In the US, the majority live in a place where having a car is all but mandatory. People don't know any different and are sold propaganda that anything else is of the boogeyman of the day. So when people want bike infrastructure, transit, zoning changes, etc, they freak out.
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Even as someone that can no longer ride a bike (disabled), I would be THRILLED with better bike infrastructure and essential businesses closer together. (Those big parking lots were such a pain when I only walked.)
Before I could afford a car, every time I had a complaint about how I couldn't get around, it seemed the answer was always "work hard and get a car." Our public transportation sucked bad, it was plain not safe to ride a bike, and walking was impossible in some areas.
I really hate that I live in a city but something like buying a gallon of milk requires a car (or delivery). It's pretty ingrained into us as a culture and I really only saw it for myself when I was destitute and had to get by without most things people had. Many of those things were doable but not having a car really screwed me over. It shouldn't be like this, but when I bring it up, my peers roll their eyes at me. Aaaaargh.
IIRC, the only way to get a tax break for owning a car in the US is if you do a hack of not driving straight to work but you stop somewhere for coffee then drive to work. Something about multiple stops being a loophole. But is that loophole being abused on a notable scale?
There’s also a loophole in the US where if you rent a car instead of buy one, there are some shenanigans that enable a simple commuter to write it off. But again, I don’t think that’s being abused on a large scale.
Europe is quite loose with the car write-offs. The car just has to be company-owned and from there it can be used simply for commuting to and from an office. So you have a phenomenon where a majority of cars are company cars being used for personal errands.
You don't get a tax break for personal vehicles. If you use it for business purposes for a business you operate (i.e. own), you can claim it as a business expense.
Cars are subsided by our zoning, minimum parking requirements, and car centric transport infrastructure.
Where are you talking about? Your first paragraph sounds like Europe, but your second paragraph sounds like the US.
That's how it is in the US?
Since you said “car centric transport infrastructure”, and zoning, that really sounded like the US. The US has some really fucked up zoning that forces commercial buildings to be separated from residential zones, which forced the norm of driving cars to work. Europe allows homes and businesses to intermingle. In fact, it’s common for a ground floor shop to have residential dwellings on the floors above it.
That's all you get when you've got a system where the accumulation of political power through the accumulation of capital is aided and abetted. Agriculture is a politically powerful lobby so they get taxpayer dollars every year and lax supervision through regulatory capture.
Veg farmers fall under that same lobby though, right? So what if the feds say “you’ll get the same amount of subsidies but every year 20% of the livestock subsidies will shift to veg farmer subsidies”?
They'd only say that if the vegetable farmers were offering the politicians more money.
It's the economic system of distribution that's the issue. That's why 10% of our gas is corn. Why the USDA food pyramid had 11 servings of grain. Business and government will continue to merge until we replace the capitalist government with a socialist one. Then at least we'd have a chance of government doing what voters want. As long as the government and the working class are different groups of people, people will always be looking for ineffectual patches for a broken system.
In the USA, the answer is lobbying
People would still feel like the government was interfering in their lifestyle, because they are used to the prices resulting from the subsidies as the default state of affairs, and would feel any change in prices as a result of ending those subsidies the same as if the government had actively mandated price increases. Telling them "technically, this is the government not intervening when it was before" won't make most people feel any better.
This is why it bothers me that vegans are not vocal. They keep their head down as their taxes is used against their beliefs. Vegans should be outraged that their tax contribution is financing animal exploitation. They should be demanding the right to be vegan, which means the right to not contribute to animal exploitation. Maybe they should get a tax rebate for being vegan to effectively pull back their livestock subsidy.
Mr krabs leans in real close to the reporter's microphone and whispers "you fuckin know why"
Conservatism. That's why.
Yeah, it’s ironic for sure that the anti-spending party takes the extreme opposite stance on farming subsidies, which is why farmers vote republican. But since farmers are die-hard right-wing voters, whenever the dems get power they would seem to have no reason to try to win over farmers (dems are never going to get farmer’s votes), so they might as well end the livestock subsidies.
There is no mass transit where I live. Hell, there aren't even any sidewalks in this neighborhood.
The USA would have to make a huge amount of changes before what you're wanting is viable & I have no idea where to start that process aside from getting rid of the GOP.
Okay but I was just talking about subsidies. I don’t think personal cars are being subsidized in the US, are they? I thought you had to be a truly commercial driver for the most part (taxi or 16-wheeler) to get a tax write-off.
Because of powerful lobbies and because of fear of losing votes for reelection.