Americans own less cars per captia than western europeans

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/

by kghose • 14 years ago

4 9 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

lifeisstillgood2• 14 years ago

The report authors seem to be arguing that income inequality in USA is so bad that an emerging lower/middle class cannot afford cars and the rich have all the cars they will need.

This strikes me as plausible.

The Atlantic is saying actually our young people aren't poor, they just want iphones instead.

This strikes me as implausible platitudes.

Is the Atlantic a Left / right wing paper (it appears on HN a lot so I would like to know)

ananyob2• 14 years ago

I think the Atlantic is regarded as vaguely liberal/left. The important thing in the article - far more important than car ownership is the energy usage figures. The US uses a lot more fossil fuel per capita than Western Europeans - even if they have fewer cars.

lifeisstillgood2• 14 years ago

I think the idea that car ownership is falling due to income inequality is staggering - that points to one direction only - enclaves of super-rich in a sea of poverty. It is not the way anyone expected USA to meet its Kyoto targets.

But the evidence of increasing income inequality is persuasive.

My favourite quote from somewhere recently:

  A society is fair if you are willing to enter it at the top or the bottom.  
  If you dont want to join Western society at the bottom of the pile, 
  its not a fair society.

Edit: far too snarky.

dalke2• 14 years ago

Historically it's a literary magazine. It's changed focus in the last 5-10 years. Andrew Sullivan was an editor there. Sullivan is an "openly gay Catholic" conservative. Jeffrey Goldberg is a writer there. He was at The New Yorker, wrote about international human rights, and Castro invited him to Cuba. James Bennet is the editor-in-chief. He was at the New York Times for about 15 years before then. As editor he "featured a cover story on Britney Spears, a change from The Atlantic's tradition in higher culture." (All cribbed from Wikipedia.)

I would say it's literary and good journalism. If Colbert is right, and reality as a well-known liberal bias, then it's liberal. Or, see the Talk section of the WP page for a rather lengthy discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Atlantic .

I think it's shifting to include more technology coverage under its traditional cultural commentary/literary style. Sort of somewhere like a mix of the Economist and Wired.

While I would like that, I'm irritated with them for spamming various sites, including HN and Reddit. See http://www.dailydot.com/society/atlantic-slaterhearst-jared-... . I've commented on some of their self-posted links here on HN, including questions about the article, and got no followup, which tells me it's more spam than trying to engage in dialog. So I tend to ignore links to their site.

_delirium2• 14 years ago

While I agree that the Atlantic tends to have good journalism, that's most true of its feature-length articles from the magazine proper. Imo these blog-style posts that they also do have more mixed quality.

maxerickson• 14 years ago

The numbers seem to exclude pickup trucks and such. The U.S. seems to have more of those than most similarly wealthy countries (Yes, the blag author disputes this; every appearance is that he is wrong twice (lots of people are linking convincing U.S. gov data that sensibly describes daily drivers at ~800/1000)).

Also, the report authors don't say much of anything about income inequality in the USA. They do note that high income inequality tends to signal lower rates of car ownership.

Americans own less cars per captia than western europeans

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