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Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

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Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#251

Post by mcv »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125
nicoburns wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> That, or companies implement flexible working hours, which allow time shifting without penalty. The issue there is the two aren't that related. Congestion pricing doesn't get employers to implement flexible working hours, because most of the cost or the inconvenience of using alternatives is on the employee. By contrast, if you passed a law requiring large employers in the city to implement flexible working hours,…

No, many people who have flexible hours still somehow choose to spend time in traffic jams. Considering congestion pricing has been proven to work, I really think that's the right way to encourage people either to drive at different times, or out of their cars and into public transit or bikes.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#252

Post by mcv »

gnopgnip wrote: post #113
hedora wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t work if you have kids. You miss seeing them in either the morning or evening, and the schools don’t time shift to match your schedule.

If you have kids and work either the kids can get to school without you needing to drive them and pick them up, or you need to have some sort of childcare.

I bring my kids to school, my wife picks them up from child care. She barely sees them in the morning (they get out of bed shortly before she leaves the house), I still see them in the evening. It's a nice balance.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#253

Post by zdragnar »

benologist wrote: post #67
zdragnar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was approached twice on the same day at a cub foods once by people offering to buy my groceries with their food stamps in exchange for a lesser amount of cash. I still think the program is valuable, but damn it hurts to see it be abused (especially since one of the guys had his little kid with him). A discount card or whatever that works on the spot is practically guaranteed to be abused as an easy money maker for…

If the majority of people are acting responsibly within the program does abuse warrant changing policies for everyone else, ie optimizing around the frauds, or should abuse be handled separately? When GOG.com optimized around the frauds they came up with a refund policy for their ethicals that's driven by preventing the frauds, now their real customers wanting refunds must work within a hostile framework designed to…

This is all rather off-topic from what I was originally replying to (a purely hypothetical means of subsidizing a hypothetical tax), but what do you imagine could be done to change the food stamp policies?

The scam was simple enough- he'd buy $100 of groceries for me, and I'd hand him $80 in cash. The one guy was practically taking food out of his kid's mouth (almost literally, in fact) to try to get that cash. Maybe it was a legit need, maybe it was for crack (fairly popular in that area of town).

Either way, if he found someone to do it, he and his family would continue living off of the cheapest foods and charity, while he'd have some unreported money.

Food stamps themselves are already a compromise; the reason we have them rather than handing out cold hard cash (like he wanted) was because we wanted some assurance that it would go towards a legitimate need, rather than fueling an addiction or luxury goods.

Short of getting family members to turn fraudsters in or having grocery store employees act as police informants, I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to improve the system at all, without even considering the burden of new policies on good actors.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#254

Post by mcv »

mikeash wrote: post #26
rocgf wrote: post #2

> parking meters don’t charge different rates to users based on their income; you have to pay the same amount to park your used Jetta as you do your new Mercedes [...] That’s inequitable. I guess it depends on which end of the political spectrum you are, but this sounds absolutely obscene to me.

I don’t understand why this example is there at all. This is just a product being sold for a price. Is it unfair that a banana costs the same for Jeff Bezos as it does for the homeless guy he walked past on his way to the store? I mean, you certainly could argue that this is unfair, but at that point you’re basically arguing for a different concept of money and commerce, which is a rather bigger subject than the unfa…

It's just an example of something that's not any more fair than congestion pricing. Congestion pricing puts a price on a scarce product: the ability to commute during rush hour.

The article isn't arguing that parking prices should depend on the price of the car being parked, just that having the same parking price for everybody is not any less inequitable than congestion pricing.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#255

Post by mcv »

avar wrote: post #73
oneplane wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tax is not the only one paying for the roads; the normal tax on fuel and the fuel-specific tax on top of that (which also differs per type of fuel) offsets the heavier engines or heavier users. At the same time, a project people abandoned a few times (mostly because or scare tactics) is in the works to see if we can lower or abandon some of the taxes in favour of usage-based taxes measured by vehicle kilometers…

Fuel taxes are just another version of taxing the wrong thing. People using gasoline for e.g. yard equipment aren't using the roads, but they're effectively paying road tax to trim their hedge. Someone who owns a Tesla also isn't paying their road tax. Taxes and tolls should be based on what/where/when you drive. Someone driving in circles in downtown Amsterdam in the middle of the day is causing a lot more externali…

  > Fuel taxes are just another version of taxing the wrong thing.
It's not really the wrong thing, it's a different thing. Fuel taxes make a lot of sense as carbon taxes to pay for the pollution you're causing.

Ultimately, though, it's complicated to tax everybody exactly for the societal costs they're causing. Taxing just the weight of the car doesn't take usage into account. Taxing fuel doesn't sufficiently take weight into account. To tax people correctly for road use you'd have to keep detailed track of how much they use their car, and that may get rather invasive into people's privacy.

That said, it's pretty clear that cars cause more externalities than they're being taxed for.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#256

Post by benologist »

zdragnar wrote: post #253
benologist wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the majority of people are acting responsibly within the program does abuse warrant changing policies for everyone else, ie optimizing around the frauds, or should abuse be handled separately? When GOG.com optimized around the frauds they came up with a refund policy for their ethicals that's driven by preventing the frauds, now their real customers wanting refunds must work within a hostile framework designed to…

This is all rather off-topic from what I was originally replying to (a purely hypothetical means of subsidizing a hypothetical tax), but what do you imagine could be done to change the food stamp policies? The scam was simple enough- he'd buy $100 of groceries for me, and I'd hand him $80 in cash. The one guy was practically taking food out of his kid's mouth (almost literally, in fact) to try to get that cash. Maybe…

I think the solution is to treat their pursuit of cash, as it pertains to the food stamp program, as just a red herring, a distraction. Some food stamp funding probably ends up in exploitative mobile game IAPs, unhealthy food etc, can't police it without massively impeding everyone's privacy and independence but 0.9% fraud means the program's overwhelmingly working as intended so why bother?

If something is to be done to help the addicts, the ill, the obese etc so they spend food stamp funding more effectively it should address their addictions and illnesses and problems. Those are health and education and social services issues.

Address that and you could actually start asking why there needs to be restrictions at all on what people can buy with food stamps... they're supposed to be help people below poverty live at normal standards, which includes spending money irresponsibly or at their own discretion!

People on that program can't buy necessities like toilet paper, laundry detergent, soap, diapers, tampons, deodorant, lip balm, I think that is a bigger problem than 0.9% fund misuse especially when such conditions might contribute to the 'misuse'.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-kerr/10-things-you-cant-b...

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#257

Post by knitHacker »

electric_muse wrote: post #131
nihonde wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in lower Manhattan. My feeling is that every vehicle other than delivery trucks should be banned from the city. There is no compelling reason for anyone to drive in Manhattan. If people are commuting into Manhattan, they should take public transit to and from parking lots in Brooklyn/Queens/New Jersey. You will never convince me that there are low income workers who need to drive in the city as an essential pa…

My compelling reason is that I live in Manhattan and frequently make trips to visit family that are not well served by public transportation. And when I'm there, I prefer using a vehicle to get around. I often return to New York with a carful of groceries, luggage, etc. I've tried this via public transit -- it's a miserable affair. The utility of a personal vehicle for me is very high -- perhaps substantially higher…

You make it sound like owning a car in Manhattan is just a matter of choice when it is an extreme luxury and an inconvenient one at that. That's at least $1000 (probably more) on something you definitely won't use every day and definitely don't need.

My SO and I each make 6 figures each and will only own a car once we move out of Manhattan because no matter how inconvenient it is it's not fiscally responsible.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#258

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jacobolus wrote: post #240
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Riding the train, subway, trolley, or bus and walking a couple blocks at each end is a heck of a lot “better” than sitting in traffic or driving 20 times around the block hunting for a parking space. Then what do you need congestion pricing for? You don't need to suppress something that's worse than the alternative because if that were true nobody should have any desire to do it to begin with. > Even moderately den…

I said “Getting rid of most of the cars and putting people on trains does wonders for peak throughput.” That is clearly an entirely different proposal than “congestion pricing”. The context was another comment criticizing congestion pricing as more or less a band-aid and advocating for increasing transportation throughput instead of trying to shift demand. I was agreeing with that comment and proposing radical change…

> I said “Getting rid of most of the cars and putting people on trains does wonders for peak throughput.” That is clearly an entirely different proposal than “congestion pricing”.

That is not clearly an entirely different proposal than "congestion pricing". "Getting rid of most of the cars and putting people on trains" is exactly what congestion pricing proponents argue that it does. But doing it that way can't increase throughput because there is at most at one to one relationship between people deterred from driving and people who take the train.

And in the context of a response to a comment criticizing congestion pricing, yours sounds like a comment defending it.

> Your nonsensical response was that replacing roads by trains wouldn’t actually increase throughput because people like car trips better.

My actual response was this:

Getting people on trains by forcing them out of cars can't actually do that. If you make it more expensive/inconvenient/impossible to drive, at most the same number of people will take the train. In practice fewer will, because some of them will find jobs somewhere else or do their shopping somewhere else etc. So the combined throughput inherently goes down.

The only way to get it to go up is to make something better instead of making something worse.

All of which is still entirely true. If you want to increase throughput, don't make driving worse, make alternatives to driving better.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#259

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #239
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? You seem to have an implicit hierarchy of transportation, and public transit is at the bottom of it. No, many people prefer it -- everyone who uses it does. And everyone who drives prefers to drive. Because they both have the option to do the other thing. But getting one person to stop driving can't get two people to use mass transit. Where is the other person supposed to come from? Why would someone who hadn'…

> No, many people prefer it -- everyone who uses it does. And everyone who drives prefers to drive. Because they both have the option to do the other thing. There are many parts of the US where this isn't the case, because cars are the only transportation available. That said, I think you're wrong about these strongly held preferences. There a decent amount of people who just want to get to where they're going and do…

> There are many parts of the US where this isn't the case, because cars are the only transportation available.

There are few places that have no level of at least bus service. And bicycling and walking are generally considered mass transit, which you can do in every part of the US I'm aware of. The number of places accessible only by car is negligible.

But the mass transit in many places is terrible, to the point that a fifteen minute drive becomes a thirty minute walk followed by a twenty minute bus ride followed by a two hour walk. And the preference for cars comes in comparison to the alternative for the person making the choice, so people in those places obviously have a strong preference for cars.

You could get them to prefer the bus there by making the car trip take three hours or cost $100, but what good is that? Whose life does it improve?

> There a decent amount of people who just want to get to where they're going and don't necessarily care how.

That's the point. If you want more people to take the bus, don't make it worse to drive, make it better to take the bus. You get the result you want, but you do it by improving someone's life instead of making it worse.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#260

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mcv wrote: post #251
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That, or companies implement flexible working hours, which allow time shifting without penalty. The issue there is the two aren't that related. Congestion pricing doesn't get employers to implement flexible working hours, because most of the cost or the inconvenience of using alternatives is on the employee. By contrast, if you passed a law requiring large employers in the city to implement flexible working hours,…

No, many people who have flexible hours still somehow choose to spend time in traffic jams. Considering congestion pricing has been proven to work, I really think that's the right way to encourage people either to drive at different times, or out of their cars and into public transit or bikes.

> No, many people who have flexible hours still somehow choose to spend time in traffic jams.

That is not evidence of a preference for sitting in traffic, it is evidence of a need to drive at that time for a reason other than work schedule. Which is only relevant for the subset of people with that constraint.

You don't actually need everyone to stop driving during rush hour -- that wouldn't even be efficient. You only need enough people to relieve the congestion.

> Considering congestion pricing has been proven to work, I really think that's the right way to encourage people either to drive at different times, or out of their cars and into public transit or bikes.

Congestion pricing works in the same way that hiring someone to throw bricks off an overpass into car windshields during rush hour would work. Effectiveness on a single metric is not the only criteria.

There are at least two major problems with congestion pricing. The first is that it can only really improve one thing -- traffic during peak times -- which only really matters to the people who are still driving at those times, who then have the benefit offset by the cost of the congestion charge. For lower income people the cost will generally outweigh the benefit. So the primary beneficiaries are people who continue to drive regardless and are so rich that the congestion charge isn't real money to them, at the cost of increased inconvenience for everyone who is deterred and increased cost for everyone who isn't (because their other alternatives are even worse) but still values that amount of money more highly than the reduced congestion.

The second problem is that it doesn't account for different levels of flexibility. Some people simply have no viable alternative. An independent steamfitter or HVAC tech can't carry all their equipment on the subway. Can't work at 4AM instead of 9AM because the customer isn't open then. The only choice is to eat the congestion charge -- thousands of dollars a year. There is no discount just because that person had no other option.

On top of that, the whole thing is a false dichotomy. The choices aren't "have congestion" or "have congestion pricing" -- there are many other, better ways to relieve congestion. Build more and higher density housing so that people can afford to live closer to where they work and more people live within walking distance of mass transit. Improve mass transit in general so that more people will actually choose it over driving without being forced to. Eliminate minimum parking requirements so that housing without it will exist (and cost less) and we reward the people who don't drive rather than punishing the people who have to. In general, use the carrot instead of the stick.

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