Did I miss the part where they discuss the economics of having a larger worker pool? like how that would affect existing workers? that seems like an enormous question to not address fully.
It would not affect everyone equally, and wages in many areas would definitely go down. For example, if the US recognized medical degrees from other countries, the influx of doctors would be so large that the income for a physician would drop tremendously. So the physicians that are already employed should (if they represent their own interest) be very against such a policy. But the aggregate would end up being that the total salaries earned by doctors in the us would go up.
i.e. if you had 5 doctors at 500k, and you opened up, maybe you would have 10 doctors at 300k. This is a natural economic progression. Same with software engineers: open borders would definitely have a stark impact on median income, but there would be more startups and more work and more people employed in the sector.
Residencies are one of the most grueling experiences for human beings ,and a restriction that makes doctors go through that process twice (in their home country and then in the US) amounts to a strong restriction.
Asking an experienced doctor to go through a residency is worse than asking software developers to get a doctorate if they want to write code in the US.
Looking at the concerns of US population, I'd bet that they'd be quite happy with the notion that increased supply could cause a significant decrease in doctor salaries and thus medical costs.
Protection benefits the industry, lack of protectionism benefits everyone else; and patients have much more votes than doctors.
The second part is true, but the patients do not so clearly see the benefit, while the doctors would personally see and feel the pain of such a measure! The interest and understanding of the latter makes them very powerfully motivated.
In Germany a healthy young migrant coming from a country that is not at war gets more money per month in welfare help than retired teachers get in Romania. What is their incentive to work?
As a butthurt American I only have one real gripe with what you said - our roads aren't free. Our taxes pay for them. I think we need to change this mentality and acknowledge that our taxes going to something else useful is actually a net good - not 'welfare.'
The roads are free to travel on, as a publicly funded post-secondary education would be free to acquire. The parent was quite obviously not suggesting these things were not paid for by someone/everyone—at least not directly at time of use.
Otherwise, totally agree with your last point. It's a shame we Americans, in our infinite political stupidity, devalue and denigrate tax-funded programs.
I think the obvious answer here is to go full open-source on the infrastructure. if they can afford to pay engineers to craft exploits, the can afford to pay engineers to fix them.
Drunk driving has always been an issue in most of America. It's not taken seriously. In Houston there was regularly horrific DUI deaths and people wouldn't bat an eyelash (several times there were cars driven by drunks onto the freeway *on the wrong side. Bam, four killed. Doesn't make top story on the local news).
I'm sure it's a big issue but I don't think it's any worse than most other large American metros. In fact, I imagine it may be less of an issue here. LA does actually have a somewhat functional rail/bus system and some pockets of very walkable neighborhoods that also tend to have an abundance of nightlife.
I think it has gotten better since Uber/Lyft came about as well as younger people not being hesitant to take the subway (now open until 2).
Terrible driving in general is still the same - no signals, double-parking without hesitation, general craziness. On big holidays, there are a lot of drunk driving checkpoints but, overall, very little to no traffic enforcement.
Hit-and-runs are a really big problem.
I think the city is going through some growing pains as there as there are more pedestrians and cyclists on the road. If you are in those categories, you have to be very, very aware.
As a comparison, I was much more worried about drunk drivers when living in a rural area. Also, a recent visit to Santa Fe I saw at least 2-3 clearly drunk drivers, which my friends said is a huge problem there.
My guess is it has something to do with [1]. I remember growing up hearing that LA was planned by a large automotive manufacturer, hence it requires copious amounts of driving to fully experience the city. I couldn't find a reliable source with any cursory searching. Still, the linked article mentions LA specifically in one of the captions, so maybe there's a grain of truth to that.
LA emphatically was not planned, especially not by an automotive manufacturer. The automotive industry simply colluded to destroy the metropolitis's mass transit system, to be replaced by automobile freeways. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
[edit: redlining didn't necessarily cause auto-dependence but it is an example of planning]
After all, if every structure has to have 2 parking spots per apartment, you'll get far, far fewer apartments in the same space, forcing things to sprawl.
I think they might finally be learning though. The Expo line goes to the beach now. And they spent $1 billion+ to widen Sepulveda pass and now it's slower than it was before. Perhaps next time they'll put rail in instead.
