The Politics of Loneliness

How Democratic Politicians Encourage Loneliness: Because marriage and children tend to incline people toward voting Republican, Democrats try various ploys to keep people unmarried and childless (i.e., more prone to loneliness as they age). For example, a reader writes:

Current Federal policy (to a large extent based on claims of fighting air pollution) strenuously encourages *increased* housing density [which raises the cost of the single family homes with yards that most Americans consider a prerequisite for having a family]. To the extent that increased density predicts increased Blue-ness (Democrat political success) Republicans might to wish to revamp this policy.

Basically, the Feds withhold highway funds from states and locales that don't use their zoning powers to discourage the construction of detached single-family homes and boost construction of high-density housing. The Feds also--counterproductively--withhold highway funds from locales with excessive air pollution, even when highway-building would help alleviate the very pollution complained-of [by dispersing the population over a larger, less-polluted area].

The Feds also give grants to NGO's, states, and locales to promote high-density development and "transportation alternatives," an ungrammatical euphemism for "wasting public money on little-used light-rail and bike-path systems."

By the way, here's an amusing glossary of planner-speak from Portland, where the basic purpose of its famous urban planning appears to be to keep Republicans from reproducing.