Item — HN Reader

In your example:

  * there are about 100 families within a mile or so of you
  * they need to spend an hour or so to drive into the city
  * they can already barely afford a car and "to keep the lights on"

To me, this screams out for car-pooling, or some other shared transportation solution, as it would be better for the environment and cheaper for them.

Also, economies are complex systems. If low income people can't afford to commute into the city, the jobs wouldn't disappear, as the work wouldn't disappear. So someone closer who was previously unemployed might get the job. Or in response to the shortage of workers, the wages of these jobs might be raised.

3 comments

There are cities that have trouble finding workers at the lower wage end of the spectrum because the cost of living for those people is just too high. A good example is Santa Barbara California. The poor are taxed enough already. If you think employers are somehow going to cover this cost, see how anxious they would be to pay for it directly.

Perhaps customers and employees should be treated as a form of pollution, just another toxic resource used by business. Wouldn't that justify business having to pay?? If given only enough wealth to survive, aren't we saying that employees have no function except to work and consume?

How far do we have to tax people before it becomes institutionalized slavery?

Cars have been a part of the American dream for a long time. Unless/until our cities are made where everyone can easily function without them, pricing some people out of them equates to a serious impairment and loss of freedom.

Taxing things that impact society isn't always the answer. Try taxing children and see how far that goes.

The wages of city employees keep going up more than that of the poor in the communities they "serve". What do some cities do to fuel that? Bring in more people, more box stores, tax it all.

Perhaps there is a fundamental conflict of interest in the way some city/county/state/national taxes and spending are handled?

Poor families like that are probably doing shift work spread across the day, so only a third of them are trying to get into town at any given time (and another third is coming back).

Also, just from a practical standpoint, telling some people "your jobs won't disappear... other people will have them!" is, uh, problematic. At best.

> To me, this screams out for car-pooling

Didn't someone mention on HN a startup that intends to do for taxis what airbnb is doing for hotels? This could be at least part of a solution.