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I wonder how things would change if commuting time was considered "working" and employers had to compensate for it at the employee's hourly rate. This probably

by imgabe 11y ago

I wonder how things would change if commuting time was considered "working" and employers had to compensate for it at the employee's hourly rate. This probably isn't realistically feasible but... It seems like most individuals would rather not have horrendous commutes, but they work where the jobs are and they live where housing is cheap and those two things are often far apart. These same individuals have little political pull in terms of zoning laws and urban improvements to make the necessary changes to the infrastructure to allow them to live close to work. If suddenly, say GE, or any major employer in a town had a financial incentive to lobby the local government to make it easier for employees to live close to where they work, things would probably change a lot faster.

lagadu 11y ago
Or even just cut the middle-man (the employer). Here in Denmark if you live more than a set distance from your place of work (IIRC it's 20km) you get tax deductions based on the distance of your commute. This way it's the government directly that gets an incentive to make things better because they literally get less tax money and there's no added complexity by involving employers.
- imgabe 11y ago
  That probably works well in Denmark, but I think it would be confusing with the morass of federal/state/local governments in the US. A deduction on your Federal taxes wouldn't necessarily affect the tax money collected by the local or state government, which is usually the one responsible for building various roads. State and local governments may or may not even collect income taxes (some do, some don't).