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I think it is fair that the increased usage of public infrastructure warrants a substantial increase in taxes
by ptah 7y ago
I think it is fair that the increased usage of public infrastructure warrants a substantial increase in taxes
- shantly 7y agoAnd the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself, or some close proxy for it. Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery so they have a harder time faking lower prices or otherwise making it seem like the higher costs are for any reason other than the way they're doing business. While we're at it we could make trucking companies pay for the actual amount of wear they put on the roads and the costs to build truck-supporting infrastructure. And I'd like a pony.
- ptah 7y agogood point, the tax on a truck should be proportional to the wear and tear of that truck on the road
- cal97g 7y agoThat's the entire point of vehicle tax and fuel duty. The more you use the roads the more fuel you buy, the more fuel you buy the more tax you pay.
- dominotw 7y agoTrump adminstration is trying to increase tolling on trucking companies because they don't pay proportional to wear and tear.
- jf22 7y agoCare to share a source on this?
- dominotw 7y agohttps://www.overdriveonline.com/do-truckers-pay-enough-for-highways-white-house-suggests-not/ https://www.overdriveonline.com/do-truckers-pay-enough-for-h...
- jf22 7y agoI think it would more accurate to say a report by the Trump administration says truckers don't pay enough, but this article does not mention any steps by the administration to increase taxes on trucks. I'm not trying to argue a political point, but it would be interesting to see the current adminstration be for a tax increase.
- pif 7y ago> And the correct activity to tax is the delivery itself [...] Ideally taxed to the business doing the delivery Congratulations! You have discovered gas taxes ;-)
- ceejayoz 7y agoThose aren't going to be super useful as the shift to electric continues.
- oh_sigh 7y agoAlso, gas taxes don't account for different vehicle damage rates to roads. Gas taxes impose effectively a constant per pound-hour tax on road use, which is fine, but roads are damaged based on what is called the 4th power law, so 1000kg axel weight does 16x more damage than 500kg axel weight.
- ip26 7y agoThe pitfall is that gas taxes are apparently not strongly correlated to road wear. A gallon of gas in a passenger vehicle does dramatically less road damage than a gallon of gas in a delivery truck.
- fdswefsad 7y agoYou're right, but it's somewhat offset that a delivery truck uses more gas per mile than a passenger vehicle. Besides, we should discourage passenger vehicle use anyway, so raise the gas tax until it covers per mile delivery vehicle road wear.
- sharkmerry 7y agoNot offset enough. a hummer does 21x the wear/tear that an average car does. a 9ton big-rig does 410x the damage https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
- 7y ago
- crazygringo 7y agoI'm pretty sure online shopping dramatically reduces use of public infrastructure, i.e. roads and parking. Every UPS truck that goes out with 100 packages means, what -- conservatively, maybe 50 separate car trips that it replaced? And so that much less traffic, congestion, pollution, gas used, etc.
- jamil7 7y agoI guess it's potentially a little more nuanced than that since people are ordering higher quantities with greater frequency.
- glofish 7y agoI am going to venture the hypothesis that people will make the same number of car trips - just to other destinations. Similar to how building more or wider roads do not reduce congestions - more traffic takes its place.
- crazygringo 7y agoYou're right in that the, say, 20 min saved per person is going to go to some other activity. And certainly some of those activities can involve driving, like going to visit friends. But many other activities will just be spending more time at home -- e.g. coming home straight from work instead of running errands, or staying home Saturday afternoon to read or play video games. To your point: in areas where traffic congestion is already extreme, it may not make a difference because there's so much pent-up demand for car trips. But in most of the rest of the country (suburbs, rural, etc.) that doesn't suffer from congestion, I think package delivery would have to result in reducing traffic to some measurable degree.
- sharkmerry 7y agoAmazon's sprinter vans that do deliveries. are 6k pounds. curb weight, can carry up to 12k pounds so 5x road wear of normal car when unloaded. 81x the wear when fully loaded.
- 7y ago