Matt on parking subsidies

Link here

There’s a public agency of some kind, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority, which does things like brag that “across the board, our rates are lower than any nearby garage.”

That, however, is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with parking garages—every city has them. And in particular a place like downtown Pittsburgh is going to have them. But a city will have parking garages because the ability to park in a downtown urban area is a valuable thing, it’s something people will pay money for. Consequently, some undeveloped land will be used as open-air parking lots and some developers may build above-ground parking structures and/or large buildings with an underground garage element. But there’s no reason for a city to be providing subsidized, below market rate parking facilities. You provide a public subsidy for something if you think there’s some reason to believe that the market output of the thing is below what’s socially optimal. But while there’s nothing wrong with people driving around, it’s certainly not more socially optimal to encourage additional driving. Subsidized parking is regressive (poor people are less likely to own cars), it causes additional traffic congestion (more cars on the round), it causes more pollution, and it promotes inefficient use of valuable land.

Francois' response: Okay, I know this is a boring subject, but my larger point won't be. This is what politics is, and liberals just won't get their heads around the idea that this is the nature of the beast. Parking is subsidized because that's a popular thing to do, more popular than feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. Cities aren't walkable because more voters drive cars than walk.

Matt understands the limitations of politics better than most, so I'd like to think that eventually we'll get to witness an amazing evolution into a libertarian blogger. I hope that happens, because there's really no logical way to square the realities of politics to liberal ideals of activist government. That doesn't mean that politics can never accomplish anything that improves people's lives. Obviously, that does happen sometimes. But liberals never take into account the "overhead" costs. The fact that if you want to deliver $1 in health care to a poor child, you're probably going to have to spend $2 on something less valuable from a policy perspective, but more desirable from a political perspective. This is how the sausage is made. Now I could be cynical and say that they just don't give a damn about all this because it's not their money.