The absence of both taxes to fund the infrastructure proposal marks a shift from Buttigieg's comments Friday.
"I think that shows a lot of promise," Buttigieg said of the mileage tax. "If we believe in that so-called user pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive.... The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it -- it's not anymore, so a so-called vehicle-miles-traveled tax or mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be a way to do it... [I]f there's a way to do it that doesn't increase the burden on the middle class, we can look at it, but if we do, we've got to recognize that's still not going to be the long-term answer."
That was last Friday, after which Buttigieg got "roasted" (according to The Week). The big problem with that "user pays principle" is that richer people live in the more close-in suburbs and have the benefit of a shorter commute, and the poorer people who must buy further-out real estate and put up with a longer commute would now be expected to pay more for their opposite-of-privilege.
Here's Buttigieg displaying absurd glibness embracing the principle and acting like he and that principle never met:
As @jaketapper says after, "something of a backtrack" on this:https://t.co/FBafw2Tudx
— The Recount (@therecount) March 29, 2021
Posts
123 comments:
The Twitter feed is denying Buttigieg even said it. Typical...
Actually, the mileage tax or fee will be the only way to fund highways soon, with the electric cars and the high fuel efficiency of modern cars. Toll roads would work but Democrats hate toll roads.
"The big problem with that "user pays principle" is that richer people live in the more close-in suburbs and have the benefit of a shorter commute, and the poorer people who must buy further-out real estate and put up with a longer commute would now be expected to pay more for their opposite-of-privilege."
That, and there's not a chance in hell they'd remove all taxes on gas.
Yeah, the whole gas tax is a time honored way to extract money from the hated rural middle class. Sort of like the lottery tickets and taxes on cigarettes I suppose.
Whether you have a car or not, everyone depends on truck traffic to deliver their toilet paper to Costco. Couple that with your observation that poor urbanites tend to have longer commutes than wealthy urbanites and you have a tax completely out of whack with actual behavior.
And, of course, the only way to enforce this tax is to monitor everyone's driving. (For a hint of where this is heading, look at how toll data was used when the Northeast instituted EZ-Pass.)
Liberals have embraced Modern Monetary Theory, which espouses the notion the fed can print money forever without any consequences. No need to tax. Where has Butti been?
Michael K has a point re the effect of electric cars. You could put a heavy tax on diesel fuel since 18 wheelers put a disproportionate amount of wear on highways. But that raises the cost of goods transported by truck.
Diesel fuel for off road construction equipment doesn't pay the tax on diesel fuel--and I would assume that the diesel fuel used in railroad locomotives is also not subject to the highway fuel tax.
we need a "user pays" system for public education and welfare.
Haha! Who am I kidding? OF COURSE there's reason to tax. Government has to claw back private property from it's lemmings somehow...
A gas tax is a mileage tax.
My wife and I both used to commute 2-3 hours per day, every day to work.
We are considered wealthy by some, but not even close to rich enough to be able to live near our offices without seriously downsizing...
But in general, high gas prices ($4/gal. regular where I live) hurt the poor and middle class the most...
In addition, wealthy people have more stuff. That has to come over the roads. Shouldn't they pay for the privilege?
"we need a "user pays" system for public education and welfare."
Interesting about the public education part...we pay a lot in property taxes and never used the public schools...
You could say that we indirectly benefit by having an educated population, but with the crap they're teaching in schools these days, there is no longer a reason to support public or most private schools.
Like Boy George, he's a man without conviction.
Karma, karma, karma chameleon, he comes and goes, comes and goes.
Actually, the mileage tax or fee will be the only way to fund highways soon, with the electric cars and the high fuel efficiency of modern cars. Toll roads would work but Democrats hate toll roads.
Yes. Government sees the problem with taxing electric vehicles and the gas tax. Sure they want to incentivize you buying an EV but they still need their chunk out of you goddammit...
"In addition, wealthy people have more stuff. That has to come over the roads. Shouldn't they pay for the privilege?"
You didn't build that...lol.
I had thought Buttegieg's only qualification for this job was that he was gay. But it turns out, he's also a good poker-faced liar! The Party hit the lottery with that pick.
"Actually, the mileage tax or fee will be the only way to fund highways soon, with the electric cars and the high fuel efficiency of modern cars."
Who says electricity can't be taxed?
"I had thought Buttegieg's only qualification for this job was that he was gay."
The MSM built him up to be the smartest man on earth during the campaign.
But the man is extremely average. He was the mayor of South Bend for God's sake.
Have you ever been there? I have. Not paradise on earth.
You could say that we indirectly benefit by having an educated population, but with the crap they're teaching in schools these days, there is no longer a reason to support public or most private schools.
One could argue property owners benefit from good schools in their community because good schools attract parents with kids and support property prices. Not sure how true that is nowadays as a community that pays up for good schools could be creating more of an anchor than a benefit.
Still good if you like the school system I guess...
tim maguire said... And, of course, the only way to enforce this tax is to monitor everyone's driving. (For a hint of where this is heading, look at how toll data was used when the Northeast instituted EZ-Pass.)
That seems to be the main purpose of BootyBoy's proposal. The gas tax already serves as a mileage tax.
As to poor versus rich. The really rich live in the tony parts of the city not that far from the urban poor. Neither group does not usually drive to work.
As an aside, I am guessing the the government makes more money per gallon of gas than the Big Oil companies.
how to tax rape the masses.
"Actually, the mileage tax or fee will be the only way to fund highways soon, with the electric cars and the high fuel efficiency of modern cars."
Who says electricity can't be taxed?
And in reality, just about everywhere, most/none of the gas tax goes to infrastructure spending...
Get rid of all the useless mass transit funding and use the gas tax on the roads and then call me after you've paid for those actual road improvement.
"Here's Buttigieg displaying absurd glibness embracing the principle and acting like he and that principle never met."
You just made my day.
Funny. The same administration whose energy policy proposals and actions caused gasoline and diesel prices to soar are now concerned about the affect of a milage tax on the poor. These people aren't just economic idiots, they're full spectrum idiots.
Who says electricity can't be taxed?
Of course it can be but a new way to assess the tax will be needed. Mileage seems to be the easiest. I also agree that gas taxes are being spent on all sorts of things other than roads, like bullet trains for example. The political left hates the automobile. Too much freedom.
Who says electricity can't be taxed?
Exactly. There's nothing that can't be taxed. I'm all for more electric vehicles but I'm certainly under no illusions about future energy taxes.
And, of course, the only way to enforce this tax is to monitor everyone's driving.
I've no doubt that's coming. It doesn't matter if vehicles run on gasoline, electricity, or unicorn farts, one day in the future they'll all be taxed based on milage driven.
I support the milage tax in principal. We should pay for roads based on usage. The gas tax does this. Sort of.
But I oppose the buttplug plan because
1 it will be in addition to rather than instead of the gas tax.
2 I don't know if buttplug plan does this but most plans don't just track miles traveled, they track where you have been. That is a horrible invasion.
Not much different from the Bluetooth trackers and license plate cameras perhaps. But more granular.
we need less not more tracking.
John Henry
How about we get rid of carpool lanes.
Where I live they are mostly for rich folks who can either afford Teslas or don't mind paying a toll.
They take up 25% of the roadway but can only be used by 5% of people unless you want to pay for the privilege of driving in them solo.
No wonder why there are traffic jams...
Michael K said
Toll roads would work but Democrats hate toll roads.
I disagree
All the dems in Illinois love the toll roads. Some an easy source of graft
"All the dems in Illinois love the toll roads. Some an easy source of graft"
The roads in Illinois heading to Indiana have been under constant construction for the past 30 years. I know. I have driven on them at least once a year during that time.
It's either superb maintenance or corruption...since it's Illinois I assume the latter.
Not too far off topic since he is talking about battery cars and how to tax their road use.
Schumer said a week or 2 back that the goal is all electric vehicles and powered by solar & wind by 2050.
So I did a back of the envelope calculation. Gasoline vehicles would require an additional 300gw (300 typical large nuclear plants) of generating capacity.
If solar, this requires more than 40,000 square miles of solar panels. This is more land than Virginia a bit less than Ohio.
Probably double or triple that if you add trucks, busses, rail, shipping and so on.
Most land under solar panels is useless for anything else, even weeds won't grow.
Can we afford to lose 100m2 of co2 absorbing greenery?
John Henry
Michael K,
Right about the automobile and freedom. The problem with cars is that you, yourself, get to decide exactly where you're going. Which is just wrong, see? Your betters are the ones who should be picking that.
I rather think some of the Left is getting anxious about electric cars for this very reason. How can they plan your living environment for you if you keep being able to go where you want? A Tesla is all well and good (disclosure: We have a Tesla), but fixed light rail with living spaces grouped around the stops (no parking lots, parking lots BAD) is ever so much better.
This is essentially a description of Manhattan. If you would like the entire US to be based on the layout of Manhattan, well, just be aware that not everyone will agree with you.
Can’t have a mileage tax. The fat cats and nomenklatura with their electric cars might be inconvenienced and required to pay for their road use. No. No. We can’t have that.
It would be fun watching these idiots beclown themselves, if the country they had stolen was not the one I live in.
I have personal experience with Mayor Pete. He's a glib know-it-all who just runs his mouth. He was a total and complete failure as Mayor of South Bend. Crime went through the ceiling when he was Mayor. Loser.
Didn't they say during the primary South Bend was plagued by "pothole problem"?
Apart from there not being enough generating capacity to support an all-electric fleet of cars, there might not be enough copper to wire all those cars and to transmit all that electricity to them. The grid is barely sufficient as it is.
The technology exists to basically have all roads, or nearly all of them, being toll roads.
Repeal the gas tax and then establish tolls on the roads.
But first, repeal the gas tax.
As for electric cars, the remaining suffering Californians will literally die in a fire as their uncharged (due to blackouts) Tesla sits in their driveway as the inferno engulfs them.
All the dems in Illinois love the toll roads. Some an easy source of graft
When I was a kid, the original toll road was being built. It had an odd pattern of weaving all over instead of following a straight line or even curve. My father explained that the curves were to include all the parcels of land owned by politicians who had bought them anticipating the toll road.
Downstate, where our family farm was, there were roads in which one lane was paved and the other gravel. My father explained that legislation had been passed to pave all those country roads but half the money had been stolen, hence the gravel lanes.
It's just Illinois. I left when I was 18.
User pays principle . . . . hmmm. I think the Dems ought to be very careful how forcefully they champion that concept. Very careful. It's not hard for me to imagine a lifestyle in which I use almost nothing that the government provides.
tcrosse,
Apart from there not being enough generating capacity to support an all-electric fleet of cars, there might not be enough copper to wire all those cars and to transmit all that electricity to them. The grid is barely sufficient as it is.
Don't tell me D'Anconia Copper is going to vanish off the face of the Earth again. Oh noes . . .
If the taxes are reasonable, I have no issue with a mileage tax.
But I DO have issues with how that mileage will be tracked.
If they check your odometer when you smog the car, no problem.
If they put a tracking device in the car, I will not be happy.
You think Pete does his own powerpoints? I've worked with several ex-McKinsey folks. Most were really good on excel and maybe knew a bit of R or matlab, but 100% were preternaturally good at making powerpoint decks. If you know someone from McKinsey, get them to look at or better yet make your presentations. Don't know what else they're good for, but they will fucking kill the powerpoint.
We'll see. Neither Mayor Pete nor President Joe is precisely known for veracity.
Repeal the gas tax and then establish tolls on the roads.
I would be fine with that in 1950. Today it's too high tech and there would be a record of everywhere you'd been. Besides they can automatically give you a ticket if you take one second less than the legal speed limit to complete a segment.
I would be fine with that in 1950. Today it's too high tech and there would be a record of everywhere you'd been. Besides they can automatically give you a ticket if you take one second less than the legal speed limit to complete a segment.
This.
tcrosse@11:01: “...The grid is barely sufficient as it is.” You noticed!
The head of Toyota expressed the same concern recently. And others, using only pencil and paper, have shown that a no-carbon power generation capacity of solar and wind, even to serve a fraction of existing demand (never mind adding lots more EV) without covering all of Arizona and California and Kansas and...
It’s quite mad, but perhaps no more so than Wokeism.
Pete is going to have a long, lucrative career as a sniveling bureaucrat.
"Kamala Harris laughs hysterically when discussing struggling parents who aren’t able to send their kids to school."
“...(never mind adding lots more EV) is not remotely possible without covering...”
Apologies.
Can we afford to lose 100m2 of co2 absorbing greenery
No idea how I wrote that sentence. I was drunk? It was a typo? Spellchecker?
Anyway what I meant to ask, rhetorically, was "can we afford to lose 100,000 square miles of co2 absorbing greenery?
John Henry
I'm really warming to the idea of "pay to use" applied to public education and in fact think that teachers ought to be paid with only local funding not federal at all. All local funding would come from collections from the very parents who have children in class so the teachers would be willing and able to meet the needs of their customers. And make the payments weekly, so that teachers have to follow up and call the parents every week to ensure the payments come in, otherwise the "teachers" should go without pay, the same way working parents who had children in school had to forego pay over the last year.
You can't really object to sharing the burden can you?
Tcrosse,
Power is mainly transmitted and distributed on aluminum wire.
But yeah, you are right. The 100,000 Sq miles of solar panels doe not include all the power lines and switch yards to get it to point of use.
The 100,000 Sq miles of solar panels is just for motor fuel. Add everything that currently uses electricity residential, commercial, industrial etc and we might need 500 to 600,000 square miles or more.
John Henry
Wince said...
Didn't they say during the primary South Bend was plagued by "pothole problem"?
I thought it was a shithole problem?
John Henry
Some states have added registration fees for electric vehicles to get them to contribute to maintaining highway infrastructure. That seems like a much better way to address the issue than a mileage tax.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2019-12-30/states-hike-fees-for-electric-vehicle-owners-in-2020
"Buttigieg displaying absurd glibness embracing the principle and acting like he and that principle never met"
It's nice to notice the absurdity once in a while, but of course he gets away with it, and the "principle" keeps simmering, and he'll dance his rhetorical dance next time as if nothing ever happened.
As long as nice women do not object to the absurdity of the prog project as such, progs will keep at it.
"The head of Toyota expressed the same concern recently."
Toyota has been making noise about Hydrogen for years. They are not 'all-in' on EVs yet.
Boot. Edge. Edge.
If you say it like Trump does it sounds better.
For a clue as to how the feds envision this working, see how Oregon has gone on their tax by the mile tests, using volunteers. The vehicle has a device attached that collects all mileage driven (and other data, but they are not upfront on that) using the OBD II port and dings your account automatically - I did mention you have to allow the government access to your account, did I not? Long term, they will be able to ding your account for speeding and other violations. And once everyone is driving electric, shut the car off if needed.
A mileage tax instead of a gas tax - both state and federal - would be OK as long as the mileage was collected once a year/quarter by reading the odometer by a person. Any requirement for putting a tracking device on the car would be a non-starter and I think would violate the constitution - but that would not bother the feds as they truly believe that document is trash anyway.
John Henry @ 11:27: “...I was drunk?” You are forgiven. Your meaning was understood, or should have been, to anyone who can do basic math. But your comment only covered the question of acreage for all those lovely PV panels and bird Cuisinarts. There’s also the dollar outlay. Which is many trillions. And? Every decade or so, you’ll have to tear it out and replace the worn-out equipment (and deal with the toxic waste of old PV panels and the un-degradable windmill blades). Good times.
Mileage tax is preferred of the gas tax because it gives the government greater ability to track individuals. The greatest cause of damage to roads is heavy transport vehicles and those are the same vehicles that tend to use the federal highway system the most. They are already taxed heavily to pay for infrastructure. The problem is the taxes collected are not sequestered to infrastructure improvement but put into the general fund to pay for things like bailout for the Kennedy Center.
Power is mainly transmitted and distributed on aluminum wire.
Where will the electricity come from to manufacture that aluminum?
How about instead of thinking of new ways to fuck with our freedoms, it isn't any bodies business where I go or how far, we just use use our motor fuel taxes to do what they were intended to do. Fix roads.
I know. Too novel?
I would be fine with that in 1950. Today it's too high tech and there would be a record of everywhere you'd been. Besides they can automatically give you a ticket if you take one second less than the legal speed limit to complete a segment.
>>
Fair point.
once a year odometer reading it is then.
"Where will the electricity come from to manufacture that aluminum?"
Twisted up beer cans will work in a pinch.
Save the planet, drink beer!
Buttplug only got the job as a sabotage of his political ambitions to be President. This pick was made by Vice President Knee Pads, and it has already worked- Buttplug is just as dumb as President Joe Shitforbrains.
Also, the Feds will dole out $ for roads to the states on the basis of miles traveled right?
hahah
Of course they won't.
Joe Smith said...
"The head of Toyota expressed the same concern recently."
Toyota has been making noise about Hydrogen for years. They are not 'all-in' on EVs yet.
****************
Can anyone imagine the extra humidity in already-humid cities like New Orleans or Washington DC if thousands of hydrogen-powered cars were emitting water vapor as exhaust during the summer?
It would be like Delhi just before the monsoon.
"The big problem with that "user pays principle" is that richer people live in the more close-in suburbs and have the benefit of a shorter commute, and the poorer people who must buy further-out real estate and put up with a longer commute would now be expected to pay more for their opposite-of-privilege."
The big problem is the government intrusiveness required to collect it. Gas tax was an unobtrusive way to collect highway monies. Let's add a tax to those electric recharge stations. Wouldn't collect it at home, but simple trumps perfect, IMO.
(I apologize for not having read the comments yet.)
" Besides they can automatically give you a ticket if you take one second less"
Feature, not bug.
"It's not hard for me to imagine a lifestyle in which I use almost nothing that the government provides."
Government is clever, Dark Helmet. In such a circumstance, they will tell you that they provide the air you breathe.
Copper? Another reason to stock up on ammo! Pelosi prolly cornered the copper market and aluminum too.
The adults slapped the boy down, "Don't you understand we have to take their guns first? Then we go for the cars and the remaining fossil fuels!"
Blogger Owen said...
'The head of Toyota expressed the same concern recently. And others, using only pencil and paper, have shown that a no-carbon power generation capacity of solar and wind, even to serve a fraction of existing demand (never mind adding lots more EV) without covering all of Arizona and California and Kansas and...
It’s quite mad, but perhaps no more so than Wokeism."
Toyota was on to something with their hydrogen fuel-cell car, but TPTB just looooove the whole EV concept with giant batteries and by limiting the locations where one can refill (there's ONE location in the Bay Area, in Oakland) the hydrogen alternative is dead on arrival. Hydrogen is a perfect fuel source (no issues with the grid, no solar/wind drawbacks) but I suspect someone somewhere isn't getting their share of the graft/kickbacks so there's no incentive to expand the infrastructure.
Apparently polling informed him it was not "cool".
“A gas tax is a mileage tax.”
Very much disagree. I have older full sized GM trucks - acTahoe and a Silverado pickup. Their gas mileage sucks around town, and esp in town in MT. I am thinking maybe 10 mpg in-town and 20 on the highway. My Audi, on the other hand has a turbo, and does well in town too. Need a newer one, but disappointed that Audi really isn’t importing their TDI diesels - my next two brothers have A6 TDI diesels, and get over 40mpg on the freeway.
I am seriously thinking an EV for use in PHX, at least since the close-in parking spaces in front of the gun range I belong to were recently converted from handicapped to EV charging stations. I rarely drive further than EV range in PHX, and the temperature, when we are in town here, s not high enough or low enough, to cause problem with mileage.
Going to get a mileage "tax" here in Co, I believe.
Hmm. Only time I was in Phoenix it was 113F in mid-April.
Can't be good for batteries.
(I thought my shoes were going to melt to the asphalt)
Blogger Joe Smith said...
Toyota has been making noise about Hydrogen for years. They are not 'all-in' on EVs yet.
Hydrogen is like a battery. If they could take solar power and use it to generate hydrogen, the hydrogen could then be used to power either fuel cells to elecricity or burned in place of fossil fuel
Lots of other issues, mostly solvable, I think, except for the economics.
But the main issue is getting people to realize that it is a store of energy, like a battery. Not a source of energy like a gas well.
John Henry
Hydrogen is a perfect fuel source
Hydrogen is quite difficult to store and transport, but just add Nitrogen and you get Ammonia, which is much easier. There's a guy in Australia who has built a reverse fuel cell to generate Ammonia for use as motor fuel.
This is a biggest BS I ever heard and it's a new one- that poor people drive farther than rich people. That may be a theory but it's without any factual basis I bet.
Secondly, if the gas tax does not work and revenue from it is dropping precipitously, why don't they ever show in real numbers the decline by year? Electric cars have not become so common that their use would lead to a big decline in the gas tax collections.
They just want more and more of our money.
If a mileage tax were enacted, how would they collect it from everyone? would the poor get tax credits so they did not have to pay it? Or would the tax be a graduated tax and added to your income tax returns?
Re: mileage tax, I don’t think you could pick a better way to both a) self-identify as an out-of-touch elitist snob, and b) piss off millions of Americans.
That is some Grade A stepping in it, right there. Well done, Pete. For an alleged genius he sure is a gaffe machine!
For those worried about tracking, it is already too late. Most everywhere you go in the US you are tracked. There are 10s of thousands of license plate cameras recording every car that goes past. These are collected in massive databases and are easily searchable. I think there are a few states where they are not legal.
Another technology that I think is in all 50 states and PR is blouetooth readers. You will see them along highways. They are a pole, usually with a solar panel for power and a Bluetooth receiver.
Anything in your car with a bluetooth has a mac address. These mac addresses are collected and stored in a database. They can not only tell where the car has been ("Look, there goes Nellie Henry's Elantra") by the car bluetooth but also who is in the car by the phone bluetooths. (Looks like John Henry, or at least his phone, is in the car. Looking at the database he seems to be the main user of this car. Oh, and look, isn't that his granddaughter's IPhone? She's probably with him.")
That ship has sailed. I object to another, federal, tracking technology which is what the buttegeg plan seems like it would be.
John Henry
Team Biden is about to discover, if they haven't already, that their other ideas about raising taxes are just as dead-on-arrival as this one was. But being the geniuses that we all know them to be, and since they have to pay tribute to the unforgiving progressive gods, I suspect they will insist on pushing forward with Biden's proposed tax hikes despite the high probability that it will backfire badly in 2022.
Link to the Blue Toad Bluetooth traffic tracking system.
https://www.econolite.com/products/software/bluetoad/
In theory it is anonymous as it only collects the mac address.
But the phone company can match my mac address and phone account and I am sure they are happy to share.
Ditto matching the car mac with the license plate.
John Henry
If a mileage tax were enacted, how would they collect it from everyone? would the poor get tax credits so they did not have to pay it? Or would the tax be a graduated tax and added to your income tax returns?
Stop asking logical questions. This is a public policy discussion!
In all seriousness, the most likely answer is that they'd require you to take it to a mechanic who would verify the mileage every year. You'd then have to report it on your income tax forms, or pay it when you renew your registration.
Actually, would they even be able to impose a mileage tax, or would it run afoul of the apportionment requirement of the constitution? Is a mileage tax a direct tax ala property taxes?
Serious Question
Other Than
Having the Founder of a Fascist Fan Club as a Father (Alliteration is Always Awesome!)
And, enjoying being f*cked up the ass....
Is there ANY other qualification that Pete Butifuc has, for being in politics? Let alone DOT Sec?
Hydrogen is a perfect fuel source
you know what IS a (near)perfect fuel source? GASOLINE!
WAIT a minute!!!
What's WRONG with a road use tax?
"President" Jo Biden, has been QUITE CLEAR;
that there WILL NOT BE TAX INCREASES on people earning less than $400,000 a year!
SO they stick "The Rich" with a road use tax? WHO THE HELL CARES
Make "The Rich" pay their fair share! It's Not like it will affect the rest of us...
Will It?
I mean, Jo Biden PROMISED! Come ON man!
Mass transit scares the hell out of me,— see Hong Kong. The CCP loyalists trapped protesters and a Hong Kong Democracy leader on a train so that their thugs could whip the hell out of them. Then to keep protests from happening they shutdown the lines.
Joe Biden’s fascination with mass transit over the autonomy of automobiles has always been revealing, it’s about power.
In China, in Shanghai no one very disabled or the elderly can take advantage of mass transit. You have to walk miles to cover what will never be covered by mass transit. On average at least four miles is what I had to do to make “connections”. Then there is the full court press of humanity on the trains at rush hour— actually got pushed off at a stop that was not on my agenda because it was — go with the flow or be stampeded. This is how Chinese “aunties” learn how to be very aggressive.
Anyways mass transit is a gawd damn nightmare never mind the poor air circulation underground and what that opportunity provides for the spread of— whatever.
Biden and Buttigieg must have gotten some push back on this but not for all the right reasons.
The big problem with that "user pays principle" is that richer people live in the more close-in suburbs and have the benefit of a shorter commute, and the poorer people who must buy further-out real estate and put up with a longer commute would now be expected to pay more for their opposite-of-privilege.
I mean, this is more or less how funding for major public transit projects like subways works, isn't it? Rich people can afford to live close to the stations, and thus reap the benefits of investments made with public funds (and especially of public funding to keep fares low). Sometimes they're even supported in part by toll road revenue, e.g. the Silver Line extension in the DC area.
Inasmuch as the least expensive Tesla will set you back $37,000, electric cars are a long way from being a mass-market item.
Want to be herded like cows and lose freedom? Buy into the mass transit bullshit.
On the pandemic the liberals right away said pandemics would be more frequent because of Global Warming and human encroachment on wilderness.
But they completely forget about pandemics when it comes to their favorite fascination —cattle cars for the masses—that they can control.
(As usual they argue one way and forget when it’s convenient and their is no intelligent or neutral media to check them on it.)
"And, enjoying being f*cked up the ass...."
Move to strike; speculation, your honor. My client is a pitcher.
Re: Chennaul:
Then there is the full court press of humanity on the trains at rush hour— actually got pushed off at a stop that was not on my agenda because it was — go with the flow or be stampeded. This is how Chinese “aunties” learn how to be very aggressive.
I spent a couple months in Shanghai, shuttling daily between Renmin Park and Lujiazui via the subway. I was somewhat surprised to find that although mainlanders have little regard for queuing in almost every other context, they lined up in orderly fashion to board the subways.
Except the old ladies, who just cut in line whenever they felt like it.
Except the old ladies, who just cut in line whenever they felt like it.
*********
And everyone let’s them for good reason— the elbows are sharp. I think China owes a lot to whatever has made the culture respectful of elders. The people of China do not deserve the government of China but somehow a huge mass of people have learned that they are helpless. Enough massacres in the history of a people will do that I guess.
Nah. They're not going to beat around the bush with this. They're just going to go straight for your bank account. A large in your face tax is coming. In fact, it's going to be called the In Your Face Tax. Even those of you on social security will feel it, because, let's face it, you use roads and bridges too. Come on, man!
Chennaul@ 2:53: “...Enough massacres...”. I think people need to re-learn these very painful lessons. About every three score and ten years. Which means that the grandfathers who fought in WW2 and Korea (and even Vietnam) are now falling silent; and the more recent generations have no direct experience or credible, personal testimony of what the cost of freedom really is. And so they may sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. When they awaken to what they have sold so cheaply, their remorse may drive rebellion; which in turn may drive repression; and there comes your massacre.
It's hard to take Lil' Pete seriously. I am reminded of Alice Roosevelt Longworth who said Tom Dewey looked "the little man on the wedding cake."
Alice was a truly horrible person, but she personally knew every president from Benjamin Harrison to Gerald Ford, and that is, in its way, impressive.
Alice was a truly horrible person, but she personally knew every president from Benjamin Harrison to Gerald Ford, and that is, in its way, impressive.
Oh, I don't know. She used to say, "If you don't have anything nice to say about someone, come sit here beside me."
The child she had, allegedly fathered by Senator Borah, was called "Aurora Borah Alice."
They should fund the transportation bill by passing a moral vanity tax on environmentalists; $1 per unit of smug emitted.
"As usual they argue one way and forget when it’s convenient..."
Like telling you that driving once a week to the store is wasteful without considering that the mass transit alternative they prefer for you requires six trips a week.
I'm Not Sure,
Like telling you that driving once a week to the store is wasteful without considering that the mass transit alternative they prefer for you requires six trips a week.
Well, the bus will be running on the same damn route whether you take it or not. But, yes, the tremendous difference in convenience/inconvenience to you is of no account.
Stuffed suit trying to make himself look important and failing. Most likely they will try to stealth pass the mileage tax at some point anyway. It would have been better for Pete if he kept his mouth shut.
Just restrict the supply of gas and there is no need to tax it, and they did that day one with executive orders.
"once a year odometer reading it is then"
That is the best way to handle this: every year when you renew the vehicle registration, you submit a mileage report. The fee is calculated based on the curb weight of the vehicle and the miles driven. The problem of under reporting gets handled when you sell the vehicle - title transfer includes the mileage and you get billed for that.
Of course people who drive out of state or through multiple counties will not be billed quite properly, but they aren't currently.
"This is a biggest BS I ever heard and it's a new one- that poor people drive farther than rich people. That may be a theory but it's without any factual basis I bet.”
This is more like a top/bottom screws the middle type tax.
I call him secretary howdy, this propeller is on too tight, maybe this was a mckinsey project
Canada pays for “single payer” with taxes on the poor. It’s the only place to get enough money. Somebody once said that once the left realizes how much money is in regressive taxes like a VAT, and once conservatives realize that the poor will mostly be paying for it, single-payer should be a breeze. Things have changed now though, and the Democrats represent mostly the extremely wealthy.
"Well, the bus will be running on the same damn route whether you take it or not."
If I don't take the bus, it'll still be running? No waste there.
This might make hydrogen a viable fuel:
One company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, spun out of MIT in 2017 and with some $250 million in private capital backing it is building a tokamak the size of a tennis court that will cost a fraction of ITER. It plans to bring a prototype reactor online by 2025 that can generate about 270 megawatts, enough to power 100,000 homes. A British company, First Light Fusion, is using an entirely different method of confining plasma, inspired by a crustacean called the pistol shrimp. When this shrimp snaps its claw to stun prey, it creates bubbles that collapse so forcefully that the vapor inside briefly turns to plasma at 4,700 degrees Celsius. This mini-explosion creates so much noise that pistol shrimp colonies interfere with submarine sonar. Using a similar technique, First Light hopes to initiate its first fusion reaction this year and to demonstrate net energy gain by 2024.. - The Week
But I will believe it when I see it.
"This is a biggest BS I ever heard and it's a new one- that poor people drive farther than rich people. That may be a theory but it's without any factual basis I bet
I'd say there's evidence of it in urban areas where real estate gets cheaper the farther you are from the city center. True in ski towns like JH or Aspen, where service workers commute up to an hour each way...
I'm Not Sure,
If I don't take the bus, it'll still be running? No waste there.
Of course there's waste; there's waste in any mass transit system, including the private ones, like airlines. For that matter, there's waste also when you drive your car, that could seat five, by yourself. But the latter isn't baked into the system as the former is. Every mass transit system is based on a fine calculation. Too frequent buses, and they're guaranteed to run mostly-empty. Too few, and they're also guaranteed to run mostly-empty, because a bus that runs once an hour is unlikely to be useful to very many people.
But the fewer buses also mean less fuel, so most transit agencies err in that direction on all but a few "popular" routes. Which are "popular" because they run more often. Usually, you also get buses piling up, or very irregularly spaced, on those routes.
I have experience of several transit systems, and I have to say that Salem's is the best so far. No sane person could think of it as an honest substitute for a car -- from this house, it's a twenty-five-minute walk to the nearest bus -- but budget a couple of hours each direction and you can get anywhere, pretty much. There are a few transit "hubs," and they're very well designed -- buses pull in every 15 minutes, somehow never colliding with each other, and arrive and depart almost simultaneously. I have never known a bus to be more than a few minutes off schedule. (Whereas in Oakland, AC Transit would run no 51s for forty minutes, and then three in the next three; MUNI, in SF, is even worse, while Golden Gate Transit -- mostly Marin and Sonoma -- makes things easier by divvying up its buses between the "hey, it's a bus, innit?" crowd and the super-nice buses that are like first-class airline seats, with overhead individual lights and high seatbacks and all the rest. The first lot are almost always packed to the gills; the second aren't.)
I'm Full Of Soup,
This is a biggest BS I ever heard and it's a new one- that poor people drive farther than rich people. That may be a theory but it's without any factual basis I bet.
It's definitely true in the Bay Area, where the jobs and the people tend to be in different places. The majority of the people who can actually afford to live in SF, for example, are very rich indeed. I worked for a sheet music company in the Mission District, and apart from the owners (who lived in SF), the rest of us were all commuting large distances. One of our band guys lived in Modesto, which is a two-hour drive, each way. Our other band guy lived in Danville, more than an hour by BART. I was just in Marin, and had no car, so it was walk to bus to ferry to BART to another 10 minutes' walk, about an hour and forty minutes altogether. Everyone on staff could tell you a similar story; SF itself was too expensive.
"For that matter, there's waste also when you drive your car, that could seat five, by yourself."
Not of my time. I value mine. What about you? How much do you value yours?
"This is a biggest BS I ever heard and it's a new one- that poor people drive farther than rich people. That may be a theory but it's without any factual basis I bet."
You might want to check with... well, anyone in the LA basin about that before you make your bet. There's a reason people buy houses in Antelope Valley and Hesperia. And it's not because they love the dry desert air.
I live just outside Silicon Valley. The closer you get to Apple HQ in Cupertino, Google HQ in Mountain View or anything in the Palo Alto-Menlo Park stretch, the higher the rents and housing prices. Lots of people commute from 30-50 miles away to work in Silicon Valley or San Francisco because wealthy property owners have gotten pretty much all new home construction zoned out of existence. So yes, in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least, minimum wage workers and people making under $40K typically commute two to three times further than those making more than $100K. And once people are driving 60-80 miles every day for their commute, they're going to rack up the miles a lot faster than a wealthy San Franciscan driving to Santa Cruz or Napa every other Sunday during the warm season (they fly to Tahoe during the winter).
Michelle Dulak Thomson...
I have to apologize, I didn't intend to give you a hard time over this, it just happens to be one of my major peeves. I've moved myself halfway across the country three times in my life, so I'm quite able to make a decision for myself regarding the kind of environment I'd like to live in. Stacked like sardines sure as shit ain't it, and I resent to hell and back all those busybody politicians (and their enablers) who think I should live that way because of Mother Gaia or Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever other horseshit religion they subscribe to tells them to believe.
pistol shrimp
Nuclear powered shrimp with a tough name. Fantastic.
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