ProcessAgentPart » Economics http://www.processagentpart.com Please do the needful Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:35:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Drive your way out of the recession! http://www.processagentpart.com/2009/11/03/drive-your-way-out-of-the-recession/ http://www.processagentpart.com/2009/11/03/drive-your-way-out-of-the-recession/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:32:17 +0000 matt http://www.processagentpart.com/?p=23 The Cascade Policy Institute, which Wikipedia tells me is a “non-profit, non partisan libertarian” think tank, has released a study informing the world that driving has a direct causal link with GDP. Yes, that’s right! If American’s for whatever reason start to drive less (say, for example, by choosing to live closer to their jobs), then over the long term, “GDP will drop by about 46% of the rate of VMT [vehicle-miles-travelled] decline”. Unfortunately, a quick Google search didn’t pull up the paper, but really, doesn’t this explain so much? For example, between November 2007 and October 2008, Americans drove nearly 100 billion fewer miles than over the same period a year prior. And what else happened during that time, starting around December 2007? We entered a recession! Finally, it’s all explained. We had a global recession because, for some reason, people drove less. The financial implosion? One can only assume that Lehman would not have collapsed had we just kept on driving.

Regardless, now that we are armed with this knowledge the way out of the recession is clear. We need people to drive more! There are so many ways we could do this. We could force people to live farther from work. Or we could increase the length of the roads (perhaps the stimulus package should have gone to making straight roads curvy). Carpooling could be made illegal. And those of us who live take public transportation or (gasp!) walk to work should buy a car and drive, even if it’s just a mile or so.

It’s our duty. Otherwise, this recession will never end.

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