Mass transit, taking your car means you're either crazy or work at night. Commute in this town however is way worse than in the rest of the country, where I lived a few years back (a town with around 8-10x less inhabitants) commute times were around 45 min/day, and I'd guess 1h would pretty representative of the whole country.
I don't know if its that different with the US, or if our corporations here are honestly more interested in the long-term (I wouldn't be to sure) but what I know for sure is different is that people here tend to save way more than in the US. There is so much pressure, culturally and from the state, against massive indebtedness (is that a word?) - a monthly rate of more than 33% your income - that it's a limited phenomenon. Well it was until very recently at least.
Ah very good, while there are a few people who do save here, I'd say it's probably the exception. It used to be that way, we used to not value tremendous debt but somewhere along the line that changed. We have very little patience as a nation to save for anything. There is certainly more cultural pressure to spend and very little incentive to save.
As far as mass transit I think it depends on the city as to it's effectiveness. The buses are pretty good but in a sprawling city like Atlanta the metro area is almost 2000 square miles and the vast majority of people drive. Our rail system is horrific in it's reach. I take it quite a bit but it's nowhere near adequate to take most people from where they live to where they work. I don't have figures, but I'd say the majority of Americans drive to work unless they live in close proximity to a major city where they might drive to a transit station and take that into the city.
My Girlfriend said to me..."How many guitars do you need?" and I replied...."How many pairs of shoes do you need?" She got really quiet.
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Ah very good, while there are a few people who do save here, I'd say it's probably the exception. It used to be that way, we used to not value tremendous debt but somewhere along the line that changed. We have very little patience as a nation to save for anything. There is certainly more cultural pressure to spend and very little incentive to save.
As far as mass transit I think it depends on the city as to it's effectiveness. The buses are pretty good but in a sprawling city like Atlanta the metro area is almost 2000 square miles and the vast majority of people drive. Our rail system is horrific in it's reach. I take it quite a bit but it's nowhere near adequate to take most people from where they live to where they work. I don't have figures, but I'd say the majority of Americans drive to work unless they live in close proximity to a major city where they might drive to a transit station and take that into the city.
Dunk, haven't you paid any attention at all? He pointed out the facts that the US invented democracy and free market capitalism
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