Driving To End Poverty

Libs love big social programs that attack poverty (successfully or not), but they hate cars, so this one is going to muddle their clarity:

Portland State grad student Kerri Sullivan has found that car ownership is the key to escaping urban poverty. Her report found:

... car ownership improved the likelihood of being employed by 80 percent. The effect on average weekly wages was approximately $275, and the effect on weeks worked was approximately 8.5 weeks.

Brock Yates, writing in Car & Driver, reported more:

Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll of UC Berkeley and LA, respectively, found that "raising minority car ownership -- compared to the white car-ownership rate -- would eliminate 45 percent of the black-white emmployment-rate differential and 17 percent of the comparable Latino-white differential."

Yates suggests that big government proponents may want to get together with Detroit's struggling auto makers and devise a "car in every garage" program.

This will be fun. The dying-earth greenies are going to have to once again try to keep their big, fat slice of the pie away from poor blacks and Latinos. Greenies will drive their cars to hearings at which they'll protest government continuing to support gasoline engines, while the poor folks will ride mass transit to the hearing and beg for a break.

Ah, the elegant hypocrisy.

Photo: Jacob Holdt