4 ms·

Road/fuel taxes almost nowhere cover road maintenance and increasing fuel taxes for environmental reasons is extremely common in Europe.

by afiori 4y ago

gruez 4y ago
That might be the case, but that doesn't mean the tax is primarily used to finance road construction. The availability of fuels with reduced taxes[1] (eg. for agricultural or domestic purposes) makes it obvious that it's not about carbon emissions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dye
- afiori 4y ago
  Agriculture is heavily regulated and subsidized in many ways. It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food. The only thing this proves is that low emission is not the only priority of a government. For an example of my claim look at [0] which started as protest from rural France for an environmental fuel tax. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food If what you want is cheaper food, why don't you subsidize food production directly? Or give money to people to buy food, which has the advantage of being something you can target directly to poorer people. Subsidizing fuel used in the production of food leads farmers to use more polluting options than they would otherwise, since fuel is artificially cheap.
    - afiori 4y ago
      I don't know why these policies were made, lowering costs at the source is easier than than price control at the margin. Foods follow a long chain with many hands; farm -> processor -> factories -> distributors -> retail; you want low retail prices and farm to be economically sustainable, moreover sometimes the link in the chain are the same entity sometime they are distinct companies. You could keep track of prices along the chain (we already do with VAT) and reimburse expenses along the chain to allow farms to sell at higher price without it affecting the final buyer. Or you could just lower the operating cost of farms by taking the major expenses* and subsidizing them. The first also is highly vulnerable to exploitation since many farms sell to huge corporations that can outplay them in the regulation game. * Which I guess are wages, taxes, fuel, and material (food/fertilizer).

Road/fuel taxes almost nowhere cover road maintenance and increasing fuel taxes for environmental reasons is extremely common in Europe.

by afiori 4y ago

Road/fuel taxes almost nowhere cover road maintenance and increasing fuel taxes for environmental reasons is extremely common in Europe.

gruez 4y ago

That might be the case, but that doesn't mean the tax is primarily used to finance road construction. The availability of fuels with reduced taxes[1] (eg. for agricultural or domestic purposes) makes it obvious that it's not about carbon emissions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_dye

afiori 4y ago
Agriculture is heavily regulated and subsidized in many ways. It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food. The only thing this proves is that low emission is not the only priority of a government. For an example of my claim look at [0] which started as protest from rural France for an environmental fuel tax. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
- jefftk 4y ago
  > It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food If what you want is cheaper food, why don't you subsidize food production directly? Or give money to people to buy food, which has the advantage of being something you can target directly to poorer people. Subsidizing fuel used in the production of food leads farmers to use more polluting options than they would otherwise, since fuel is artificially cheap.
  - afiori 4y ago
    I don't know why these policies were made, lowering costs at the source is easier than than price control at the margin. Foods follow a long chain with many hands; farm -> processor -> factories -> distributors -> retail; you want low retail prices and farm to be economically sustainable, moreover sometimes the link in the chain are the same entity sometime they are distinct companies. You could keep track of prices along the chain (we already do with VAT) and reimburse expenses along the chain to allow farms to sell at higher price without it affecting the final buyer. Or you could just lower the operating cost of farms by taking the major expenses* and subsidizing them. The first also is highly vulnerable to exploitation since many farms sell to huge corporations that can outplay them in the regulation game. * Which I guess are wages, taxes, fuel, and material (food/fertilizer).