I am a big proponent of public transit. But I’d much rather walk to work than take the bus. Buses are notorious for being late, and that kind of stress isn’t good for my quality of life.
the best way I’ve heard buses described is “An urban bus is a device for going from where you aren’t, to where you don’t actually want to be, at an inconvenient time for you, while burning an awful lot of diesel and doing a ton of road damage in the process.”
Of course it depends entirely on where you live and where you want to go - but an awful lot of people are somewhat judgy about people not owning a car even when they don’t need one. That line in the OP about poor people waiting for the bus wearing name brand sneakers - I assume monstro has reasons for believing the people she is talking about are poor. But I encounter an awful lot of people who believe that only poor people take the bus or train and can’t understand that it’s not uncommon in NYC for someone to own a house but not a car. Or that people might in fact own a car but still take the train/bus regularly because driving to the particular place they’re going had no advantage over public transit.* These people seem to think that the only reasons you wouldn’t own a car is because you are either too poor or physically unable to drive- and that it could never be just because it’s the best decision financially.
- When I worked in Manhattan, I might have saved 10 minutes by driving instead of taking the train- if I paid about $150 a week to park in a nearby garage. So I would have gotten more aggravated and paid an extra $125 a week to save maybe 20 minutes a day. Not worth it to me.
The part you quote says “people,” not “households.” A two-person household, each making 30K, is solidly in middle-class territory.
Admittedly New York is America’s biggest city. But still–it is only ONE city. To hold it up as a typical American experience is parochial and short-sighted. New York is outside the norm for the typical American in several ways.
If you’re defining professional school as broadly as you seem to be, I don’t understand why ART wouldn’t be a professional school.
I’m not holding it up as a typical city - it’s simply one example of why not owning a car and taking public transportation may not due to poor financial choices or poverty. To assume that not owning a car and instead using public transportation is always due to poor financial choices/poverty is equally parochial.
OK, but no one has expressed this assumption in this thread. I didn’t say that riding a bus is emblematic of poor choices.
Yes, I have a good reason to believe that the people I see wearing nice kicks at bus stops are actually poor. Their fast food uniforms are a dead-give away and so is the fact that they walk to low-income housing after the bus lets them out. Quite a few namebrand-clad college students ride the bus in my town, but I find it easy to distinguish them from the folks who are trying to get to menial jobs and the folks who board the bus with small children in one hand and a bag full of groceries in the other.
Public transit in my city is OK. It’s good enough that if you live and work in the heart of the city and don’t have to get to places exactly on time, it can be as good if not better than a car…as long as you plan things very carefully and are lucky with the bus stops. But it has it real limitations. I went through a period without a car and tried to see how feasible it would be to have the bus be my primary mode of transportation (besides my feet). I gave up after three months. I just couldn’t deal with all the time spent waiting for buses (sometimes in crappy weather) and then the stress of late buses. I consider myself pretty hardcore, but I just couldn’t deal with that kind of stuff. So in my city, relying solely on public transit–while not being a poor choice–would not be the best choice for most people. I hope one day that changes, though.
A person that would make such a statement is not a “friend”. Find some other friends.
You don’t need to be in an NYC-sized city to have access to a car-sharing service and only pay for the short periods of time you use the car. That won’t work if you live way out in the suburbs (because rent is unaffordable in the actual city…), though.
I guess if I had to choose, I would share a broom closet with 3 other people and stay in the city rather than not be able to get to work or school on time.
I wonder how much of that is due to people who just can’t/won’t say “no” to their kids’ demands. Reminds me of something I saw years ago flipping through the channels on daytime TV (big mistake, I know.) saw one of those Dr. Phil-type show where someone was up there with her 14-year-old son, and she was in tears over spending so much money because he refused to wear anything other than clothes from one (pricey) brand. later I heard a bit from Adele Givens on satellite radio talking about the same thing. Her take was “my son better not pull that crap on me! If he tried that I’d be like ‘you will wear a dress if that is what I buy for you!’”
Yes, the lack of public transportation is a big problem in a lot of places, making it mandatory to drive a car.
As for poor people with fancy sneakers or other seemingly “expensive” things, that doesn’t always mean they’re making “poor choices.”
Not the case in my city - among other things, many of our buses are hybrid, some even electric. Though I’m aware that many cities are not so lucky.
call it a poor decision, then? I can’t think of a reason spending money on expensive shoes when you’re otherwise barely scraping by is a good idea. Especially when the people most concerned with “fitting in” or showing off are teenagers who can outgrow shoes within a few months.
They could just be a friend who just doesn’t know they are being insensitive and stupid because no one has ever set them straight.
I have to admit that if I’ve invited someone to join me for Starbucks and they came back with “I can’t, I’m trying to save money!”, I might be tempted to rib them a little. Especially if I’ve accepted similar invitations from them in the past. And especially since I would hope they’d be able to intuit that I don’t really care if they choose not to buy a cup of coffee. I’m inviting them to keep me company while I stand in line. Not break their piggy bank.
I have coworker friends who invite me to Starbucks all the time. I almost never buy anything on these visits because I don’t want the extra calories. But I don’t tell them this because that’s TMI. They’ve never given me a hard time about me not buying anything.
In addition to giving kids some financial education, I think they also need to be taught how not to care so much about pleasing or impressing others. And also how to defuse an insensitive remark made by an insensitive someone. I think kids need this lesson now more than ever.
I can understand why a financially strapped parent may have a hard time saying “no” to certain requests. Their kids are always asking for stuff but always having their requests denied.
“Can we go to Chucky Cheese?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can we go to the movies?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can we go to Six Flags?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can I be on the traveling sports team?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can I go to sleepaway camp?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can we live in a house with working plumbing and heat instead of this crappy apartment?”
“No, we can’t afford that.”
“Can we eat at McDonald’s for dinner?”
“OK. I can afford the dollar menu.”
“Will you buy me some Nikes this year? The kids at school keep hassling me over the K-mart shoes you’ve got me wearing. I hate my life so much.”
“OK, but that’s your birthday and Christmas present and you had better not ask me for nothing else. Now cheer up and stop complaining about how horrible everything is.”
Most of us don’t blink an eye at middle-class parents “wasting” money on Chucky Cheese, movies, Six Flags, sleepaway camp, and other pricey experiences for their kids. But we’ll shit a break over poor parents buying one or two luxury items so that their kids will have SOME sunshine in their life. We expect poor parents to have the fortitude to say “no” to everything even though their kids are vulnerable to information that convinces them they need everything. That’s expecting poor parents and their kids to be stronger-willed and more virtuous than everyone else. That’s pretty shitty IMHO.
Not broad examples, no. If I were wise enough to identify broadly-applicable ways to improve aggregate utility, I’d be forming PACs and running for public office, not posting on a message board.
Still, you could come up with examples that are more narrow. For example, folks who enjoy gambling a lot could potentially improve their utility by reducing their gambling expenditure by a small amount, say 10%, and then putting that money into, say, tax money for infrastructure repairs. You’d have fewer gambling establishments, so fewer casino workers and tourism-related jobs, and so on. You’d in turn have more construction workers. But even then, it’s not clear that this is obviously utility-gaining. Maybe said person gets unusually strong dopamine rushes from gambling. Maybe the person gets around by private helicopter and jet, and is less dependent upon public infrastructure generally. Maybe said person is loaded and doesn’t have much reason to give a damn about money.
Another example might be reforming our criminal justice system to spend fewer dollars on incarceration facilities (sorry correctional officers) and instead putting those dollars towards rehabilitation (psychologists, guidance counselors, etc…) and community-based early-intervention efforts (social workers, education, local infrastructure, etc…).
Point being, cutting spending in one area does not automatically imply a decrease in overall spending, because the money gets spent elsewhere. (If spending cuts in one area do result in decreased aggregate spending, then the overall saving rate has increased which is a whole economic discussion by itself). So I disagree with the proposition that “American society runs on poor choices” in the sense that I don’t believe the poor choices are essential to the functioning of the economy; the poor choices can be replaced with “better” choices (however you choose to define better); the society functions differently, but still likely functions reasonably well.
point taken.
OK, I think I get what you are saying. And I agree with it even if I think it would be difficult to get all of us to agree with it.
Like, maybe if we were taxed more heavily, we could have a stronger safety net (universal healthcare and more subsidized housing). We would initially complain that we have less money to spend on dining-out and going crazy with Christmas gifts and having “fun”. But eventually we’d get used to it. And while some/many restaurant and retail workers would be out of a job, the stronger safety net means they’d be able to exploit opportunities that were previously unavailable to them. Guaranteed healthcare and housing means that they could live off of their savings while they go to school or start their own small businesses. Maybe a stronger safety net would unleash ingenuity that is currently being wasted in dead-end low-wage soul-crushing jobs.
So they probably spend all day working on their feet, and then have to walk some distance to get home after they get off the bus.
Have you ever tried to spend all day on your feet in crappy shoes?
Spending a significant amount of your money on your shoes when your life is like that is not a stupid decision. It may be essential, if you’re not going to wind up in too much pain to be able to work.
(Also, if they’re broke enough, they may have got the shoes second hand; though if they did, their feet probably do hurt, as the shoes were first broken in to somebody else’s feet.)