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This is very hard to make into a progressive tax when you take into account that structurally it will 1) raise prices for all goods and most services, dispropor
by wcunning 5y ago
This is very hard to make into a progressive tax when you take into account that structurally it will 1) raise prices for all goods and most services, disproportionately impacting the poor and 2) higher paying job categories demand less driving structurally. On top of that, it will significantly change incentives on where people live and work -- rural areas are already very expensive in terms of difficulty to acquire goods and services, so adding a massive tax because you have to drive a lot when you live there will significantly damage an already poor population and wreck property values. This is a correct cost application, but there's massive political power against it, both in terms of the Senate's structural ruralness and the structural rural power inside most states.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoPaying the true cost when you haven’t been previously is understandably inconvenient. I find it absolutely fascinating how much this occurs across human civilization (benefit programs, infrastructure, fossil energy consumption are a few examples) and critiques of it are quietly ignored or pushed aside. A Ponzi or pyramid scheme aren’t the right words, but it’s closer to a species wide confidence game at scale. Everyone knows it, no one wants to fix it, they just want a chair when the music stops.
- BurningFrog 5y agoI expect this scheme to raise costs for two main categories: trucks and big city commuters. Regular rural car drivers should pay considerably less than they do now, at least if the total amount stay the same.