If I heard the radio correctly, Planned Parenthood alone has a nearly $1 billion budget with about 1/3 of that from government subsidy. Regardless of one's stance regarding abortion, that's pork spending.
Does Houston still have no zoning? Might be a model for those advocating looser zoning.
The traffic problem is your choice. You made that choice by picking the place that you live. 99% of America (by land area) has no traffic problem at all. You happened to pick the 1% that is congested.
Again, it boils down to choices. I bought a brand new home 5 years ago, and my payment is only $500 a month. That got me a
3 bedroom, 2 bath, with modern kitchen, laundry, 2 car garage, and home theatre room (aka, den). You are free to make that same choice. There are not too many income levels where a $500 a month payment for housing is a major problem.If you con yourself into accepting the myth that you have to be mortgaged up to your eyeballs, then both spouses may have to work, and life can be a real grind. But you don't have to fall for that plan--all it does is transfer wealth from you to the rich folks.
-john-
The eco-nuts are to blame, both for diverting road funds to transit projects (which they know are a total waste) and for changing the public-comment process to make it much easier for NIMBYs to block a project (the system is designed to include only people living within 1-2 blocks of a project site, not the much larger number who would benefit from it).
Most people have these things called "jobs", which tend to be in the
1% you reference.-Scott
Here we go again. Whenever someone suggests that people need to live within nature's limits, some reactionary claims it's got to involve genocide. Those are your ideas, not mind.
Have you ever heard of CONTRACEPTION? It's the only technology that can stave off the destruction of nature. It just needs to be used with more foresight and vigor. The media talks and talks and talks about the environment but is afraid to offend prolific breeders who are crowding it out
No coercion need be involved for birth control to work; just general intelligence. Unfortunately, that's been too much to ask of average people. Most lowering of birthrates has come from economic expediency, not an understanding of carrying capacity.
E.A.
50 billion people - are you out of your gourd?! Does open space and nature mean nothing? Let me guess: the 50 billion could all fit in Texas! See
People need to realize that economic growth has _become_ population growth and economies of scale (manufacturing efficiency) can no longer be improved with more bodies. There is too much welfare and artificial job creation. In a balanced system, people would rarely be lacking for work. The construction industry is mostly a w**re to population growth; generating depletion jobs, not sustainable ones.
In the past few decades, things have only "improved" for crafty folks who chase population growth around the world and play money games. Most people are getting smaller slices of the pie and working more for less real gain. That's exactly what they should expect in a FINITE world.
As the land gets more crowded, housing gets less affordable, energy gets scarcer, traffic gets worse, noise invades rural areas and animal habitat keeps disappearing. Efficiency and pollution-control gains keep falling to sheer numbers of people. Life is only improving in the most superficial sense; fancier gadgets, mainly. Global warming and/or peak oil could wreck the entire system, but I bet you're a "skeptic" on those issues.
I wouldn't mind letting growth-addicts settle on Mars and crowd the hell out of it, but I don't want to be stuck with their ignorant Creationist policies on Earth. We're 20 centuries past the point where the Bible commanded "go forth and multiply" and it's time to apply the brakes.
E.A.
That last question has always fascinated me. What DO growth-addicts think causes traffic jams, and do they really think there's an infinite amount of land for building more roads? Is job-creation in the construction industry some sort of Holy Grail? Everywhere you go where there's endless road construction, endless population growth wipes out the benefits and they have to build again. Growthism is analogous to how people drive; tailgating, pushing and rarely thinking ahead.
Zero population growth would allow us to _recover_ from these messes and actually find the security we as a society claim to seek. Growthism is no better than drug-addiction or any hyperactive, pointless pursuit.
E.A.
Why do certain people automatically assume zero population growth implies genocide? Have you ever heard of contraception and restoring the natural balance between births and deaths? With the advent of cheap (finite) energy, people stopped playing by nature's rules - and that's the whole problem. Here's a full page of methods to halt growth- as-usual:
E.A.
Insanity like that keeps me posting in these forums - as a public service. There are many people who know nothing of scarcity or limits. They're fooled by global trade, deficit spending and economic tricks that perpetuate the illusion of expanding wealth when it's actually shrinking. See:
I was in Lake Tahoe last weekend, dealing with crushing traffic, trying to image what it would be like with 60 million Californians in
2050 when it's this bad already. "Keep Tahoe Blue" is a pipe dream without more birth control. The widening of U.S. 50 to Tahoe is inevitable, and like most shallow responses to growth, it will only make the problem worse. Oh, but it will create construction jobs, you say.Which came first: people, jobs, chickens or eggs? Is there a benefit to making the world more crowded just to say jobs were created that wouldn't have been needed otherwise? Amazingly, California's economy functioned way back when there were only 10 million people. The endless wave of new jobs are just bloat in a strained system.
If the population of any other large mammal grew by even two-fold, we'd declare a state of emergency. And you're talking about 50 billion people improving the quality of life?! You must really like crowds or really hate nature. Un-frigging believable.
E.A.
Yes, more roads certainly have certainly relieved traffic congestion (like hell they have). They keep building and widening and the voids keep getting filled by more people. That's 500,000 - 600,000 more people annually in California alone. It never ends and the construction industry loves it; job security for righteous sons of guns at the expense of nature and general sanity. We mustn't waste all those civil engineering degrees on refinement or improvement. Mindless growth is a mandate from on high.
Instead of using clich=E9s like NIMBY, ask yourself why the backyard "must" get more crowded all the time. Stop accepting population growth as a given; it's unnatural. How would you like it if your own home got filled with a extra person each day? Larger spaces are just as finite in the end.
The weird thing about conservatives who promote growth is that more people means more regulations (bigger crowds are harder to control). Right-wing growthmaniacs are at odds with their own desire for sovereignty. If freedom is the goal, sharing a finite world with more and more people is not the solution.
E=2EA.
Farmland is being paved daily and most parks within easy driving distance are already overcrowded. Yosemite will be a total mob-scene by 2050, with permits required many months in advance. That's exactly how you define a shortage of space. You can't trust the market to predict these things in advance. Credit allows people to live well beyond their means.
Zoning exists to prevent nature from being totally overrun by the _unnatural_ multiplication of a single species. Many members of that species could care less about the ones they're forcing out.
Again, you show no concern for the fact that nature is being chipped away at 24/7. Zoning laws exist for reasons that nature-haters will never understand, since they consider nature to be wasted space. Growth-addicts would happily erase all vestiges of a frontier. A thin strip of woods in front of a McMansion is all the wilderness they need. It's like facing shelves at a grocery store to create the illusion of stock.
E.A.
They're actually underfunded when you consider the present and future costs of overpopulation. People who complain about immigration should want to fund foreign family planning aid! Ease the pressure at the source, not the border. Planned Parenthood is about birth control much more than abortion. Take notice, you cretins who think "genocide" is the only means to achieve zero population growth. Contraception prevents genocide while growth-as-usual has the opposite effect.
E.A.
What a load! Most people have to live where there is water and jobs! Why do you think all major cities are located near some stable water source? You can't just "pick" a trailer in Winnemucca and live happily ever after.
Sparsely populated areas are either too dry, cold, mountainous, or consist of farmland devoted to serving big cities. Land needed for the average American ranges from 3 to 5 acres, depending on standard of living (ecological footprint). Packing people densely in one area doesn't mean they aren't using space elsewhere.
Unfortunately, if growth-addiction continues, those sparsely populated areas will indeed become large cities. Traffic jams also occur hundreds of miles from cities when people converge on popular vacation spots. The math of mindless growth can't be avoided.
E.A.
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