This topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing.
Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum building height, and require minimum parking spaces. Many European cities have maximum parking spaces, and minimum building height. The latter produces higher population densities which make public transportation possible.
We need to push back against suburban sprawl and the car-first design. No required parking, no free curbside parking, and a carbon tax on gasoline. Once cities get a population density >7 people per acre, public transportation becomes viable. Population density follows a logarithmic curve with miles traveled per person, so you get as much of a reduction from moving from 2 to 20 people per square acre, as from 20 to 200.
You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them.
You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids.
etc.
Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not.
To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.
I think you've missed the point of the article. People who don't use public transportation subsidize those who do, but we're OK with that as a society in large part because many need to use public transportation; the young, the disabled, anyone who can't afford a car and or to live next to their work and a grocery store. Similarly, we subsidize schooling and school lunches. But subsidizing parking is the opposite of that: the poorer pay for the richer. No one would be concerned that the ultra-rich are forced to subsidize parking they're not using when they take their private jets instead of road-tripping.
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids.
Which means that your kids will live in society largely made up of people who have received some education. You could argue that there is more value in this than there is in providing parking.
"99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions,"
Yes, police, parks, fire, libraries, K-12 schools, air traffic control, restaurant health inspectors, everyone agrees ... Just don't bring up the seemingly tiny little detail of the financial structure of the health care system in the USA. And secondary side issue of roads full of cars.
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids
and you receive the benefit of living in a society where most people have a minimum level of education. You can then hire these people and not have to pay to teach them how to read.
> You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them
Maybe you personally somehow never enjoy seeing nature, I don't know. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to see a little nature which is shown to make people happier and more productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian landscape.
I find this a little different than your examples since it is government forcing your actions within the private market, not forcing you to pay for its bundle of services. There is no cost to the system to stop doing this one, it just would make car drivers as frustrated as dog owners when they shop for an apartment in a metro area.
Given how much funding already goes to roads I would say enough is enough. But there is a risk of more long distance commuters, and it is hard to claw back the subsidies that make them.
"...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not."
Oh the irony of calling everyone else out for their love of monolithic solutions, then peddling your personal preference for how the economy for everyone should work for everyone.
The 99.9% is just asinine. It's another ideological monolith. It's this over generalization, this "the world is against me" narrative that is peddled here, Twitter, Reddit...
How about some rigor in our discourse. Peddle your ideals with detail, not your emotional hangups and QQ's
> To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.
If everyone is pleading in this manner, then it isn't so special.
>Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
Anarchocapitalism isn't anarchistic, as capitalism necessarily entails the establishment of at least two classes: the proletariat and bourgeoisie, defined in terms of the relationship to the means of production.
I don't think that's special pleading exactly. They're not saying "people should only pay for what they use, except for all these things I want and they don't", they're saying "people should be forced to pay for certain things, and those things should coincidentally be the ones I want". It's self-serving, but it's not an exception to a general principle.
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids.
Being a Floridian, we get a lot of retirees from other states (shocker, right?). A portion of these retirees don't like paying taxes for education. They say their kids are grown and they went to schools in other states, so why should they pay taxes for education?
Yes, we do each of those things because we want to strongly encourage their use. The unfairness is supposed to be outweighed by the social benefits to all by this encouragement. This is a good thing IF we think it's a good thing for people to:
- Go to parks more, and be more relaxed and healthy, benefiting everyone
- Get more education more, benefiting all of society
- Drive more.... thus creating more traffic, accidents, and pollution??
One of these things is not like the other!
At the very least, if you want to encourage people travelling (for some reason, not clear what the benefit is) you should be fair and equally subsidize car usage, transit usage, and bike/walk usage. (In much of the USA, parking is free, usage of most freeways is free, but trains and buses cost money and bike/walking is made difficult. The only conclusion to draw is that government wants to encourage usage of cars instead of non-car transport mediums, for unfathomable reasons)
[I] would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
If you don't like subsidies, why make such a show of arguing in favor of this subsidy? (Sure, from a particular idiosyncratic point of view, you aren't so arguing, but you've deliberately left that quite ambiguous...)
Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[2][3]
One aspect that concerned me:
In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market.
Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion.
Such as:
>>> I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
So you only use 2.5 miles of a highway to get to and back from work - right? Should you pay for the entire highway or just the parts you use? So what if other people only use "parts" of that same highway? Does that mean we suddenly have huge gaps in our highways since people are only paying for the parts they use?
There was a study a while back that showed that the USA has eight times as many parking spaces as it has cars.
At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at work that's empty at night and the spot you park in at home that's empty during the day.
Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking.
I think we wouldn't see things as being nearly this bad if all American cities didn't rip out their tram networks. Every city I've lived in, even small ones with ~100k people, use to have Streetcars. Today, cities like Cincinnati struggle to get a tiny segment put in.
Trams carry a ton more people than buses. People are more likely to ride them too. If American cities hadn't given in to GM and Ford and kept streetcars instead of replacing them with buses (that have lower capacity, use up more fuel, etc.) I think parking in the US, and car ownership in general, would be very different.
I'd be very surprised if shared self driving cars lead to a major reduction in excess parking, or lower the number of traffic jams.
People want to do the same things at more or less the same time: Having time off while your social circle is at work is not as fun. Many jobs require customers, and others require entire groups of people to be there together. This means the minimum capacity needed to handle peaks is not going to be very far off from where we are right now.
Think of your typical morning traffic: One side of the highway is in gridlock, while the other is doing well. In the evenings, the directions reverse. A lot of people want to be at the office at 8:00, so you need capacity for that. And what do the cars do now that it's 8:05 and they are downtown? Probably nothing, as there is no demand for that much capacity for most of the day.
Same thing with a sporting event: People will get to the stadium to watch the 49ers, but Santa Clara doesn't have any use for 40K+ cars for 3 hours on sunday morning. The most you can do is have the cars do some otherwise useless miles to park in a cheaper area further away from the stadium.
I'd love to be wrong on this, but this phenomenon would make it surprising if we got a double digit decrease in traffic with shared self driving cars.
There is also the concept of “ground cover” in some places.
I have seen office buildings create gigantic parking lots just to “occupy” all their land so that the land cannot be taken away later. If land is completely undeveloped then it can be reclaimed in some situations, e.g. someone decides they want to build a railway.
Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.
It floors me that businesses are allowed to keep their parking lots off limits during non business hours. That alone would go a long way to freeing up spaces.
Even at peak demand many spots are empty. The reason for so much parking is that it is legally required. Nothing more, nothing less. Many of the businesses will never make full use of their parking.
Places without parking requirement laws develop very differently, and if parking is provided at all, it's usually in far smaller quantities and it's not free.
Compare, say, third tier Japanese cities that lack subway systems to American equivalents. Parking exists, but it's not universally free, and there's less of it.
>At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year
"Need to", because, god forbid if people:
(a) take the public transit (or build a decent public transit in the first place),
(b) park a little further down (e.g. half a mile or so), and walk to the place you want to go.
Interesting. Now you got me thinking more about what things might change with self-driving cars.
Will cars offer an "orbiting" mode where they keep driving in a circle until you are ready to be picked up.
Will stores offer a driving ring where cars can drive around in circles off the main street in the case where no parking slots are available?
Will cars be able to drop you off, and park themselves when a space becomes available? Will the cars notify you where they parked, or will they always come to your location? (And what if you are standing in an area that is impossible to drive to...where does the car go?)
I can't wait for self-driving cars. This will be a lot of fun to see how the world changes in both the large and small.
> Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking.
I would think that applied to any shared cars, including taxis and ride-hailing services. Why would the self-driving feature reduce parking demand beyond that?
Most of the commenters on this thread don't appear to have lived in a country with the opposite problem. Consider what happens when development and car ownership expands in a country without adequate government parking mandates.
You routinely find at least two road lanes blocked by parked traffic because buildings don't have adequate parking. This leads to very slow bumper to bumper traffic (try Bangalore, Mumbai, Cairo, Manila), higher air pollution leading to a public health crisis, waste of time, higher green house emissions etc. When calculating "rental increases", articles like these conveniently forget externalities that would result from jot providing for parking.
I'll add that Visa charges 1.43% - 2.4% of the transaction. I'd be curious to know what the cost of a cash transaction is as a percentage of the transaction. I doubt it climbs that high.
> Credit cards make everything more expensive when the poor often can't use them due to bad credit.
This makes sense.
> Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores.
This does not. You've transitioned to talking about averages for some reason.
I think the argument is that city planners (the State) requires a minimum amount of parking for all structures, thereby raising the price of all goods. It's not that expensive things are bad, but that maybe the State should focus on affordable housing for the poor.
My city just passed a bond measure which includes $36MM for a 300 space parking garage for the high school and city hall, literally meters from where a new light rail stop will be built. 25% of the city's families don't own a car. I have trouble not seeing this as a forced, direct subsidy for the lifestyle of the employees of the city. And this is supposedly one of the most transit-friendly cities around (in the US). But this is an enormous cost, for the benefit of so few... plus it will add 600 trips per day to some of our busiest local roads.
Free parking has all sorts of problems, and when government gets in on the game it only raises more questions, in my mind.
[edited to clarify that the city in question is in the USA]
I don't disagree with the numbers but you could make this same argument for literally any feature of a business that has the affect of making that business more attractive to customers with Y quality (where Y is not something all customers have).
Let's imagine that the parking lots of Walmart, $localSupermarketChain and other stores is cut to 1/4 it's present size. What happens then? I suspect the inability to draw wealthier customers from further away (because "why shop somewhere you can't find parking") would cause a price increase.
The trucks that deliver the goods that poor people buy (and carry away the waste) are hard as hell on roads - you could say that the car drivers are subsidizing (through gasoline taxes) the massive infrastructure costs of maintaining a road network. I don't know how the numbers would balance out, but I'd bet that the benefits of that subsidy are greater than the costs incurred from free parking.
The canonical opposite example of this is a nationalised healthcare system. Rich people pay for a healthcare system that they don't use.
Due to economies of scale the NHS in the UK costs less than half the money the American systems costs and has better outcomes. The government in the UK being very right wing are slowly trying to destroy the service. Numerous mostly Tory MPs are paid cash by private healthcare providers!
I'm wondering what are the myriad other ways that low-income folks are silently taxed?
higher interest rates, housing codes, regulatory compliance (leading to higher prices), and possibly even the minimum wage come to mind (I'm sure there's much more), thus always keeping "the basics" expensive enough to be out of reach.
So we could argue that drivers are subsidizing the cost of mostly unused handicapped parking spaces as well. I'll see a parking lot with dozens of these spaces almost chronically unused, but since the ADA requires a certain (arbitrary) number of handicapped spots, businesses are forced to build an excess capacity of these spots despite many of them sitting unused, except occasionally by the Jaguar owner who is friends with a doctor.
A strange thing is that you have handicapped parking requirements yet the NYC subway is still not even close to being Accessible for those in wheelchairs. A suburban Target is required to have something like 90 handicapped spaces (obviously I'm exaggerating,) but the NYC subway still has huge swatches of stations that are accessible only by stairs. How NYC gets away with this is beyond me -- they can force businesses to bend over backwards to accommodate the disabled, but they themselves don't do much of anything to improve the public transportation situation for the disabled. (or even moms with strollers and kids.)
If anyone wants to know why public transportation isn't a bigger thing for families -- it's because going to a grocery store with a kid(s) in a stroller via the subway is a nightmare. -- not even talking about carrying your purchases home. Buying a weeks worth of groceries and then carrying all that home on a crowded bus or train with a kid in tow? No thanks.
Implicitly, the author assumes that a car would be the last thing this hypothetical poor person would purchase.
There are in fact, many impoverished homeless people who live in cars. In this case, they might find themselves parking in one of those abundant spaces.
I wonder when the last time she walked by a walmart was.
Yes, it can embed the cost. However the problem solving approach should be social one; more tax from who can afford, which means in this case, the car owners. Without social, community based approach, the solution surely become less protective and more discrimitive to poor people.
And you know what? In countries with free healthcare the healthy pay for the care of the sick, even when they are healthy. Doesn't make it a bad system.
A few years ago in the US there was talk about requiring the 1st checked airline bag to be free. This is the same thing. The bill was put forward by a respected politician.
These are the types of issues that make me think educating the public on this stuff is incredibly important.
Here in my part of the greater Los Angeles area, in the poorer areas, you will see most houses with more than a few cars in each house. In my area we have some people who have more than five cars/household for houses that are probably no larger than 1500 sq. ft.
[+] [-] JDDunn9|9 years ago|reply
Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum building height, and require minimum parking spaces. Many European cities have maximum parking spaces, and minimum building height. The latter produces higher population densities which make public transportation possible.
We need to push back against suburban sprawl and the car-first design. No required parking, no free curbside parking, and a carbon tax on gasoline. Once cities get a population density >7 people per acre, public transportation becomes viable. Population density follows a logarithmic curve with miles traveled per person, so you get as much of a reduction from moving from 2 to 20 people per square acre, as from 20 to 200.
[+] [-] tjic|9 years ago|reply
You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them.
You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids.
etc.
Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not.
To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.
[+] [-] tgb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msl|9 years ago|reply
Which means that your kids will live in society largely made up of people who have received some education. You could argue that there is more value in this than there is in providing parking.
[+] [-] VLM|9 years ago|reply
Yes, police, parks, fire, libraries, K-12 schools, air traffic control, restaurant health inspectors, everyone agrees ... Just don't bring up the seemingly tiny little detail of the financial structure of the health care system in the USA. And secondary side issue of roads full of cars.
[+] [-] imgabe|9 years ago|reply
and you receive the benefit of living in a society where most people have a minimum level of education. You can then hire these people and not have to pay to teach them how to read.
> You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them
Maybe you personally somehow never enjoy seeing nature, I don't know. You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to see a little nature which is shown to make people happier and more productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian landscape.
[+] [-] languagewars|9 years ago|reply
Given how much funding already goes to roads I would say enough is enough. But there is a risk of more long distance commuters, and it is hard to claw back the subsidies that make them.
[+] [-] adrianN|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thorawy33|9 years ago|reply
Oh the irony of calling everyone else out for their love of monolithic solutions, then peddling your personal preference for how the economy for everyone should work for everyone.
The 99.9% is just asinine. It's another ideological monolith. It's this over generalization, this "the world is against me" narrative that is peddled here, Twitter, Reddit...
How about some rigor in our discourse. Peddle your ideals with detail, not your emotional hangups and QQ's
[+] [-] hx87|9 years ago|reply
If everyone is pleading in this manner, then it isn't so special.
[+] [-] ue_|9 years ago|reply
Anarchocapitalism isn't anarchistic, as capitalism necessarily entails the establishment of at least two classes: the proletariat and bourgeoisie, defined in terms of the relationship to the means of production.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-huc...
[+] [-] aninhumer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply
Being a Floridian, we get a lot of retirees from other states (shocker, right?). A portion of these retirees don't like paying taxes for education. They say their kids are grown and they went to schools in other states, so why should they pay taxes for education?
[+] [-] galdosdi|9 years ago|reply
- Go to parks more, and be more relaxed and healthy, benefiting everyone
- Get more education more, benefiting all of society
- Drive more.... thus creating more traffic, accidents, and pollution??
One of these things is not like the other!
At the very least, if you want to encourage people travelling (for some reason, not clear what the benefit is) you should be fair and equally subsidize car usage, transit usage, and bike/walk usage. (In much of the USA, parking is free, usage of most freeways is free, but trains and buses cost money and bike/walking is made difficult. The only conclusion to draw is that government wants to encourage usage of cars instead of non-car transport mediums, for unfathomable reasons)
[+] [-] carapace|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jessaustin|9 years ago|reply
If you don't like subsidies, why make such a show of arguing in favor of this subsidy? (Sure, from a particular idiosyncratic point of view, you aren't so arguing, but you've deliberately left that quite ambiguous...)
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and free markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that, in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[2][3]
One aspect that concerned me:
In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market.
Sooooooooo private security firms for law enforcement? Pretty sure we saw how that worked out in Iraq with Blackwater. No thank you. There's a ton of flaws with this philosophy once you start thinking about it and following certain aspects to their logical conclusion.
Such as:
>>> I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use.
So you only use 2.5 miles of a highway to get to and back from work - right? Should you pay for the entire highway or just the parts you use? So what if other people only use "parts" of that same highway? Does that mean we suddenly have huge gaps in our highways since people are only paying for the parts they use?
[+] [-] jedberg|9 years ago|reply
At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at work that's empty at night and the spot you park in at home that's empty during the day.
Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking.
[+] [-] djsumdog|9 years ago|reply
Trams carry a ton more people than buses. People are more likely to ride them too. If American cities hadn't given in to GM and Ford and kept streetcars instead of replacing them with buses (that have lower capacity, use up more fuel, etc.) I think parking in the US, and car ownership in general, would be very different.
[+] [-] hibikir|9 years ago|reply
People want to do the same things at more or less the same time: Having time off while your social circle is at work is not as fun. Many jobs require customers, and others require entire groups of people to be there together. This means the minimum capacity needed to handle peaks is not going to be very far off from where we are right now.
Think of your typical morning traffic: One side of the highway is in gridlock, while the other is doing well. In the evenings, the directions reverse. A lot of people want to be at the office at 8:00, so you need capacity for that. And what do the cars do now that it's 8:05 and they are downtown? Probably nothing, as there is no demand for that much capacity for most of the day.
Same thing with a sporting event: People will get to the stadium to watch the 49ers, but Santa Clara doesn't have any use for 40K+ cars for 3 hours on sunday morning. The most you can do is have the cars do some otherwise useless miles to park in a cheaper area further away from the stadium.
I'd love to be wrong on this, but this phenomenon would make it surprising if we got a double digit decrease in traffic with shared self driving cars.
[+] [-] makecheck|9 years ago|reply
I have seen office buildings create gigantic parking lots just to “occupy” all their land so that the land cannot be taken away later. If land is completely undeveloped then it can be reclaimed in some situations, e.g. someone decides they want to build a railway.
[+] [-] yason|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zach_the_Lizard|9 years ago|reply
Places without parking requirement laws develop very differently, and if parking is provided at all, it's usually in far smaller quantities and it's not free.
Compare, say, third tier Japanese cities that lack subway systems to American equivalents. Parking exists, but it's not universally free, and there's less of it.
You should read up on parking minimum laws.
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
"Need to", because, god forbid if people:
(a) take the public transit (or build a decent public transit in the first place),
(b) park a little further down (e.g. half a mile or so), and walk to the place you want to go.
[+] [-] forgettableuser|9 years ago|reply
Will cars offer an "orbiting" mode where they keep driving in a circle until you are ready to be picked up.
Will stores offer a driving ring where cars can drive around in circles off the main street in the case where no parking slots are available?
Will cars be able to drop you off, and park themselves when a space becomes available? Will the cars notify you where they parked, or will they always come to your location? (And what if you are standing in an area that is impossible to drive to...where does the car go?)
I can't wait for self-driving cars. This will be a lot of fun to see how the world changes in both the large and small.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
I would think that applied to any shared cars, including taxis and ride-hailing services. Why would the self-driving feature reduce parking demand beyond that?
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfifs|9 years ago|reply
You routinely find at least two road lanes blocked by parked traffic because buildings don't have adequate parking. This leads to very slow bumper to bumper traffic (try Bangalore, Mumbai, Cairo, Manila), higher air pollution leading to a public health crisis, waste of time, higher green house emissions etc. When calculating "rental increases", articles like these conveniently forget externalities that would result from jot providing for parking.
[+] [-] refurb|9 years ago|reply
Credit cards make everything more expensive when the poor often can't use them due to bad credit.
Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores.
I'm sure what this article is arguing for.
[+] [-] CalChris|9 years ago|reply
Full stop. Credit cards provide a service and that service isn't free. It gets factored into prices.
https://www.merchantmaverick.com/the-complete-guide-to-credi...
I'll add that Visa charges 1.43% - 2.4% of the transaction. I'd be curious to know what the cost of a cash transaction is as a percentage of the transaction. I doubt it climbs that high.
[+] [-] pessimizer|9 years ago|reply
This makes sense.
> Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores.
This does not. You've transitioned to talking about averages for some reason.
[+] [-] grapehut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xphilter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrap|9 years ago|reply
Free parking has all sorts of problems, and when government gets in on the game it only raises more questions, in my mind.
[edited to clarify that the city in question is in the USA]
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|9 years ago|reply
Let's imagine that the parking lots of Walmart, $localSupermarketChain and other stores is cut to 1/4 it's present size. What happens then? I suspect the inability to draw wealthier customers from further away (because "why shop somewhere you can't find parking") would cause a price increase.
[+] [-] drcode|9 years ago|reply
2. Stores that have more customers can offer better prices to all their customers (including poor people) due to greater sales volumes
[+] [-] badsock|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samtoday|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andy_ppp|9 years ago|reply
Due to economies of scale the NHS in the UK costs less than half the money the American systems costs and has better outcomes. The government in the UK being very right wing are slowly trying to destroy the service. Numerous mostly Tory MPs are paid cash by private healthcare providers!
[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selling-nhs-profit-full...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/healthcare-...
[+] [-] pcr0|9 years ago|reply
Under-utilised parking spots should be leased or sold. (They sell for 80-300k where I live)
[+] [-] cobbzilla|9 years ago|reply
higher interest rates, housing codes, regulatory compliance (leading to higher prices), and possibly even the minimum wage come to mind (I'm sure there's much more), thus always keeping "the basics" expensive enough to be out of reach.
[+] [-] briandear|9 years ago|reply
A strange thing is that you have handicapped parking requirements yet the NYC subway is still not even close to being Accessible for those in wheelchairs. A suburban Target is required to have something like 90 handicapped spaces (obviously I'm exaggerating,) but the NYC subway still has huge swatches of stations that are accessible only by stairs. How NYC gets away with this is beyond me -- they can force businesses to bend over backwards to accommodate the disabled, but they themselves don't do much of anything to improve the public transportation situation for the disabled. (or even moms with strollers and kids.)
If anyone wants to know why public transportation isn't a bigger thing for families -- it's because going to a grocery store with a kid(s) in a stroller via the subway is a nightmare. -- not even talking about carrying your purchases home. Buying a weeks worth of groceries and then carrying all that home on a crowded bus or train with a kid in tow? No thanks.
[+] [-] readme|9 years ago|reply
There are in fact, many impoverished homeless people who live in cars. In this case, they might find themselves parking in one of those abundant spaces.
I wonder when the last time she walked by a walmart was.
[+] [-] chunsj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zensavona|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h4nkoslo|9 years ago|reply
They also effectively ensure maximum density, which in some areas is an explicit government policy objective.
[+] [-] spectrum1234|9 years ago|reply
A few years ago in the US there was talk about requiring the 1st checked airline bag to be free. This is the same thing. The bill was put forward by a respected politician.
These are the types of issues that make me think educating the public on this stuff is incredibly important.
[+] [-] vondur|9 years ago|reply