6 ms·

Except for the untold millions who are barely scraping by after the pandemic who have no leeway in their budget for an auto tax increase.

acdha 6y ago
Anyone in that boat will see much greater benefit from alternatives which don't cost a significant fraction of their annual income. Investing in transit and bike infrastructure saves many thousands of dollars a year and improves health outcomes for everyone.
- bezmenov 6y ago
  How do rural folk benefit from either? Distances are too great for biking and the lack of density precludes mass-transit.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    "Rural folk" are going to need to come to grips with their exorbitantly subsidized lifestyle choices sooner or later. Probably sooner, since their guy is sabotaging one of their most important subsidies (near-free rural mail service) as we speak.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      My understanding of a common rural view is that 'city people' restrict them unnecessarily with a lot of environmental restrictions (which may be partly true). But they don't believe they are subsidized. In Washington state they have a report from the legislature that has spending in each county compared to tax revenues. This is very sensitive because of course Seattle money goes out to the whole state. There's a second version of that report that tries to compute the economic benefit of the rural areas, separately from the actual tax revenues, I'm sure this was created to lessen the sting. I want to keep our economy and the people in it living. But we need to have a shared reality.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        An interesting manifestation of this belief is the California separatist movement "State of Jefferson". These are people who believe that the economy of far northern California would be far stronger if they were simply allowed to clearcut every forest in the state. One county, Lake County, had the good manners to cancel a planned vote of secession in late 2015 after the rest of the state paid to put out an enormous wildfire there.
    - justanotheranon 6y ago
      up until 1900, 98% of people worked on farms in rural areas. IMHO it's a bit pretencious to force rural folk to move to the big cities and become Urbanite Consumers. and it is reckless to think changing the way most people have lived for 100,000 years wont trigger an even worse catastrophe. rural folk think the same way of Urbanites as you think of them. they think everyone should get out of the cities and stop being a polluting leech who is detached from the natural state of humans living in equillibrium with nature.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Nobody, absolutely nobody, lived in a fully dispersed car-based rural landscape prior to 1900. They lived in small towns and villages, like sensible people.
  - acdha 6y ago
    Flip that question the other way: what happens if we continue ignoring externalities? They’ve been subsidized for a century but it’s also hurting people – many of the least healthy lifestyles involve regular long drives (night, lack of exercise, etc.), and climate change is going to be brutal for agriculture and forestry. Now, also look back a century. Rural life existed - not exactly the same but also with improvements like healthier communities because people bought locally rather than driving 2 hours to Walmart or Costco. Raising the price of gas would benefit all of businesses which have been out priced by companies who don’t have to pay for externalities. Sharing a ride might seem like a good trade in comparison to learning that your staple crop no longer grows in your region or that the hundred year flood/fire is now a decadal experience. Also, remember that this isn’t a ban on cars. It’s a financial cue pushing people to drive less, combine trips, buy the vehicle with the specs they actually need rather than the heavily-marketed guzzler, etc. People like having way more horsepower than they need but nobody is really inconvenienced without it.
  - novok 6y ago
    You act like european rural folk and concentrate into small villages surrounded by your farms. Instead of driving to walmart for an hour, you shop at your local village.
- jcims 6y ago
  There’s a lot of things wrong with the electoral college in the US, but when I read comments like this I can’t say I’m entirely mad it still exists. That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for. But if you’re going to squeeze people out of cars, you should probably have a solid plan to deal with the outcome.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    When you burn a gallon of gas, do you have a solid plan to deal with the outcome?
    - selectodude 6y ago
      Reality has a liberal bias, it seems.
    - jcims 6y ago
      ? >That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for. My point is direct economic recovery of those externalities is going to be largely regressive, and that the idea of that investing in bicycles and buses is a suitable replacement is incomplete...particularly in non-metro regions.
  - acdha 6y ago
    You might want to reconsider my comment and ask how much of your reaction is due to whatever baggage you’re bringing rather than what I wrote. Note, for example, that I didn’t say anything about forcing people out of their cars but was instead talking about how expensive cars are – we built most of the country around having them but that means the second most expensive property purchases in the average American’s life is a big purchase which requires regular expenditures and is idle more than 90% of their life. If you’re going to use terms like “squeeze”, think about the politics behind the assumption that this is the natural order of things.
    - jcims 6y ago
      It seemed like you were positing public transit and bike infrastructure as an alternative to cars...particularly as a money saving and healthy alternative to those 'who are barely scraping by after the pandemic who have no leeway in their budget for an auto tax increas' This may be true in some areas, but not most.
JamesBarney 6y ago
Look into Pigouvian tax, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax. Basically the idea is we then take the tax income raised by a societally harmful activity (like driving) and redistribute it to individuals like the ones who are scraping by so that tax is revenue neutral.
- bezmenov 6y ago
  Sounds great in theory. In practice, the aggregate outcome would be wealthy city-dwelling democrats subsiding poor rural republicans.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Business as usual, then?
    - samatman 6y ago
      Yes, dollars flow from city to country, and calories flow from country to city. It has always been so. Best to keep in mind both sides of the equation, because we can only eat one of these things.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Money flows through the food system from people who eat to landowners who personally live in places like Beverley Hills and Pebble Beach. Food production in America in 2020 has nothing to do with salt-of-the-earth farmer-models they put on packaged food labels.
        NotSammyHagar 6y ago
        Agree that US farming financially is kind of messed up. Most subsidies go to big farms. Small farmers constantly go out of business. The price of land keeps going up at the same time. There's little profit, it's received up in the chain going to consumer stores. Americans can buy food from anywhere. There's an oversupply that is difficult to deal with because the farming industrial complex constantly improves yields. We already get food from Mexico, south america, Canada, fish from the ocean all over. We stupidly subsidize ethanol, we should get rid of that. We need to keep some food production going, both for national security but also because the rural areas are already decimated with job loss and lack of opportunities for people. Every town is full of closed shops and the nearby Walmart supplanted all local things, except maybe a bar. My family has farms in the south and midwest, I want to support farming and those farmers. The US govt pays us not to plant part of our crop. And they also have price supports on crops which basically sets the price. Of course we all benefit from cheap food. Much of the profit is gone from farming. Most young people take outside jobs because you can't make a living unless you have very large mass scale (this is not exactly a new discovery). My dad lives in a big city in Texas and inherited his mom's farm. Someone else farms it, he doesn't have anything to do with it. 30 years ago there were some salt of the earth farmers but they all sadly died, at least in my family.
lmm 6y ago
When child labour laws were introduced, many barely scraping by families had no leeway in their budget for that loss of income.
swiley 6y ago
These are exactly the people who shouldn’t be paying to maintain a vehicle.

acdha 6y ago

Anyone in that boat will see much greater benefit from alternatives which don't cost a significant fraction of their annual income. Investing in transit and bike infrastructure saves many thousands of dollars a year and improves health outcomes for everyone.

bezmenov 6y ago
How do rural folk benefit from either? Distances are too great for biking and the lack of density precludes mass-transit.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  "Rural folk" are going to need to come to grips with their exorbitantly subsidized lifestyle choices sooner or later. Probably sooner, since their guy is sabotaging one of their most important subsidies (near-free rural mail service) as we speak.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    My understanding of a common rural view is that 'city people' restrict them unnecessarily with a lot of environmental restrictions (which may be partly true). But they don't believe they are subsidized. In Washington state they have a report from the legislature that has spending in each county compared to tax revenues. This is very sensitive because of course Seattle money goes out to the whole state. There's a second version of that report that tries to compute the economic benefit of the rural areas, separately from the actual tax revenues, I'm sure this was created to lessen the sting. I want to keep our economy and the people in it living. But we need to have a shared reality.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      An interesting manifestation of this belief is the California separatist movement "State of Jefferson". These are people who believe that the economy of far northern California would be far stronger if they were simply allowed to clearcut every forest in the state. One county, Lake County, had the good manners to cancel a planned vote of secession in late 2015 after the rest of the state paid to put out an enormous wildfire there.
  - justanotheranon 6y ago
    up until 1900, 98% of people worked on farms in rural areas. IMHO it's a bit pretencious to force rural folk to move to the big cities and become Urbanite Consumers. and it is reckless to think changing the way most people have lived for 100,000 years wont trigger an even worse catastrophe. rural folk think the same way of Urbanites as you think of them. they think everyone should get out of the cities and stop being a polluting leech who is detached from the natural state of humans living in equillibrium with nature.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Nobody, absolutely nobody, lived in a fully dispersed car-based rural landscape prior to 1900. They lived in small towns and villages, like sensible people.
- acdha 6y ago
  Flip that question the other way: what happens if we continue ignoring externalities? They’ve been subsidized for a century but it’s also hurting people – many of the least healthy lifestyles involve regular long drives (night, lack of exercise, etc.), and climate change is going to be brutal for agriculture and forestry. Now, also look back a century. Rural life existed - not exactly the same but also with improvements like healthier communities because people bought locally rather than driving 2 hours to Walmart or Costco. Raising the price of gas would benefit all of businesses which have been out priced by companies who don’t have to pay for externalities. Sharing a ride might seem like a good trade in comparison to learning that your staple crop no longer grows in your region or that the hundred year flood/fire is now a decadal experience. Also, remember that this isn’t a ban on cars. It’s a financial cue pushing people to drive less, combine trips, buy the vehicle with the specs they actually need rather than the heavily-marketed guzzler, etc. People like having way more horsepower than they need but nobody is really inconvenienced without it.
- novok 6y ago
  You act like european rural folk and concentrate into small villages surrounded by your farms. Instead of driving to walmart for an hour, you shop at your local village.
jcims 6y ago
There’s a lot of things wrong with the electoral college in the US, but when I read comments like this I can’t say I’m entirely mad it still exists. That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for. But if you’re going to squeeze people out of cars, you should probably have a solid plan to deal with the outcome.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  When you burn a gallon of gas, do you have a solid plan to deal with the outcome?
  - selectodude 6y ago
    Reality has a liberal bias, it seems.
  - jcims 6y ago
    ? >That’s not to say that externalities of consumption shouldn’t be accounted for. My point is direct economic recovery of those externalities is going to be largely regressive, and that the idea of that investing in bicycles and buses is a suitable replacement is incomplete...particularly in non-metro regions.
- acdha 6y ago
  You might want to reconsider my comment and ask how much of your reaction is due to whatever baggage you’re bringing rather than what I wrote. Note, for example, that I didn’t say anything about forcing people out of their cars but was instead talking about how expensive cars are – we built most of the country around having them but that means the second most expensive property purchases in the average American’s life is a big purchase which requires regular expenditures and is idle more than 90% of their life. If you’re going to use terms like “squeeze”, think about the politics behind the assumption that this is the natural order of things.
  - jcims 6y ago
    It seemed like you were positing public transit and bike infrastructure as an alternative to cars...particularly as a money saving and healthy alternative to those 'who are barely scraping by after the pandemic who have no leeway in their budget for an auto tax increas' This may be true in some areas, but not most.

JamesBarney 6y ago

Look into Pigouvian tax, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax. Basically the idea is we then take the tax income raised by a societally harmful activity (like driving) and redistribute it to individuals like the ones who are scraping by so that tax is revenue neutral.

bezmenov 6y ago
Sounds great in theory. In practice, the aggregate outcome would be wealthy city-dwelling democrats subsiding poor rural republicans.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Business as usual, then?
  - samatman 6y ago
    Yes, dollars flow from city to country, and calories flow from country to city. It has always been so. Best to keep in mind both sides of the equation, because we can only eat one of these things.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Money flows through the food system from people who eat to landowners who personally live in places like Beverley Hills and Pebble Beach. Food production in America in 2020 has nothing to do with salt-of-the-earth farmer-models they put on packaged food labels.
      - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
        Agree that US farming financially is kind of messed up. Most subsidies go to big farms. Small farmers constantly go out of business. The price of land keeps going up at the same time. There's little profit, it's received up in the chain going to consumer stores. Americans can buy food from anywhere. There's an oversupply that is difficult to deal with because the farming industrial complex constantly improves yields. We already get food from Mexico, south america, Canada, fish from the ocean all over. We stupidly subsidize ethanol, we should get rid of that. We need to keep some food production going, both for national security but also because the rural areas are already decimated with job loss and lack of opportunities for people. Every town is full of closed shops and the nearby Walmart supplanted all local things, except maybe a bar. My family has farms in the south and midwest, I want to support farming and those farmers. The US govt pays us not to plant part of our crop. And they also have price supports on crops which basically sets the price. Of course we all benefit from cheap food. Much of the profit is gone from farming. Most young people take outside jobs because you can't make a living unless you have very large mass scale (this is not exactly a new discovery). My dad lives in a big city in Texas and inherited his mom's farm. Someone else farms it, he doesn't have anything to do with it. 30 years ago there were some salt of the earth farmers but they all sadly died, at least in my family.

lmm 6y ago

When child labour laws were introduced, many barely scraping by families had no leeway in their budget for that loss of income.

swiley 6y ago

These are exactly the people who shouldn’t be paying to maintain a vehicle.