The Auto Mall

I like knowing there will be five million fewer cars built this year than last year. This is a good thing for anyone who gives a shit about their local environments, their global environment, total energy drawdown...but this is not a good thing for Elk Grove, who just lost 34 jobs at the Elk Grove AutoMall Saturn dealership when it shut down Friday. In addition to the lost jobs, Elk Grove loses additional tax revenues from lost sales and service.

Elk Grove is as car dependent a 'city' as you can possibly find in this great nation. Without a regional shopping mall or high paying jobs to capture sales and business taxes, and without any discernable local economy of its own, its major source of revenue is its Auto Mall. The Auto Mall.

90% of its inhabitants commute in single occupant vehicles to jobs outside the city. So if 90% of Elk Grove is utterly, completely, and wholly dependent on multiple motor vehicles to perform even the most menial tasks such as getting a spare key made or getting a haircut, and the largest tax base is the sales of said motor vehicles, and 90% of the shit in their housal units is made in a foreign land because Merkian wages are non-competitive, what's the problem with evicerating the Big Three and letting 90% of their vehicles be foreign made, too?