The national economic implications of a taco truck on every corner

[babylonsister]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/02/the-national-economic-implications-of-a-taco-truck-on-every-corner/

The national economic implications of a taco truck on every corner
By Philip Bump September 2 at 9:57 AM

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The first question we must answer is how many trucks we're talking about. A corner is dependent on an intersection of street, a place where two roads meet or where one road turns. For the purposes of our thought experiment, we will assume that Gutierrez didn't mean a truck literally on every corner — that would be ridiculous. Instead, let's assume that he meant a truck at every intersection.

There doesn't appear to be an official tally of the number of intersections in the United States, in part thanks to our using this term to describe a lot of possible combinations of streets.

We do have estimates of the number of intersections with stoplights in the country, though. In 2004, the Institute of Transportation Engineers estimated that there are 265,000 "signalized intersections" in the country. But that report also included a rule of thumb suggesting a ratio between the number of intersections with stoplights and the population: For every 1,000 people, one intersection with a stoplight. That doesn't quite hold in New York City, where there are 12,460 intersections with stoplights and a population of only 8.4 million. But it's fairly close, so let's use it. That would peg the current number of intersections with stoplights in America at 322,000.

That's just intersections with stoplights, of course. Estimating how many other intersections there are is even harder. So for the sake of argument, let's assume that there are nine un-signalized intersections for every intersection with a stoplight. The density of stoplights is higher in a city — Manhattan has 2,820 signals but probably about 3,500 intersections — but out in more rural areas, they're rarer. Here's a random swath of rural Kansas: Lots of intersections, few signals.

That would give us about 3.2 million intersections in the United States. And it would mean that, per Gutierrez's vision of the future, we'd suddenly see 3.2 million conveniently located taco trucks. How ubiquitous is that? Well, it's one on every corner. But we can also compare it to Starbucks, which seems pretty ubiquitous in a lot of places. In 2012, there were about 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States.

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That, more than the cultural fearmongering some might see in Gutierrez's dire warning, is the real threat to America. A taco truck on every corner means a dramatic shift in how America views itself, sure, but it also means a new economy built on serving up burritos or developing new, more fuel-efficient box trucks. It means a change to the American way of life that Gutierrez, for one, finds unacceptable.

That means 63 million new jobs -- save for those people already employed at taco trucks, as another reader notes. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track "taco truck employees" as a separate data point.) It also means that the scale of everything else increase by a factor of seven: seven times as many mechanics and seven times as much vegetable oil sold for the deep fryers.

As you consider this important political issue, bear that in mind.

[LisaM]

1. It should help out the manufacturing sector, too

Maybe the Big Three can start making these trucks.

[doc03]

3. It will also create thousands of jobs outfitting the trucks

with a food service box. It would be a yuuuuge economic expansion. We would have so many jobs we would get tired of working.

[Wounded Bear]

2. 3.2 million new small businesses....

Any Repub worth his salt should back that one.

[Wednesdays]

4. They'd only back it if

it were 3.2 million franchises under a single corporate head.

[KatyMan]

5. I would like the

taco truck concession in Colorado please.

[longship]

6. I would be happy with one truck on a strategic corner in Albequerque.

That would be really great!

New Mexico has awesome Mexican food! Must be the peppers they grow there? That and much more! A state that respects heritage.

[IronLionZion]

7. Job Creators!

That is going to boost our economy for all types of people! The future is sounding delicious.

[Coyotl]

8. Full employment overnight.