As the 97% gets poorer and poorer, they will ride public transportation and shared vehicles more and more. Many will simply have to walk.

Eventually, only the 3% will afford to drive private vehicles.

This is one of the first step back to the 15th century.

It's sad, but I had the same thought process on this one that Harvey did.

Wages for working people have gone down in real value, while productivity has gone up. Vehicles are a big money sink that have no or little residual value. You can be smart and hard working, and you can still be poor, if you buy what is typically considered necessary consumption, like a car, and other things that are not really needed. Of course, the smart person, as our teachers here and elsewhwere will tell us, is the one that accepts his or her training and follows the good advice of the leaders. For our leaders and their media outlet brethren are certainly wise people who have the nations best interests in mind and in no way are they trying to make themselves rich or to enslave others.

Actually, on another note. I have used public transportation in a number of cities and find that it is lower stress than driving, lower cost, and I can spend time reading, which is rather enjoyable. Now, that said, there are a number of locations where public transportation is available but local police and their customer criminals make the system relatively dangerous, and so normal people don't use it unless they are desperate. Boston, DC, San Fran, are good systems, parts of NYC and most of Chicago are bad systems because of the crime. So, what I am saying is that these public systems would all be great except for the punk criminals and the inept cops that screw up certain ones.

For every $1T hidden in 'safe heavens', one more million Americans will have to use public transports. As more and more wealth is hidden out of the country, the 97% gets poorer and cannot afford to buy and operate private vehicles.

The above trend is getting worse. The average American worker is making less money today then in 2000, in steady 2000 dollars but buying and using a private vehicle cost 50% more.

People normally get the level of public transport security they deserve. With over 400,000,000 weapons sold in USA, many will be used against innocent and not so innocent travellers.

HarveyD stated the transportation context.

Urban mass transport may be most of what's needed. 'One moving part' electric vehicles may be the least costly means for the future "route 66" mind set.

"The rich get richer", but along the way science has given the masses refrigeration, travel, health, entertainment, comfort, .. beyond what Alexander the Great or Napoleon had.

However, there needs to be an even spectrum of consumers and products.

When it becomes 'the one percent' verse 'the remainder' - French guillotines can be replaced with 'tag/fire' rifles/scopes, IEDs, homemade cell phone hacked drones, etc, ..

HareyD, I don't doubt those numbers.

What in nature allows one member of a species to have or waste thousands of times more than the next member - for the sake of either?

Those feeding on yachts and caviar would already naturally be extinct.

How many fold better/cheaper would US public transportation be if

Very little, because the criminal class has been allowed to make it too dangerous for the law-abiding public under "civil rights" legislation.  If you want the general public to ride PT, you need an effective way of banning bad actors from ever setting foot on it, or preying on people at stops.

The "deadly arms" most frequently used against drivers and riders in the USA are fists.  If the criminal class had to risk being shot by law-abiding citizens when carrying out their predations, PT would be far less hazardous.  Citizens with concealed-carry licenses are particularly law-abiding, and also are greatly feared by criminals.  So far as PT in the USA is concerned, the more of these "riders equipped with deadly arms", the better.

I beg to differ with E-P. Arming every rider with deadly weapons will not reduce crimes on USA's public transits but bring it back to cowboy days.

Isn't the good old cowboy days mentality, ongoing growing social disparities and street gangs three of the main reasons for all those crimes?

One thing is almost certain, as social disparities grow, more people will have to use public transits and more crimes will be committed.

It is very difficult to separate bad passengers from good ones or one gang from another.

E-P has not convinced me that arming the general population with fatal weapons (like in the good old cowboy days) will make everybody safer.

On the contrary, more and more guns will promote more and more gun shots and killings. USA is the perfect example of that with about 10X our fatalities.

more and more guns will promote more and more gun shots and killings.

Your fear is based on Hollywood tropes, and a few "Old West" towns where (ironically) law enforcement imposed gun control... or tried to.  It didn't work any better then than it does on Chicago's south side today.

Reality doesn't follow your narrative.  When concealed carry was liberalized in Florida way back in 1987, the claims were that blood would flow in the streets:

critics warned that the "Sunshine State" would become the "Gunshine State." Contrary to their predictions, homicide rates dropped faster than the national average. Further, through 1997, only one permit holder out of the over 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide.

USA is the perfect example of that with about 10X our fatalities.

The USA's violent crime is primarly among two racial minorities which comprise a much smaller fraction of the population of Canada.  If you're willing to provide Section 8 housing for the former residents of Chicago and Detroit housing projects, you can have the violent crime that comes with them.

For the first time, gun fatalities (33,000) will be higher than road fatalities (32,000) in USA in 2015.

That's because you can't put seat belts and air bags on ghetto gang-bangers, and their population continues to go up.

USA has one of the highest gun fatalities (per 100,000 people) in the industrialized world.

You appear to believe that people who die from stab wounds, strangulation and blunt-force trauma somehow aren't dead.  Also, your figures include suicides.  The TOTAL homicide rate in the USA is about 6/100k.  Contrast gun-prohibiting Jamaica, which hit 58/100k in 2005.  The rate among Whites in the USA is about 2/100k.

If you could keep the criminal element off public transit, everyone else would ride it.  However, "civil rights" means that anything "discriminatory" is prohibited, even if it means pushing the law-abiding out of public accomodations.

More guns and more public transport users may mean more gun fatalities in USA

A few more gun fatalities would be a good thing, if criminals died.  Crime on the New York subway system plummeted in the immediate aftermath of Bernhard Goetz' shootings of 4 muggers.  As I said, when criminals fear their targets, the law-abiding people are safe and life is good.  Life is not good today.

"Civil rights" is code for black people, right?
So today's lesson is, black people are to blame for all of America's problems, because life was perfect under Jim Crow. Instead of putting them in the back of the bus, we shouldn't even let them ride the bus.
Except, Engineer-Poet, that your own math has a problem. If you accept that Canada's homicide rate would also go down using all your exceptions and provisos, it would still be substantially lower than the American white-only homicide rate. And Canada does have a black population, largely descended from escapees from America's slave systems and immigrants from the West Indies, meaning violent Jamaica. White Americans are still the most violent white people in the advanced world. And you and I are still more likely to be killed by someone we know than a criminal stranger.

And we know why permit holders aren't convicted of murder in Florida. They're white, and can shoot any black person they feel afraid of and claim that as a defense. Sounds like ol' Mr. Crow be comin' back.

Well said Richard.

The right to kill (between whites) was used extensively during the 'cowboys era' in USA.

Later on, it was used to kill 'non-whites" who dare to be seen with whites.

Currently, it is used to kill whoever you are afraid of or you do not like, including members of your own family. Honnor killing is even worst?

There are many other civilized, less fatal ways to express your disapproval or dislike.

The increased flow of immigrants with different and strange values and manners may be taxing the tolerance level of many.