I don’t believe Democrats and Republicans are remotely the same but one large coalition straddles both parties & demands wildly unfair/unsustainable/destructive policy:
The NIMBYs.
In cities & suburbs alike, Republican & Democratic NIMBYs agree: “No more housing here.”
Given the existential nature of housing, whichever party casts out this coalition and energizes the majority — who WANT walkable communities and affordable cities — will dominate American politics.
Neither party is currently capable of this.
The Republicans are beholden to violent, reactionary white Christianists for votes, and the oil industry for money.
The Democrats actually have the *voting* coalition and the values to race ahead on housing, but are mostly cowed by angry suburban NIMBYs and wealthy NIMBY donors.
But it doesn’t matter what the excuse, the outcome is the same.
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A high-end but reasonable estimate of cross country high speed rail in the United States is ~ $5 trillion, or about ~ 85% of what we spend on cars every year.
Spread that $5 trillion over 20 year bonds to get HSR cost.
During that 20 years we'll spend ~ $120 trillion on cars.
I know I'm just a stupid liberal but even my addled brain can see that $5 trillion is probably a lot less than $120 trillion
Broken part of car brain is part that budgets for them in silos: Oh, highways are cheap, just $200B a year, or oh, cars are cheap, most people only spend $9,500 a year.
But the "cost" of driving is highways + car + fuel + widespread death and destruction.
People wondering how we lost Roe - this is how we lost Roe:
Urban areas in the United States have lowest voter participation in local elections imaginable. Your school board doesn’t suck because government is objectively broken; it sucks because most people don’t participate.
Republicans participate. They have a vision of a white Christianist caliphate, and are executing that vision.
You can watch and maintain ironic detachment, right up til they’re at your door.
people who still insist that capitalism is America’s primary affliction, I’d challenge to prove that it’s not actually the living artifact of American manifest destiny — and the deep, cultural sense of spatial entitlement that engendered — that is the real culprit here.
There are plenty of American socialists and communists utterly drunk on the notion of NIMBY pastoralism, that mythical child of manifest destiny who believes the noble urban farmer is Marx’s only true heir.
Geometric denial is trans-partisan, it afflicts all American movements.
Having been close enough to hippie back-to-land phenomenon to see these people are also just, mostly, cultists, I’m deeply convinced that what ails us is our cultural heritage, not economic ideology:
That land is infinite and there’s more “over there” when this land is “full.”
In US context “innovation” generally refers to federal funding of R&D but I’d be willing to bet a giant share of “innovation” funds end up underwriting sales price of single family homes, or landlords for such innovations as “exclusionary zoning” and “objective shadow standards”
One thing about housing is it is fundamental so if you fuck up housing then basically everything else gets fucked up by proxy.
Transport? Fucked by housing. Health care? Fucked by housing. Nutrition? Fucked by housing. Education access? Fucked by housing.
Climate action?
The folks who say “social housing only! It’s too important!” are actually ideologically correct, IMO, housing makes or breaks everything else, it should be guaranteed like clean air and safe water. Where they go astray is in the yawning gap between practice and theory.