331–340 of 388 posts
But the real overlooked issue is the cost of roads. They cost millions per mile -- and that cost largely is a reflection of the fact that road building is not competitive. Find a way to innovate this side of the issue -- bringing road costs down multiple factors -- and the taxation issue largely evaporates.
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This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day. There was a time when I think that would have been seen as a public good, and thus people were ok with that. Now is not that time. Comparing this with free public education, by not charging user fees to attend school, we are subsidizing (a) having children, and (b) educating them at the expense of the c…
Most public schools I have been a part of charge "optional" fees. There seems to be constant fund-raising for both extracurricular activities and general school funds as well as requests from students for classroom supplies. The bulk of the funding comes from the school taxes.
That said, you should listen to the podcast “Nice White Parents.” It points out that this model of underfunding the schools and making up for it with donations is essentially letting wealthy families buy their way out of the problem while leaving disadvantaged students behind.
These moves always come out of some sense of unfairness about electric vehicles not paying gasoline tax. However, we want people to stop using gasoline, and it makes no sense to punish people for doing a net good thing for society by abandoning ICE vehicles. To truly make a fair system, the payments for road maintenance should be proportional to the damage done to the road by the vehicle. Thus, fees should scale expo…
I believe road wear is calculated as the 4th power of axle weight. Trucks have many axles to distribute the load, and are forced to stop at weigh stations to verify that they are within weight requirements. As far as road tax, the current system works pretty fairly for ICE engines, in my opinion. The larger the vehicle, the more powerful the engine, and thus the lower the efficiency. So semis are paying higher road t…
It is my impression that straight up net metering is very rare. It certainly isn't a thing in the UK where you will generally be paid much less for exporting to the grid than you will pay for importing from the grid.
Moreover, as I recall, everywhere I've lived (several different countries) separated out a standing charge for grid maintenance from electricity usage. It is certainly the case where I am now.
I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…
> tax all drivers based on (... kms driven This is just not realistic to apply, and especially in Australia. You'd need someone to actually record those numbers, which would be a massive overhead of salaries on its own. Then you have crazy distances... you'd either send the inspector to that single farm 300km from the nearest town, or force people running it to being the trucks in for a check monthly.
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Everybody is receiving benefits from well maintained roads, just like everyone is receiving benefits from schools. Why special taxes for users unless you want to discourage use? Just pay for maintenance from the general budget.
If you pay for maintenance from the general budget, you are allowing shipping companies (for example) to externalize cost that they incur on society. This is generally a bad thing, but very concretely it led to road traffic growing much faster than rail traffic (or canal ship traffic) even in countries with a very dense rail network.
I can't help but see this as a regressive use tax in many ways, since it'll likely apply to lower value items at a higher proportion which is what poorer people would be buying. The end user pays in either case, but doing it through taxation policy allows for a measured approach.
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> towing your boat/jet ski etc. A 180-200 BHP sedan can tow a trailer quite easily. You don't need a big SUV for that.
horsepower is rarely the limiting factor for a sedan's towing capacity. a sedan's chassis is only designed to withstand accelerating and stopping its own weight (plus a margin for safety and internal cargo of a reasonable mass). you could probably get away with towing a jetski with a typical sedan, but anything much heavier than that risks bending the chassis. even if a car can tow something without deforming itself,…
What you're saying is likely not true.
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Wikipedia says damage is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#cite_ref-13
I remember my dad telling me that when I was in my late teens. That it’s the fourth power startled me. To give an idea of what this means: For a 50 tonne semi-trailer with five axles, (⁵⁰⁄₅)⁴ = 10,000 units of damage. 2 tonne vehicle with two axles, 1 unit of damage. That one truck, only 25 times as heavy as a pretty heavy car, is doing 10,000 times as much damage to the road. Thus indeed if you have basically any he…
There's many more passenger cars than freight trucks on the roads.
It doesn't change the math all that much, but the 1-to-1 comparisons in the thread didn't account for this factor.
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This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day. There was a time when I think that would have been seen as a public good, and thus people were ok with that. Now is not that time. Comparing this with free public education, by not charging user fees to attend school, we are subsidizing (a) having children, and (b) educating them at the expense of the c…
>"This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day." Hence greatly increasing chances of finding better or any employment and at least partially reducing pressure employers can come up with. ... You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you pay for maintenance from the general budget, you are allowing shipping companies (for example) to externalize cost that they incur on society. This is generally a bad thing, but very concretely it led to road traffic growing much faster than rail traffic (or canal ship traffic) even in countries with a very dense rail network.
Trade and economy are vital for a modern society though. If costs were instead born by the shipping companies they'd be put into the price of goods sold. I can't help but see this as a regressive use tax in many ways, since it'll likely apply to lower value items at a higher proportion which is what poorer people would be buying. The end user pays in either case, but doing it through taxation policy allows for a meas…
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Because you want to discourage use.
But now you're making a statement which is too general. There is no benefit to discouraging use of highways at night, or uncongested suburban/rural roads. The thing you really want to prevent is congestion. And even that is not inherently best solved through punitive fees. If you can reduce congestion by e.g. building more housing near where people work so they don't have to commute as far, that's preferable to levyi…
Furthermore, continuing to build more travel lanes to alleviate congestion has been shown to simply lead to more traffic. It’s a circular problem.
We are finally seeing this turn around in a very painful way in Silicon Valley. There’s no longer political will, nor is there tax revenue, to keep expanding the highways. As a result, commute times have gone up dramatically. As a further result, over the past decade, I’ve watched previously undesirable near suburbs like Sunnyvale and Santa Clara be bid up dramatically in housing price as people have realized that spending 3 hours per day in their car isn’t worth having a giant house with a giant yard in the far south suburbs like Morgan Hill and Gilroy.