Here’s a Way to Slash $21 Trillion of Wasteful Federal Spending: Get Rid of Transit Subsidies

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #865
09/27/2023
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1) Here’s a Way to Slash $21 Trillion of Wasteful Federal Spending: Get Rid of Transit Subsidies
The more the government throws at transit systems, the fewer people that ride the buses and trains.

Our transportation expert Wendell Cox has raked through the latest data, that no one else wants to report. Here is what he has found:
* Over the past three years, transit ridership has plummeted, mostly because the number of Americans working at home has tripled (from 5.7% in 2019 to 15.2% in 2022).
* Transit’s market share has dropped from 5% nationally, in 2019 to 3%.
* Despite building expensive subways and light rail lines, transit commuting dropped by about 30,000 daily between 1960 and 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. At the same time, auto commuting increased by more than 105 million daily trips. Build roads, not transit, fools!

Transit is said to be vital in big cities. WRONG. Out of the 56 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population), transit ridership has lost between 3% and 60% of the commuter market share. San Francisco, the second strongest transit commute market, lost 57% of its market share.

New York is by far the biggest transit system in the country, but even the NY transit system lost 25% of its riders.

As we move even faster into an era of telecommuting from home and as we approach the age of automated cars that will take passengers from door to door at a fraction of the cost (to taxpayers and commuters) and big-time savings for commuters, the government should get out of the transit business altogether.

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2) Chart of the Day – Americans Under Water
One reason Americans are in such a foul mood – with 70 percent or so consistently saying their finances are in bad shape, is that for roughly 8 of 10 families, their savings have dropped since 2020. The lower the income, the more savings have been depleted. This explains higher credit card balances and delinquencies. Unlike the federal government, households can’t go on borrowing forever.

Andy Puzder explains the bad news below:

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3) Another Round of Net Neutrality Stupidity
Yesterday, Biden FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced a new round of net neutrality regulation. Her proposed regulations would socialize the infrastructure necessary to build out and secure high-speed internet access to every area of the country. This would obviously slow down the tech revolution in communications, and is baffling five years after the Obama version was repealed when none of the apocalyptic predictions from Democrats and the media came true.

Former Trump FCC chairman Ajit Pai mocked the fake urgency:

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Not only did none of the predicted horribles occur, but there was a boom in investment by cable and telcos, prices lagged inflation, and – quite the opposite of the Democrat prediction of an Internet that loads one word at a time, there was a major increase in Internet speeds:

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When the Zoom-boom hit, American Internet providers managed the surge in demand with very few hiccups, while regulated Europe was forced to throttle traffic.

But Rosenworcel started off her speech yesterday complaining that she had poor WiFi reception in her house when lockdowns hit – seriously.

Maybe we could just buy her a better router, instead of using that as an excuse to impose multi-billion-dollar regulations on Internet providers?

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4) Biden FTC Sues To Destroy Amazon Prime
The FCC action described above wasn’t even this week’s craziest Biden assault against the high-tech sector. That distinction goes to the FTC – which officially filed an antitrust lawsuit to try to ban Amazon Prime.

This may be the most ludicrous antitrust case in history because Amazon Prime LOWERS prices for consumers. That’s why two-thirds of voters pay the $15 a month to be Amazon Prime members. They get in return:
* Unlimited movie and TV streaming
* Unlimited reading of over a thousand books
* Unlimited music streaming of over 2 million songs
* Whole Foods deals

Is Amazon being sued for lowering prices TOO much? If there is any crime being committed here, it is a victimless crime because the customers are overwhelmingly satisfied with it.

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And they are overwhelmingly satisfied with it:

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As usual, the regulators are way behind the real-world market. E-commerce Age, a trade publication, recently ran this headline:

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Question: Does Lina Kahn have any scintilla of an idea of what she is doing?

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5) Another COVID Villain Lands at Harvard
Notorious New York Times propagandist Apoorva Mandavilli did as much to promote irrational coronavirus panic and extended school closures as anyone outside of government, with this among her many unforgettable corrections as the paper’s purported COVID expert:

We first noticed Mandavilli when she did a victory dance of sorts on Twitter after an article badly misrepresented a South Korean report on school transmission to scare parents in July 2020.

She corrected herself months later after the damage had been done and with a tiny fraction of the secondary media coverage.

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Being constantly wrong has qualified Mandavilli to lecture at Harvard (alongside former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot) as — get this — a "misinformation expert":

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We can't move on from COVID when the villains are still being praised as heroes.

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6) Now Try to Find Border Czar Kamala

Dear valued reader,

Today we are taking a poll of which action by the Biden government is stupider: the FCC effort to socialize and regulate the infrastructure for the internet, or the FTC antitrust lawsuit by Lina Kahn against Amazon Prime – a service that REDUCES consumer prices and that more than 60% of American voters voluntarily subscribe to. It’s a tough call.

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