Law of Unintended Consequences Bites America’s Butt.

Exurbanization Means Next Generation’s America Will Be Very Different - maybe better

Since the end of World War II, government policy has funded and encouraged the exurban lifestyle, subsidizing highways while starving mass transit but according to the energy department the tipping point has been reached at $4.00 per gallon. Now America is contracting back toward its urban areas where we lived in before 1941 as extended families with neighbors in neighborhoods.

Except for a micro hic-cup doing the 1973 OPEC Oil embargo America has been in a constant state of sprawl as Mom and Dad traded in their Ralph Kramden like apartments for Leave it to Beaver lawns. The lead sleds of the 1950-60s gave way to the tape striped phony supercars of the 1970s then to the chagrin of farmers and tradesmen everywhere ever more luxurious and costly pickup trucks and their highly profitable SUV successors the 3-ton gasoline yardage vehicles of choice across America.

Ironically it was increasing tax collections on growing gasoline consumption that fueled the whole scheme since President Eisenhower envisioned the most ambitious road building program in world history - the interstate freeway system. The federal government put your money where its mouth is spending $4 on highways for $1 on any sort of mass transmit. World War II rolled on America’s already aging railroads but with the advent of those interstate freeway the nation’s transport changed from the clacking freight trains that rattle through towns in the wee hours to the intimidating ubiquitous 18-wheeled whining rubber tired behemoths. Now moving people or cargo is over 90% highway-centric.

Exurbanization - if that’s a word - changes everything - smaller houses on less land and fewer cars, eliminates an array of services cutting more existing taxes and creating demands to invent new ones. Planners are writing rules requiring mass transit access for new projects and developers are eyeing conforming urban plots.

Ironically part of today’s “housing crisis” is a collapse of home prices in what was once the willie-whacks, as Americans trade in their SUV for a transit pass. Urban real estate prices have begun to rise and insidious urban blight is showing early signs of regressing.

Last month Americans drove 10,000,000,000 (billion) fewer miles that in 2007 and burned corresponding less fuel paying hundreds of millions of dollar less in taxes. Congress and state legislatures are rushing to slam the barn door well after the horse is gone, and bureaucrats are mumbling about raising fuel taxes amid hell raising by taxpayers who are increasingly demanding reduced costs.

Of course raising taxes also cuts consumption by punishing consumers and hence tax income falls. Witness Maryland’s contemporary example. When it doubled per pack cigarette taxes extensively to improve health care and education cigarette sales fell 25% over night proportionately rising in neighboring states. California’s RINO (Republican In Name Only) Governor Schwarzenegger after co-engineering a $20 billion annual deficit announced Monday his plan to raise sales taxes 15% adding to fuel and all other costs kicking consumers in the teeth and banging another nail in auto dealer’s coffins.

According to Brookings transportation cost now follow only housing with food a distant third for family budgets. Meanwhile Congress is sticking its ample derriere into American voters’ faces who are demanding real energy action and fewer platitudes but are getting pooped on by Pelosi and her ilk.

The good news, if unintended, may be the return of nuclear neighborhoods, and extended families and the decline of child protective service bureaucrats in favor of aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpap. Unlike some who preach change but meaning merely different this may be change for the better. One thing is certain the law of unintended consequences is kicking in with a vengeance, and the next generation’s America will be dramatically different than this one.