George Will never considered the vast individual liberty in walking? Unbeholden to the grand viziers of road design and leftist traffic signals? The freedom not only to cut through a park or travel against the dominant direction of pedestrian movement over our wide sidewalks but perhaps even to cut through a private lobby or hop a stairway to an otherwise unavailable shortcut? All while free of seatbelt and fuel efficiency laws. What could be a more libertarian existence than using one’s god-given feet to traverse this great nation?
Correction: George Will *is* Andy Rooney--with a bow tie and a snobby attitude. And unbelievably, The Washington Post still carries his columns and Bezos and CEO Lewis like him just fine.
Inexplicably and unfortunately. He is still an outrageous snob and sexist, classist bigot. Who is also still stuck in the mindset of 1960s upper-crust intelligentsia. Andy Rooney was actually a satirist, if my mind serves me well. He usually had a sardonic take on current events. Will is a cantankerous old fossil.
Or cycling. No licensure, no insurance, go where you like including on footpaths, dirt tracks etc. Park anywhere, service it yourself, no dependancy on fuel etc.
As a student of evolutionary biology, I understand that change usually is bad for individuals, as it means only those who CAN ADAPT will survive. I also have observed that in our species, it is those who REFUSE to adapt are the ones whom which upon the consequences of change impact the hardest.
Be adaptable.
Also, George Will is one of those RESPONSIBLE for the political schism we find ourselves experiencing.
Change is always hard for people. But what Paul is also describing is an built in narcissism of the US psyche that says it is all about me, me, me and that I don’t care if my actions harm anybody else.
"built in narcissism of the US psyche that says it is all about me, me, me"
Maybe we need Tom Hanks to start making World War II movies again. This country never, ever, ever would have achieved its midcentury egalitarianism without a huge majority of men having relied on other men to stay alive. Across class lines, and geographical lines, no less. (Not racial lines, yet.) World War II was an unspeakably gigantic tragedy, but it taught people a very valuable lesson... there are no "individuals" in a war, there are units and there are dead guys.
Apparently history is completely worthless, and people have to go ahead and make the same mistakes over and over, and learn the same lessons over and over. I guess shouldn't be surprising to me - I mean, just look at the history of human understanding of history, right?
Yes, war is the ultimate collectivist, socialist enterprise. Remember, those who ask you to sacrifice for the "greater good" are usually the ones who benefit from your sacrifice. See the famous essay "War is the Health of the State".
There are probably better ways of achieving the effects of war on collectivist ideas. I think the main thing that causes people to work together is to need to work together. The thing they need to work together to do probably isn't that important.
You seem to be advancing a Libertarian position which makes your whole thing kind of hilarious since a society's implementation of Libertarianism is a don't-pass-Go to Civil War 100% of the time. Nah man, people find reasons to kill each other without "The State" telling them to do it.
“Rugged Individualist” is a strawman argument used to mock libertarians. I’m not very “rugged” - never been hunting, fishing or camping. I “work together” with others all the time - by mutual consent, not the orders of the state.
The State could be looked at as an overgrown street gang, marking its territory, demanding tribute from that territory’s occupants and hey, if you’re not one of “us” we better not catch you on the wrong side of 17th Street!
Since the draft ended, nothing has required men to bond with a cross section of fellow Americans, to everybody's benefit. Working for a healthier, broader update of the institution now seems pointless as well as hopeless since Amazon, then the pandemic, have relieved us of the need to get to know even our close neighbors.
PS If you're lucky enough to get a chance to hear "Take the A Train" sung in Japanese, enjoy the singular fun.
;-) We are privileged to have lived on the same planet with Ellington and Strayhorn. I lost half a day searching youtube in vain for a Japanese-language "A Train." I heard it at a public living room concert.
Wait till see good even in NYC which I have stayed. I am betting you couldnt adapt or Paul Krugman or Robin Wells. Be careful who you talk about adapting.
It’s interesting because I agree in basic principle with *some* of Will’s ideas about meritocracy. But he takes it to the point of ignoring realities about race and class that are significant, and that just pisses me the fuck off. And, more to the point here, he seems to disregard issues of the common good. And that pisses me off too. We’re living in a society, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes you have to have a little consideration and compassion for the whole team, not just yourself. Otherwise…why not just eat each other?
Ah yes, the esteemed (in pundit land) George Will. I clearly remember “debategate” and am still furious it didn’t end his career.
“George F. Will: His Unethical Behavior in 1980 Made Him the Role Model For a Pundit Generation:
Yesterday, Will altered quotes from his own paper's reporting in order to make Sen-elect Jim Webb look ruder (and the President more polite) during their encounter.”
“ The Carter/Reagan debate, and Will's role in it, changed journalism forever. Will went on national television that year to comment live and "objectively" on Ronald Reagan's debate performance - without disclosing that he was working for the Reagan campaign and had helped Reagan prepare for that very debate - using stolen property.”
The stolen property was Carter’s debate prep book which contained recommended responses for Carter. That was a big, illegal factor in Reagan winning that debate. In contrast when Gore’s campaign was given Bush’s debate prep notes they immediately turned it over to the Feds and the person who stole it got was sentenced to a year in prison.
Yes, and do you notice that Republicans are way better and more ruthless at exploiting any advantage than are Democrats? I think you’d have to go back to the Kennedys and LBJ to find equally hard-nosed operators. And it’s repeatedly cost the Dems elections, from Reagan’s secret talks with the ayotollahs in 1980 all the way to Trump and Putin in 2016…
George Will also pines for the era when Reagan would cut mass transit funding and even zero out the Amtrack budget. Some of which was restored by Congress but took years to restore and improve service. There’s a quote attributed to Maggie Thatcher where she said that it was the peons and losers in life who rode the bus. Goes to show you what these people think of the the common man.
The richest, Musk and his cohort, and the most Powerful, Trump and his cohort, have not adapted at all. In fact they are using their wealth and power to hold on to long discarded thinking on the economy, like tariffs and "bureaucracy", societal compassion, like health care and social security, and integration, like non tech immigrants. And they are getting more and more rich and powerful.
Are you referencing the long arch of time or just our life times?
George Will is a deeply unethical guy. He secretly worked for Reagan in 1980, helping him prepare for his debate with Carter. Then Will went on television as an objective analyst of the debate and praised Reagan’s performance, declaring him the winner without revealing his big conflict of interest. That was the debate that Reagan’s team had been given Carter’s stolen debate prep book — which contained classified material. They used it instead of turning it over to the authorities like Gore’s campaign did when they were given Bush’s prep p. That should have gotten him fired.
I don’t know, news to me. But I found this on Wikipedia and it seems plausible to me: “Carter apologized to Will for "any incorrect statement that I have ever made about his role in the use of my briefing book.... I have never thought Mr. Will took my book, that the outcome of the debate was damaging to my campaign or that Mr. Will apologized to me".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debategate#cite_note-16
Being a "good guy" is irrelevant. Even Jesse Helms adopted a handicapped child, yet he was a major contributor to America's moves towards authoritarianism and inequality.
Sure, you can always find worse people and compare. I don’t know George Will, so that is all I can say. I like his writing, although I don’t always agree with it. There seem to be a lot of people with much more questionable characters out there.
When I lived in Cambridge (late 1970's) progressives and the Dukakis administration proposed the nation's first "bottle bill". Republicans and the soft drink makers fought it tooth and nail with $MMs and initially defeated it, and Dukakis lost to a Trump-like idiot. Four years later, having regained the governorship, Dukakis got the bill passed- and- wait for it- virtually every piece of roadside litter, bottles and cans, was cleaned up overnight! It was the most immediate and successful bill I had ever seen passed.
A second item, since you bring up George Will, my favorite Will piece was the one accusing Jane Fonda and others of nuclear extremism for making "China Syndrome". That piece hit the (pre-internet) newsstands in the same week Three-Mile Island occurred.
Similarly, the recent plastic bag bans have eliminated a lot of litter, especially the ugly "witch's knickers" that used to festoon the trees. People grumbled about having to pay a nickel or a dime for a bag at the store, but practically everyone brings reusables now.
Yeah, definitely it worked for grocery stores, which I totally support. Where it failed here in San Francisco was with restaurants to-go. The restaurants just automatically include the dime (10c) in what they charge.
We have reusable bag mandates here in Oregon. I read that one of the "reusable" plastic bags has 145 times the material in it that 1 of the flimsy old bags. Those "reusable" bags are now mostly single use. No way can you reuse one of those bags even close to that.
I agree with paying for bags, but our single use bag ban wasn't well thought out. That's why you need loyal opposition when making policy.
Plastic in the ocean isn't a problem solely of plastic use, its improper disposal. How much garbage is dumped illegally in the ocean?
You don't get bags at COSTCO. When I forget my bags (50%) I've started putting my groceries back in the cart, unloading them into the car and bagging them up at home.
The same thing happened here in the early 1980’s under Mario Cuomo. The bottle bill was proposed and was fought tooth and nail by the beverage industry. It passed and lo and behold the streets and highways and byways became cleaner. Even the storm drains were unclogged. One of most effective PSAs ever was the “crying Indian” ad to discourage littering as part of the Make America beautiful campaign. Basic moral suasion can be quite effective.
You mean the first bottle bill in Massachusetts, correct? In 1971, Oregon enacted the first bottle bill in the nation. If Dukakis was talking about enacting one in the late 1970s, he wasn’t the first.
I'm in Los Angeles, the car capital of, well, everywhere, and have actually only visited NY City once in my life. Here, we have more mass transit than we used to (unless you go back pre-WWII, at least) but very few people take it on a daily basis. I actually stayed in a job I didn't care for very much for about 15 years b/c it was a "reverse commute," i.e., I was going against traffic during my commute which meant I usually avoided heavy traffic and traffic jams. But I really came here to say that I have spent quite a bit of time in Europe, esp. Paris, where my spouse and I lived for a month pre-pandemic. And OMG the mass transit- get anywhere you wanted, quickly and relatively cheaply. Miss the train on the Metro? Another one would be there in about three minutes. I would kill for a system like that here!
One of the things I found while living in Burbank was that Angelinos have a strong cultural belief that their public transit is unusable when it is, in fact, pretty good. My friend and I from Norcal got around without cars just fine- I biked and used the Metro most places, he took the bus. It's not as good as Europe, but it's certainly been incrementally improving since the 1984 Olympics and more native Angelinos should actually try it.
We were in LA until 2019, and the extension of the Expo Line was just awesome. Culver City to the SM Pier, and I don’t have to park? Culver City to the Natural History Museum, and we don’t have to park? Culver City to downtown LA, and I don’t have to park or navigate those shitty one-way streets or get stuck in traffic? Why yes, thank you!
There was a guy in a cat suit on stilts one time, and a couple of others maybe off-meds, but that’s just part of living in a society. There are others and sometimes…?
Depends on where you are and who you are. My son is in Pasadena and uses the train and his bike to get around (his job is also in Pasadena). I'm in the foothillls and my husband and I take the train to certain restaurants, etc. But when I was working, even if the infrastructure had been there (the local trains weren't all in place before I retired), it would have been impossible to get to my office/court, etc. using it. And biking wasn't an option.
If I'm going to Los Angeles I'm going fly into Burbank from SFO, and then get an AirBnb close the North Hollywood station. You can pretty much get anywhere you'd need to using the subway.
I don't understand people's tolerance for sitting in traffic jams when they could easily not.
You actually can't get to "anywhere you need" using the train. At best, it would be a mishmash of trains and buses - and it would slow you down considerably if you relied on it and were working against hard times that you needed to be someplace...
LA buses are incredibly fragmented with 45 different service providers (not routes 45 different government agencies/companies/etc.), Someone tried to ride them all over a weekend. So its less useful than it appears, unsurprisingly the suggestion is consolidation.
Disappointed to see that even before the pandemic the LA transit ridership was down from its peak in the 1980s. This despite basically the entire light rail system having been build since 1990, and traffic getting worse and worse the entire time.
My understanding is that it’s a pretty decent system but giving how huge and sprawling LA county is it’s hard to imagine it can serve a very large percentage of residents reliably.
It’s interesting to consider the governmental consolidation of New York City with Brooklyn and parts of Nassau county (Queens) and Westchester county (Bronx). That gave New York some huge advantages during the breakneck development of the 20th century. It’s not like 1900s-30s growth in NY was intentionally planned, but at least there was a large area for people like LaGuardia to implement a holistic set of policies and development strategies, instead of having something like the 10 cities above 100,000 people in LA county.
New York was pretty lucky. It was more common for cities to shed suburbs which led to huge tax base problems when urban areas declined in the 1970s - take a look at Hartford for a worst case scenario. Hartford should be a wealthy city of about 300,000 but instead it’s a grindingly poor city of 120,000. The other 180,000 are in surrounding towns with good budget situations and great schools.
(To tie into the original subject Hartford also got it as bad from the interstate system as any city in the country. And a LOT were impacted. The state is currently looking at $20B+ plans to begin to repair the damage.)
I hear CA is going to spend billions (Fed money too) on high speed from Bakersfield to Modesto. OMG could you come up with a more ridiculous plan!!! Born and raised in Bakersfield. You'd be hard pressed to get the people out of their 10mpg pickup trucks. There's no infrastructure on either end. A total bridge to nowhere.
That money should go to the Bay area or LA. Maybe LA to San Diego or Sacramento to SF or SF to San Jose. Anything but Bakersfield to Modesto.
The dream of connecting LA to SF is crazy. Look at a physical map! The mountains between them are higher than anything on the east coast.
The west coast needs BOLT and MEGA busses. The old Greyhound bus system is TERRIBLE.
The mountains are why it is going to cost even more than the billions for Bakersfield to Merced. On the other hand, a 3 hour trip from SF to LA is certainly appealing. (It's already a 3 hour trip to fly plus drive with only an hour in the air!)
I also wouldn't mind taking the train from SF to Fresno to visit Yosemite.
In order for transit to work, you need lots of density near the stations so there's actually demand for the trains. In order to build lots of density, you need effective transit so that you can still get around when the streets become jammed with cars. Therefore the only ways to break the cycle are to have a city that's already dense, but where regular people can't get around easily (Paris in 1860) or to have a city that has a bunch of expensive trains no one uses (LA in 2020). Godspeed!
Of course, back in the day, the whole Los Angeles area had a great transit system b/t the trains and red cars. The auto and oil companies killed that. It was on purpose, not b/c of the geography per se.
The bag fee in DC lowered single use plastic bags by huge numbers and the bags that did get used had to be purchased, raising whopping sums that went towards green projects, a win win. I hope the congestion fees are also as effective on both ends. People need to ease up and let good ideas flow.
The incoming administration's platform (Project 2025) is entirely based on Change Rage. They are raging against changes that have made the United States one of the greatest nations (generally speaking, of course) over the last 160 years. Beginning Jan 20th, we'll see what Change Rage really looks like. I can assure you, this change won't make America "great again."
Dear Prof Krugman, I agree with your post, obviously. I would like if you could write a post on negative externalities in general, and how our current system broadly fails to price them (usually on the side of wealthiest). Thanks!
It is a problem with Capitalism in general, isn't it? And then we're just supposed to throw up our hands and it's just one of those things - a mystery of life. And we're supposed to just put up w it - just because...
Fixing externalities with stuff like pigouvian taxes is one the most basic economic concept that is basically taught in Econ 101. We don’t just “throw up our hands”, we try to fix it. It’s just hard to do politically.
Also as a side note, externalities are not unique to capitalism (pollution exists even with government owned means of production). Markets are however usually incapable of fixing them by themselves hence the term market failure.
We visited him frequently. He insisted we learn the subway system. We never had a bad experience. We saved a fortune on cabs. Inexpensive, convenient. Car congestion NYC is a ridiculous nightmare.
If you noticed the dates, my son was in NYC for 9/11. As it happens he was stuck in a dark subway car for 6hrs.
It was a long 6hours, for us, for him, but like the underground in London WW2, all in all, not the worst place to be.
My daughter went to school in NYC. When I visited I learned how to use the subway. The transportation was great, but there were a few encounters with crazy people that were stressful. At least the guy sitting next to me turned his head to the wall when he started shouting obscenities.
There needs to be more law enforcement on the trains. My daughter was accosted a few times. Once a fellow passenger "removed" a man who was seriously harassing her.
I remember, back when Obamacare was being debated, there was in the press an interview with a Florida voter that contained this deathless quote,, "If anything changes, it should stay exactly the same."
I agree with most of this article. My complaint is with giving more money to the MTA. I’ve followed their mismanagement over the last 40+ years. I don’t have a solution, I’m not privy to their inner workings.
As a resident of CT driving into the city, the number of cars with avoidance devices is remarkable.
When I take the train and then the subway,
The amount of toll jumpers is laughable.
None of this is new. It makes me feel like the idiot to follow the rules.
By the way, I’m enjoying your writing much more since you left the times, no idea why, just saying…
We have had congestion pricing in electric power systems for over 25 years now. It
Implicitly exists in natural gas commodity prices that differ by location due to transportation bottlenecks. We have toll roads in FL that allow one to avoid congestion if they are willing to pay a small fee (usually $0.50 - $2.00). Get over the culture war bullshit about subways and safety. When I fly to NYC, I will almost always take the train into the city. It is faster and cheaper and less stressful!
I can't fathom why anyone would WANT to drive a car into Manhattan. Lived there for 4 years without one. It's eminently walkable--and bikeable. All I can conjecture about the resistance to attempts promote pubic transportation is that it's promoted where it isn't a practical proposition. It's being pushed where I live in Southern California. It would take me an hour and a half to get to work by public transportation with bus to trolley station, trolley change in downtown, and another bus from trolley stop to work--exactly as long as it would take me to bike on some miserable unbikeable streets. Lucky New Yorkers should count their blessings, take advantage of a terrific subway system and enjoy walking through a beautiful city with art deco buildings to die for.
That’s perfectly true if you live in those places. Many people who live very close to NYC do not have good public transit options into Manhattan (esp outside of rush hour, and esp if they are not going to midtown)
Most Americans value delusional sociopathy above all else. They embrace diffusion of responsibility with real gratitude; offer them sadism on top, and you’ve got a winner. There’s a lot of mutually reinforcing lies about love and gratitude and family and faith, but the bottom line is self over everyone, period. A self of eternal presents (pun intended), with no thought of the future.
I live in Chicago, whose transit system is second only to New York in size and complexity. I've been living here for almost twenty years now and have never owned a car. Don't need one, don't want one. I grew up in New York, so I'm used to public transit.
I moved here from Atlanta, where a car is an absolute necessity because public transportation doesn't do what it's supposed to do. In fact, many places will refuse to hire you if you don't have a car. And of course, there's you-know-what: Atlanta's MARTA rail system (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) is often called "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta". There were times when I was the only white person in a train car, because white people in Atlanta simply would not ride (This was in the late 1990's-early 2000's, I'm sure not much has changed). Meanwhile, Highway 400, the road that leads to the northern white flight suburbs, kept getting wider and wider, only to be filled with more and more vehicles.
There are very few places in the country where you can survive without a car, and where it used to be the kind of symbol of freedom that George Will rants about, it's now a ball-and-chain: gas prices, insurance, maintenance...people's lives depend too much on them. It's not sustainable, but try to tell conservatives that.
I have so much more to say on this but I have to leave for work soon, I take the Blue Line downtown, an unlimited monthly CTA pass costs me $75, a lot less than I used to have to pay for the "freedom" to own a car.
George Will never considered the vast individual liberty in walking? Unbeholden to the grand viziers of road design and leftist traffic signals? The freedom not only to cut through a park or travel against the dominant direction of pedestrian movement over our wide sidewalks but perhaps even to cut through a private lobby or hop a stairway to an otherwise unavailable shortcut? All while free of seatbelt and fuel efficiency laws. What could be a more libertarian existence than using one’s god-given feet to traverse this great nation?
George Will was Andy Rooney with a snobby attitude.
Correction: George Will *is* Andy Rooney--with a bow tie and a snobby attitude. And unbelievably, The Washington Post still carries his columns and Bezos and CEO Lewis like him just fine.
No one took Andy Rooney seriously. Inexplicably, some people take George Will seriously.
Inexplicably and unfortunately. He is still an outrageous snob and sexist, classist bigot. Who is also still stuck in the mindset of 1960s upper-crust intelligentsia. Andy Rooney was actually a satirist, if my mind serves me well. He usually had a sardonic take on current events. Will is a cantankerous old fossil.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
One of the best comments I’ve read on this website. Thanks for a great laugh.
Or cycling. No licensure, no insurance, go where you like including on footpaths, dirt tracks etc. Park anywhere, service it yourself, no dependancy on fuel etc.
As a student of evolutionary biology, I understand that change usually is bad for individuals, as it means only those who CAN ADAPT will survive. I also have observed that in our species, it is those who REFUSE to adapt are the ones whom which upon the consequences of change impact the hardest.
Be adaptable.
Also, George Will is one of those RESPONSIBLE for the political schism we find ourselves experiencing.
Fűçķ off @GeorgeWill🤬🤬🤬
Change is always hard for people. But what Paul is also describing is an built in narcissism of the US psyche that says it is all about me, me, me and that I don’t care if my actions harm anybody else.
"built in narcissism of the US psyche that says it is all about me, me, me"
Maybe we need Tom Hanks to start making World War II movies again. This country never, ever, ever would have achieved its midcentury egalitarianism without a huge majority of men having relied on other men to stay alive. Across class lines, and geographical lines, no less. (Not racial lines, yet.) World War II was an unspeakably gigantic tragedy, but it taught people a very valuable lesson... there are no "individuals" in a war, there are units and there are dead guys.
Apparently history is completely worthless, and people have to go ahead and make the same mistakes over and over, and learn the same lessons over and over. I guess shouldn't be surprising to me - I mean, just look at the history of human understanding of history, right?
Yes, war is the ultimate collectivist, socialist enterprise. Remember, those who ask you to sacrifice for the "greater good" are usually the ones who benefit from your sacrifice. See the famous essay "War is the Health of the State".
https://libcom.org/article/war-health-state-randolph-bourne
There are probably better ways of achieving the effects of war on collectivist ideas. I think the main thing that causes people to work together is to need to work together. The thing they need to work together to do probably isn't that important.
You seem to be advancing a Libertarian position which makes your whole thing kind of hilarious since a society's implementation of Libertarianism is a don't-pass-Go to Civil War 100% of the time. Nah man, people find reasons to kill each other without "The State" telling them to do it.
“Rugged Individualist” is a strawman argument used to mock libertarians. I’m not very “rugged” - never been hunting, fishing or camping. I “work together” with others all the time - by mutual consent, not the orders of the state.
The State could be looked at as an overgrown street gang, marking its territory, demanding tribute from that territory’s occupants and hey, if you’re not one of “us” we better not catch you on the wrong side of 17th Street!
If there was no state you would just have street gangs. Some might call themselves "militias." Some might call themselves "corporations."
Since the draft ended, nothing has required men to bond with a cross section of fellow Americans, to everybody's benefit. Working for a healthier, broader update of the institution now seems pointless as well as hopeless since Amazon, then the pandemic, have relieved us of the need to get to know even our close neighbors.
PS If you're lucky enough to get a chance to hear "Take the A Train" sung in Japanese, enjoy the singular fun.
Wow, I used to play "Take the A Train" in high school jazz band (Trumpet 2, baby) and didn't even know it had lyrics!
They would've really helped me out that one time I got lost going to Sugar Hill.
;-) We are privileged to have lived on the same planet with Ellington and Strayhorn. I lost half a day searching youtube in vain for a Japanese-language "A Train." I heard it at a public living room concert.
Wait till see good even in NYC which I have stayed. I am betting you couldnt adapt or Paul Krugman or Robin Wells. Be careful who you talk about adapting.
Can you run this through google translator for English please?
It’s interesting because I agree in basic principle with *some* of Will’s ideas about meritocracy. But he takes it to the point of ignoring realities about race and class that are significant, and that just pisses me the fuck off. And, more to the point here, he seems to disregard issues of the common good. And that pisses me off too. We’re living in a society, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes you have to have a little consideration and compassion for the whole team, not just yourself. Otherwise…why not just eat each other?
He also ignores the lavish subsidies given to car based infrastructure, as well as land use regulation which favours car dependant design.
Ah yes, the esteemed (in pundit land) George Will. I clearly remember “debategate” and am still furious it didn’t end his career.
“George F. Will: His Unethical Behavior in 1980 Made Him the Role Model For a Pundit Generation:
Yesterday, Will altered quotes from his own paper's reporting in order to make Sen-elect Jim Webb look ruder (and the President more polite) during their encounter.”
“ The Carter/Reagan debate, and Will's role in it, changed journalism forever. Will went on national television that year to comment live and "objectively" on Ronald Reagan's debate performance - without disclosing that he was working for the Reagan campaign and had helped Reagan prepare for that very debate - using stolen property.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-f-will-his-unethic_b_35251
The stolen property was Carter’s debate prep book which contained recommended responses for Carter. That was a big, illegal factor in Reagan winning that debate. In contrast when Gore’s campaign was given Bush’s debate prep notes they immediately turned it over to the Feds and the person who stole it got was sentenced to a year in prison.
Yes, and do you notice that Republicans are way better and more ruthless at exploiting any advantage than are Democrats? I think you’d have to go back to the Kennedys and LBJ to find equally hard-nosed operators. And it’s repeatedly cost the Dems elections, from Reagan’s secret talks with the ayotollahs in 1980 all the way to Trump and Putin in 2016…
George Will also pines for the era when Reagan would cut mass transit funding and even zero out the Amtrack budget. Some of which was restored by Congress but took years to restore and improve service. There’s a quote attributed to Maggie Thatcher where she said that it was the peons and losers in life who rode the bus. Goes to show you what these people think of the the common man.
Alierias, I can't agree with you.
The richest, Musk and his cohort, and the most Powerful, Trump and his cohort, have not adapted at all. In fact they are using their wealth and power to hold on to long discarded thinking on the economy, like tariffs and "bureaucracy", societal compassion, like health care and social security, and integration, like non tech immigrants. And they are getting more and more rich and powerful.
Are you referencing the long arch of time or just our life times?
The only thing that never changes is that things always change.
The language of evolution and survival is pretty dramatic for a policy question of charging a $9 toll on some drivers, don't you think?
George Will is a good guy
George Will is a deeply unethical guy. He secretly worked for Reagan in 1980, helping him prepare for his debate with Carter. Then Will went on television as an objective analyst of the debate and praised Reagan’s performance, declaring him the winner without revealing his big conflict of interest. That was the debate that Reagan’s team had been given Carter’s stolen debate prep book — which contained classified material. They used it instead of turning it over to the authorities like Gore’s campaign did when they were given Bush’s prep p. That should have gotten him fired.
I don’t know, news to me. But I found this on Wikipedia and it seems plausible to me: “Carter apologized to Will for "any incorrect statement that I have ever made about his role in the use of my briefing book.... I have never thought Mr. Will took my book, that the outcome of the debate was damaging to my campaign or that Mr. Will apologized to me".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debategate#cite_note-16
George Will is a privileged guy.
Being a "good guy" is irrelevant. Even Jesse Helms adopted a handicapped child, yet he was a major contributor to America's moves towards authoritarianism and inequality.
Sure, you can always find worse people and compare. I don’t know George Will, so that is all I can say. I like his writing, although I don’t always agree with it. There seem to be a lot of people with much more questionable characters out there.
Good for what?
When I lived in Cambridge (late 1970's) progressives and the Dukakis administration proposed the nation's first "bottle bill". Republicans and the soft drink makers fought it tooth and nail with $MMs and initially defeated it, and Dukakis lost to a Trump-like idiot. Four years later, having regained the governorship, Dukakis got the bill passed- and- wait for it- virtually every piece of roadside litter, bottles and cans, was cleaned up overnight! It was the most immediate and successful bill I had ever seen passed.
A second item, since you bring up George Will, my favorite Will piece was the one accusing Jane Fonda and others of nuclear extremism for making "China Syndrome". That piece hit the (pre-internet) newsstands in the same week Three-Mile Island occurred.
Similarly, the recent plastic bag bans have eliminated a lot of litter, especially the ugly "witch's knickers" that used to festoon the trees. People grumbled about having to pay a nickel or a dime for a bag at the store, but practically everyone brings reusables now.
Yeah, definitely it worked for grocery stores, which I totally support. Where it failed here in San Francisco was with restaurants to-go. The restaurants just automatically include the dime (10c) in what they charge.
We have reusable bag mandates here in Oregon. I read that one of the "reusable" plastic bags has 145 times the material in it that 1 of the flimsy old bags. Those "reusable" bags are now mostly single use. No way can you reuse one of those bags even close to that.
I agree with paying for bags, but our single use bag ban wasn't well thought out. That's why you need loyal opposition when making policy.
Plastic in the ocean isn't a problem solely of plastic use, its improper disposal. How much garbage is dumped illegally in the ocean?
You don't get bags at COSTCO. When I forget my bags (50%) I've started putting my groceries back in the cart, unloading them into the car and bagging them up at home.
Fewer, more durable bags seems like a win win to me. Less litter and less risk of bags breaking. We reuse ours as trash or gym bags.
The classic retort: "I read that...."
The same thing happened here in the early 1980’s under Mario Cuomo. The bottle bill was proposed and was fought tooth and nail by the beverage industry. It passed and lo and behold the streets and highways and byways became cleaner. Even the storm drains were unclogged. One of most effective PSAs ever was the “crying Indian” ad to discourage littering as part of the Make America beautiful campaign. Basic moral suasion can be quite effective.
Longtime MA resident here -- ditto about the bottle bill, and another upside was that schoolkids did bottle-based fundraisers for school projects.
You mean the first bottle bill in Massachusetts, correct? In 1971, Oregon enacted the first bottle bill in the nation. If Dukakis was talking about enacting one in the late 1970s, he wasn’t the first.
I'm in Los Angeles, the car capital of, well, everywhere, and have actually only visited NY City once in my life. Here, we have more mass transit than we used to (unless you go back pre-WWII, at least) but very few people take it on a daily basis. I actually stayed in a job I didn't care for very much for about 15 years b/c it was a "reverse commute," i.e., I was going against traffic during my commute which meant I usually avoided heavy traffic and traffic jams. But I really came here to say that I have spent quite a bit of time in Europe, esp. Paris, where my spouse and I lived for a month pre-pandemic. And OMG the mass transit- get anywhere you wanted, quickly and relatively cheaply. Miss the train on the Metro? Another one would be there in about three minutes. I would kill for a system like that here!
One of the things I found while living in Burbank was that Angelinos have a strong cultural belief that their public transit is unusable when it is, in fact, pretty good. My friend and I from Norcal got around without cars just fine- I biked and used the Metro most places, he took the bus. It's not as good as Europe, but it's certainly been incrementally improving since the 1984 Olympics and more native Angelinos should actually try it.
We were in LA until 2019, and the extension of the Expo Line was just awesome. Culver City to the SM Pier, and I don’t have to park? Culver City to the Natural History Museum, and we don’t have to park? Culver City to downtown LA, and I don’t have to park or navigate those shitty one-way streets or get stuck in traffic? Why yes, thank you!
There was a guy in a cat suit on stilts one time, and a couple of others maybe off-meds, but that’s just part of living in a society. There are others and sometimes…?
Depends on where you are and who you are. My son is in Pasadena and uses the train and his bike to get around (his job is also in Pasadena). I'm in the foothillls and my husband and I take the train to certain restaurants, etc. But when I was working, even if the infrastructure had been there (the local trains weren't all in place before I retired), it would have been impossible to get to my office/court, etc. using it. And biking wasn't an option.
If I'm going to Los Angeles I'm going fly into Burbank from SFO, and then get an AirBnb close the North Hollywood station. You can pretty much get anywhere you'd need to using the subway.
I don't understand people's tolerance for sitting in traffic jams when they could easily not.
You actually can't get to "anywhere you need" using the train. At best, it would be a mishmash of trains and buses - and it would slow you down considerably if you relied on it and were working against hard times that you needed to be someplace...
And traffic and its unpredictable-ness doesn't slow you down considerably?
LA buses are incredibly fragmented with 45 different service providers (not routes 45 different government agencies/companies/etc.), Someone tried to ride them all over a weekend. So its less useful than it appears, unsurprisingly the suggestion is consolidation.
https://youtu.be/53kvD3DV-cA?si=g8_VLIOFU-jvthWN
Disappointed to see that even before the pandemic the LA transit ridership was down from its peak in the 1980s. This despite basically the entire light rail system having been build since 1990, and traffic getting worse and worse the entire time.
My understanding is that it’s a pretty decent system but giving how huge and sprawling LA county is it’s hard to imagine it can serve a very large percentage of residents reliably.
It’s interesting to consider the governmental consolidation of New York City with Brooklyn and parts of Nassau county (Queens) and Westchester county (Bronx). That gave New York some huge advantages during the breakneck development of the 20th century. It’s not like 1900s-30s growth in NY was intentionally planned, but at least there was a large area for people like LaGuardia to implement a holistic set of policies and development strategies, instead of having something like the 10 cities above 100,000 people in LA county.
New York was pretty lucky. It was more common for cities to shed suburbs which led to huge tax base problems when urban areas declined in the 1970s - take a look at Hartford for a worst case scenario. Hartford should be a wealthy city of about 300,000 but instead it’s a grindingly poor city of 120,000. The other 180,000 are in surrounding towns with good budget situations and great schools.
(To tie into the original subject Hartford also got it as bad from the interstate system as any city in the country. And a LOT were impacted. The state is currently looking at $20B+ plans to begin to repair the damage.)
I hear CA is going to spend billions (Fed money too) on high speed from Bakersfield to Modesto. OMG could you come up with a more ridiculous plan!!! Born and raised in Bakersfield. You'd be hard pressed to get the people out of their 10mpg pickup trucks. There's no infrastructure on either end. A total bridge to nowhere.
That money should go to the Bay area or LA. Maybe LA to San Diego or Sacramento to SF or SF to San Jose. Anything but Bakersfield to Modesto.
The dream of connecting LA to SF is crazy. Look at a physical map! The mountains between them are higher than anything on the east coast.
The west coast needs BOLT and MEGA busses. The old Greyhound bus system is TERRIBLE.
The mountains are why it is going to cost even more than the billions for Bakersfield to Merced. On the other hand, a 3 hour trip from SF to LA is certainly appealing. (It's already a 3 hour trip to fly plus drive with only an hour in the air!)
I also wouldn't mind taking the train from SF to Fresno to visit Yosemite.
You can already take Amtrak from SF (OK, Oakland or Emeryville) to Yosemite (OK, with one bus transfer). https://www.amtrak.com/san-joaquins/yosemite-national-park
In order for transit to work, you need lots of density near the stations so there's actually demand for the trains. In order to build lots of density, you need effective transit so that you can still get around when the streets become jammed with cars. Therefore the only ways to break the cycle are to have a city that's already dense, but where regular people can't get around easily (Paris in 1860) or to have a city that has a bunch of expensive trains no one uses (LA in 2020). Godspeed!
Of course, back in the day, the whole Los Angeles area had a great transit system b/t the trains and red cars. The auto and oil companies killed that. It was on purpose, not b/c of the geography per se.
The bag fee in DC lowered single use plastic bags by huge numbers and the bags that did get used had to be purchased, raising whopping sums that went towards green projects, a win win. I hope the congestion fees are also as effective on both ends. People need to ease up and let good ideas flow.
This “change rage” seems to be the crux of the challenge in shifting towards single-payer.
Outstanding term: "Change Rage."
The incoming administration's platform (Project 2025) is entirely based on Change Rage. They are raging against changes that have made the United States one of the greatest nations (generally speaking, of course) over the last 160 years. Beginning Jan 20th, we'll see what Change Rage really looks like. I can assure you, this change won't make America "great again."
Dear Prof Krugman, I agree with your post, obviously. I would like if you could write a post on negative externalities in general, and how our current system broadly fails to price them (usually on the side of wealthiest). Thanks!
It is a problem with Capitalism in general, isn't it? And then we're just supposed to throw up our hands and it's just one of those things - a mystery of life. And we're supposed to just put up w it - just because...
Fixing externalities with stuff like pigouvian taxes is one the most basic economic concept that is basically taught in Econ 101. We don’t just “throw up our hands”, we try to fix it. It’s just hard to do politically.
Also as a side note, externalities are not unique to capitalism (pollution exists even with government owned means of production). Markets are however usually incapable of fixing them by themselves hence the term market failure.
From rural IN, live in Cincinnati.
My son moved to NYC in 1999.
We visited him frequently. He insisted we learn the subway system. We never had a bad experience. We saved a fortune on cabs. Inexpensive, convenient. Car congestion NYC is a ridiculous nightmare.
If you noticed the dates, my son was in NYC for 9/11. As it happens he was stuck in a dark subway car for 6hrs.
It was a long 6hours, for us, for him, but like the underground in London WW2, all in all, not the worst place to be.
My daughter went to school in NYC. When I visited I learned how to use the subway. The transportation was great, but there were a few encounters with crazy people that were stressful. At least the guy sitting next to me turned his head to the wall when he started shouting obscenities.
There needs to be more law enforcement on the trains. My daughter was accosted a few times. Once a fellow passenger "removed" a man who was seriously harassing her.
Fortunately we didn’t have any terrible experiences.
I know others weren’t as lucky, but Musk contention subway system causes urban congestion is silly.
I do believe in SAFE public transportation.
I remember, back when Obamacare was being debated, there was in the press an interview with a Florida voter that contained this deathless quote,, "If anything changes, it should stay exactly the same."
I thought that Yogi Berra had died
As well as “Keep your government hands off of my Medicare!”
:-)
One of my favorite quotes, by Steinbeck:
It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, especially change for the better.
I used to keep that pinned to my corkboard at work to remind myself when I found change difficult, and it still rings true to me.
I agree with most of this article. My complaint is with giving more money to the MTA. I’ve followed their mismanagement over the last 40+ years. I don’t have a solution, I’m not privy to their inner workings.
As a resident of CT driving into the city, the number of cars with avoidance devices is remarkable.
When I take the train and then the subway,
The amount of toll jumpers is laughable.
None of this is new. It makes me feel like the idiot to follow the rules.
By the way, I’m enjoying your writing much more since you left the times, no idea why, just saying…
Makes you wonder if the Times constrained him. His writing here is must-read now.
We have had congestion pricing in electric power systems for over 25 years now. It
Implicitly exists in natural gas commodity prices that differ by location due to transportation bottlenecks. We have toll roads in FL that allow one to avoid congestion if they are willing to pay a small fee (usually $0.50 - $2.00). Get over the culture war bullshit about subways and safety. When I fly to NYC, I will almost always take the train into the city. It is faster and cheaper and less stressful!
I can't fathom why anyone would WANT to drive a car into Manhattan. Lived there for 4 years without one. It's eminently walkable--and bikeable. All I can conjecture about the resistance to attempts promote pubic transportation is that it's promoted where it isn't a practical proposition. It's being pushed where I live in Southern California. It would take me an hour and a half to get to work by public transportation with bus to trolley station, trolley change in downtown, and another bus from trolley stop to work--exactly as long as it would take me to bike on some miserable unbikeable streets. Lucky New Yorkers should count their blessings, take advantage of a terrific subway system and enjoy walking through a beautiful city with art deco buildings to die for.
It’s not complicated. Mass Transit WITHIN NyC is pretty good. Mass Transit getting INTO NYC is terrible.
Taking the LIRR or New Jersey PATH or Metro isn't so bad. My recommendation: stay in Hoboken and take the train into Manhattan.
That’s perfectly true if you live in those places. Many people who live very close to NYC do not have good public transit options into Manhattan (esp outside of rush hour, and esp if they are not going to midtown)
@GarySanDiego. I live in Chula Vista and work at the University of San Diego. 'Nuff said!
Most Americans value delusional sociopathy above all else. They embrace diffusion of responsibility with real gratitude; offer them sadism on top, and you’ve got a winner. There’s a lot of mutually reinforcing lies about love and gratitude and family and faith, but the bottom line is self over everyone, period. A self of eternal presents (pun intended), with no thought of the future.
I live in Chicago, whose transit system is second only to New York in size and complexity. I've been living here for almost twenty years now and have never owned a car. Don't need one, don't want one. I grew up in New York, so I'm used to public transit.
I moved here from Atlanta, where a car is an absolute necessity because public transportation doesn't do what it's supposed to do. In fact, many places will refuse to hire you if you don't have a car. And of course, there's you-know-what: Atlanta's MARTA rail system (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) is often called "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta". There were times when I was the only white person in a train car, because white people in Atlanta simply would not ride (This was in the late 1990's-early 2000's, I'm sure not much has changed). Meanwhile, Highway 400, the road that leads to the northern white flight suburbs, kept getting wider and wider, only to be filled with more and more vehicles.
There are very few places in the country where you can survive without a car, and where it used to be the kind of symbol of freedom that George Will rants about, it's now a ball-and-chain: gas prices, insurance, maintenance...people's lives depend too much on them. It's not sustainable, but try to tell conservatives that.
I have so much more to say on this but I have to leave for work soon, I take the Blue Line downtown, an unlimited monthly CTA pass costs me $75, a lot less than I used to have to pay for the "freedom" to own a car.
South Florida is worse.