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Heavy car dependency is making American lives less satisfying, study shows (www.motherjones.com)
submitted 3 days ago by jeffw to c/news
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[–] [email protected] 111 points 3 days ago (4 children)

America in general is making Americans miserable.

Drive everywhere, media is awful, job is either $12/hr or good money to spend all your day making things worse, people are fake, food is poisoned, plastic is in everything, it all gets more expensive every year to pay people who already have enough, and public space is nonexistent.

Man, fuck this.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 days ago (6 children)

I am not from US, so I don't know what the $12/hr is supposed to be. So I went on to check the minimum wage, apparently the federal minimum is $7.25/hr but can be higher per state. OK, but oh boy I found some American-style shit:

The minimum wage for employees who receive tips is $2.13 per hour. The amount of tips plus the $2.13 must reach at least $7.25 per hour. If not, your employer must pay to make up the difference.

The fuck are you calling a "tip" at this point if it just becomes part of the wage and a way for the employer to save some money??

Here's the source: https://www.usa.gov/minimum-wage
I did not pull it out my ass, although it's clearly been pulled out of some.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Also, if you’re mentally disabled, your employer is allowed to pay you less than minimum wage.

USA, whee

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

Maybe there's some hope: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-labor-department-proposes-nixing-sub-minimum-wage-disabled-workers-2024-12-03/

Dec 3 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a last-minute proposal to eliminate employers' ability to pay less than the minimum wage to certain workers with disabilities.

Now for some awful statistics:

About half of workers earn less than $3.50 per hour, and about 10% are paid $1 an hour or less, according to DOL.

That 10%... you can't even call that pocket money.

[–] makyo 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah the American tipping system is famously bad. At some restaurants people can really make a lot of money on tips. Some of them people make nearly nothing and really suffer. Most of them people get by and their employer takes it to the bank.

[–] AA5B 3 points 3 days ago

At some restaurants people can really make a lot of money on tips

And at some restaurants the hot yet ditsy server in a miniskirt can really make a lot of money on tips while being slow and getting my order wrong. Meanwhile the person hustling with my food, the person redoing the order the server screwed up do a lot more work to provide good service yet get nothing

[–] PlantJam 16 points 3 days ago

Here's the source: https://www.usa.gov/minimum-wage
I did not pull it out my ass, although it's clearly been pulled out of some.

The fact that the US minimum wage laws are so abhorrent that you felt the need to cite your source is tragically comedic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Tipping is part of the US meta-shit-culture that is really just we are a business-supporting country that happens to have citizens in it.

  • Instead of paying restaurant and service workers, have the customer pay via tipping!
  • Instead of having social programs, our corpo media promotes "charity" and GoFundMe stories so we can all feel personally guilty/responsible for taking care of each other for medical expenses or any life altering event
  • Instead of the rich or corpos paying taxes, they'll just raise ours
  • Every new thing created, be it a service or an object or whatever, starts out as a thing, and then within a few years, there are fees upon fees and services upon services inserted in between due to lack of regulations.
    • Gotta buy a car at a dealer, gotta pay dealer fees, gotta pay license and registration, get tricked into extended warranty, gotta pay for parts, gotta pay for software services in the car.
    • Want Internet? Gotta pay the one company available in the area, they then charge for the modem, they charge all the taxes they are taxed and pass onto you, they create bogus billing fees that are just so they can advertise one price and charge another, and that another price will change frequently.
    • Want a doctor's visit? Well we've inserted your insurance company, medical billing department, webs of codes that have various prices for the same drug or procedure, third party insurances tacked on, billing rules that might be calendar year or not, requirements that you can only choose to change your insurance once a year, "tax free" payment methods like HSA/FSA that have certain requirements around them, only allowing certain types of procedures under certain conditions for insurance to allow them, billing most preventative things as "diagnostic" even when they're to prevent things like steep medical bills in the future which is the very definition of preventative.

United States culture is a country by the Corpo, for the Corpo, with we dregs doing all the work for them and everything is 60 steps so you're too busy to realize it.

[–] AA5B 5 points 3 days ago

US minimum wage and tipping culture is awful, but in this case I think they’re more referring to “the missing middle class”. We’ve lost a lot of decently paid middle class jobs, such as skilled manufacturing, and many of the replacements are much lower paid service and gig work.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

American obsession with tips is second only to our obsession with making sure it's super easy to get guns. It's culturally embedded that tipping is a good thing which is exactly what all these employers want people to think as they continue to underpay.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Tipping is a good thing. It's a way to reward good work.

But they only work if they're not mandatory and we can keep 100% of it

[–] AA5B 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Tipping is …. a way to reward good work.

It hasn’t been this for most of my life. Tipping is an essentially mandated addition to a few specific job types to get basic service and to replace practically non-existent wages (and to overpay in relation to their peers)

I pay tips to get served at all, and to keep my food from being tampered with.

I willingly paid higher tips during pandemic to the people risking their health in customer facing jobs. However I object to the new normal of 20%+, I object to tips being added automatically, I object to required tips before any service, and I object to so many more jobs demanding tips. I especially object to being charged tips on self-service.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nah, strong disagree here. There's no ifs. Systems this broken should be replaced not nurtured. Your attitude is a pervasive on in the states though. The idea of not tipping is viewed somehow as elitist or greedy. I participate in the practice as a member of society, short of massively organized protest type actions, the only way change comes here is legislative, but that's like hoping for better gun laws. One off individual refusals to tip accomplish nothing, but doing some education is a move in the right direction.

See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abolish-tipping_n_5991796

As a very easy to read intro, but there is lots written on this. Don't forget the tipping culture in the US is pretty unique. While present elsewhere the dependance on tipping as income is a pretty rare thing - it's not a brave wild experiment to try to do away with it. With appropriate legislation workers would only benefit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

In Europe it works well. Sometimes I don't get any tips and it's absolutely fine, some other times I get invited for a drink or even food, some other times I just get some money (tips are called "Trinkgeld" in German, "drinking money", which accurately reflects their purpose). It's not part of my wage, I'm getting paid properly, it's just something on top of it (and when I get tips, I get to keep 100% - it's money specifically for my enjoyment as a way of thanking me for bringing others enjoyment).

The tipping culture you have in the USA can't really be considered a tipping culture, it's just that customers are paying the workers' wages. And you even force people to tip instead of reserving it for good service. I absolutely don't support this way of tipping.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm fully on board with your comment, take my upvote... but if you're suffering from the nonexistence of public space and you can possibly get out West before you're stuck for good, that is one thing that everyone who comes here from anywhere east still tells me, that they can hardly believe how much public land there is.

On the other hand, though, to actually make use of all that public land over here, attempting to do so by making plenty of money and therefore having plenty of time and transportation options is a vicious circle that only leads to more frustration for most. The average Californian spends so much time in their own city, barely able to get a few clipped weekends off to enjoy the vast open and unpopulated areas that lie very close by. If you give up on your future (or "the" future) you can still live and work a shitty job in a small town and have lots of time to enjoy the wilderness. I went for broke and did that for many years. Now I'm back in cities because I can't tell the difference anymore and a city is just a different type of wilderness, now that all roads seem to be leading to the same dark future.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yup… wish there was a way forward

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Sounds good

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I lost it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Sees like you found it again :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I agree with everything except the people are fake part. They exist in fairly large numbers, but it depends on where you live, I guess. They sure as hell aren't fake where I grew up (NJ).

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 days ago (3 children)

“Car dependency has a threshold effect—using a car just sometimes increases life satisfaction but if you have to drive much more than this people start reporting lower levels of happiness,” said Rababe Saadaoui, an urban planning expert at Arizona State University and lead author of the study. “Extreme car dependence comes at a cost, to the point that the downsides outweigh the benefits.”

This ties into something I've thought about a long time having lived in the busy Seattle corridor for a stretch (there's accidents on I-5 literally every day). At a certain point, even with an ever-expanding number of lanes, everyone having their car becomes limiting not freeing. Because we're all on the roads all at the same time all the time, it takes longer to get places and we have to spend more of our time planning on the off-chance there might be traffic because a short drive to Tacoma could be 30 minutes or 2 hours. It doesn't make you feel free to do what you want, because everyone else is also using their freedom to the point that everything is clogged and backed up all the time and everyone is so tired of it all they've taken to driving like maniacs since the pandemic.

The results were “surprising,” Saadaoui said, and could be the result of a number of negative impacts of driving, such as the stress of continually navigating roads and traffic, the loss of physical activity from not walking anywhere, a reduced engagement with other people, and the growing financial burden of owning and maintaining a vehicle.

That's the big one. average people are torn between trying to keep an old car from before everything in cars was computerized and trying to keep it running, or you're forced into the modern-era of cars where there is no economy vehicle, they're all luxury, and the cost of buying it and keeping it maintained is way, way, way, way higher. As is the insurance.

“Some people drive a lot and feel fine with it but others feel a real burden,” she said. “The study doesn’t call for people to completely stop using cars but the solution could be in finding a balance. For many people driving isn’t a choice, so diversifying choices is important.”

It literally isn't a choice if you want to be able to have a job, the number of low-level, low-paying jobs that absolutely act like you're unreliable if you don't have a vehicle is too damn high. It's really almost not a choice at all.

[–] dexa_scantron 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

At a certain point, even with an ever-expanding number of lanes, everyone having their car becomes limiting not freeing. Because we're all on the roads all at the same time all the time, it takes longer to get places and we have to spend more of our time planning on the off-chance there might be traffic because a short drive to Tacoma could be 30 minutes or 2 hours. It doesn't make you feel free to do what you want, because everyone else is also using their freedom to the point that everything is clogged and backed up all the time and everyone is so tired of it all they've taken to driving like maniacs since the pandemic.

This is what toxic individualists don't understand about collectivism: sacrificing a little bit of freedom can get you more freedom in the long run. I sacrifice the freedom to kill random people and in exchange I get freedom from most of the fear of being randomly murdered. I sacrifice the freedom to throw mercury in the garbage and I gain freedom from mercury poisoning. I sacrifice the freedom of driving straight out of my driveway onto a big ugly stroad and I gain the freedom to walk safely out of my front door onto a nice quiet street.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Positive vs negative freedom. Right-libertarians refuse to believe positive freedom exists, because their whole worldview shatters if you go there.

[–] AA5B 3 points 3 days ago

Right. Living in any major city makes it really obvious that car dependency just doesn’t scale, and easily reaches negative usefulness. I felt so much more free living in the city without a car. My city is very walkable, has a decent (for the US) transit system, and has long encouraged “transit oriented development “

I do love the freedom of a car when leaving the city, but there’s nothing quite like the freedom of the entire city available without dealing with the hassles of parking and traffic. There’s nothing like the freedom of walking out my door and hopping a train for a far away city. I can no longer deal with towns that don’t have at least a walkable center

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Man, if you thought it was bad in the Seattle area (where I've lived for quite a while now), you don't want to see the shitshows in places like New York or DC.

Driving in the metro DC area is worse than driving in Seattle proper. When I lived in Northern Virginia, if it was a weeknight, I just accepted that there was nothing I could do other than go home because the public transit was almost non-existent, there was nothing to walk to (and poor pedestrian infrastructure), and driving anywhere would take forever because of the traffic. And you would be frustrated the entire time because people there drive like entitled idiots. You don't just turn on your hazards and stop in the middle of the road/highway! I don't know why that one in particular is such a big thing in NoVa, but it is, and it drove me insane. That and people turning on their hazards and then parking in a fire lane. Just, wtf.

[–] SuperIce 24 points 3 days ago

Yeah, no shit. I live in a city and since I've stopped using a car to get around, I feel so much better. Decent public transit and bike share + bike lanes are way better than having to drive everywhere, dealing with traffic, parking, etc. I only use my roommate's car now for groceries every week or two, but I can also just bike if weather permits (carrying groceries and biking is surprisingly intense cardio).

[–] Gammelfisch 4 points 3 days ago

The US public transportation infrastructure was outstanding until the early 1960's. It went to shit thanks to the lobbyists from the oil, automobile and tire industries.

[–] PetteriPano 4 points 3 days ago

I've worked from home for a long time, but before that I used to get my workout by riding my bike to the office.

20 minutes is just enough to wake you up for the day, rain, shine or snow.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I work from home so I don't drive much and when I do I have a fun car to drive, so I don't mind it. The worst part about it is that there's clearly many people on the road who'd rather be somewhere else. Either they're terrified or distracted, often dangerously so.

Giving those people better options and getting them out of my way is one reason, despite not liking cities or mass transit, I support urbanists and trainbros.

[–] Joelk111 3 points 3 days ago

As a massive gear head, this is always my argument. If we have better public transit infrastructure, people who don't want to drive won't, making the experience better for those of us that do.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

I mean, that’s one of the many reasons.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

My wife and I both miss the convenience of Tokyo and walking or taking trains everywhere, but we don't miss how tiny and packed things were. Now, we basically have to drive everywhere in our rural area. When the weather is nice, we can cycle, but it still takes quite a bit of time