Obama’s Friends: Enemies of the American Dream?

Wendell Cox reports:

The automobile plays the role of the Great Satan in this morality play. The goal of many ‘progressive’ urbanists is to force people into transit and stop road building. Transit, of course has its place. There is no better way to get to your job south of 59th Street in Manhattan, to Chicago’s Loop or to a few other of the nation’s largest downtown areas. But the stark reality is that transit can not substitute for the automobile for the overwhelming majority of trips, except for these niche markets. Further, failing to expand highways to keep up with traffic growth increases traffic congestion (and air pollution) and reduces economic productivity (read: “increases poverty”).

Higher costs for home ownership and slower commutes to work – and they will be slower because transit commutes average twice as long as automobile – impose significant burdens on people. Fewer people will have houses and fewer will have jobs. Forcing a single parent to take longer to navigate from home to the day care center to the job, whether by transit or by car, makes life more difficult, and for no rational reason. It is the equivalent of forcing people to work harder for nothing.

Some politicians benefit from the urban life style.