yaris get 40 mpg and are inexpensive) and in the mean time perhaps lobby KC (is that Kansas City) to work on dense zoning, walkable cities, and mass transit. You're going to need it. Increased oil demand from China and India, coupled with ever increasing demand by the US is exacerbating a supply problem. OPEC nations are running their production flat. They are continually using more of their oil production at home, and have less to export. In less than 20 years Iran will no longer be an oil exporting nation. Therefore we have long term supply problems due to demand outstripping supply. It would be useful then, to make policies that deal with these realities.
"In less than 20 years Iran will no longer be an oil exporting nation."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I suppose if the U.S. is forcibly appropriating a nation's national resources calling those resources an export commodity is inaccurate. Point taken.
You forget that price controls on gas was tried previously, and was a miserable failure. Why repeat past mistakes?
Maybe the 70s were an aberration.
No, Brad and others, this is a horrible idea.
Rationing is not the better method for energy, because the government is then deciding who should receive gasoline. That should be determined only by who can afford to buy it, i.e. the market. Gasoline will naturally be allocated toward the most productive uses, because higher productivity enables a user to pay more.
Gas prices are, ipso facto, never "too high". If they were "too high", consumption would drop, and prices would follow.
If these truckers are struggling to make ends meet because of high gas prices, they shouldn't be protesting to Congress and asking for a price cap on gasoline. They should be protesting to their employers and asking for higher wages to offset the higher cost of fuel.
The result: truckers are paid more by logistics companies, logistics companies charge more to customers, manufacturers and retailers who use the services of logistics companies charge more to consumers, consumption declines, gas prices come back down as demand for energy is reduced by lower economic productivity. The free market finds equilibrium if left alone.
Now, one could argue that we live in a new time, and because of international demand for fuel sources, slower U.S. economic growth will not necessarily result in a decline in the price of gasoline. This may very well be true, but if so, the outcome of this price cap would be even worse. It would starve the U.S. of oil and gasoline, causing a massive constriction of our economy and putting millions of people out of work, and still wouldn't reduce the cost of fuel.
Maybe the 70s were an aberration.
How so?
TH:
Well -have fun killing the American consumer and economy trying to ensure "market fundamentals" take root.
You clearly have no ability to differentiate between inelastic, underlying necessities and widgets. But hey – you watch Kudlow and Company – you must be an expert.
Brad: you should not apologize for duplicate posting, it was a triplicate.
I have no ideological abhorence of rationing, but I think that any huge deviation from the current practices must convincingly do more good than bad.
Rationing makes sense if we can identify some key needs that have to be protected against the market. For example, we may want to distribute 400 g of grain per to every adult person, or 300 g, to prevent abject hunger by minority during a time of severe food shortage. There will be a huge disruption of ordinary economic life, what with troops send to farms to confiscate grain, but we will avoid dead bodies on our streets.
More often, it is nearly impossible to figure out what those dire needs could be. If we were on war footing, and if we had to make do with our domestic oil production alone, the economic mayhem would be immense and it could well be that we would need to militarize transportation and establish necessary minima of service.
But rationing itself would create mayhem, even if the decisions who gets what were mostly correct.
Healthcare is a reasonable case for rationing. Consumers ordinarily have no idea what their needs are, they have to be told by specialists, correct estimation of values of different insurance offers is next to impossible, and lives are at stake. Imposition of price controls and rationing is what Madicare, Medicaid and Veteran Administration do, and it seems to be doing more good than harm.
But energy is actually total oposite. Consumer understand exactly what different energy products they may need and how they can substitute one of another, if they can. They can trade convenience for energy. E.g. my suburban friend can limit his presence at his university to times when he can carpool with his wife, children can cut on extra activities requiring a lot of driving (or carpools can be arranged) etc. Another suburban friend could actually commute by train, although it would add at least half hour each way. With gas at 9 dollars per gallon, he could (I think he needs a gallon each way). Or find some way of sharing the ride.
Rural folks are actually pretty good at carpooling already, from what I can see (I live in a place where thousands of workers commute 20-40 miles). Winter heating can be reduced.
Yes, some dire needs can be established, we do not want people to freeze to death, but apart from that, people can make very good informed decisions.
Governments at various levels could make it easier for people to adapt. E.g. there could be web-based "matchmaking" for carpools. The transit services can be expanded. Production of energy substitution products, their evaluation and, of warranted, promotion, can be aided. But any direct involvement is bound to screw something, so we need to balance bad and good, without pretending that there will be only good.
Fewer truckers = less Chinese crap in the stores. And no plastic-tasting strawberries in January. And of course fewer huge rigs menacing you 6 inches from your rear bumper, every time you hop on the freeway.
It would be tough, but I think we could handle it.
Fewer truckers = less Chinese crap in the stores. And no plastic-tasting strawberries in January. And of course fewer huge rigs menacing you 6 inches from your rear bumper, every time you hop on the freeway.
It would be tough, but I think we could handle it.
Seems to me that anyone who likes the idea of price controls on gasoline didn't actually live through the 70's. Let's see... they didn't ration by coupon either in '74 or '79, so rationing was by waiting in line for an hour or two. Or else you knew the owner of a gas station (like my Dad did), and got your gas at off-hours with no waiting (worked for me, I never had to wait in line in '74). And then there were line jumpers (hey, I have a meeting to get to and I really need the gas), leading to violence (fistfights or worse).
There was a whole bureaucracy set up to allocate gas among the states (based on prior usage), which meant no lines in '79 in Michigan (I was here at the time), and monster lines in California.
Alternatively, you could explicitly ration by coupons, which would mean setting up a new bureaucracy to distribute the coupons, and probably another bureaucracy to handle appeals from people who think they deserve an extra ration. And by the time the legislation makes its way through Congress (Hey! Residents of Montana need extra rations), everyone in the country will feel they're being ripped off.
Market advocates such as me often are accused of naivete, but advocates of government action in a case like this are equally naive in that their first assumption is a government of philosopher kings who will make the right and most equitable decisions.
No thanks. I dislike paying $3.65 a gallon (actual from last fillup), but I'll take my chances on that rather than the alternative.
I have a better idea. Let's put the truckers to work rebuilding all the local rail lines that have been torn up since 1945.
During World War II, there was strict rationing of gasoline (as well as meat, sugar and other commodities in short supply). There were different classes of gas ration coupons-- unless you fell into a high priority class (e.g. doctors, public safety, farmers or truckers)-- the ordinary A class ration card allowed you 3 to 4 gallons of gasoline a week. Oh and the national speed limit was 35 mph.
The ostensible reason for rationing was to preserve tires because Japan had cut off our sources of rubber. The real reason was German U-Boats were kicking our ass by sinking tankers sailing from Houston to the Northeast (this was before the pipeline network was built).
It was politically impossible (and militarily foolish to tip off the Germans of their success) to only ration in the Northeast, so it was imposed nationwide, even in Texasm which swimming in oil.
A couple of years ago, Martin Feldstein proposed bringing back rationing in the form of a cap and trade system (with the number of points varying by geographic driving patterns). Drives who conserve their points could sell them for a profit to drivers who don't (in contrast to a gas tax, whose only economic winner is the US Treasury).
Actually sounds like a damn good idea. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114946588448771080.html?mod=article-outset-box
Clearly, Bush and his crew don't think this gas crisis / war on terrorism / food shortage business is a very big deal or we'd be running more plays from FDR's playbook.
Besides drafting every healthy male between 18 and 45, Uncle Sam ran big recycling campaigns to collect scrap metal and other necessary commodities in short supply and encouraged Victory Gardens-- home and community gardens which supplied 40% of the vegetables harvested by the end of the war.
In KC, it is literally impossible for me to take any type of public transportation from my home to within a mile of my office. And since it's 30 miles, no way I can walk or ride a bike.
So, you're driving in from Lawrence everyday? You could just move closer to work.
I think that gas rationing is the way to go. To eliminate our dependence on foreign oil we could ration only the amount our country can produce. Initially this would be a shock, but we could learn to adapt to this reduced level and begin to reap all the positive benefits.
... perhaps lobby KC (is that Kansas City) to work on dense zoning, walkable cities, and mass transit.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA **cough** HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
Sorry ... but that happening in Kansas City is about the same as me starting at QB for the Indianapolis Colts this fall.
This town can't even get it's damn schools accredited, it's sewers were built by Civil War survivors (seriously ... they're that old), and there's a current battle over a relatively short light rail line that will cost a billion dollars. As nice as it would be, it just isn't all that feasible right now.
The KC area is also spread out over several counties and two states, so getting anything like mass transit to work will take the cooperation of all areas. That just doesn't happen all that often.
Partly since KC proper has shown an inability to anything with any amount of competence, and partly because most Johnson County folks (Kansas side) aren't willing to pay for anything on the other side of State Line Road, even when they enjoy its benefits.
It's a tough thing to figure out.
So, you're driving in from Lawrence everyday? You could just move closer to work.
Nope. NE Jackson County (unincorporated) outside of Independence.
But since I don't plan on staying at this job forever, what happens when my next one is, say, north of the river? Am I just supposed to move every time I get a new job?
Don't get me wrong here -- I'm not whining about my commute. Just mentioning that not every area has a decent public transportation system or walkable/bike-able areas, so other solutions need to be developed.
My person solution is for us to make cars that don't use gas. A bit more development on longer-lasting and quick-to-recharge batteries would be a nice step.
But at this point, bus routes that make any sense would be nice -- KC's were apparently developed by a blind guy suffering a seizure. They don't really get many folks from where they are to where they need to go.
And here I thought Matt was down with Thomas Frank.
Comments closed May 13, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Why does Jeffrey Goldberg hate you, Matthew?
Posted by Petey | April 29, 2008 1:33 PM