I feel like the legality of not reimbursing him for using his personal vehicle for work purposes is fairly dubious though I'd be lying if I said I knew the specifics of the laws there.

Given the cost of fuel, a bus pass for me (if I still had to commute, I work from home now) for a month is now just over $800/mo.

6 years ago, that was $375/mo.

I don't think the issue is limited to car drivers, I suspect more than a few folks who took public transit with me are looking at a pretty impactful monthly cost.

Bus lanes and trams are a symbol of “communism” and car is a sign of “freedom”

This is basically it.

I saw a post the other day that argued to the conservative mind there must be an underclass. There must be poor people whose lives suck. If you try to make things good for everyone, you're going against nature and will just make things bad for everyone.

Thus good public transit is bad. If different classes of people all mingle then it's like mixing your food up on the plate and that's just wrong!

They really are like children

I still don't get truck culture.

I grew up kinda out in the sticks, fair number of religious nuts and racists.

You know what they'd say about trucks, in the late 90s?

If you need a truck, like, really actually need a truck, you get it and use it only for actually hauling shit, or towing something.

Then you have a sedan or similar for everything else.

Like, ... the yokels of 20/30 years ago would all be laughing at the yokels of today.

I don't get how these people can be this aggresively stupid, its literally an insult to their 'heritage', fucked up as that heritage may or may not be.

EXACTLY. GIVE A CHOICE!!

I myself am a car person but still. Give us a choice. I would be ALL FOR banning cars in our downtown area and just having to bike walk or bus to get there from farther away. Cars ruin cities.

We need them in rural. But thats far fewer people.

Or just can't afford to buy a new vehicle, ironically enough. I would love little more than to get rid of my car for an EV right now but I was barely staying afloat before gas prices started to surge, now it's just even more precarious.

Worry not, 15 year financing will save North America!

They won't.

Despite what you hear on lemmy, the average american is not living in some kind of fascist hellscape. They are working a pretty decent job for a wage that pays their bills, and everything for them is more or less the same as it was under Biden. They are unhappy with the increased cost of things - but they aren't even close to "riot in the streets".

Instead, their strategy will be:

• ignore the federal government until the next election
• vote in opposition politicians in city and state elections in the meantime

Legally, the states can't make laws that contradict federal law. But as the case of marijuana legalization has shown, the federal government is very hesitant to push back on laws passed by states with broad popular appeal. So in the meantime, we'll likely see moves by the states to become more autonomous, and will see more anti-Trump politicians make names for themselves and get ready for the national stage.

It's already happened, the coup is done.

Yeah, I think we are certainly learning it, albeit slowly. When we set up our suburbia world, it was fine, because there were just fewer people, and we had the room to do it. It's now chaos, you take your life in your hands driving to work, it costs an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, we designed ourselves into a corner, and (at least where I live) trying to fix it feels insurmountable. And I live in a place with some of the best trains outside of Manhattan. And they're terrible.

No solutions here. Just observations.

RIP Trevor Moore, one of the funniest (and whitest) kids u know.

They could take public transit and spend three hours one way commuting to their eight hour shift.