People with long commutes spend most of that time on highways, which are not affected by traffic calming measures. A surface street going from 35mph to 25mph is not going to add an hour of driving time unless you are driving 100 miles a day on non-highway surface streets, which literally nobody does. You are exaggerating the impact of traffic calming measures.
Cars are getting less safe for pedestrians and cyclists, not more safe. Why should pedestrians bear the human cost of higher car speeds when drivers are the ones benefitting from it? Easy to pretend the benefits of speeding outweigh the costs when the benefits accrue to you and the costs accrue to other people.
> A surface street going from 35mph to 25mph is not going to add an hour of driving time unless you are driving 100 miles a day on non-highway surface streets, which literally nobody does.
I’ve seen streets go from 45mph to 25mph, lose driving lanes to bike or bus lanes, lose parking, etc. It makes things far worse than you think. What used to be a 20 minute drive will now be 35 minutes. Now consider the drive in both directions, time to find parking, and other trips you might make that day. It forces people to stay confined and not make as many trips because it simply isn’t possible to fit them in anymore. That is a loss of life quality.
> Why should pedestrians bear the human cost of higher car speeds when drivers are the ones benefitting from it?
They don’t have to and by and large they don’t bear any cost for it. You’re exaggerating things - the probability of a pedestrian dying is incredibly low. I walk as well and am not in fear of cars just like I’m not in fear of other unlikely events.
The quality of life improves for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders when parking and car lanes are converted to bike and bus lanes. Drivers are not the only stakeholders who deserve consideration.
Many of the people who insist that there is no safety impact from high speed local roads nevertheless choose to raise their kids in suburban cul-de-sacs with minimal traffic and curvy roads with low speed limits. They want the right to subject other communities to speeding cars for their own convenience while protecting their own families from them.
Judges are also unelected bureaucrats, and they are less subject to democratic oversight since they have lifetime appointments vs agency heads who are appointed by the executive branch and can be effectively "voted out" if voters choose a different president who replaces them.
When dealing with a country of over 300 million people and a near $30 trillion economy Congress cannot possibly specify things so completely that there won't be things that need interpretation.
How did it work before the Chevron defense? The USA didn't implode before 1984.
Congress would need to outline the limits of the executive function in the law. It would need to detail what the goals are (and are not).
To me this seems like a vast improvement rather than just passing a bill "regulate pollution" and then whatever the EPA decides is now law impervious to court challenges.
Congress passed laws that required interpretation to actually implement. If someone disagreed with the agency interpretation they went to court. The court would then figure out an interpretation.
All Chevron deference did is tell the court that if the agency interpretation was reasonable the court should go with that.
With or without Chevron, "unelected bureaucrats" end up interpreting the law.
> With or without Chevron, "unelected bureaucrats" end up interpreting the law.
You really feel like there is no difference between a judge, schooled in the law and some GS-10 government employee?
Really? In deciding whether or not the government is following a law passed by Congress? You know, acting as a judicial expert? The "exact same unelected bureaucrats"?
Let me give you a real life example (from the people who brought the case to the Supreme Court) - the Dept of Fisheries decided that some fisherman required an observer to be on the boat when they fished (to make sure they followed regulations) and that they had to pay for it.
That was never a part of the law, only a decision by a bureaucrat. It couldn't even be challenged in court due to Chevron.
You feel that is a better situation than Americans saying "wait a second, why am I paying for this? that's not even in the law" and bringing the decision to a court of law?
You feel like taking away that power from Americans is a good thing?
Removing Chevron deference moves authority from the administrative agencies to the courts, who are not only also unelected bureaucrats, they are more insulated from democratic forces since they have lifetime appointments. Agency heads are political appointments and change with every president.
Congress is broken and structurally incapable of passing laws under this level of political polarization because there are too many veto points (bicameral legislature, the filibuster, the presidential veto) for any law to get passed even if it's supported by the majority of legislators and the majority of voters.
Tesla is not the leader in self driving, they are pretty far behind both Cruise and Waymo, which have or used to have driverless vehicles legally operating on public roads. If you're betting on driverless tech why would you go with Tesla and not Google or GM?
Facebook, Apple and Google are very big companies which hire a lot of very well paid engineers. We're not talking about being an NFL quarterback or something where only a small handful of people will reach that level. Being a big tech engineer is probably the easiest and most achievable path to $500k/year on the planet.
A pension is not worth 150k-200k a year in compensation. Also taxes are higher in most of Europe, even taking payroll taxes into account (I assume that's what you mean by social security pay in).
Most programmers are $90k/year code monkeys. The $400k+/year jobs are very heavily concentrated in a small number of tech hubs, and mostly in the bay, and that’s the relevant statistic that should inform your decision making if you want to make that type of money.
And this is the condescending attitude that makes the 99.4% of us who aren't overpaid Silicon Valley types resent the valley.
According to the BLS stats above the median salary for a software engineer is $130k, which is nearly double the median household income in the USA and more than enough to enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle in most areas of the US.
But sure, feel free to look down on those of us who choose to stop optimizing for wealth after realizing we already are earning in the top 10%.
Did you read the article at all? Unless you were buying meat with personal loans the issue of whether or not interest expenses should be included in CPI has no relevance to correct measurement of food inflation.
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that.""
Cars are getting less safe for pedestrians and cyclists, not more safe. Why should pedestrians bear the human cost of higher car speeds when drivers are the ones benefitting from it? Easy to pretend the benefits of speeding outweigh the costs when the benefits accrue to you and the costs accrue to other people.