4 ms·

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 t

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 having produced said trash. Want to pay less taxes? Produce less trash.

kasey_junk 8y ago
Now do water.
praptak 8y ago
The point of the article is that the same arguments work in favour of congestion pricing.
voisin 8y ago
The argument isn’t about whether the quantum of taxes is appropriate. It is how a fixed quantum turns a disincentive for some into an irrelevancy to others. If the purpose of the cost is to discourage use (peak period congestion charges), then it should vary with income so as to be a equally discouraging to all to whom it applies. For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production, whereas the rich aren’t affected and can produce far more before they feel the incentive to reduce waste. I think the parking spot item is more like a meal at a fine restaurant - there is no incentive or disincentive from a social standpoint that should justify variable pricing on income. But to the extend there is, say via congestion, pollution, etc, it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive.
- ramblerouser 8y ago
  A poor person's car takes up the same number of parking spaces as a rich person's car, and a rich person has already paid a huge amount of their income to the poor person in the form of income taxes and welfare.
  - pas 8y ago
    poor might mean lower middle-class. no welfare income.
- devereaux 8y ago
  > it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive. No, it's not reasonable. The goal is not to discourage use, but to price in the negative externality. > For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production, And that's good, even if we suppose your argument is right. Bear with me: what's the percentage of the population in your country that you would call "rich"? Let's say 20%. Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80% of the population? I don't think so. In the parking example, do you think 20% of the population can park more cars than 80% of the population? I don't think so either. Someone rich may have more than one car, but I strongly doubt they are able to drive 2 cars at once.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure 5% of the population can create more of whatever negative externality you'd like to tax than the lower 95%. Someone rich might not drive a car at all and instead take a private jet. An average person from the US produces fifty times as much CO2 as an average person from Kenya.
    - devereaux 8y ago
      If we were talking about CO2, I'd agree with you. But we are talking about parking spaces, and production of trash within a country.
  - seniorsassycat 8y ago
    > Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80% of the population? I don't think so. I live in a wealthy household, our discarded amazon packaging, food and meal delivery garbage is easily 4x the garbage produced by a penny pinching household. And so far my housemates and I haven't reduced our consumption because the garbage collection fees do not outweigh the convenience of online shopping.
  - voisin 8y ago
    The point is not the number of cars or trash bags. It is the incentive to use a vehicle or generate a bag of trash. If a $20/day charge is out of reach for the poor, 100% of the poor will avoid parking and take public transit. If $20/day is meaningless to someone that makes $500k/year, then they will not factor that into their decision to drive versus take public transit. So for those that set prices, does it matter whether demand elasticity is equal across income levels or not?
skh 8y ago
There are lots of people who don’t think a flat tax on income is the fairest tax. Presumably a person whose income is very large has a lot more to lose if society collapses so they should pay more to maintain society. I tend to believe progressive taxation on income/wealth is the most fair. But I’m someone who believes that there should be a ceiling and a floor on how much a person can have. The distribution of resources and wealth in the world is grossly unfair in my opinion.
sametmax 8y ago
I don't agree with the fact we should tax more expensive cars for parking. But I don't think your reasoning hold either. If you have more money, it's easier to take less parking space, and produce less trash. I can certainly attest that it's easier for me now: I can afford a private parking lot and taxis, I can buy food in expensive organic shops that have less packaging, I can pay people to do things for me, that would result in more work, but less waste. Basically, when you have money, you can optimize for way more things than when you are constrained financially.
barrkel 8y ago
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.asp 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 not like for like tradeoffs, they're qualitatively different.
- devereaux 8y ago
  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.
  - barrkel 8y ago
    If you are seriously suggesting that a penny is worth the same to a wealthy man as a child, we cannot have a serious conversation.

kasey_junk 8y ago

Now do water.

praptak 8y ago

The point of the article is that the same arguments work in favour of congestion pricing.

voisin 8y ago

The argument isn’t about whether the quantum of taxes is appropriate. It is how a fixed quantum turns a disincentive for some into an irrelevancy to others. If the purpose of the cost is to discourage use (peak period congestion charges), then it should vary with income so as to be a equally discouraging to all to whom it applies. For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production, whereas the rich aren’t affected and can produce far more before they feel the incentive to reduce waste. I think the parking spot item is more like a meal at a fine restaurant - there is no incentive or disincentive from a social standpoint that should justify variable pricing on income. But to the extend there is, say via congestion, pollution, etc, it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive.

ramblerouser 8y ago
A poor person's car takes up the same number of parking spaces as a rich person's car, and a rich person has already paid a huge amount of their income to the poor person in the form of income taxes and welfare.
- pas 8y ago
  poor might mean lower middle-class. no welfare income.
devereaux 8y ago
> it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive. No, it's not reasonable. The goal is not to discourage use, but to price in the negative externality. > For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production, And that's good, even if we suppose your argument is right. Bear with me: what's the percentage of the population in your country that you would call "rich"? Let's say 20%. Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80% of the population? I don't think so. In the parking example, do you think 20% of the population can park more cars than 80% of the population? I don't think so either. Someone rich may have more than one car, but I strongly doubt they are able to drive 2 cars at once.
- adrianN 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure 5% of the population can create more of whatever negative externality you'd like to tax than the lower 95%. Someone rich might not drive a car at all and instead take a private jet. An average person from the US produces fifty times as much CO2 as an average person from Kenya.
  - devereaux 8y ago
    If we were talking about CO2, I'd agree with you. But we are talking about parking spaces, and production of trash within a country.
- seniorsassycat 8y ago
  > Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80% of the population? I don't think so. I live in a wealthy household, our discarded amazon packaging, food and meal delivery garbage is easily 4x the garbage produced by a penny pinching household. And so far my housemates and I haven't reduced our consumption because the garbage collection fees do not outweigh the convenience of online shopping.
- voisin 8y ago
  The point is not the number of cars or trash bags. It is the incentive to use a vehicle or generate a bag of trash. If a $20/day charge is out of reach for the poor, 100% of the poor will avoid parking and take public transit. If $20/day is meaningless to someone that makes $500k/year, then they will not factor that into their decision to drive versus take public transit. So for those that set prices, does it matter whether demand elasticity is equal across income levels or not?

skh 8y ago

There are lots of people who don’t think a flat tax on income is the fairest tax. Presumably a person whose income is very large has a lot more to lose if society collapses so they should pay more to maintain society. I tend to believe progressive taxation on income/wealth is the most fair. But I’m someone who believes that there should be a ceiling and a floor on how much a person can have. The distribution of resources and wealth in the world is grossly unfair in my opinion.

sametmax 8y ago

I don't agree with the fact we should tax more expensive cars for parking. But I don't think your reasoning hold either. If you have more money, it's easier to take less parking space, and produce less trash. I can certainly attest that it's easier for me now: I can afford a private parking lot and taxis, I can buy food in expensive organic shops that have less packaging, I can pay people to do things for me, that would result in more work, but less waste. Basically, when you have money, you can optimize for way more things than when you are constrained financially.

barrkel 8y ago

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.asp 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 not like for like tradeoffs, they're qualitatively different.

devereaux 8y ago
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.
- barrkel 8y ago
  If you are seriously suggesting that a penny is worth the same to a wealthy man as a child, we cannot have a serious conversation.