Things that are more inequitable than road pricing • Hacker News Board

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#81

Post by devereaux » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #77

devereaux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds obscene to me too. A car uses a parking spot. The spot is no longer available for someone else- regardless of your income. Incomes is orthogonal to the problem. Flat taxes are the fairest taxes. Take trash taxes for example: you produce 100 lbs of trash, you pay for 100 lbs of trash because disposing of 100 lbs of trash in a landfill or a recycling facility won't be affected by the income of the person havi…

Flat taxes are not the fairest taxes for a very simple reason: the decreasing marginal utility of money. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility... If you're poor, a tax - no matter how small - affects things like food expenditure. If you're income rich, the difference tax makes affects things like what kind of car you buy or what quality of hotel you stay at when you're on vacation. These are no…

Decreasing marginal utility of money is just a theory, and there are many flaws in the theory - including measuring happiness with a discrete scale of questionable boundaries (5=very happy, etc.), considering self administered questions at face value, etc.

Another theory is hedonic adaptation- you adapt to whatever and regress to a baseline.

Finally, there seems to be proof that some people do not spent their money on what will make them happier, the typical example being buying an object instead of an experience.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#82

Post by graeme » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

DataWorker wrote: post #76

tgb wrote: post #51

I think most of the comments here are misunderstanding the article. It seems to be saying "Don't say congestion pricing is inequitable without also saying that these are things that we already have are inequitable." It's meant as a counter-argument to people saying "but congestion pricing is regressive against poor people therefore we shouldn't have it." So if you think that gas pricing should not have to be based on…

Gas taxes and congestion prices are different. If you can’t grasp that then you probably don’t see the foolishness of the original article and probably are as confused as the articles author about what critics of congestion pricing think and why.

Why? In both cases the user of gas and roads is creating negative externalities for others. Taxing them compensates for the externalities. The externalities aren't dependent on income, so an income based tax doesn't seem appropriate.

Externalities are:

* Wear and tear on roads

* Congestion

* Cost of policing roads

* Road deaths and accidents

* urban pollution

* co2 increase

The latter two don't apply to electric cars, and urban pollution doesn't apply to a gas tax on rural drivers. Otherwise they both seems to be things either a gas tax or congestion charge could make up for.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#83

Post by devereaux » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #69

bilbo0s wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside NYC, they probably never even heard of "placard abuse".

Until I moved here, I hadn't heard of it. The lawlessness of law enforcement is striking. It's doubly galling when it's "courtesy" extended to non-police. A lot of officers can argue that they need to get to work and they need to park somewhere. Police cars also have to be parked somewhere. The City will need a carrot as well as a stick. But when it's stuff like "NYPD Family Member", I think only of collecting and sh…

You should read about the "walk out of jail" cards that are made for each member, to be distributed to family members.

There's a thriving secondary market for that.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#84

Post by paganel » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #42

ddebernardy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's introduce a point system with quotas tied to license plates and surge point deduction. [...] Unless of course some of the rich decide to buy additional cars just so they can drive more - although I don't think many would be willing to go to such lengths. During pollution spikes in Paris, the city occasionally alternates each day between forbidding odd or even ending car plates from circulating downtown. The r…

Does it make financial sense comparing to taxis, or do they just buy some kind of barely-allowed shitbox as a substitute?

I’d guess that from a certain point on you don’t look at the financial incentives only, but that you want to maintain your “status” (for different definitions of that word depending on different social environments).

For example I know of people close to my age (late 30s) and from my social circles (middle-class people) who pride themselves for almost never using the metro, even though in the city where I’m living (Eastern Europe) the metro does a pretty good job at transporting most of the city’s population. As such, if a system that would forbid car circulation based on their license plates were to be introduced I’m pretty much sure that those same people would buy a second car especially in order to circumvent the new rules, and I’m also pretty much sure that that second car would be almost as “good” as their first car. Doing otherwise would be seen as a diminishing of those people’s social standing.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#85

Post by andrewem » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

DataWorker wrote: post #76

tgb wrote: post #51

I think most of the comments here are misunderstanding the article. It seems to be saying "Don't say congestion pricing is inequitable without also saying that these are things that we already have are inequitable." It's meant as a counter-argument to people saying "but congestion pricing is regressive against poor people therefore we shouldn't have it." So if you think that gas pricing should not have to be based on…

Gas taxes and congestion prices are different. If you can’t grasp that then you probably don’t see the foolishness of the original article and probably are as confused as the articles author about what critics of congestion pricing think and why.

I've downvoted your comment, because you claim without explanation that "gas taxes and congestion prices are different", and therefore the article is foolish. Maybe you're right in some meaningful way, but showing that will require some evidence or explanation.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#86

Post by nicoburns » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #70

jonstewart wrote: post #47

In Northern Virginia outside DC, I-66 had been subject to directional rush hour restrictions on single occupancy vehicles. It was illegal to drive a car with just yourself for a few hours every weekday and you risked a ticket if you were caught. People put blow up dolls in their passenger seats. Last year they rolled out automatic congestion pricing for SOVs. All the news stories were about how the toll could hit a r…

> Commuters have effectively time-shifted, alleviating and smoothing congestion. It has been so effective that the length of I-66 subject to this treatment will be extended. Also, has anyone computed the cost of the economic externalities here? Time shifting ones commute either has severe financial repercussions for the employer (lost productivity) or the employees (a decrease in effective wages). I suspect those num…

> Also, has anyone computed the cost of the economic externalities here? Time shifting ones commute either has severe financial repercussions for the employer (lost productivity) or the employees (a decrease in effective wages).

That, or companies implement flexible working hours, which allow time shifting without penalty.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#87

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #82

DataWorker wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas taxes and congestion prices are different. If you can’t grasp that then you probably don’t see the foolishness of the original article and probably are as confused as the articles author about what critics of congestion pricing think and why.

Why? In both cases the user of gas and roads is creating negative externalities for others. Taxing them compensates for the externalities. The externalities aren't dependent on income, so an income based tax doesn't seem appropriate. Externalities are: * Wear and tear on roads * Congestion * Cost of policing roads * Road deaths and accidents * urban pollution * co2 increase The latter two don't apply to electric cars…

I drive an electric car. It is CO2 free only at the (hypothetical) tailpipe, not across the entire generation cycle. My car emits CO2 for every mile driven, just not right in the urban center.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#88

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #45

Author uses a really backwards definition of equitable. Equability is not about making every price defined as percentage of income. Equability is about making things so cheap that everyone can easily afford them, regardless of income. In perfect equitably, everything would be free. Public Schools are equitable, because every child can attend public school, there are no barriers to attendance. Public Water utility sys…

> Public Schools are equitable, because every child can attend public school, there are no barriers to attendance.

My experience of seeing/evaluating/considering public schools in rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods suggests that public schooling in the US is far from equitable.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#89

Post by cimmanom » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #34

I don't know about other cities, but to understand the strong political push back against congestion pricing in NYC requires a bunch of local context. Neither the rich+, nor the poor, nor the vast majority of the middle class regularly commute into Manhattan by car. The poor and the lower/middle middle class because parking is prohibitively expensive. The upper middle class and the rich because they either live in Ma…

And the other people who drive into Manhattan are those who live outside the 5 boroughs. And since the MTA is controlled by the state rather than the city, their votes on the issue (and those of people who live nowhere near the city and never visit but can't conceive of using anything but a personal car for transportation) outnumber those of the city dwellers who are most impacted by the noise, pollution, and transit slowdowns caused by congestion.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#90

Post by jabl » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

robertAngst wrote: post #21

For the people who believe this is fair and just- Should engineers and programmers pay more money for the same laptop as an art student? I'm unsure if this pricing should only exist in the public sector or should extend to private services. Looking to hear your rationale. I'm one of those, treat everyone equal, types. Would like to hear your reason.

> I'm one of those, treat everyone equal, types. Would like to hear your reason.

Here's a thought experiment: Imagine that you are born as any random person in a society. You could be born as a white male of exceptional intelligence with 1% rich parents, or you could be born as a girl of a minority race to junkie parents and suffer from mental health issues your entire life. Now, without knowing what kind of person you're born as, design a just society in terms of, say, the level of income redistribution, tax-provided health care, or whatnot.

Getting back to your original question of whether somebody should pay more for a laptop than somebody else; well, IF you accept (some amount of) income redistribution, it's more of a technical question how to implement it. I imagine it'd be easier to implement with income redistribution, social spending on low-income citizens or whatnot rather than having wealth- or income-dependent prices on everything.