The Car Conundrum

Today, let’s take a break from the continued insanity of our mad would-be King, and consider some of the issues that we policy nerds used to contend with before the nutcase descended on his tacky golden elevator. (Consider this a vacation from the daily hysteria…)

Let’s talk about cars. Automobiles.

I live in a city where the notion of public transportation is incomprehensible to a significant portion of our car-centric population. That love affair with automobiles, along with a flat, mostly open geography, largely explains the lack of density that makes provision of public transport in cities like Indianapolis challenging.

Policy folks who address the issues raised by a population that is massively dependent upon ownership of a working vehicle largely focus on the environmental impact and various public safety concerns, but studies raise numerous other negatives that should be taken into consideration.

A recent article in The Guardian, for example, focused on an aspect of our car-centric culture that most of us haven’t considered. It seems that excessive car dependency leads to unhappiness.

The article notes that the automobile is “the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans.” More than nine in 10 households have at least one vehicle and 87% of people use their cars every day. In 2025 a record 290 million vehicles were operated on US streets and highways.

 However, this extreme car dependence is affecting Americans’ quality of life, with a new study finding there is a tipping point at which more driving leads to deeper unhappiness. It found that while having a car is better than not for overall life satisfaction, having to drive for more than 50% of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction.

The article noted that planning policies and parking construction have encouraged suburban sprawl, construction of strip malls that have more space for cars than people, and the accompanying erosion of shared “third places” where Americans can congregate. As most Americans know, even very short journeys outside the house require a car–the article says that half of all car trips are under three miles.

Even in cities with excellent public transportation, traffic congestion is often brutal. Paul Krugman recently discussed New York’s effort to address that congestion, which is an example of a “negative externality” — a cost people impose on other people. Krugman cites estimates that commuting into lower Manhattan on a weekday imposes $100 or more in costs on other drivers, delivery trucks, and so on. The congestion fee recently imposed on those driving into central Manhattan has vastly reduced that congestion –but as Krugman notes, even in New York, getting that fee imposed was a heavy lift, because a significant number of people evidently feel a “sense of control when driving that makes them reluctant to take mass transit.”

The one thing that may break through this love affair with our very own cars may be the issue of affordability. An article in the Washington Post has confirmed what transportation scholars have consistently preached: owning a car is incredibly expensive. The question isn’t whether to buy a new or used vehicle–the article says they are both debt traps. But as we all know, they are frequently required debt traps.  “For most Americans, a car isn’t a luxury; it’s a requirement to get to work and keep the lights on, food on the table and a roof over their heads.” For increasing numbers of Americans, vehicle costs are starting to rival rent or mortgage payments.

And thanks to America’s aging population, another problem is manifesting. When older folks can no longer drive, those who don’t live in walkable areas are increasingly immobilized and isolated. (Wealthier folks can access Uber or Lyft, but most older Americans cannot.)  

And speaking of affordability in a country where the gap between the rich and the rest continues to grow, the lack of transportation hits hardest on poor people who can’t find work because they can’t afford a car to get them there. (In urban policy and labor economics, this is often described as “spatial mismatch” or “transportation poverty.”) When people who can’t afford a car live in places with weak public transit, they face mutually reinforcing barriers to employment–barriers that are particularly acute in places like Indiana, where jobs are increasingly located in suburban areas, office parks and industrial zones near highways–places generally not served by our limited public transportation systems.

The question–as always–is “what should we do?” 

I look forward to the day when MAGA and Trump are gone, and normal Americans can turn our attention back to issues like this.

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A Summary And A Prescription

In today’s post, I’m citing  two commentaries that describe where we are– and one that outlines what we must do.

Last Monday, Simon Rosenberg’s post at “Hopium Chronicles” included a two-paragraph summary of Trump’s preceding week. I’m quoting both paragraphs in full, because they paint a very clear picture of the time and place we inhabit.

Just in the last few manic days Trump has launched a full out assault on the Fed (see Chairman Powell’s historic video, below). He is threatening to invade Greenland, bomb Iran, struck targets in Syria this weekend, and last night declared himself “Acting President of Venezuela.” He is now fighting with the oil companies over their reluctance to become part of his Venezuelan oil fantasy; threatened the credit card companies with a law that only exists in his mind; sanctioned the killing of Americans by his paramilitaries for dissent; threatened to veto the resumption of the ACA subsidies if passed by the Senate; and with another anemic jobs report on Friday received further confirmation of the failure of his tariffs to deliver for the country, or Republican candidates facing extinction over affordability. The lunatic HHS Secretary is returning America to a pre-modern health era, threatening the lives and health of tens of millions of Americans. Millions of people took to the streets this weekend, many in terrible weather. We are now more than a quarter of the way into the new federal fiscal year without a budget, and the government may run out of money again in 18 days.

Things are getting worse, not better, for Republicans and the country. Trump is threatening the fundamental security alliance that has kept us safe and free for 80 years. He is threatening the integrity of our financial system which has made us the wealthiest nation in history. He has walked away from the UN Charter which has created the basic governing rules for nations for 81 years. He snatched a foreign leader from his palace in the middle of the night, without Congressional approval. In the last few days he openly threatened both the oil companies, and the big banks, two powerful Republican-aligned industries who will be loudly complaining to Thune and Johnson today. Last night he declared himself the “Acting President of Venezuela.” He is encouraging his goons to kill Americans on the streets. His public performances and social media posts suggest he has completely lost his shit and it is time now for the keys to be taken away.

Rosenberg is a Democrat–a hated “progressive.” However, Charlie Sykes, was a rock-ribbed conservative pundit. 

Sykes began his post by sharing an editorial cartoon that’s been making the rounds–ICE agents standing over a fallen Statue of Liberty, polishing their guns and explaining that “She was brandishing a torch.” He then pivoted to discussion of “Judgement at Nuremberg” a film he found relevant to the times in which we find ourselves. He then quoted Joe Klein for the “critical parallel.”

Innocent people are being rounded up in the streets of America now. One was killed last week. Too many of our fellow citizens are okay with this.

But they don’t even have the “Good” Nazis’ excuse: they know it’s happening. They see it on tv every night. Their tolerance for this brutality is making our country, palpably, a place it never was before. It is becoming the sort of country that people used to flee… to come to America.

That’s where we are. The critical question, of course, is: where do we go? What must we do? Rick Wilson–another former Republican (and former GOP strategist) has weighed in on that pivotal question.

To stop the immediate crisis, we must weaponize the very “propositional nature” of America. This involves a tactical veto of civil society: a collective refusal by elected leaders, local governments, businesses, the legal community, and civic and religious leaders to facilitate the “will to power.”

By creating friction in the gears of the state, we transform the grim anxiety of the populace into a functional resistance that protects the remaining guardrails of the Republic until the momentum of ICE can be broken at the ballot box.

Then, Wilson writes, we must create a National Commission on the Rule of Law to document every “butcher’s bill” and ensure that names like Renee Good are never forgotten. That Commission must then pursue the active prosecution of every functionary who used the machinery of the state to crush America–the  “American SS and people like Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino, and Tom Homan, and the hundreds of lower-ranking DHS and ICE officials who executed these abuses.”

Wilson is right. We must return to an America in which “the rule of law is not a suggestion, but a binding commitment that carries a price for its betrayal.”

We the People can do that.

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Indiana’s Brain Drain

Indiana has long had a “brain drain.” College educated young people–even those who graduate from Hoosier colleges and universities–consistently leave the state. The reasons aren’t mysterious, and most aren’t economic, although we do have lower starting salaries and fewer large headquarters than other (mostly Bluer) states.

Indiana’s legislators recognize the existence of the problem, but overlook–or choose to ignore–the reasons for it. Our elected officials fail to recognize the importance of the quality of life issues that educated young folks (and plenty of us older ones) value: walkable neighborhoods, good public transit, a lively arts scene, and the cultural diversity that supports a wide variety of restaurants, cafes and nightlife– attributes of a vibrant urbanism that Indiana’s legislature not only doesn’t appreciate, but routinely tries to diminish.

Then, of course, there is social policy. Indiana’s abortion ban isn’t just a deal-breaker for many young women and their partners (ask some of our larger employers, who will confirm the effect of that ban on their efforts to hire). It is also negatively affecting the state’s ability to retain physicians, researchers, and even some of the employers who are experiencing those problems with recruitment.

Our Red state’s war on LGBTQ+ rights is another negative. Educated young people are repulsed by the bigotry that has prompted Indiana’s laws attacking the rights of trans children and their parents.  It isn’t only gay young people who find these and other anti-gay measures distasteful. These efforts to stigmatize gay folks join the legislature’s (and Governor’s) interference in higher education, the Trumpian attacks on DEI, and  politicization of university curricula. All of this is (quite accurately) seen as an unwelcoming environment for intellectual life.

And then there’s the recent prominence of the Hoosier state’s Christian nationalists.

Lest you dismiss my assertion that the rise of our “Christian warriors” has accelerated the departure of educated young people from the Hoosier state, allow me to quote a real economist. Michael Hicks is the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University. In a recent column for the Indiana Citizen, Hicks expressly linked the rise of Indiana’s Christian nationalism to the outflow of educated young people. As he wrote,

Indiana is in the midst of what is possibly the most economically damaging period of outmigration in state history. This is because net migration from Indiana is concentrated among the best educated young people. A 2017 study by U.S. Senate Republicans reported Indiana’s ‘brain drain’ was among the worst  seven states nationwide – worse than West Virginia. Since then, the environment has worsened substantially. College enrollment in Indiana is in rapid, historically unequalled decline with more Hoosiers heading to out-of-state colleges than ever before.

The last thing a healthy and prosperous Indiana needs is anything that would repel young people wishing to make a life in our state. A Christian nationalist agenda that is hostile to Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists and Lutherans is a recipe for a more sluggish and moribund economy.

And just to be clear, a more sluggish economy is a feature, not a bug of the Christian nationalist movement. They seek an ideologically pure, small-sect Christian state, where students are consigned religious schools from pre-Kindergarten through college.  They want a poorer, less educated population, that is easier to control. They want a public workforce that sits quietly in the pews of one or two different denominations.

This is economically damaging to Indiana, deeply anti-Christian and un-American. It must be rejected by Hoosiers.

Our legislative overlords like to proclaim that low tax rates make Indiana “business friendly.” They don’t seem able to connect the dots between adequate investments in the state’s quality of life and a robust business environment. And they are obviously impervious to the negative economic consequences of support for social policies reminiscent of the 1800s.

And speaking of “connecting the dots”–the composition of Indiana’s legislature isn’t the result of a backward citizenry. It doesn’t reflect widespread public sentiment. A significant minority of our state’s citizens actually live in the twenty-first century, and understand and disapprove of the implications of our government’s backward approach. Those citizens just aren’t represented in the state legislature, thanks to Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering.

It’s frustrating to be a Hoosier…

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Dopamine Nation

Sociologists, political scientists and historians all confirm the effects of rapid social change. For that matter, most Americans recognize those effects: when the world one inhabits seems different every day, when previous cultural assumptions are being upended daily, widespread disorientation and animus shouldn’t surprise us.

We are at one of those moments in human history when change–especially but certainly not exclusively the almost daily advances in technology–challenge the millions of Americans who grew up with telephones anchored to walls, written messages sent via the post office, and cars that required far more extensive human control.

I am one of the millions of older Americans who watch grandchildren using devices we only dimly understand, and struggle to comprehend the dimensions of–and arguments over–Artificial Intelligence. I’m not one of those who reject these creations out of hand, but I do recognize an uncomfortable fact: we really don’t know how these “advances” are changing human and social behavior.

And that admission brings me to what is perhaps the most pervasive and troubling of these new communication mechanisms: the proliferating social media platforms and the algorithms producing the dopamine that keeps users glued to them.

A recent article in Lincoln Square was appropriately titled, “Life Under a Clicktatorship.”

The article began by noting that the faux “Situation Room” portrayed on Trump’s social media during the Maduro kidnapping had (inadvertently?) shown a screen with X in the background.

With the best intelligence systems in the world at their fingertips, they were checking X in the midst of the mission? Combined with the curtains separating some section of Mar‑A‑Lago from the rest of the President’s resort, the images create an almost surreal air. It felt as if a group of twelve-year-old boys in a basement had been handed control of the most lethal military in history—and were using it to boost their online brands.

The article noted that Trump effectively uses social media to draw attention, reshape norms, and fuel conspiracy theories–in this case, turning “avowed MAGA isolationists into enthusiastic colonial imperialists overnight.” But the challenge we face is, as it insists, far more worrisome and widespread than the single talent of our demented President.

Social media operates like a drug. It feeds us dopamine and rewires our brains’ reward pathways, and those “unhealthy dynamics” are made worse by the anonymity offered and (as the article notes) the fact that “standing out online often demands being awful—channeling negative emotions like anger and outrage, usually based on misinformation or conspiracy theories.”

These characteristics of social media have been shown to have a profound effect on voter behavior. They also affect how policymakers use public power. The author argues–pretty persuasively–that the members of Trump’s administration aren’t just using social media to support their preferred narratives. There is evidence that many of them are deeply addicted to it.

We would be concerned if a senior government official was an alcoholic or drug addict, knowing it could impair judgment and decisionmaking. But we should be equally concerned about Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk’s social media compulsions—just as much as their alcohol or ketamine use, respectively.

The Trump administration is made up of a cabinet of posters. For many, that’s how they won Trump’s attention. The head of the FBI, for example, is a podcaster—that’s his main qualifier for the job.

They view the world through a social media lens in a way that is plausibly corrupting their judgment and undermining their performance.

Thanks to the nature of the current information environment, most Americans occupy information “bubbles.” I certainly do, and I rather imagine most of my subscribers are right in there with me. That said, most ordinary people still don’t spend much time on social media–a fact that motivates those the article dubs “outrage farmers” to compete for followers by engaging in outrage and employing bots programmed to exacerbate division.

Those who spend excessive time online exhibit more and more extreme behaviors in order to keep the dopamine coming. And as the author points out, living in these bubbles distorts reality far more for the rich and powerful, who already have limited contact with ordinary people.

When government officials are addicted to social media, they prioritize pleasing their audiences rather than their constituents.

For instance, the Podcaster/Director of the FBI reportedly fired veteran FBI leaders to curry favor with online critics. USAID was the first federal agency killed by online conspiracy theories—with tragic results.

At a time when Americans are already deeply polarized–social media addiction is deepening our divisions. It’s a problem.

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MAGA’s War On Education

Yesterday, I posted about the threat to higher education spearheaded by a Florida organization that proposes to redefine education as job training and to defund college courses that don’t promise graduates good salaries. 

The fact that the sponsoring organization is located in Florida shouldn’t surprise us: under DeSantis, that state is leading the way when it comes to MAGA’s war on education. He has already destroyed New College, which offended him by being “woke.”

As one observer recently wrote, DeSantis’ goal was to convert a liberal institution into a conservative one by using government money and purges. But by 2023, one third of its faculty had departed for jobs elsewhere, students were unable to find classes, and those with housing contracts were living in an airport hotel.

Today, New College spends more per student than any other institution of higher education in Florida–but the “return on investment” that so fascinates the Right has failed to materialize. The school has dropped 60 spots in the US News & World Report rankings, and its administration is currently trying to turn things around by–wait for it–recruiting student athletes and eliminating all-gender bathrooms. (In all fairness, maybe it will work. Indiana University’s winning football team has succeeding in diverting attention from the widely-criticised performance of IU’s president.)

Efforts to replace education with indoctrination aren’t limited to Florida. An article in Talking Points Memo notes that, when it comes to waging war on education, Trump appears to have taken yet another a page from the Confederacy.

In the early twentieth century, devotees of the ahistoric Lost Cause (it was all about state’s rights, not slavery) like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) used their considerable political influence to revise history curricula. As the article reports, “For the next several decades, nearly 70 million Southern students were taught that the enslaved were actually servants and that the Confederates fought merely to preserve a Southern way of life.” The article traced the numerous efforts that commandeered state-level commissions and controlled the “history” taught to generations of students, particularly–but not exclusively– in the South.

Under President Donald Trump, this blueprint is being adapted and disseminated directly from the White House. The president in September announced the Department of Education’s partnership with dozens of conservative and far-right organizations including Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty, and PragerU. The group will lead the Trump administration’s 250th anniversary civic education efforts “in schools across the nation.” Among the administration’s priorities? “Renewing patriotism,” and “advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”…

Trump II is leaning heavily on the “again” part of his MAGA slogan by pushing policy that propels the nation backward. Experts told TPM that by partnering with right-wing groups, Trump and his allies are exercising control over the retelling of history in hopes of shaping the political opinions of the youngest Americans. With groups like TPUSA and the Heritage Foundation at the helm, the Trump administration threatens to propagandize public education for generations to come, and to revive the highly politicized, and ahistorical, curriculum campaigns of the early- and mid-20th centuries.

The linked article goes through the history of these (undeniably successful) efforts to distort history, and is very much worth reading in its entirety. It also highlights Trump’s partnership with PragerU, a conservative, anti-DEI media nonprofit, to produce “educational materials” about the Revolutionary War. 

PragerU has published materials with false claims about slavery and racism, echoing the ethos of the UDC, in the name of “American values.” Like the UDC and other 20th century education activists, the group has been lobbying to get its materials in schools for years. Under Trump, the architects of the next decades of public (and charter and private) schooling appear to be right-wing groups like the PragerU, the Heritage Foundation, and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point.

If that isn’t chilling enough, a glance through the administration’s wider efforts to control what Americans learn is instructive. 

The administration’s numerous threats to museums and libraries are part of that war. At the end of December, The New York Times reported the destruction of NASA’s largest research library, described as “a facility that houses tens of thousands of books, documents and journals — many of them not digitized or available anywhere else.” According to a NASA spokesman, while some materials would be stored in a government warehouse, the rest would simply be tossed away. That library’s closure followed the shutdown of seven other NASA libraries around the country since 2022, including three this year. 

I think it was Santayana who warned that those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it…

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