Originally Posted by
tandempower
Everything funds cars as long as the price of a car and driving expenses are built into the wages paid.
Think about it this way: how much more would you have to pay employees for everyone to buy a Tesla or Mercedes or other expensive car instead of a Ford or Hyundai or whatever basic level car they buy? Hopefully you realize that employers don't want to pay all their employees at that level. Now think about how much less you could pay employees if they only took transit and/or rode bicycles and didn't even buy the basic Ford or Hyundai.
That's not the way it works.
Minimum wage employees walk, bike, take transit, drive old cheap cars, or get rides. Those employees are not compensated with pay for transportation.
People that make wages above minimum are paid for the job they are hired to do. Higher value to the employer gets that employee more money. That increase in money could be used to change that employee's housing-to-transportation cost ratio. Closer to work might mean more expensive housing, but potentially less expensive transportation. These employees are not compensated for transportation, they are paid a competitive rate based on what their job is and what part of the world the job is located.
The employers that do pay their employees compensation for transportation are usually employers that hire their employees to drive their own personal vehicles for the job.
Like has already been mentioned, transit infrastructure is paid for by the people with taxes*, bonds, and tolls.
Sure, cost of living is part of what has driven wages up, and you touched on housing which is a big part of it. Plus, the USA has some pretty high living standards even if you leave cars and housing out of the picture. How many of us would go without air conditioning, smart phones, the internet, etc. One landline phone per household sure is cheaper than four smartphones in the same house. My bills certainly were much smaller back when all I had was a land line phone and books to read. So were everyone else's bills too.
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*"The average Texan pays about $10 per month in state gasoline taxes for the roads we drive on every day."
https://tti.tamu.edu/uncategorized/t...d-the-numbers/
28 million Texans x $10/month per Texan is a lot of infrastructure money.