The Good: Gay marriage is allowed in California beginning on June 16th. While some of you may not care, the gravity of the situation is that this could help California to get its head above water again. California, along with many other states in the Nation, is slowly facing more and more difficulty keeping its normal schedule. Increased costs and low tax income means that the city is forced to rely on whatever it can scrounge up.

This is where gay marriage comes in. The gay marriage allowance will allow thousands of couples in the state to marry; this causes the brides and grooms to spend money, as well as the guests that they fly in. Approximately 50,000 same-sex couples are intending to marry in California in the next three years. This means that dress shops, bakeries, hotels, and airlines will all see business. Also the state is poised to collect $9 million in marriage license fees and $64 million in tax revenue from these couples and their visitors. So what does this show us? Let gay marriage happen. If larger metropolitan states start allowing gay marriage, maybe we will see a little more green in our economy.

The Bad: We all know that gas prices are through the roof right now (the trip to freshman orientation yesterday could have broke the bank thanks to gas) and thus it is encouraging more people to stop driving. As an alternative, people are stepping onto buses, subways, and trams to get from place to place. While it is great to see people utilizing these services, and even better to see it working out, there is of course a problem. The mass transit system in some cities are not able to cope with this huge increase in riders. Older transit systems (like the New York subway system) never expected this, and were not designed for it. Some bus systems can not cope with all the riders they now pick up. While some cities are expanding and putting money in, still more are stuck between the rock of gas prices and the hard place of renovation. The cities that are currently the worst off are: Indianapolis, Orlando, and Raleigh. Just goes to show it is time to change the system for what is hopefully a permanent increase in riders.