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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Met Council - More invented numbers to "justify" a sound policy?

Strib, here, presumably the matter is reported elsewhere, likely with Met Council links Strib omits.

[...] As the region, just like the nation, grows more diverse — 9 percent people of color in 1990 in the seven-county metro area, compared with a projected 43 percent in 2040 — it’s imperative that solutions are found.

The Met Council projects that if race-based income disparity could be eliminated by 2040, and 298,000 regional residents were moved out of poverty, there would be 182,000 more high-school graduates, 137,000 more people working and 216,000 more homeowners. This in turn would pump nearly $35 billion into the regional economy over the same 30-year span.

[...] A much more aggressive, strategic build out of the transit system could happen if Dayton and the DFL-controlled Legislature work together to accelerate investment in transit. Dayton’s bold sales-tax funding proposal fell victim to politics last session. Election-year politics shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction this year.

With the nation increasingly focused on inequality, it’s time for Minnesota to do more to reduce disparities that if left unattended will hinder the state’s economic trajectory. Smart investments in transit and housing must be part of a broader strategy.

Inventing numbers helps little. Do you trust any of that smoke?

Next, it is the morally decent thing to fight poverty, and it is morally indecent to move more toward twenty-first century feudalism rather than backing away. That is the justification, along with transit leading to less waste of limited fossil fuel. Combustion is needed in cement kilns and in metallurgy, which are precursors to housing and capital structures being built as needed, when needed, but combustion can be replaced or curtailed in moving people around. Moreover, questioning an economy in the digital age still largely dependent on moving people around is a step in what may be a productive direction. Met Council has a compelling bias on moving people around. It pays the paychecks of the apparatchiks. Go figure that one.

Yes public transit makes sense, so reexamine the planned removal of trolly transit after World War II.

To fight a postwar unemployment depression, short term things were done, and big oil loved it.

Next, go back to those TC demographic projections at the beginning of the quote. Who says? Why so? Based on what long term policy, and why would that be considered the default sound policy to pursue? Who, at the top of the human "food chain" stands to benefit from such evolution of demographics?

Question the premises, not the logical flow from them. Unless/until a clearly articulated basis for the publicized numbers is made public, it's total hooey. It all seems a house of cards. Huff and puff, and it blows down, and another scenario can be built. Why this one? Again, key questions: Who says? Why so?