Who and when is "a long time ago we decided" The way you present your points of view would lead one to believe that you consider yourself one of those "experts". I don't recall ever voting to give anyone that kind of authority and our constitution was specifically written to limit the federal government to things like defense, foreign affairs and interstate commerce. The 10th amendment specifically states that if it's not mentioned in the constitution it falls to the states or the people.

You obviously are not a fan of a free-market economy and prefer a socialist form of government where the government decides what's best for us. Free market economics has done more to raise the world out of poverty than any other system. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried and it has been tried a lot. No system is perfect but capitalism has by far the best record when everyone acts in their own self interest.

A lot of strong opinions here! Here’s mine:

Yes capitalism is the most effective way for people to extricate themselves from poverty. Look at China. Their standard of living has gone up tremendously. Yes they still have a Communist federal government, but they’ve had to let regular people practice capitalism.

Europeans are happier than Americans are. Compared to what? Pretty hard to compare without having been on the other side.

I was married to a woman from Australia for a short time. What they call democracy we call socialism. Their democracy has no Bill of Rights like we do. That’s how their government was able to take away and prevent citizens from owning guns. And if you didn’t turn your weapons in, you faced prison time. There was no letting the people vote on gun ownership, some politicians made that decision on their own and to hell with what the public wanted.

Her son and I had some very in depth discussions on how our governments differed. Something I’ve never forgotten was when he said, “Your Bill of Rights is to keep your government from taking over. We don’t have anything like that.”

His mother and I were watching the local news. It showed some neo-Nazis peacefully marching in Jefferson City MO and a bunch of protesters jumped some of them and were arrested by the police. She couldn’t believe the cops arrested the “good guys” and let the bad guys go on with their parade. I explained that our first amendment guarantees freedom of speech even if the people or the cops don’t like what they say. The marchers had obtained the necessary permits and were being peaceful, hence the first amendment worked like it was supposed to.

So it’s hard to say that Europeans are happier than we are because they don’t know what it’s like here. Sweden is a socialist government with free higher education, free healthcare and so on. My buddy’s cousin runs a furniture factory in Sweden and the government takes 90% of his wages. Not a lot of incentive to work harder and earn more money if the government takes most of it to support the lazy deadbeats who know they are going to get the same services without working as those that do work.

So what's the answer for the car emissions problem? Cars represent the planet's single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions; far more than power plants, arctic methane releases, industrial sources, etc. I don't want to get into an argument about the validity of human contributions to climate change but even the nay sayers admit climate change exists and if we can reduce its effects to leave a viable planet to our grand children, shouldn't we?

In the late 1800's when steam (and even electric) were the chief automobile power sources, gas cars were in the same position as EVs, today. We just need to improve the technology or find a better one. Unfortunately, we can't waste 50 years waiting to see what comes along.