The Cheapest Generation

It depends strongly on the gas mileage for the car, of course, but my first assumption would be that for most people the cost of public transit is about the same as gas. My daily commute, for example (which I know you don't have, but most people do) is about 50 miles. On days I don't work from home, my choice is between a commuter train which costs $22 round trip, commuting on the long-distance train ($28 round trip), or driving, which costs about $10-15 in gas, depending on the current price of gas. I mostly take the train, because driving into Washington, DC isn't fun; I'm certainly not trying to convince you to run out and buy a car, just responding to the assertion that it would cost $7000 a year extra to keep one.

I lived in the DC metro for two years without a car, before purchasing this one, and having lived both ways, I personally strongly prefer having a car. Without one, I had to structure my life around not having a car. Going to the computer store (Microcenter) to pick up a new video card on a whim was something that would take the bulk of the day without a car (two or three metro lines depending on route). If the store half a mile from my house didn't have something, I had to either plan a trip on a bus to another one (and what if that one didn't, either? So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out in advance online if they did), or just go without. I don't much like shopping for groceries, but I got to do it three or four times a week anyway, because I couldn't carry enough 2L bottles to last longer than a few days, etc... without a car, a lot of my life was concerned with inventory and transportation, in a way that I don't even think about with a car, since I can pop out to any kind of store and be back in 20 minutes.

Not quite sure what you're saying, but if you're claiming that Obama ran without a specific platform, you're wrong. For example, below is an excerpt from his platform on civil liberties. These weren't vague promises (although he made a lot of those, too). They were specific promises, and he's now broken most of them.

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Reclaiming Our Constitution and Our Liberties

As we combat terrorism, we must not sacrifice the American values we are fighting to protect. In recent years, we've seen an Administration put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The Democratic Party rejects this dichotomy. We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation's founding commitment to liberty under law.

We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live.

We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of "inherent" presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. And we will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears.

We believe that our Constitution, our courts, our institutions, and our traditions work.

In its operations overseas, while claiming to spread freedom throughout the world, the current Administration has tragically helped give rise to a new generation of potential adversaries who threaten to make America less secure. We will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools to hunt down and take out terrorists without undermining our Constitution, our freedom, and our privacy.

To build a freer and safer world, we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.

[...]

Our Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the foundation of our democracy. It makes freedom and self-governance possible, and helps to protect our security. The Democratic Party will restore our Constitution to its proper place in our government and return our Nation to our best traditions–including our commitment to government by law.

I realize you're probably purposely trying to be disrespectful, but in case it's by accident, I'll point out that prefacing your comment with "dude", when you're talking to someone you don't know, is what many men do when they're trying to belittle another man who's a verbal opponent. It's sort of like using the informal "you" to adult strangers in languages that have a polite and informal form of personal pronouns.

Second, I'm glad you feel your vote is productive. I personally feel like our system is fundamentally flawed and irreparably skewed toward the two-party system, and see little point in voting for a third-party. You can disagree with me, and I may be wrong here (in which case I'll change my position), but please, let's try to keep the conversation civil. We might even share fundamental motivations here.

I see. We may have different use cases. I wasn't exaggerating when I said everything is literally five minutes away in my neighborhood. I usually get groceries several times per week, on my walk home from somewhere. Occasionally I take a somewhat longer walk to a cheap grocery store for certain items, but no planning required. I don't drink pop or juice, so no 2L bottles.

Apple store and protein powder describe the two items I can't get within this 5 minute radius. And transit is $4.80 round trip with a pass and takes me anywhere in town quickly. Metro gets you anywhere, so no planning or routes required. Taxi downtown is $12-$15 if for some reason I'm in a rush.

For the same reason dating couples breakup: because something changes, externally or internally, that makes staying together less desirable than splitting up. I've been married for 3+ years, and been with my spouse for almost 10. We have a child. There is, to put it lightly, momentum that keeps us together along with societal pressures (a dad married to the mom is superior to the dad divorced from the mom, all other things equal.)

I'm not posting to comment on whether this pressure is good or bad, but merely to point out it exists. We live in a culture that celebrates weddings and proposals and scandalizes divorce (look at any tabloid for copious examples), but has little to say about the tenure between.

The trend of dating long term, co-habitation, and finally "tying the knot" late in the relationship is an interestingly recent development in America. I'm curious to see how the data on US divorce evolves as this trend matures. Most of my peers (I'm late Gen X) and Millenials I know are following this pattern.

I suspect it is a direct reaction to generations raised in divorced households, but I have no proof of this.

EDIT: small clarification.