While I am a huge proponent of public transportation and thus think this study is stupid on the face of it, in favor of actually having buses, we should, and in fact do, subsidize transportation. Oil is heavily subsidized, as are the roads themselves. IMO we should also subsidize public transportation to a much larger degree. That Uber/Lyft is able to be a transportation option if subsidized then, doesn't indight it on the face of it for me. Much as I hate to admit it, that is. I also hate to admit that there are times when Uber/Lyft are actually the superior option, and it makes sense to subsidize. Eg if you're not critically injured, an Uber/Lyft to the hospital ER works out better.
It’s really not. Articles and “studies” that spread this line always rely heavily on an esoteric (read: deceptive) definition of the word “subsidy”. First, some guy does a purely academic calculation of all O&G externalities and declares that this number represents the “correct amount” of taxes that O&G should pay. Next he takes the difference between actual taxes paid and his imaginary number, and calls this meaningless, hypothetical number a “subsidy”. In reality, where we don’t get to redefine words as a matter of convenience, the oil & gas industry is not “heavily subsidized”, but in fact generates huge amounts of tax revenue.
If you look at the cost for, say, Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), (estimated at $1.7 trillion), which was used to secure our access to oil, I'm not convinced the costs don't come out ahead of the tax revenue it generates.
While I am a huge proponent of public transportation and thus think this study is stupid on the face of it, in favor of actually having buses, we should, and in fact do, subsidize transportation. Oil is heavily subsidized, as are the roads themselves. IMO we should also subsidize public transportation to a much larger degree. That Uber/Lyft is able to be a transportation option if subsidized then, doesn't indight it on the face of it for me. Much as I hate to admit it, that is. I also hate to admit that there are times when Uber/Lyft are actually the superior option, and it makes sense to subsidize. Eg if you're not critically injured, an Uber/Lyft to the hospital ER works out better.