I'm always so pleased at the way Americans want everything for free, and how bad we are at doing the basic math of transport costs, especially when a British newspaper reports on the total collapse of New York railroads today:
The fire at [the Long Island Railroad] Jamaica [station] was out, but the LIRR was still running well below capacity when an electrical problem in Maryland shut down power to trains up and down the Northeast corridor. Commuters in Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington (Delaware), and throughout New Jersey were affected by the outage, which hit at the height of rush hour.
As the New York Times and the Infrastructurist both note, this is yet another example of how America's outdated and fragile infrastructure continues to cause problems—especially in the Northeast corridor. The solution is simple: if Americans want better infrastructure, they have to invest the money to pay for it.
Oy. Trains are worth more than we pay for them, people. Get your heads out of your asses and your asses out of your cars.
More data for my analysis:
We're in the thick of what one sociologist calls "the changing timetable for adulthood." Sociologists traditionally define the "transition to adulthood" as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early '70s.
The whole idea of milestones, of course, is something of an anachronism; it implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace. ...
Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? ... To some, what we're seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.
I'm trying to work up a theory about people born after 1980, which seems to be the cut-off for a host of behaviors and attitudes that are alien to me and my contemporaries. I'm not sure how on-point this article is, but I'm thinking about it.
India became independent from the U.K. on 15 August 1947. Happy birthday!
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And because blogs are traditionally self-absorbed, I'll point out India has hot, sticky weather much like what we've had in Chicago this summer. We've had 35 consecutive days with dewpoints over 22°C. Bleah.
I got an odd bit of mail today, in an official USPS envelope with a handwritten address. It was a check. A check I wrote. To the State Department.
Apparently, my passport renewal check got swept up in a pile of bills and other envelopes I dropped into the local mailbox. I didn't even realize I'd mailed the check without an envelope. And I remember thinking, as I reprinted the check a couple days later, "crap, another one fell behind my desk. I'll get it later."
Thank you, anonymous Chicago postal worker, for sending my check back.
Even better, I got an email from the State Department today saying they've completed my passport renewal already. I mailed it in on the 29th, without requesting expedited service. They sent me an email when they received it on the 3rd, and now, only one week later, they're done. Huh.
Let's review. (This is especially important to you ignorant starve-the-beast neo-Hobbsians out there.) Two public-service agencies, one quasi-public and the other a de facto (and, actually, de jure) part of the U.S. Government, apparently have conscientious, hard-working employees who do their jobs better than expected.
That they do this in the face of deliberate, malicious actions by elected officials only underscores how wrong the myth of "government bureaucracy" really is. In fact, government (and postal!) workers, like any others, come in many varieties, but mostly they just want to do their jobs well.
So here's a challenge to the right-wingers who read The Daily Parker—especially the one running for public office: can you tell me how your life would, on balance, be better without government?
...
Keep thinking. I've got time. And I've got my check back, and I'll have my passport Tuesday.
Via one of my classmates, and the NPR Planet Money blog, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority has started testing demand pricing for parking spaces:
The system will use electronic sensors to measure real-time demand for parking spaces, and adjust prices accordingly. When there are lots of empty spaces, it will be cheap to park. When spaces are hard to find, rates will be higher.
The range in prices will be huge: from 25 cents an hour to a maximum of $6 an hour, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority.
Eventually, drivers will be able to find open parking spaces by going online, checking their mobile phones or reading for new electronic signs that will be posted throughout the city.
That's how to run a parking system. Not, as some might suspect, by leasing all the meters to a for-profit company which immediately raises prices to the point where people don't park on some streets at all any more.
Via Sullivan and the New Yorker, a scary-cool animation of the 2,051 nuclear weapons tests (plus the two the U.S. dropped on Japan) between 1945 and 1998:
Krugman makes a succinct point about why the current recession isn't like 1981:
The 1981-2 recession was a very different kind of event from the 2007-9 recession: basically, it was a recession deliberately created by the Fed to bring down inflation. The Fed raised interest rates sky-high, causing a plunge in home construction, which was the main driver of the slump. When Paul Volcker believed that we had suffered enough, he cut rates, housing sprang back — and it was housing that mainly drove the recovery. Reaganomics was basically irrelevant.
The 2007-9 recession was driven by the collapse of a huge housing bubble, and the resulting financial fallout. The Fed couldn’t cut rates sharply, because they weren’t all that high to begin with; there couldn’t be a housing boom, because housing was already overbuilt.
The problem, as Krugman has patiently explained for months, is that anti-inflationary measures right now will bring about deflation, which is worse. If you have any debt at all, inflation is your friend. If you're a lender, deflation rocks. Three guesses why the Republicans are so eager to curb the non-existent inflation we have right now.
Via Sullivan, UK Prime Minister David Cameron presents the Conservative view of gay marriage:
I know there is one other subject that the gay community is particularly interested in: marriage. As someone who believes in commitment, in marriage and in civil partnerships, my view is that if religious organisations want to have civil partnerships registered at their places of worship that should be able to happen. Last week the Equalities Minister held listening events with faith groups and representatives of the gay community, as we consider what the next steps are for civil partnerships and how we enable religious organisations to register same-sex relationships on their premises if they wish to do so. I think this is an important step forward and we will help to make it happen. But making this country a more equal, open place isn't just a job for government alone. The truth is we will never really tackle homophobia in schools, the workplace or in sport just by passing laws. We need a culture change as well.
There's no single lever we can pull or even collection of measures that we can take to make that happen. The wall of prejudice is also chipped away by high-profile role models, by public celebrations, by a positive approach to diversity. That's why I am proud that there are now more openly gay MPs in the Conservative Party than any other party. It's why I wish the upcoming Pride events – today in Leeds, all week in Brighton and on Saturday in Liverpool – every success. And it's why I congratulate everyone on this list for doing their bit to inspire and change attitudes. This is a country where people can be proud of who they are – and quite right too.
As Sullivan says, "Imagine a Republican leader doing that. Better still, imagine him or her writing this."
That's as likely right now as a Republican leader who believes we can cut the deficit by increasing spending without increasing taxes. I mention this because the Lib-Con coalition in the UK is reducing speding and increasing taxes, as that seems the surest way for the government to spend less than it takes in. Arithmetic, you see.
Via Sullivan, Timothy Lee describes how freeway construction destroyed the center of St. Louis:
Planners in St. Louis, as in most American cities, decided that the new expressways would run directly through the cities’ downtowns. One of them (I-44/I-70) now runs North to South between the park and downtown. Not surprisingly, if you visit the park today you’ll find a light sprinkling of tourists, but nothing like the throngs of locals you’ll find in successful urban parks like New York’s Union Square, Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, or DC’s Dupont Circle. Whatever “revitalizing” effects the park might have had on the rest of the city were undermined by the fact that the park isn’t really accessible to pedestrians in the rest of the city.
Planners pursued the same basic scheme in other American cities. And in almost every case, they encountered fierce resistance from people already living where the freeways were supposed to go. [Author Jane] Jacobs herself was a key player in the famous, and ultimately successful, effort to stop a proposed freeway through lower Manhattan. After decades of bitter conflict, similar plans were defeated in Washington, DC. Urbanists were partially successful in Philadelphia. They killed the Crosstown expressway, which would have cut through South Philly, but they failed to stop the Vine Street Expressway, which ran north of downtown and contributed to the destruction of Philly’s Chinatown.
In Chicago, the Eisenhower and U of I combined to destroy Little Italy; and the Dan Ryan sliced right through the principal middle-class black community, scattering black professionals to the winds.
The Culture Dash took me back to Kazan Cathedral today, only this time, I went inside:
