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It wouldn't be cheaper to drive if your government properly taxed the petrol and road usage to help pay for and offset the environmental damage your transportat

It wouldn't be cheaper to drive if your government properly taxed the petrol and road usage to help pay for and offset the environmental damage your transportation choice caused, would it?

sirsinsalot 4y ago
They do tax those things. 45% of the price of petrol is tax. I pay £1,000 per year in road tax and plenty of council tax too. The issue is inefficiency. That money ends up lining the pockets of private firms with crazy margins on government and council contracts. Our train privatisation scheme is basically a money funnelling exercise to fund middle managers not trains. It's daylight corruption.
- eptcyka 4y ago
  It's daylight robbery, corruption would imply there's something shady going on here. This is how government services operate anywhere and everywhere in the world.
alias_neo 4y ago
> and offset the environmental damage your transportation choice caused, would it? I live in the UK, not America. My car does an average of 45mpg+ and I pay ~£8.14 per gallon for fuel. They tax us plenty for driving here, train prices are just _that_ bad, the worst I've experienced anywhere in the world.
- komali2 4y ago
  That's frustrating that train prices are bad. I think I understood that you live in the UK when I wrote my comment, idk how though. I guess it seems crazy but to me those gas prices still sound cheap. Maybe I'm just an obnoxious environmentalist but I think gas taxes for private vehicles should simply be high enough to fund a carbon offset for the usage. I don't have numbers at hand but I'd imagine it'd be pretty high. And yup thus in my dreams planes would basically be outrageously expensive to fly on. I guess for me the convenience trade-off is worth me being confident that my grandkids will have coral reefs to look at, which I'm basically 90% certain won't be the case for now.
  - alias_neo 4y ago
    It's a nation wide issue unfortunately. Since our rail was privatised the goal has (as is expected from a business) profit and not (as should be expected for a public service) utility. Fuel prices aren't cheap here,though not the highest in Europe either, and ~50% is taxes, I'd hope some of that goes to good use for environmental efforts. > And yup thus in my dreams planes would basically be outrageously expensive to fly on. I guess for me the convenience trade-off is worth me being confident that my grandkids will have coral reefs to look at, which I'm basically 90% certain won't be the case for now. This is a difficult problem, form an environmental-only perspective that sounds reasonable, but to make it so that only the wealthy and elite can fly widens the class divide. I came from a working class family, but have traveled all over the world; that wouldn't have been possible if we simply priced ordinary people out of flying. Living in the UK, on an island, flying is one of the main ways out. Rather, as an Engineer, I'd look to solve the problem with more efficient and sustainable technology, we should make the transport cause less harm, not price anybody but the wealthy out of it.

It wouldn't be cheaper to drive if your government properly taxed the petrol and road usage to help pay for and offset the environmental damage your transportation choice caused, would it?

sirsinsalot 4y ago

They do tax those things. 45% of the price of petrol is tax. I pay £1,000 per year in road tax and plenty of council tax too. The issue is inefficiency. That money ends up lining the pockets of private firms with crazy margins on government and council contracts. Our train privatisation scheme is basically a money funnelling exercise to fund middle managers not trains. It's daylight corruption.

eptcyka 4y ago
It's daylight robbery, corruption would imply there's something shady going on here. This is how government services operate anywhere and everywhere in the world.

alias_neo 4y ago

> and offset the environmental damage your transportation choice caused, would it? I live in the UK, not America. My car does an average of 45mpg+ and I pay ~£8.14 per gallon for fuel. They tax us plenty for driving here, train prices are just _that_ bad, the worst I've experienced anywhere in the world.

komali2 4y ago
That's frustrating that train prices are bad. I think I understood that you live in the UK when I wrote my comment, idk how though. I guess it seems crazy but to me those gas prices still sound cheap. Maybe I'm just an obnoxious environmentalist but I think gas taxes for private vehicles should simply be high enough to fund a carbon offset for the usage. I don't have numbers at hand but I'd imagine it'd be pretty high. And yup thus in my dreams planes would basically be outrageously expensive to fly on. I guess for me the convenience trade-off is worth me being confident that my grandkids will have coral reefs to look at, which I'm basically 90% certain won't be the case for now.
- alias_neo 4y ago
  It's a nation wide issue unfortunately. Since our rail was privatised the goal has (as is expected from a business) profit and not (as should be expected for a public service) utility. Fuel prices aren't cheap here,though not the highest in Europe either, and ~50% is taxes, I'd hope some of that goes to good use for environmental efforts. > And yup thus in my dreams planes would basically be outrageously expensive to fly on. I guess for me the convenience trade-off is worth me being confident that my grandkids will have coral reefs to look at, which I'm basically 90% certain won't be the case for now. This is a difficult problem, form an environmental-only perspective that sounds reasonable, but to make it so that only the wealthy and elite can fly widens the class divide. I came from a working class family, but have traveled all over the world; that wouldn't have been possible if we simply priced ordinary people out of flying. Living in the UK, on an island, flying is one of the main ways out. Rather, as an Engineer, I'd look to solve the problem with more efficient and sustainable technology, we should make the transport cause less harm, not price anybody but the wealthy out of it.