Switching to say EVs isn't going to save the planet either.
No, it's not, which is why I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. In general, people who commit heavily to the idea that electric vehicles will solve climate change have either been suckered by tech bros or they are cynically looking for excuses to avoid the conclusion of needing to make more radical changes.
In order to "save the planet", there needs to be a rethinking of the way human living spaces are designed and laid out in order to reduce car dependence altogether. This means investing heavily in public transport. It means ending single use zoning. It means ensuring residential areas are pedestrian-accessible. It means enabling people to work-from-home more, and it means building large amounts of affordable subsidized housing (particularly in urban areas) so people can afford to live closer to where they work. We are a long, long way from this, but some urban governments even in the US are beginning to move in the right direction, and we can expect it to continue.
Electric vehicles cannot replace fossil fuel burning vehicles, and they won't for a long, long time.
Maybe for certain forms of personal use if someone is willing to accept the limitations and if governments are willing to invest heavily in the green energy infrastructure to make them ecologically sustainable (which admittedly is another thing which needs to happen immanently in order to avoid disaster) but absolutely not for any kind of logistical use. For the time being, a certain amount of fossil fuel burning vehicle use is unavoidable. There is, however, a pretty urgent need to minimize that use.
I'm saying time is more important than money.
So why live are you advocating for urban workers to move out of cities and commute in order to take advantage of lower house prices?
And what if you have to get somewhere that public transport doesn't reach or is just so inconvenient it's not worth taking it?
Why would you ever need to go to such a place unless you already live there? Do you
want to get sacrificed to a malevolent corn spirit?
I know Chicago and NYC, it's way more money to live there than the increased pay rate (at least for normal jobs, executives or whatever probably make bank).
Are you sure?
Do you think there are no poor people living in Chicago or NYC? How are they managing it if your galaxy brained money-saving genius can't?
You really have this extreme hatred for cars for like no reason.
Cars are literally destroying the ecosystem of the planet we live in and degrading the living standards of future humanity. They render urban and suburban spaces dangerous and hostile for pedestrians and unsafe for children. They kill vast numbers of people each year. They create air pollution which leads to many people developing health problems. They're noisy and unsightly.
There are plenty of reasons to hate cars. I don't hate them though, they will always be useful and necessary for some people. I just think structuring your life (and on the social level, structuring your cities) in such a way that you are reliant on them to do anything is dumb and unnecessary
Also, exercise isn't that key to staying at a healthy weight because it doesn't burn as much calories as one would think,
..and it doesn't need to.
Because we're not indulging the stupid assumption that a person who exercises more will automatically eat a less healthy diet. They won't. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that exercise helps to regulate appetite for many people. People who exercise will generally
eat the same things they were eating anyway.
It's pretty reasonable to expect that a person who is walking as part of a daily commute will burn about 200 calories each day doing that. Over the course of a week, that comes to 1,400 extra calories burned. Over the course of a year, 73,000 calories. 73,000 calories is equivalent to about 20 pounds/9 kilograms of fat which a hypothetical sedentary person eating the same diet would have gained or maintained over that year. Small amounts of exercise add up over time.
And this is without factoring in other benefits. Exercise builds muscle, which requires energy to maintain and reduces the appearance of body fat. Exercise increases cardiovascular health and helps prevent the loss of bone density. Exercise has a positive impact on mental health and reduces daytime tiredness..
Dipping into your 401k to fix your car is not an actual money problem?
It seems like an extremely trivial one.
Not being able to afford an extra $5 on a Friday is not an actual money problem?
Again, it seems extremely trivial.
Both those instances are people with no housing costs having those money issues, how are they to own or rent if they are that bad with managing money?
Why does it matter? It sounds like they're mostly doing fine, and the problem is less about them not having enough money to live comfortably as with you disapproving of the comforts they choose to spend that money on.
There is no justice to the distribution of wealth in this society. Again, the reason the urban housing market is fucked is literally because some people have so much money they can afford to buy up all the houses and use their relative monopoly to let them out at hiked prices and earn even more money at everyone else's expense. Expecting people to conform their lives to that broken market in order to demonstrate their quality as a human being is the most dumb shit imaginable. The people succeeding in that market certainly aren't living the kind of austere, spartan existence you seem to believe leads to success.
If you're poor, be angry about it. If you're rich, be a selfish prick while you still can. Sitting in the middle and trying desperately to justify why everyone with less than you should get fucked is the worst of both worlds.
