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

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#91

Post by cerebellum42 » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

gthaman wrote: post #53

airstrike wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody drives a car in Manhattan cause traffic is just terrible!"

All kinds of excuses will be made to increase the taxes in this system where NO amount of money will add up to enough for this government. New York City in particular has a MEDICAL ONLY section of its pension benefits for city employees that adds up to $100 Billion. Medical, only. Not including pension payouts. Puerto Rico defaulted on $71 Billion worth of debt, which was all of it, just recently. This reckoning that…

You might be entirely right for all I know, but your points don't actually support your claims...

Why _would_ a city government make a profit? It's a government after all, not a business.

Comparing Puerto Rico with a city with multiple times its inhabitants and many many times its economic power isn't exactly saying much either

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#92

Post by dmix » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #60

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…

For those outside NYC, it can be difficult to understand the sheer scale of this phenomenon ("placard abuse"). https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/12/28/streetsies-2018-placa... https://twitter.com/placardabuse

That top tweet of the police just casually harassing the placard guy for filming an officer’s car is very interesting. Particularly how the officer is using carefully chosen words “I’m giving you an order to show me your ID” to skirt the fact he had no legal right to demand his ID.

So much of law enforcement abuse of power depends on intimidation and (most) people’s default reaction to trust their authority in all situations (which is also essential to their abuse of placards).

I had a similar experience where police straight up lied about tenant laws during an eviction process of the, protecting the most awful and abusive tenant (who was a cocaine dealer) a family friend had to deal with. The family member was immediately willing to believe the police, and had another family friend not been a lawyer who was familiar with tenant law and knows very well from professional experience never to trust police outright. The result was saving the family over a thousand dollars (out of multiple thousand owed), as the timing of them leaving the property, which the police was attempting to mess with, was very important in the legal process of a later claim.

The officer essentially conceded on the spot he had no legal grounds for what he had previously claimed with such confident authority, with plenty of weasel words, and just left.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#93

Post by gizmo686 » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

gthaman wrote: post #53

airstrike wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody drives a car in Manhattan cause traffic is just terrible!"

All kinds of excuses will be made to increase the taxes in this system where NO amount of money will add up to enough for this government. New York City in particular has a MEDICAL ONLY section of its pension benefits for city employees that adds up to $100 Billion. Medical, only. Not including pension payouts. Puerto Rico defaulted on $71 Billion worth of debt, which was all of it, just recently. This reckoning that…

NYC population: 8.6 million

Puerto Rico population: 3.3 million

NYC per capita GDP: 64000

Puero rico per capita GDP: 31000

Not to mention the brain drain from Puerto Rico, or there special status as an unicorporated territory (and resulting lack of political power)

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#94

Post by coredog64 » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #35

buzzdenver wrote: post #18

The way I conceptually see it is that people with lower income pay less once a year, during tax time, and save a lot of money then. All other times it's just much simpler if prices/fees/whatnot are based on actual usage. Can you imagine owning a gas station or running a parking lot and having to deal with income verification from all your clients, and then dealing with the government to get reimbursed because Joe Sch…

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…

I had a college roommate who was on food stamps as a kid. He related the story that his mom used to buy additional discounted food stamps from drunks in order to extend her family’s food budget. Sometimes you can actually get a righteous result from a bad system.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#95

Post by nihonde » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:17 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…

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 part of their livelihood. That’s just not a real thing here.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#96

Post by zaroth » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

I agree with TFA’s premise, but some of the specific arguments present are faulty.

Flat vehicle registration fees

Excise tax is not flat, and sometimes a luxury tax on top even makes it progressive. These are registration fees paid to the town instead of the state.

The storm sewer subsidy

The complaint here is that pollution is contributed by commuters / travelers but cleanup is paid by locals. The travelers polluting city storm water sewers are paying taxes in the city when they do business in the city, which is why they are using the roads. If there was no reason to come to the city, there would be a lot less stormwater pollution but also a lot less commerce and the city would be worse off.

Insurance rates

The fact that everyone pays for their own insurance means that is it not a tax. If we subsidized insurance based on income, then insurance would effectively be an income tax. Which, by the way, is true for health insurance.

Gasoline and gas taxes

Are meant to cover (part of) the externalities of driving. The same as the congestion tax the article is supporting. By covering the externality we discourage the polluting activity, which is equitable to be done for everyone who is polluting, regardless of income.

EV tax credits

If we want these (cheaper, more economical, cleaner, safer) cars to become available in the mass market, there is a multi-billion dollar R&D hill to climb. Economies of scale for li-ion and electric drivetrains do not materialize overnight. Getting rich people to spend $60-$100k on a new toy to fund this endeavor, by providing a $7500 carrot, benefits the poor and middle class in the long run. Hell, it benefits the whole planet in the long run. The rich people are putting up a lot more capital than the Federal government in this equation to make mass scale EV a reality. This is a huge win and to say it is inequitable totally misses the point of the subsidy.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#97

Post by rdiddly » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #57

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…

In the Bay Area, when they added the ability to pay a toll to use the HOV lane, and also extended the HOV lane hours to end at 10AM instead of 9AM, it immediately added 30-45 minutes to the 880 -> 237 commute from East Bay. Extending congestion hours by lowering road throughput is counterproductive, so saying “it smoothed congestion” is applying the wrong metric. At this point in time, we can measure door-to-door tim…

Improving your commute by car isn't the goal. The goal is to get you to stop doing it, or bear your share of the real costs for a change.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#98

Post by coredog64 » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #32

buzzdenver wrote: post #18

The way I conceptually see it is that people with lower income pay less once a year, during tax time, and save a lot of money then. All other times it's just much simpler if prices/fees/whatnot are based on actual usage. Can you imagine owning a gas station or running a parking lot and having to deal with income verification from all your clients, and then dealing with the government to get reimbursed because Joe Sch…

The author isn't suggesting that gas taxes should vary with income. His point is that they're a flat tax and flat taxes are regressive.

I’ve made similar comments in other discussions, but there’s an element of redlining to this. Upper middle class people push for ever higher safety standards in new motor vehicles. This pushes the retail price higher for new cars, but also has the follow on effect of raising the price of newer used cars. As a result, vehicle consumers at the bottom of the economic ladder wind up with cars that are less safe, less efficient, and less reliable.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#99

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #96

I agree with TFA’s premise, but some of the specific arguments present are faulty. Flat vehicle registration fees Excise tax is not flat, and sometimes a luxury tax on top even makes it progressive. These are registration fees paid to the town instead of the state. The storm sewer subsidy The complaint here is that pollution is contributed by commuters / travelers but cleanup is paid by locals. The travelers pollutin…

And clearly gasoline taxes aren't high enough if trucks and SUVs are the best-selling vehicles in the US. The effect of higher gasoline taxes wouldn't be higher taxes overall in many cases, it would simply mean people driving smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#100

Post by miketery » Sun, Feb 03, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

nihonde wrote: post #95

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…

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…

Couln't agree more. Better for walk ability, can increase number of dedicated bus lanes, have express lines, and local van lines. With the density in new york, you could have these buses and vans running all day, it would give much better access to subways and importantly can alleviate subway needs at night (why run a train every 30 minutes with 8 nearly empty cars, if you can instead run 2 buses every 30 minutes, or a bus every 15 min).

for buses Otherwise there will be clear roads to have a good bus system that can run express and local lines better, can start shutting down the subway for a few hours a day, and the bus should work just as well