High-flying welfare queens

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons:



High-Flying Free Riders
The growing fleet of posh private jets? We subsidize them.

By David Bollier


The private jet is always cast as the ultimate status symbol. Flip through The New Yorker and other upscale magazines, and you are invited to enter the fantasy world of private aviation, where there are no crowds, no long security lines and no boring waits in noisy airport lounges. You can just drive up to the plane (in your limo, of course) and jet to wherever and whenever you want!

The outrageous reality is that private jets are one of the most piggish forms of conspicuous consumption imaginable. The private jet is not only a symbol of extreme privilege and exclusivity, it imposes significant costs on the air travel system, taxpayers, shareholders and the environment.

The facts are all laid out in a report by the Institute for Policy Studies and Essential Action, High Flyers: How Private Jet Travel is Straining the System, Warming the Planet and Costing You Money. The authors are Sarah Anderson, Sam Bollier, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins and Robert Weissman. (Full disclosure: Sam Bollier is my son.)

Private jet travel has “taken off” over the past forty years — from 1,000 jets in 1970 to over 10,000 in 2006, a number that is expected to double by 2017. For years, the expansion rate of private aviation roughly paralleled that of commercial aviation. Then, in 1997, private aviation took off — a trend that not-so-coincidentally paralleled the worsening of inequality. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2711