[Carfreeliving] A Car In Every Garage

[Jason Henderson]

This is sad, real sad. And maybe a hint at why the Clinton-Gore 
"domestic policy" excluded any real meaningful change in US transport 
policy.
-jh


    A Car In Every Garage


          By Margy Waller, Washington Monthly
          Posted on December 1, 2005, Printed on December 6, 2005
          http://www.alternet.org/story/27723/

Among the many unpleasant realities exposed by Hurricane Katrina and its 
aftermath--from persistent income and racial disparities to the chronic 
incompetence of the Bush administration--one of the most surprising, to 
many, was this: our nearly total dependence on automobiles.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the exodus from New Orleans itself. The 
difference between those who escaped with their lives and loved ones, 
and those who did not, often came down to access to a car and enough 
money for gas. Now, in the recovery stage, many of those who were left 
behind have been evacuated to trailer-park camps, where they are likely 
to be worse off than they were before, in part because they cannot get 
to where the jobs are.

Even those Americans who do have cars--and who live nowhere near the 
Gulf Coast--have been affected by Katrina. After the hurricane, 
already-high gas prices spiked to record levels--suddenly, it cost $60 
to fill up the tank. Prices receded somewhat afterwards. Given worldwide 
supply and demand issues, prices are more likely to move up than down in 
the near future, as most Americans understand. No wonder, then, that gas 
prices top the list of financial concerns in recent polling. These 
higher prices might be more tolerable if incomes were rising. But in 
fact, incomes have been flat since 2001 and declined last year for 
working-age households.

American drivers have taken a number of steps in response to high gas 
prices. SUV sales, which had already started to slip, plunged further in 
Katrina's wake while demand for fuel-efficient vehicles like the Toyota 
Prius soared. But while we can choose to buy hybrids or cut down on 
trips to the grocery store, the hard truth is that, in a suburbanized 
country, there is only so much Americans can do to reduce their car 
usage. To make a living, they have to work. And to get to work, the vast 
majority of Americans have to drive.

There is a limit to what government can do to reduce gas prices or 
increase private sector wages, at least in the short term. But it can do 
something to give middle-class families some relief and low-income 
workers a leg up--by recognizing that the cost of commuting is a 
business expense, and changing tax policy to reflect that fact. The 
federal government should offer tax credits that would lower the cost of 
commuting to work for low and middle-income employees, and would allow 
low-income workers who can't afford a reliable car to get one.

Employers, welfare administrators, and the unemployed have long asserted 
that transportation barriers are a key obstacle to success on the job, 
so these commuting credits may be the most promising next step for 
welfare reform. They would help transform the lives of many low-income 
Americans, giving them a previously unimaginable level of convenience, 
security, and freedom. And, in a broader sense, after five years of 
easing the tax burden on those who don't need to work for a living, 
commuting credits would--for the first time in a long time--give a break 
to those who do.

*Keys to Success*

A century ago, getting to work seldom required a lengthy commute. In 
rural areas, farmers walked out the kitchen door to their jobs. And most 
urban residents either lived within walking distance of their places of 
employment or could rely on convenient public transit systems like 
streetcars. Today, however, two-thirds of residents in metropolitan 
areas live in the suburbs, and two-thirds of new jobs are located there 
as well. It's therefore no surprise that 88 percent of workers drive to 
their jobs.

Left behind in this car culture are central-city poor residents without 
cars, who have become increasingly isolated from the American economy. 
As Mark Alan Hughes, William Julius Wilson, and other scholars have 
documented, the steady movement of jobs out of cities and into the 
suburbs has helped create and sustain the concentrated poverty that is 
now endemic to America's urban areas. Because new jobs tend to be 
located in ever-expanding suburbs, which are poorly served by mass 
transit, poor central-city residents find themselves living further and 
further away from economic opportunities. Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor 
of urban planning at UCLA, found that car-driving residents of the Watts 
section of Los Angeles have access to an astounding 59 times as many 
jobs as their neighbors dependent on public transit. Even more isolated 
are the car-less low-income families that now live in the 
suburbs--nearly half of all metropolitan poor.

There is reason to believe that not having a car isn't just a 
consequence of poverty--it's a barrier to escaping it. A significant 
body of research shows that low-income people with cars work at higher 
rates, and earn more, than those without. Outside factors like personal 
motivation--the type of people who get cars are likely to be the type 
who also get jobs--could go some way to accounting for the difference. 
But researchers who have evaluated that possibility by looking at 
existing survey data and at a small program that provides cars to the 
working poor find that car ownership does indeed directly help people to 
work, and to earn, more.

The lack of a car limits opportunities for America's poor in other ways 
too. It's never easy to be a working single parent, but it's infinitely 
harder without a car. When you spend three hours a day commuting to work 
by bus and train, then have to buy groceries and pick up your kids, 
there isn't much time for anything else--like helping with homework or 
after-school activities, taking yourself or your family to the doctor 
when necessary, or even finding a partner to help share the load. And 
lack of access to a car limits your housing options, making it even 
harder to move into safer neighborhoods, or ones with better schools.

Perhaps worst of all, the lack of a car leaves people more vulnerable to 
unforeseen emergencies. Katrina was an extreme example, but the daily 
lives of the poor are filled with smaller ones. In American Dream: Three 
Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, Jason DeParle 
follows Angie Jobe, an inner-city Milwaukee single mother. At one point, 
Jobe has her food stamps cut off because of a bureaucratic error. Not 
having a car, she takes the bus to the food stamp office to clear up the 
problem, but it breaks down on the way there, and she arrives late, so 
no one will see her. She's forced to return the following day and 
eventually has her stamps reinstated, but the episode ends up costing 
her $500--more than a week's wages.

Clearly, the problems are most acute for low-income families without 
cars. But even for low- and middle-income workers who do own cars, 
purchase and operating costs take a significant bite out of their 
income--more than 20 percent of all household expenditures go for 
transportation, second only to housing. For the vast majority of 
households, those costs aren't optional--cars represent a fixed and 
non-negotiable expense. And every time the price of gas increases, it is 
in effect a tax on work.

*Right of way*

Federal policy has long given favorable treatment to work expenses, and 
rightly so. The government subsidizes the cost of college and worker 
retraining. The tax code allows deductions for the cost of uniforms, job 
searches, tools, home offices, and work-related moving. There are even 
tax breaks for non-commuting work travel and parking. Yet one of the 
largest and least avoidable work-related expenses for most 
Americans--the cost of getting to and from work, receives no favorable 
treatment in the United States, though it does in countries like Germany 
and France.

This inequity can be remedied in a simple and straightforward way. The 
federal government should offer a tax benefit to anyone who commutes to 
work and is in the middle to bottom of the income scale--that is, anyone 
in the 60 percent of U.S. households making less than $52,000 a year. 
Those who need the credit most would get the most help: Lower-income 
workers would receive a refund if their credit exceeded the amount of 
taxes they owe, in the form of a check for up to $3,000. That's enough 
to help significantly with the purchase and maintenance of a decent, 
though not fancy, car. Those higher up the income scale would get a 
dollar-for-dollar credit against taxes owed; a family making $40,000 
would get back around $1,000. To avoid punishing those who don't use 
cars, all workers with commuting expenses--even those who take mass 
transit--could claim the benefit.

Many would still be unable to purchase a car because of credit problems 
or the inability to provide a down payment. Fortunately, nonprofit 
organizations like Working Wheels in Seattle and Vehicles for Change in 
the Washington, D.C., area already help to provide loans and decent cars 
for poor workers. These successful programs could be expanded using 
federal resources to cover all working families who need assistance. And 
this move would help in other ways. Insurers and car dealers often make 
the poor pay excessive rates, which acts as a further obstacle to car 
ownership. Widening the reach of nonprofit programs would reduce the 
impact of these bad business practices. In addition, these programs aid 
working families to improve their credit rating, and develop traditional 
banking relationships--two more crucial steps in rising up the income 
ladder.

*Road Worriers*

This is an ambitious proposal, and a costly one. If all eligible workers 
took advantage of the option--an unlikely prospect, based on our 
experience with other credit programs--the cost could reach $100 billion 
a year. Any initiative that big raises certain obvious objections.

Many who would be willing to spend that amount of money would prefer 
that it go to mass transit, in the hopes of reducing congestion and 
pollution. But there is little reason to think that even a massive 
investment in public transportation would substantially reduce the 
overall amount of driving Americans do. Anthony Downs, a transportation 
expert at the Brookings Institution, has projected that doubling the 
number of people who take mass transit to work (a Herculean achievement) 
would reduce the number who drive by only around 5 percent. While it 
unquestionably makes sense to improve service to the transit-dependent, 
particularly in dense urban neighborhoods, no amount of money will 
enable us to use transit to meet the needs of most workers. Only cars 
can do that. And even if every car-deprived household in the bottom half 
of the income scale were to buy an automobile, it would increase the 
number of vehicles on the road by only around 3.5 percent. The modest 
effects of this slight increase are far outweighed by the moral 
imperative to give the poor access to a crucial commodity enjoyed by the 
rest of society.

Another objection is that the plan would lessen incentives to cut down 
on driving and thus reduce our oil consumption. No doubt it will to a 
small extent. But because the credit isn't directly tied to the price of 
gas, Americans would continue to feel the sting when prices at the pump 
are high. They would therefore still have a major incentive to change 
their behavior--by cutting down on inessential trips, by buying more 
fuel-efficient vehicles, and by supporting politicians who favor raising 
fuel economy standards.

Perhaps the strongest objection is that the nation can't afford a $100 
billion program each year during a time of massive deficits and huge 
unpaid costs, both overseas and on the Gulf Coast. But let's take a step 
back. The deficits exist in the first place thanks in large part to a 
particular vision of tax policy espoused by conservatives in Congress 
and the administration, one which presumes that easing the tax burden on 
the wealthy will make the economy grow. Over the last five years, taxes 
have been cut by over $2 trillion, almost 70 percent of which has gone 
to the richest 20 percent of Americans. Even so, the economy has 
remained unsteady, and the number of Americans in poverty has increased.

There is another way to think about tax policy. Former senator John 
Edwards, among others, argues that the country would be better off, and 
the economy stronger, if we rewarded work instead of wealth. This was 
the approach of the 1990s, when taxes on the rich increased, the Earned 
Income Tax Credit doubled, and the minimum wage rose. These changes 
coincided with the longest economic boom in American history; incomes 
rose while poverty and unemployment declined. Replacing the Bush tax 
cuts with the commuting credit would result in a net savings of around 
$1 trillion over 10 years, and would realign tax policy to reward the 
American value of hard work.

Would such an idea ever be politically feasible? In fact, there is 
reason to believe that it could attract broad support, and help forge 
some unlikely alliances. Unreliable cars and unpredictable transit are a 
major contributors to employee tardiness and absenteeism, cutting 
productivity and profits. Commuting credits would ease that problem, and 
increase the pool of applicants for low wage jobs, making the credits a 
natural sell to major employers. And the automakers and the powerful 
auto unions would surely welcome the prospect of creating a new market 
for cars.

The political logic may be the most compelling for candidates: Any 
proposal that involves money in the pocket for this many voters won't 
lack for public support. In particular, rural and exurban workers who 
have long been particularly hard hit by this tax on work are a natural 
constituency for the commuting credit. Indeed, in addition to 
transforming the lives of America's inner-city poor, commuting credits 
could also be the first step toward making low- and middle-income voters 
feel that the federal government is making a difference in their 
economic well-being.

The idea that driving a car is a lifestyle decision has long since 
become outmoded. Americans do love to drive, but these days, they also 
must drive. To be a fully functioning citizen in this country today, a 
car is a virtual necessity, and any American willing to work ought to be 
able to afford one. We use the tax code to subsidize most other work 
expenses. It's time we did the same for the most common and unavoidable 
of them all.

/ Margy Waller served as a domestic adviser in the Clinton-Gore White 
House. She is based in Washington, DC. /


          © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

-- 
Jason Henderson 
San Francisco CA 
(415)-255-8136
jhenders at sbcglobal.net 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: jhenders.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 218 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://livablecity.org/pipermail/carfreeliving_livablecity.org/attachments/20051206/74167e58/jhenders.vcf