Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee
the two major employers- located right next to each other- could alleviate most short-term congestion by simply staggering shift times...
|
Or the city could offer meaningful tax breaks to employers offering four-ten or better work weeks. That way their employees would commute 20% fewer days and the reduced traffic management and air quality concerns, etc should easily pay for the tax breaks - (that's 20% less fuel and congestion right there, depending what those people would be doing on their days off) and those same people would have three days each week to actually
live life , engage in commerce and hobbies and other productive or leisurely pursuits... which brings me to:
Quote:
Originally Posted by XYZ
We've become a nation of panhandlers and prostitutes...
|
As far as I'm concerned we're all prostitutes, that's what life is. I sell my body for 40-60 hours a week, and my employer does whatever he wants with it. It just so happens that he wants me to design things instead of that other activity usually associated with the word
prostitution, but to put it bluntly I'd rather he was done with me in 10 minutes than using up 9+ hours of my life every day. It's prostitution either way.
I don't actually mind the fact that we have a so-called
social safety net because it's important to keep people from becoming outright desperate - not only is it humane to keep people above absolute starvation where possible but also desperate people are dangerous people. How much money do you spend every year on defense of self/property/family? Locks, car alarms, home alarms, deliberately living in a "safe" neighborhood even though it means a longer commute and higher cost of living, deliberately living in a rural area even though it means less economic opportunity, self defense weapons (pepper spray, firearms, poke stick, baseball bat by the door, whatever) ... how much more would you spend and worry if everyone on welfare got cut off and went a couple days without food? You have nice things...
But I do mind that we haven't built a work system. I drive, walk and ride past blighted property every day, I hang out in filthy and unmaintained parks and ride bike trails that could use a cleaning and some thorn removal, gutters that could use sweeping, roads that could use resurfacing - there are literally millions of things that need doing and I think it's within our society's capacity to convert the dole to a guaranteed jobs system. Not for people legitimately disabled of course, but if you don't have working legs you can still be a security guard or answer phones or supervise able-bodied, but mentally unstable folks who are performing more physical work in exchange for a living.
A magical utopia of rainbows and lollipops isn't reasonably achievable but for f's sake, we can do better than we're doing now.
