June 5, 2006
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Time is Money
Matt and I live outside of town in a canyon. The other day, someone came by to see us, and they asked, “How do you like it, living out here?” The implication is that we live pretty far out into the country.
Honestly, I timed it. I live no farther than the people in the newest suburbs on the other side of the city. It takes the same amount of time to get to work, only I have less stop lights to go through (only 3, and only once I hit town), and much less traffic.
Gas prices here have gone up, but it really doesn’t put a dent in my schedule. (It’s $2.79/gallon at most places.) In fact, someone did a nice calculation about how much one can save by buying a new “energy efficient” car.
I remember going to a Chinese restaurant with my high school boyfriend, and you know how these days, fortune cookies don’t give fortunes. They give one-liner Confucius-like advice. Well, his “fortune” said this:
Dissatisfaction is the mother of invention. He said, “This is stupid,” and threw it away. That was 16 years ago. He still lives in an apartment, working a minimum wage job. He was right. Dissatisfaction with his “fortune” didn’t make him an inventor.
One of Matt’s friends had a brilliant idea. “The government should tax gas. That will encourage people to find alternative sources of energy.” Ahh-well. . . Sorry to burst your bubble, but gas is already taxed, in some states more than others. California, as an example, has much higher gas prices than most other states because of government taxation, which believes exactly as Matt’s dear friend believes. And yet, I don’t see an impetus for either making shorter commutes, nor for making alternative energy cars.
A good friend of mine is involved in making an electric car in Seattle. He gets no funding from the government. This is something he does in his spare time.
Taxation will not cause people to want to make cars. Government funding will not cause people to want to make cars. (How many useful things came out of my graduate school program? One patent for a gene product, in one faculty member’s lab.) Being intelligent and curious enough to make cars, plus the possibility that you might make money on them (aka “capitalism”), causes people to want to make cars.
That said, back in November of 2004, I read an ignorant person’s article about how people in Middle America use more gas to get to work than people on the Coast.
Top 100 Cities With the Longest Commute
(I’m surprised Austin is not on this list. My neighbor said to me that she loved living in Austin, but the traffic has become terrible. We agreed that it’s due to the influx of West Coast expatriates.)Top 100 Cities with the Shortest Commute
(Sorry, people, but I would *not* want to live in Tucumcari, New Mexico, even if I could teleport to work.)
Comments (2)
Tucumcari, NM is a nice place- we’re glad its there because if it weren’t there’d be such a long drive to get to the next place to buy the expensive gas…
I’ve actually stayed in a motel there twice. Both times during moves from Arizona (don’t ask why twice). It’s a nice place to visit, but I agree- I don’t want to live there.
time is money, very true