teuast

All of those are phenomenal arguments for heavily reinvesting in our freight rail.

Your history is wrong. We had begun industrializing about 100 years before trucks were invented and more like 160 before they really became dominant.

And are you literally arguing that building rail is more cost prohibitive, time consuming, and inflexible than building roads? Like actually? Unironically? I'm sorry, buddy, but when you start getting into numbers, that's my territory and you're out of your depth. https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2014/01/11/rails-vs-roads-for-value-utilization-emissions-savings-difference-like-night-and-day/

If only we properly invested in history education in this country. Then maybe people wouldn't be embarrassing themselves by making arguments like yours.

So what did we do before we had widespread cargo trucking? Did we just not deliver any cargo ever? Everyone just wandered around dropping limes all over the place 'cause they'd only figured out how to carry them with their bare hands, until Henry Ford invented gas station sushi and revolutionized transportation forever?

Well, in the interest of not wasting everybody's time, I'll tell you: they organized their towns and cities around rail. This happened right here in the United States, with the stated example being in Philadelphia. Even the old West Coast cities were organized in much the same way for a long time. That was the only way they had available to them, and somehow, they still managed to have an economy.

We have a lot of retrofitting to do to regain that ideal. But it's possible.

Who besides rich boys can afford to ride their bikes to work?

i bike to work in no small part because i can't afford to drive there

Single mothers getting their kids to elementary and middle schools?

in civilized countries, they can use a cargo bike (what the dutch call a bakfiets) to carry the kids. or the kids can ride their own bikes.

The elderly going to their doctors appointments?

many elderly people can still cycle. you may even see electric assist tricycles on the bike path in civilized countries. and of course elderly people also benefit from accessible and convenient public transit.

Working stiffs who can’t afford to live in downtown?

this is a real concern and i absolutely share your desire to build large-scale dense public housing developments in downtown around transit stations, as well as doing the same around more outlying transit stations such that taking public transit also becomes a viable option.

What do you think will happen to rents when is forced to get an apartment in one of the existing blocks?

wait, i thought you wanted to build public housing to address housing affordability? was that just me offering a solution, and not you? that's weird

Why's it wrong?

I've been retreading the same ground because your argumentation strategy has just been to double down on your original points while ignoring my rebuttals. Which makes it fucking rich of you to accuse me of "not being interested in examining this discussion in any meaningful way." Imagine what I could achieve with that level of absolute brass balls.

What's the point of discussing if wages have grown without factoring in inflation? If wages increase, but inflation increases by the same amount, then leaving out the latter when arguing the former seems a little fucking dishonest, no? And of course it didn't occur to you to read past the first sentence to see where she makes that exact same point... or you deliberately ignored it to keep doubling down on the points I've already debunked.

And you've also admitted that there are still workers making the federal minimum wage, so it doesn't seem like this wage growth you think is such a trump card has been benefiting them at all. As I pointed out earlier, a third of the workforce is making less than $15, meaning that all of them would get a pay bump from raising the minimum, not just the ones who are already on the minimum wage. I have made this point multiple times and you still refuse to acknowledge it.

Honestly, you're arguing dishonestly enough that I straight up don't believe you when you say you'd love to see wages rise more.

Top result on Google. https://www.ppic.org/blog/wage-growth-is-struggling-to-keep-up-with-inflation/ Got another "nuh uh" for me, or are you going to make an actual effort this time?

set maximum profits aside

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

And they still aren't, so why should she discuss that?

I appreciate that you want more frequent adjustments to the minimum wage. I am in full agreement. I think it should be assessed on a national level more so than local, because making it piecemeal like that leaves lots of open opportunities for bad actors to exploit it (think gerrymandered congressional maps), but I do appreciate that as far as that goes, we are largely in agreement.

That said, Teter's essay addresses most of the other claims in your comment, with both argumentation and sources. Maybe you should read more of that and try addressing some of her other rebuttals to your points, rather than just ignoring them and repeating yourself endlessly? Then you might at least look a little bit less disingenuous.

It's at least a little bit interesting IMO that this is something of a pattern I've noticed. I had plenty of stupid arguments on Reddit, but at least those ones would change over time as new information was introduced and responded to. Here, it seems way more common for people to just ignore your rebuttals to their points and just repeat them without adding anything new. Are people here just more stubborn, or what?