5 ms·

You can also tax cars until demand decreases. The obvious challenge is that presently people commute into the city because they can't afford to live in the city

You can also tax cars until demand decreases. The obvious challenge is that presently people commute into the city because they can't afford to live in the city or perhaps most aptly cannot afford what they would consider a reasonable lifestyle there. Even if you phase it in you risk simply forcing people to move into the city exacerbating existing housing prices. It feels like you need a very very substantial increase in housing prior to increase in taxes. For instance in cities that have excessive single family housing bulldozing houses to build substantial apartments then phasing in taxes. The alternative is probably pretty ugly because people have a seemingly very high tolerance for bad traffic. They will keep moving to the city and keep driving until driving in the city is beyond untenable.

ProfessorLayton 3y ago
We could also just stop subsidizing as much as we currently do. We hand out so much public land in the form of free street parking, making the roads larger unwieldy to walk in, and bikes have to worry about getting doored. I'm not suggesting we get rid of all street parking, but it's currently at absurd levels. It would be great if some of those subsidies went to something else that lessened the need to own a car in the first place.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  You're downvoted, but it's a very reasonable point. I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.
  - thereisnospork 3y ago
    The short answer is because public parking is in the public interest. Same as bike parking or sidewalks. Think how much space we could save if we got rid of sidewalks! (/s of course)
    - adrianN 3y ago
      You grandparent is arguing that there is a desirable level of street parking that is below current levels of street parking. They don't claim that all street parking is bad.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      The difference is that car parking is an enormously larger handout. Bike parking probably takes a tenth as much space per "vehicle".
  - melagonster 3y ago
    Before car occupied road, it is possible.
  - maxsilver 3y ago
    > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. I mean, the traditional answer is pretty clear. Roads are public transportation infrastructure. Parking cars (and bikes and scooters) is allowed, because cars move the public around. All these other things are not transportation for the public. People think of parking spots along the streets as "landed property", but they're not, they're more like the overhead bins in a bus or plane. But also, from a practical sense, no one cares about public transportation anymore, so you actually can now park random crap in the street, anytime you'd like? At least in Michigan, restaurants routinely do the "park a picnic table with a BBQ on the side of the road" thing all the time (see https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets-in-parking-spaces/ https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets...) -- many of which still persist since COVID assistance ended. And residential/commercial construction workers routinely do get to block off street parking for a tablesaw or any other construction usage at job sites all the time.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. You don't have to pay to do those other things either. You might not be able to because of safety reasons (e.g. a BBQ in some places) but the "for free" isn't relevant.
- verisimi 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - taeric 3y ago
    I don't quite follow your line of thought, here. Yes, roads were constructed using tax revenue. And road maintenance is expensive and gets more expensive on heavily used roads. To the point that you should expect to pay about as much to repair/replace a system as it cost to build it in the first place. Things get weird here, as our tax rates are lower than the years where we built a lot of our roads. Comically so, honestly. I think I'm fine that the top marginal rate isn't in the 90 percent range, but it is hard to understand complaints on taxes in perspective. Your last point, though, is where I really get lost. Yes, we want to grow the country. That means everything in the country will grow. If you want the country's government to be smaller, you are effectively wanting the country to be smaller. Why? You can maybe replace parts with non-government entities? And when they fail, as all things do, who picks up the pieces to continue on? (And really, what is a corporation but a mini government bound by the rules they create and the laws of their country?)
    - verisimi 3y ago
      I know you don't follow my thought - that's fine. The issue, imo, is something of a lack of imagination. People in general see the government as a good thing, rather than a wealth extraction method that people buy into. It has no right to do what it does. Think about it. Can I give you my right to tax someone? Can you give me a right to tax another? If we 2 get together, do our rights to tax someone else increase? The whole idea is nonsense - no one has a right to coerce money from another. I don't care if you call it mafia or government - there is no such right. So once an entity forcibly extracts wealth from people, and then sets up schools with those illicit gains and educates young people that what it does is right, does this now make it right? No. It does make it confusing for those people that have been "educated" though. If it then places itself as arbiter of 'good' and 'bad' and decides that cars are 'good' and it uses some of the illicit, forcibly extracted gains to create roads, is that right? If later it uses more illicit, forcibly extracted gains to tax the cars on roads, is that right? No - its still not right. The only thing it shows, is how incompetent the thing is, how useless for people, how arbitrary.
- underlipton 3y ago
  We also subsidize the auto companies (and companies related to the auto industry). Sometimes directly, sometimes by being lax on safety or privacy or efficiency standards, or by giving them loopholes (hello, truck-only product offerings). We could just... stop that. Taxing cars hits the public. Phasing out these subsidies hits companies that probably need to be smaller to begin with. Someone's going to get hurt, let's choose the ones with some fat to cut.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It's the same. Taxing companies or people results in more cost to customers. It's like thinking that people pay income tax but companies pay employment tax. Companies would happily pay you the employment tax, as they've already budgeted paying that much for you anyway. Thinking this is some free money that doesn't affect people is incorrect.
autoexec 3y ago
> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. I think punishing drivers is a bad idea. It'd be much better to provide alternatives to driving that are attractive enough that people choose to use them because it actually benefits them to do so. Not many people are looking for their city to hurt them until they have no choice but to make do with things that are worse and less convenient for them. Give people a better option and they'll flock to it naturally. I've spent enough time in places with amazing public transportation that I know it can be the preferred option for 80-90% of my needs. That's what we should strive for.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  I agree. The issue with taxing drivers is it assume the driver is mostly culpable. But the infrastructure decisions that force the majority of people to commute by car weren't made by them. You got things like the big boss and his managers all like to live close to each other and close to work. So they commute 5 minutes to the office in Sunnyvale. While the secretary is commuting from Vacaville. Placing a Pigouvian tax on the secretary is kinda a jerk move.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    I suggested that housing be substantially expanded FIRST and then phase in increased taxes on cars in the city thereafter. Basically first make it possible for the secretary to have an opportunity to move close to Sunnyvale then years later if its still important to live in Vacaville they can pay increasing taxes representing the actual collective cost.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      I suspect you'll run into similar difficulties convincing people to allow their single family homes to be bulldozed and give up their privacy, their equity, and their lawns/gardens so that they can move in with strangers. If you can't offer people a housing situation that's better for them than what they have you'll not get many people signing up to make their lives worse. Try to strong arm them into it and you'll get resistance and resentment. I think we have the ability to give people better, less isolated, housing options that many would find preferable to cookie cutter houses in labyrinth-like subdivisions that cut them off from the rest of the city unless they can drive, but those options will have to minimize the downsides of living in close proximity to many others and come with additional benefits that more than make up for what you're asking people to give up.
frankus 3y ago
It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of ways to get people into and out of a city that don’t involve driving a private car.
bluGill 3y ago
> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. No you can't. If you try you will find yourself voted out of office and replaced with someone who immediately removes those taxes - and everything else you were doing to make alternatives better. If you want to make people not drive you need to start with a better option. Start building great transit. Great transit isn't possible without quantity, so build a lot of it. Make it fast and frequent. Once people have a good (not always better, but it needs to be good) we can talk about how to get the stragglers still driving out of their cars. However very few places in the world have this problem and so it isn't worth talking about.
calamari4065 3y ago
>You can also tax cars until demand decreases Ideas like this disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. Sure, you've reduced traffic, but now only the Right Kind Of People can afford to drive. Not a great look.
- selectodude 3y ago
  Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.
  - digging 3y ago
    Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity
    - estebank 3y ago
      And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.
      - digging 3y ago
        I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.
      - digging 3y ago
        > The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. Very clever, you sure got me. > 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car. Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent. Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.

ProfessorLayton 3y ago

We could also just stop subsidizing as much as we currently do. We hand out so much public land in the form of free street parking, making the roads larger unwieldy to walk in, and bikes have to worry about getting doored. I'm not suggesting we get rid of all street parking, but it's currently at absurd levels. It would be great if some of those subsidies went to something else that lessened the need to own a car in the first place.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
You're downvoted, but it's a very reasonable point. I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on.
- thereisnospork 3y ago
  The short answer is because public parking is in the public interest. Same as bike parking or sidewalks. Think how much space we could save if we got rid of sidewalks! (/s of course)
  - adrianN 3y ago
    You grandparent is arguing that there is a desirable level of street parking that is below current levels of street parking. They don't claim that all street parking is bad.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    The difference is that car parking is an enormously larger handout. Bike parking probably takes a tenth as much space per "vehicle".
- melagonster 3y ago
  Before car occupied road, it is possible.
- maxsilver 3y ago
  > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. I mean, the traditional answer is pretty clear. Roads are public transportation infrastructure. Parking cars (and bikes and scooters) is allowed, because cars move the public around. All these other things are not transportation for the public. People think of parking spots along the streets as "landed property", but they're not, they're more like the overhead bins in a bus or plane. But also, from a practical sense, no one cares about public transportation anymore, so you actually can now park random crap in the street, anytime you'd like? At least in Michigan, restaurants routinely do the "park a picnic table with a BBQ on the side of the road" thing all the time (see https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets-in-parking-spaces/ https://www.giffelswebster.com/dining-platforms-and-parklets...) -- many of which still persist since COVID assistance ended. And residential/commercial construction workers routinely do get to block off street parking for a tablesaw or any other construction usage at job sites all the time.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > I'm not sure why you can park a car on the street for hours for free, but not, say, a picnictable with a BBQ, a folding tablesaw, a telescope, a pop-up bookstore, a film projector, and so on. You don't have to pay to do those other things either. You might not be able to because of safety reasons (e.g. a BBQ in some places) but the "for free" isn't relevant.
verisimi 3y ago
[flagged]
- taeric 3y ago
  I don't quite follow your line of thought, here. Yes, roads were constructed using tax revenue. And road maintenance is expensive and gets more expensive on heavily used roads. To the point that you should expect to pay about as much to repair/replace a system as it cost to build it in the first place. Things get weird here, as our tax rates are lower than the years where we built a lot of our roads. Comically so, honestly. I think I'm fine that the top marginal rate isn't in the 90 percent range, but it is hard to understand complaints on taxes in perspective. Your last point, though, is where I really get lost. Yes, we want to grow the country. That means everything in the country will grow. If you want the country's government to be smaller, you are effectively wanting the country to be smaller. Why? You can maybe replace parts with non-government entities? And when they fail, as all things do, who picks up the pieces to continue on? (And really, what is a corporation but a mini government bound by the rules they create and the laws of their country?)
  - verisimi 3y ago
    I know you don't follow my thought - that's fine. The issue, imo, is something of a lack of imagination. People in general see the government as a good thing, rather than a wealth extraction method that people buy into. It has no right to do what it does. Think about it. Can I give you my right to tax someone? Can you give me a right to tax another? If we 2 get together, do our rights to tax someone else increase? The whole idea is nonsense - no one has a right to coerce money from another. I don't care if you call it mafia or government - there is no such right. So once an entity forcibly extracts wealth from people, and then sets up schools with those illicit gains and educates young people that what it does is right, does this now make it right? No. It does make it confusing for those people that have been "educated" though. If it then places itself as arbiter of 'good' and 'bad' and decides that cars are 'good' and it uses some of the illicit, forcibly extracted gains to create roads, is that right? If later it uses more illicit, forcibly extracted gains to tax the cars on roads, is that right? No - its still not right. The only thing it shows, is how incompetent the thing is, how useless for people, how arbitrary.
underlipton 3y ago
We also subsidize the auto companies (and companies related to the auto industry). Sometimes directly, sometimes by being lax on safety or privacy or efficiency standards, or by giving them loopholes (hello, truck-only product offerings). We could just... stop that. Taxing cars hits the public. Phasing out these subsidies hits companies that probably need to be smaller to begin with. Someone's going to get hurt, let's choose the ones with some fat to cut.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It's the same. Taxing companies or people results in more cost to customers. It's like thinking that people pay income tax but companies pay employment tax. Companies would happily pay you the employment tax, as they've already budgeted paying that much for you anyway. Thinking this is some free money that doesn't affect people is incorrect.

autoexec 3y ago

> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. I think punishing drivers is a bad idea. It'd be much better to provide alternatives to driving that are attractive enough that people choose to use them because it actually benefits them to do so. Not many people are looking for their city to hurt them until they have no choice but to make do with things that are worse and less convenient for them. Give people a better option and they'll flock to it naturally. I've spent enough time in places with amazing public transportation that I know it can be the preferred option for 80-90% of my needs. That's what we should strive for.

Gibbon1 3y ago
I agree. The issue with taxing drivers is it assume the driver is mostly culpable. But the infrastructure decisions that force the majority of people to commute by car weren't made by them. You got things like the big boss and his managers all like to live close to each other and close to work. So they commute 5 minutes to the office in Sunnyvale. While the secretary is commuting from Vacaville. Placing a Pigouvian tax on the secretary is kinda a jerk move.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  I suggested that housing be substantially expanded FIRST and then phase in increased taxes on cars in the city thereafter. Basically first make it possible for the secretary to have an opportunity to move close to Sunnyvale then years later if its still important to live in Vacaville they can pay increasing taxes representing the actual collective cost.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I suspect you'll run into similar difficulties convincing people to allow their single family homes to be bulldozed and give up their privacy, their equity, and their lawns/gardens so that they can move in with strangers. If you can't offer people a housing situation that's better for them than what they have you'll not get many people signing up to make their lives worse. Try to strong arm them into it and you'll get resistance and resentment. I think we have the ability to give people better, less isolated, housing options that many would find preferable to cookie cutter houses in labyrinth-like subdivisions that cut them off from the rest of the city unless they can drive, but those options will have to minimize the downsides of living in close proximity to many others and come with additional benefits that more than make up for what you're asking people to give up.

frankus 3y ago

It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of ways to get people into and out of a city that don’t involve driving a private car.

bluGill 3y ago

> You can also tax cars until demand decreases. No you can't. If you try you will find yourself voted out of office and replaced with someone who immediately removes those taxes - and everything else you were doing to make alternatives better. If you want to make people not drive you need to start with a better option. Start building great transit. Great transit isn't possible without quantity, so build a lot of it. Make it fast and frequent. Once people have a good (not always better, but it needs to be good) we can talk about how to get the stragglers still driving out of their cars. However very few places in the world have this problem and so it isn't worth talking about.

calamari4065 3y ago

>You can also tax cars until demand decreases Ideas like this disproportionately affects poor people and minorities. Sure, you've reduced traffic, but now only the Right Kind Of People can afford to drive. Not a great look.

selectodude 3y ago
Driving is, in fact, a luxury. Only the right kind of people can vacation in Vail and I don’t see anyone flipping out about that.
- digging 3y ago
  Not in the vast majority of North America. It's a necessity
  - estebank 3y ago
    And the argument is that in cities, it shouldn't be.
    - digging 3y ago
      I fully agree but that's 3-4 decades away if it's ever coming for most cities.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car.
    - digging 3y ago
      > The vast majority of America by acreage has squirrels and deer, water, or crops by sq ft. Very clever, you sure got me. > 4 in 5 citizen lives in an urban area where one could with sufficient investment live without a car. Most definitely not. Americans living in a typical suburb have no option except to drive or walk for perhaps hours (often with no sidewalks) to get basic necessities. Even within the vast majority of US cities, typically it's a minority of neighborhoods well serviced by walkable amenities and transit, and the rest are still car-dependent. Again, walking 45+ minutes for basic errands is not a reasonable ask. Bike infrastructure is usually lacking or absent and is forbiddingly dangerous to people who aren't strong and confident bicyclists.