Nadeau

Fares up, services cut as more need public transit;
1 more sign the world’s on brink of an ‘age of rage’

People are losing the homes and living in their cars. Next to go in this severe economic shutdown and period of rising oil prices is the car. An increasing number of people will be homeless, carless and in deep need of a public transit ride to the Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town to buy what little food they can afford.

So what do the urban planners and government thinkers give us? Less at a higher price.

The deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression is having a devastating impact on mass public transit systems throughout the US. State tax revenues have suffered their worst decline in more than half a century, and more is still to come. Since state and local governments are legally required to balance their budgets, legislatures and governors are taking a sledgehammer to spending on everything from libraries to state parks to health, education and transit. Far from making up for these shortfalls, the austerity policies backed by the Obama administration and both parties are making matters worse.[…]

According to a report issued by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), a lobbying and advocacy group consisting largely of transit agencies themselves, 84 percent of major transit systems have either cut service and raised fares in the last 18 months, or are considering such measures. Out of a total of 151 agencies surveyed, 59 percent have already cut service or raised fares, 69 percent have projected budget shortfalls, and 47 percent have either laid off employees or plan to do so.
WSWS

Is it any wonder why some of us think the pot is coming to the boil?

When Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that “a spectre is haunting Europe,” he did so on the eve of the revolutionary eruptions that began in Italy and France in 1848 and engulfed much of the European continent.

In recent days, a number of media commentaries have predicted a similar eruption of social unrest of revolutionary dimensions as a direct result of the worsening economic crisis. These warnings are accompanied by dire predictions that Europe will suffer the return of nationalist tensions, the emergence of fascist movements and even war.

Writing in the Financial Times May 24, for example, historian Simon Schama stated, “Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage... in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage.”
WSWS