{"id":4535,"date":"2008-06-29T13:57:29","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T21:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/29\/anti-driving-policies-hurt-the-poor-and-i-favor-them-anyway\/"},"modified":"2008-06-29T13:57:29","modified_gmt":"2008-06-29T21:17:17","slug":"anti-driving-policies-hurt-the-poor-and-i-favor-them-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4535","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Driving Policies Hurt The Poor, And I Favor Them Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Yglesias <\/a>writes:<\/p>\n

One objection you often hear to pro-transit, pro-walking, anti-driving measures is a social justice argument that these measures will hit the poor hardest. In fact, as this Kevin Drum post <\/a>makes clear poor people do relatively little driving. They differ from middle class and wealthy people in that utility bills take up a very large proportion of their income. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s true that poor people, on average, drive less than rich people. But what matters isn’t the absolute level of fuel usage, but how big a chunk of one’s income is taken up by fuel usage. According to the data in Kevin Drum’s post, folks in the bottom fifth of income in the US spend 10% of their income on gasolene, and about 12% on utility bills. In contrast, the richest fifth of people spend about 4% of their income on gasolene, and about 3% on utility bills.<\/p>\n

So contrary to Yglesias’ claim, any policy that increases the cost of driving will definitely hit the poor harder than the rich. This should be no surprise, since virtually any economic hardship one can imagine hits the poor harder than the rich. This is why it’s helpful to be rich.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean that we should oppose “pro-transit, pro-walking, anti-driving measures” as a matter of social justice. Avoiding those policies won’t prevent high gas prices, which are much more painful to the poor than the rich; and in the long run, doing nothing to transition away from a gas-based economy and infrastructure will be worse for the poorest 20% than the alternatives. What we should be doing is trying to change to more sustainable energy use, while simultaniously pursuing policies to reduce and mitigate poverty.<\/p>\n

From Kevin Drum’s post:<\/p>\n

…low-income houses spend 22% of their income on energy, while high-income households spend only 4% of their income on energy. If you raise the cost of energy, you hurt the poor far, far more than the better off.<\/p>\n

Two things are worth noting. First, utility costs are a bigger problem than gasoline. On a percentage basis, the poor pay 7x as much for utilities as the well off, while they pay only 4x as much for gasoline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree with most of Kevin’s post, but he’s mistaken to use “how much more do the poor pay compared to the rich” as his measurement of which is “a bigger problem.” If our concern is hardship, what matters is how big a percentage of one’s income is being spent — not how that percentage compares to what the rich spend. The bottom fifth of earners in the US are spending 10% of income on gas and 12% on utilities; for those folks the two problems are just about equal in size.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Yglesias writes: One objection you often hear to pro-transit, pro-walking, anti-driving measures is a social justice argument that these measures will hit the poor hardest. In fact, as this Kevin Drum post makes clear poor people do relatively little … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-poverty-labor-related-issues","category-environmental-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}