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0 pointsxethos10mo ago0 comments

No, but like roads, public transit leads to greater economic activity and boosts GDP. Good public transit also increases social and financial mobility, makes other clean air targets easier to hit, and decreases medical costs [0] while increasing the number of financially-productive hours a citizen can work - because a healthier citizen is a more economically productive one.

America seems utterly incapable of grasping many second-order effects. For another example, look to the ROI of investing in the (coninuously underfunded) IRS [1]

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4917017/

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-tax-audits-recover-12-do...

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deepsun10mo ago

Yes, thanks for elaborating. I seem to be not clear in my point: that public transit is subsidized and it's a good thing, we should not expect to see an immediate profit from it, and should not expect a commercial company willing to invest into it.

xethosOP10mo ago

I appreciate the clarification, my mistake taking your original comment the wrong way. I'm a little reassured too - what seems to be an Americanism (things that don't turn a profit aren't worth doing) feels like it's seeping into my locale as well, so I may be overly sensitive to it. It's nice to be told I was wrong in this instance.

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