No, this post is about the costs to our healthcare that arise from our social isolationism. Okay, so the title is a bit misleading, it says individualism, but I tend to not see a dramatic difference. Individualism encourages us to look to no one but ourselves for our necessities, which when taken to its logical endpoint, means we become more isolated. Semantics aside, my argument is pretty simple: our isolationism is costing us in our healthcare spending – and big time.

One thing that we don’t really hear about in healthcare debates, particularly when comparing the United States to other countries is that virtually all of the other countries with universal healthcare also have much tighter social webs, community life, and place less emphasis on individualism. I don’t think there is a direct 1:1 correlation between community attachment and healthcare spending, only that there is an indirect link that probably hasn’t been studied very much. A few areas strike me here as very likely areas where this matters a lot:

1) the elderly. Older people are notoriously lonely, especially in the US. In my relatively limited travel, I’ve noticed that older people rarely live alone in other places, they usually live in multi-generational households. They watch their grandkids (or great grandkids) and their children take care of them. The psychological toll of that constant loneliness really gets to people and lonely people are more likely to be depressed, get sick, and generally be less happy. I imagine that older people like to see their doctors more because they have someone to talk to. Hell a lot of older people I know base a good chunk of their social lives around discussing their health conditions and ailments. Who better than a doctor . . . which leads me to . . .

2) Hypochondriacs. People who think they are always sick. Have a sore thoat? Maybe it’s tonsilitis. Oh God! a bump on your neck? must be a tumor…or so WebMD suggests. More information isn’t good if the person receiving the information doesn’t know how to interpret it properly, but that’s an aside. Without people, family, close friends, co-workers to give us that reality check and tell us it’s ok, every sneeze sends us to the doctor and every chest pain demands an MRI. Which of course leads to . . .

3) Pill Popping. Suburban housewives are huge drug users. They just pop prozac and antidepressants. They put their kids on ritalin because they’re hyper (really? a hyper kid needs medication? Really? God what would have happened to me if ritalin were widely prescribed when I was 5). We turn ourselves into blank zombies. We’re not any happier because of all of the pills. We don’t feel any better. If anything our isolation and self-medication make us feel worse, hate our lives, and become depressed. Which leads me to . . .

4) Psychiatric Care. Now I’ve never been to a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a therapist of any kind. Some who know me well enough might suggest it could help. Maybe, maybe not. I have, however, known many people with severe problems who were and are on multiple meds and seeing multiple therapists. Some people genuinely need this. For a lot of people, however, I get the feeling that having a loving family around and good, supportive friends would be as good or better. Even people with serious issues could probably benefit from a tight social network. I’m not spouting here, because I’ve seen the difference in people (primarily with depression) who deal dramatically better with their issues when they’re around family and friends than when they feel alone.

And of course all this stems from the belief that *I* (not me specifically, but the Ego “I”) am a special and unique snowflake and my life is worth an infinite amount of money (well as long as I’m not picking up the tab) and of course so are my loved ones’. Now when it comes to *your* life  and you will cost a million dollars for the possibility of living another two months, to hell with you. Ah the Ego bias.

This isn’t nuts, it’s probably a series “well duh” things. I know. But no one’s talking about it.

Point being that we can do a lot to “fix” health care by expanding coverage, cutting costs and all that jazz, but we may still face higher costs than we have to because of our culture of isolation and individualism. I’m not suggesting we all hug and sing kumbaya. I’m not suggesting we have group hugs (although I do enjoy hugs). Point simply being that we’re treating conditions more than we need to or that probably shouldn’t exist as a result of our culture. I don’t know how to “fix” it. I don’t know that it can be “fixed.” Just an observation.

Well, first off let’s get on the table that this won’t fix all of your problems, but it’s a start.

Sick of paying high property taxes? Taxes that pay to send her kids to school? His golf course that you never use? The library with the musty books? That black hole of a mass transit district?

The plan: Incorporate your own low-tax municipality! Within months you’ll see business flock to you and residents clamor for housing and you can sit back and bask in the fact that your property taxes are 20, 30 or 50% lower than that guy in that place. Just follow these easy steps!

1) Now this one’s a little tricky, but you have to either a) find yourself a nice plot of undeveloped land adjacent to a (relatively) big city or b) find an area of relatively low-intensity use with high average incomes within an existing municipality or unincorporated area

2) Incorporate! Make a city charter and become your very own city!

3) Form a mass transit district with no bus or rail services so that the mass transit from the city can’t start serving your area and you can keep property values high. This means you can keep taxes low while generating higher revenues.

4) Turn all of your major thoroughfares and arterial roads into state highways. You get the road, the state picks up the tab!

5) Zone all of the land near major roads commercial and with those low low property taxes, businesses will trip over themselves to get into the action!

6) Avoid expensive, ongoing public works projects. This means no or few parks, no library, no museums. That’s why you have to be next to a city. They pay for the stuff and you get to use them – at no or low cost! Oh sure you might have to pay to use the library, but then only the people who use it pay, not all the rest of us.

7) Zone to restrict apartment buildings. More people per unit of land = more chance of children = more schools. Keep the density low! In fact, if you can help it, restrict single family dwellings too. They’re a tax drain. Commercial = good for city coffers, residential = bad.

8) Don’t have a fire or police department. Contract them out to the city. You’ll save the capital costs of maintaining the building and won’t have to worry about labor relations or spikes in cost. Contracting is great for your new little muni because you don’t pay the full  cost of the service. Don’t worry though, you’re not stealing it, it just doesn’t make sense to have a full police and fire force for your little piece of Mayberry.

9) Join the best school district in your area. They’re not tied to municipal boundaries and people will pay a premium to see their kids going to the best school around.

10) Keep it homogeneous! I know I know. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Homogenous how? Well start with income. You want everyone roughly equal so that no one feels like they’re paying more. If you can exclude other undesirable types, that’d be great too. Remember, people will pay more for services for people who are like them.

With these simple guidelines, your taxes will be low, stay low, and your town will be rolling in revenue. No municipal crunch here folks!

As alluded to above, a proper mythos serves as the foundation for a constellation of universals: ethics, morals, norms, and causal explanations. Such universals are incredibly important in that they allow us to communicate with one another on a moral level and share a common understanding of the sacred and the profane, the good and the bad, the better and the worse. They allow for the smooth functioning of a society or social group because people understand what is and is not within the range of acceptable behavior and, whether they act in accordance with the ideals 100% of the time or not, they are omnipresent. Universals as first principles are not morals or standards per se, they are the explanatory principles behind them; why it is wrong to cheat or steal, why being nice is better than being mean. At a certain point these first principles can only be explained by reference to their effects, consequentialst explanations. Yet even consequentialist explanations rely to a degree on the universals they attempt to justify (i.e. explaining why female circumcision is wrong would very likely result in reference to a first principle which would be explained by how it makes life better, but the definition of better itself relies on other first principles).

First principles do not act on the conscious mind. In fact, they are so ingrained that we would have to sit for a while and draw up a list and then reduce that to the foundational principles.  We learn them both consciously and subconsciously through overt teaching and subtle social cues. We are, by and large, so attached to our first principles, our mythos, that we are often hard pressed to explain them or justify them without some gymnastics. In everyday life, we tend to interact with people who, for the most part, share our mythos so explaining why something is bad is much easier than if there were no common mythos.  An example of this is that it would not be difficult to explain why killing an animal just because you can is wrong if the person you are talking to shares your mythos; it is when they do no that it becomes tricky.

Any mythos is in a sense random in that it relies on first principles for which we have no further explanation. We can explain why we hold a first principle by reference to its benefits (utility) and consequences, but as noted above, we eventually arrive at another first principle within our mythos. Mythic systems are self-contained, therefore our “universals” are not truly universal in that they do not apply to everyone in all situations.

This is not to deny the power of a mythos or to doubt their existence, reality, or efficacy in guiding human behavior. In fact, I think we need a mythos to survive. Humans are storytelling animals and the lack of a grand narrative which provides the basis of a mythic system is practically essential to our wellbeing. For most people the striving for a mythos is satisfied by some sort of religion which provides first principles which give life a certain order. What’s more religion offers the ultimate first principle, the concept of a god or gods which are extrinsic sources of universal principles. Gods are perhaps the highest refinement of mythos because they are self evident and true to their believers, but like any mythos they require a certain leap of faith to transcend objective reality and engage with the concept of an absolute source of order and value.

A mythos is a powerful tool for ordering lives and channeling impulses into socially acceptable pathways, and yet there are as many mythos as there are cultures (though like culturs and languages, probably dwindling as the years go by) probably more. There is a fundamental difficulty, a breakdown of communication when attempting to engage those outside of our mythic system because without the same (or similar) set of foundational principles, we are unable to effectively communicate regarding values. It may be difficult to explain to certain groups why a clitorectomy (femal circumcision) is wrong by referencing human rights or gender equality because more likely than not such groups do not ascribe to those principles. Similiarly it may be difficult to explain universal individual rights to someone from China (as I have seen done several times) without reference to our own values which they may not share. The reason this is significant is that in attempting to engage a person or group with a different mythos, we must be very conscious of our own first principles. Any attempt to explain the right or wrong of something to such a person would likely fall flat or result in defensiveness, or worse claims of imposition of values, if we try to engage them on our terms and in our constellation of values. It would perhaps be more effective, then, to engage those of a different mythos within their own constellation of values using consequentialist examples and linking those to other competing first principles within their mythic structure.

There are those who would rather we turn to religion as the first principle, the mythos. That is one way to do it, and has been the predominant method historically of providing life with order and meaning. Unfortunately there are numerous religions that are heavily influenced by their cultural contexts and a perfect reconciliation of even sects within a religion let alone between religious paradigms  would be nearly impossible. This means taking a step above religion to first principles and acknowledging them when we engage with one another on questions of right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and debased.

Finally there are those who insist that there is an ultimate truth, but we as humans are incapable of comprehending such a truth. In spite of this, we should strive to reach for this elusive truth and order our lives around our imperfect perceptions of truth. The simple response to this is that history provides as many versions of truth as there are civilizations, cultures, and eras, so if there is a higher truth it is awful elusive. Rather than seek such a truth perhaps we should just modestly admit that we will never know and do the best we can for our day and age.

I’m quite literally dropping a very short policy paper on the balance between individual transportation and mass transit alternatives.

Introduction

Urban transportation involves highly complex and interrelated systems which people use as a means to accomplish a variety of ends. Transportation in urban areas can take the form of pedestrian traffic, bicycling, private automobiles, buses, and railways. Each of these forms has its functional purpose as well as limitations. This paper will focus primarily upon the use of private automobiles and mass transit systems (buses and railways) in urban areas as well as their benefits, problems, and potential solutions to those problems.

The Private Automobile

In the United States the primary mode of transportation is the use of private automobiles. In lower density settings this makes perfect sense as automobiles quickly and comfortably can get travelers to their destinations with a minimum of interruption. In higher density areas, however, high automobile usage creates congestion which slows down movement, contributes to accidents and injury, and makes the movement of people and goods increasingly inefficient with each additional user.

Automobile use began in the early 20^th Century and has increased greatly over time such that it is currently the dominant mode of transportation in much of the United States. The use of automobiles was spurred in part by relatively sparse settlement patterns as well as by design in the creation of the Interstate Highway System. For much of recent American history there has been an overriding preoccupation with automobile transportation and the ways to make it more efficient. Unfortunately, most highway planners seem to “have become so preoccupiedwith the production of efficiency in automobile movement that they have builtchoice right out of the environment” (Cervero & Gorham, p. 1). Essentially, this preoccupation with the efficient movement of automobiles has adversely affected opportunities for finding creative solutions to our transit problems and planners have focused primarily upon ways to build more highway capacity.

Increased highway capacity has had numerous deleterious consequences on urban environments. It has led to an increase in suburban sprawl as the ability to drive into the city from further away at faster speeds is coupled with poor land use regulations and with people’s desire for more space in which to live. Additionally, it fails to alleviate congestion as people choose to make more nonessential trips when their travel time between destinations is decreased. Furthermore, this increased capacity coupled with higher use exacerbates congestion as there are now more miles of highway backed up which in turn leads to increased pollution in the form of vehicle emissions.

Mass Transit Systems

The primary alternative to the private automobile is found in mass transportation systems which generally take the form of railways and buses. Mass transit systems have the capacity to transport large numbers of people from one point to another. They also offers increased mobility options to those who do not own automobiles either because of economic circumstances, age, or infirmity. Additionally, mass transit service is available equally to all users while automobiles are available only to those who own them or otherwise have access to them.

Depending on the form mass transit takes, it can be somewhat slower or much faster than transportation by automobile. For instance, buses operating at grade are subject to the same traffic as autos and have to make regular stops to drop off and pick up passengers, making them considerably slower than auto transportation. At the other extreme are bullet trains operating above or below grade which can be several times faster than driving during hours of high congestion. In between are at grade light rail and heavy rail systems operating on separate grades which can be slower or faster than auto transportation depending largely on the time of day, grade at which the track is laid, and number of stops.

Mass transit systems, because of their ability to pick up and drop off large numbers of people in a small geographic area, have positive external effects on their surroundings. Cervero (1995), for instance, notes that office vacancy rates are lower and rents higher in areas where mass transit authorities have formed joint-development projects with private developers to ensure higher-density development near train stations. Mass transit systems also tend to have a positive impact on property values in the vicinity of stops as people are willing to pay more money for easy access to alternative modes of transportation.

In spite of their virtues, mass transit systems are incredibly expensive to construct and operate. Jose Gomez-Ibanez (1996) notes that in general, mass transit systems are subject to decreasing economic viability as more people push out to ever distant suburbs and turn to automobiles for their transportation needs. Some of the economic problems faced by mass transit are inherent in the system—waves for drivers and capital costs—while others are largely external to the system—stability of the local job market, increases in personal income, changing residential patterns. Whatever the case, mass transit systems by and large face ever-widening operational deficits as operators keep fares artificially low to maintain ridership.

The Way Forward

Automobiles appear to be self-sustaining, with the costs borne by their users. Mass transit, on the other hand, appears to be economically unsustainable with municipalities subsidizing users. Reality, however, is a bit more complicated. Kim (2004) details the phenomenon of cross-subsidization in which countries subsidize a particular mode of transportation through policy choices. Cross-subsidization is characterized by charging users a price below the true cost of their activities and supplying the funds from a general revenue source. In many European countries, gasoline is priced to more accurately reflect the costs of automobile usage such as congestion, pollution, and adverse health effects. In the United States, on the other hand, gasoline is priced well below its true value with gasoline taxes failing to even pay for the highways upon which automobiles operate. So while it is true that mass transit systems are often subsidized by taxpayers, so too is the use of private autos.

Having briefly surveyed the benefits and costs of the two dominant modes of transportation in the United States, the task at hand is to create proposals that will play to the strengths of both private autos and mass transit systems in such a way as to make both more revenue neutral as well as improve their performance to reduce congestion and make transportation more efficient. There are any number of changes that could be made in an attempt to improve the experience of users of both autos and mass transit, however, there are three which seem to provide the most promise for clearly visible results. These three changes are: altering the way neighborhoods are designed, bringing the cost of automobile use more in line with its actual cost, and differential grading for mass transit systems.

Cervero and Gorham (1995) conducted a study of the differences in travel patterns of residents of economically similar and geographically close neighborhoods. They differentiated between older neighborhoods designed on grid patterns, most often near former streetcar lines, and newer neighborhoods designed for autos featuring more impediments to rapid movement. Their study revealed that neighborhood design influences whether people ride share, walk, or bike to their destination, as well as whether they utilize mass transit. Residents of neighborhoods designed along grid patterns were more likely to walk, use bicycles, use public transportation, and carpool to work than those of more auto-oriented neighborhoods. This suggests that a return to grid layouts for newer neighborhoods could help cut down on traffic congestion, reduce emissions, and encourage alternative transportation modes without depriving people of the choice of whether to use an automobile to reach their destination.

Because the United States subsidizes the use and ownership of autos, a second proposal would be to bring the costs of driving more in line with the actual cost of use. These costs can be internalized by users in any number of ways. One such way is to increase the fuel tax to better reflect the generalized cost of highway construction and public health dangers presented by auto emissions. A second way to make users internalize these costs would be to use dynamic tolling or congestion pricing in heavily-trafficked urban areas where costs to public health and infrastructure are most heavily concentrated. Either or both of these proposals would very quickly bring the cost of auto usage more in line with their costs to society in general. Once these costs are internalized, it is also likely that mass transit systems will become more attractive and the fares for such systems would be able to increase without having as dramatic an impact on ridership as would be seen under present conditions. Such a system would, however, be politically unpopular and would require very careful negotiation and compromise to implement.

The final proposal is to provide for differential grading for mass-transit systems. Cervero (1994) states that there are three categories of grading: rows C, B, and A. Row Category C grading is use of public streets open to general traffic. Row Category B grading is the partial separation of mass transit systems from general traffic by providing a separate right of way while still being subject to cross traffic. Row Category A grading is a completely separate right of way for mass transit such as elevated tracks or subterranean tunnels. Shifting from a more general grade (C) to a more separate grade (B or A) would increase capacity, speed, reliability, and safety (Cervero 1994, p. 4-5). A shift to more specialized rights of way, while requiring an initial capital investment, would have the virtue of improving mass transit while simultaneously improving the experience of auto users by taking the transit system off of general thoroughfares and lessening the disruption to traffic flows.

Conclusion

Both automobiles and mass transit systems provide users with a means to accomplish other goals while simultaneously imposing costs on society at large. While there is no perfect solution to our transportation problems, our current system is seriously out of balance and would benefit from changes. Some of the changes are relatively modest such as providing separate grading for mass transit, while others are more ambitious such as dynamic tolling and redesigning neighborhood layouts. While all of the suggestions detailed above would individually benefit users of all modes of transportation, their benefits would be most apparent and widespread if used in conjunction.

Imagine my surprise today then, when I find this same man going against the very principles he explained to me nearly three years ago. He posted a very interesting article in reaction to a political cartoon from a well known and controversial cartoonist. Specifically this one:

http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/minor/files/2009/02/deadmonkey.jpg

He received some rather unfavorable and some insulting responses from readers who thought he was overreacting. Within 24 hours the post was down. Then it was back up. Now it is back down and deleted. This kind of self-censorship seems to scream against the very principles of the guy I met three years ago. I’m not trying to insult you Billy. I’m just making a public call for you to stick to your guns and defend your position or take the flak. Maybe it’s to preserve a sense of self-image, but whatever damage that could be done mostly is. People don’t forget and the internet has a long memory as Tom likes to remind us.

Several years ago I learned that the United States government carried out a program of forced sterilization on Puerto Rican women during the post-World War II era. Initially, I was shocked and appalled. Why would the government of Puerto Rico with the support of the U.S. government force sterilization on women?

The primary motivation behind this was eugenic. Puerto Rico was overpopulated (it still is) and birth rates were high. The government couldn’t get people to emigrate fast enough and Uncle Sam was worried about another few million people in one of its colonies. Basically what happened is what happens in China today: poor women were tricked or coerced into having abortions or being sterilized. Sometimes it was the only family planning option offered. At others there was no consent.

This came crashing down to me about fifteen minutes ago when I got a call from my father. My grandmother, his mother, died about a year ago. My father had always been very close to her and so, when she died, he took some of her personal effects, mostly letters, back to California with him from New York. He was nearly in tears and bitterness clung to every word. He skipped pleasantries and simply began speaking.

“Sometimes” he said “I am so pissed off at what the government has done.”

I was rather confused and asked him what he meant.

In a mere five minutes he related to me the following. By 1949 or 1950 my grandparents had three children: my father and his two brothers, one older, one younger. Around this time my grandmother got pregnant again, this time with a girl. When she went in for a prenatal exam, she was either forced or deceived into taking medication that would induce abortion. Apparently three children was enough. My grandfather found out about this and was quite understandably pissed. They were offered $200 to sign a waiver form and shut up. At the time he earned about $5 a day, so $200 was what he earned in a couple of months. They signed and took the money.

This wouldn’t have come off quite so bad in my mind if I didn’t know anything about history or them personally I suppose, but I do. Up until 1951, all education, and likely all official documentation was in English. I have no idea how much (or I should say little) education my grandparents had, but I would guess that sixth grade might be pushing the envelope. Even in their twilight, when they had been living in the United States for fifty years, they never spoke more than relatively basic English. I would rate it around that of a ten year old. In all likelihood it means they signed a piece of paper that said fuckall as far as they were concerned and got $200 to not talk about it.

My grandfather had served in World War II in the Pacific and returned to a country that didn’t really want him because he was Puerto Rican. Apparently they didn’t want his children either. He never got the GI Bill. He never owned a home. In fact, he lived his entire life in poverty. The government not only screwed him on benefits, it deprived him of the right to have a child because he happened to speak the wrong language, be poor, and be Puerto Rican.

But hey, don’t get me wrong. The government has screwed lots of other people in the same way, mostly poor minorities. So Tom, Ragnar. You can tell me all you want about how great America was when you were kids. I still call bullshit.

So the government is about to spend a gajillion dollars and the transition team is probably thinking up how to target the investments to get the most bang for the buck. Many have suggested using a chunk of it to help states or to fund proposed and planned infrastructure projects. Funding infrastructure projects has the benefit of putting large numbers of people directly to work in construction. Indirectly it will stimulate demand and create jobs in other sectors that supply materials as well as in service sectors as people spend the money they’re earning with their nifty construction jobs. 

 The biggest cause for concern in investing in existing planned projects is that we might be entrenching a problematic status quo or invest in scattered projects without an overarching vision that sets the tone for the future development of our country. If the portion of the package that is going towards infrastructure simply goes into repairing aging roads, maintaing bridges, and the odd new road project, it will do something to stimulate the economy, but it won’t change our trajectory. What we really need to do is rethink our infrastructure and use this money to launch our country into the next upswing. Eventually the economy will stop hemmoraging jobs and money and we’ll be out of the beta phase. The question is whether our recovery will be slow and our plateau lower or quicker and our eventual plateau higher. Essentially we have to ensure that this stimulus makes the country more competitive far into the future. If our investment stops at repair (we need the repair TOO) and small projects, we are just fixing our infrastructure so that we can compete in the 1970s, not the 2010s.

We need to invest with vision. A patchwork of uncoordinated projects won’t get us far, it’s got to be big, bold, and innovative. We need to invest in upgrading our roads, rail, universities, power grid, medical practices, and communications networks. A coordinated effort to upgrade our infrastructure would do all of these things in such a way that they work together seamlessly. We’re about to give America a $1 trillion makeover. Will the end result be Angelina Jolie or Michael Jackson?

Anyone who has driven in any of the more high traffic corridors of a major metro area can attest to the sorry state our roads are in. Traffic is backed up for miles at rush hour, potholes are common, and repairs are haphazard, unsightly, and always seem to be done at the worst times of the day. While we need to repair and improve our roads, we should also be careful that we do not increase access points too much otherwise the problems of today will be back within a decade as urban areas sprawl out to infinity with cheap houses made out of popsicle sticks and cardboard, “starter homes,” popping up in the exurban fringe. Roads are nifty and all, but they are part of our problem because part of why we are losing our competitive edge is that we can’t keep up with our infrastructure needs. It’s a hell of a lot harder to maintain hundreds of thousands of miles of road that is heavily trafficked than to maintain fewer roads with lighter traffic and mass transit systems. At a certain point the number of people using a transportation grid point is too low to pay for or justify creation and maintenance, but we seem to do it anyway, depriving more heavily trafficked areas of maintenance funds. New road projects should include innovative ideas like New York’s failed congestion pricing scheme that would have charged people to enter Manhattan below 60-somethingth street and put a portion of that money into mass transit projects. Other ideas floating around are converting HOV or Carpool lanes into sliding-scale toll roads where users would pay increased fees for using the lane at peak hours than off-peak hours with each additional X cars increasing the price of use.

Related to highways and roads is our use of cars. Yeah I know, open highways, house in the burbs, white picket fence, 2.3 kids, dog named spot. American dream. That particular American dream might just hold us back in the future. It made sense in the 50s, it seems to make sense in the 00s. As the price of fuel increases and as governments the world round consider attaching a cost to carbon emissions, the use of internal combustion engines will become increasingly expensive. Oh sure we’ll have new technology  that uses less carbon, is cheaper, etc, but I’m still waiting for California’s hydrogen highway to not look like a huge publicity stunt. As the economy recovers, basic materials will go right back to their pre-bust highs much faster than most would like and things like copper for wiring, rubber for tires and insulation, steel for construction, concrete, hell any raw material will go through the roof. The longer the distance between people, the more we’ll have to spend per capita for these things that undergird our infrastructure, and the more it will cost to maintain them. We don’t need to kill cars, just make it such that they are not a necessity in American life.

A logical offshoot of a decreased dependence on cars would be an increased reliance on rail. This runs the gamut from freight rail, to commuter rail, to subways. A really bold plan would fund projects like California’s bullet train from LA to San Francisco or a national bullet system linking major metropolitan areas that could compete with airlines as fuel becomes more expensive. On the freight rail front, we could really use more freight track because demand has outstripped supply for a number of years and the overload contributes to accidents and massive delays. On the commuter rail and subway/lightrail front, the government could fund proposed projects in a number of major metropolitan areas and, if combined with some form of congestion pricing or flexible tolls, could create infrastructure that is more self-sustaining costwise.

Our education system generally is in need of some serious improvements, but even more immediate is the need to change how we conceptualized higher education. People should not be graduating college with more debt than they can reasonably expect to earn in their first year of employment. A possible way to help on this front is to increase federal aid to students and/or create scholarships with strings attached for students who want to pursue a career that might not be as remunerative (or perhaps just gentler loan terms). Also, we should look seriously about how much we need the higher education we have today. I’m not saying all post high school education should go, just that credentialism has gotten a bit ridiculous. Jobs that often require a B.A. really require nothing more than six months of office training in many instances or perhaps a year or two of copy editing and computer skills training, but the low bar to get a decent job just keeps going up as the number of people with B.A.s goes up and the salaries aren’t keeping pace with the debt load kids are graduating with today. B.A.s are great if you’re going into academia or graduate-level work, sciences, etc. But do you really need a B.A. to write? To do any number of boring office jobs that currently require a B.A.? To be an accountant? Hell in Puerto Rio you may need a college degree to be a tour guide earning just above minimum wage. Really? I’m all for a liberal arts education, but when you’re 18 and trying to find a decent job, I’m not sure that spending 4 years racking up debt to get a degree in film is really a step in the right direction.

Next on the agenda is our aging and inefficient power grid. I’m not talking solely about our old power lines and transistors that are blowing out with fun blackouts in the Northeast, but our entire energy infrastructure. Investment in more localized power sources from smartgrid technology which allows small producers (i.e. rooftop solar panels or turbines) to feed power back into the grid would be a good start. Investment in renewable energy sources would also be a boon. Like it or not, most of the world will eventually move towards some form of carbon pricing and it’s better to be prepared while we’re busy tossing around all this money than be caught later.

Our communication network is lacking to say the least. Our broadband access is around #14 and anyone who has ever tried using their cell phone outside of a city, or sometimes even within a city (my mom’s in LA comes to mind) can attest to dropped calls and shoddy service. This is especially true while travelling. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had dropped calls while driving or riding the train. Both of these problems are indirectly related to our low-density settlement patterns because it’s harder to serve sparsely populated areas with just about anything than higher-density areas. That’s not really the point though. The point is that even in modestly dense suburbs there are service issues, gaps, and no service areas.

Whether you agree with the huge stimulus package or not, it’s coming. I’m just here to offer some ideas on how to make sure it gets spent in a way that benefits us for decades rather than short-term.

The “Real America” is the America of small towns. Apparently only about 20% of the denizens of this chunk of rock we call the United States can even qualify as real Americans because that’s the percent that doesn’t live in a metropolitan area. Metropolitan areas are cities of more than 50,000 and their dependent outliers. Even if we go with a more conservative rendering, we see that those living in the urban core are 30.3% of the country and of the remaining 50% of the total 80% in metro areas, 80% live in an urbanized area (40% of the total population). So with 70% of the nation living in urban or urbanized areas, is it honest to call that anything other than the “Real America?”.

“Real America” is a nostalgic rendition of the America of my parents’ childhood. A country of small towns, church on Sundays (which is still largely true), hard work, self sufficiency, guns, common sense, and a raft of other things. Real Americans don’t have sex before you’re married and if she gets pregnant, they damn sure better marry her or at the very least support the child. They didn’t go to college. They shop at Walmart. They have kids. They don’t like fancy things. They are patriotic. They are an increasingly rare breed.

“Real America” seems to be a few things at once. It is a throwback to an idealized bygone era. It is, in some estimations, a code for the America of the blue collar WASP, white America. It is the America of my country right or wrong. It isn’t really America. Oh sure, there is a segment of the populous that fits the bill, but increasingly we live in a nation of urbanites. We live in big cities. We go to college. We cohabitate. Most of us don’t own guns. In fact, as older generations slowly pass on, we resemble “Real America” less and less.  So what gives?

Part of it is our history. This country started out as a country of relatively egalitarian small towns. Great wealth was not a big concern for early colonists. The earliest settlers (invaders?) were northern European Christians with similar culture and religion who mistrusted distant power and ascribed status. As time has gone on, however, we have become less white, less religious, and more urban. Americans are White, Black, Latino, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Gay, Straight, and Polys. In short, we are far more diverse than the invokers of the “Real America” would have us believe. The “Real America” is changing, it’s time to open our eyes and see it for what it is today, not what some particular segment of the population wishes it was. So, will the real America please stand up?

Now I understand where the endorsement comes from. McCain has been a fierce advocate of immigration reform that isn’t mouth-foaming or unworkable. I don’t love it, but I can see where people would respect it. In fact, that was the primary reason for the endorsement. While I read a few articles about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone told him what the guy’s songs are actually about. From casual sex in “Lo que paso paso” to thinly veiled references to muscle cars and sex in “Gasolina,” I think it’s a rather odd fit. McCain is (other than that little divorce remairrage soon after thing) a pretty straight-laced guy partnered with a guy advocating some rather un-family values.

When I think about the contrast combined with the fact that the endorser probably can’t even vote (no, I couldn’t find his official address, so I’m not 100% sure), it seems about a good as an endorsement from Gary Glitter. :-D. Hey, maybe “Gasolina” is about energy independence…Anyway, McCain apparently likes Daddy Yankee’s gasolina…just don’t tell him what that means (chances are McCain’s staff has no idea either).