This is fair.
It may not be a new idea, but it is a bad idea in this country at this time.
It’s not an easy problem, but any solution that hurts the working class is almost certainly not the best.
Change the bolded to “the obscenely wealthy” and you have yourself a deal.
I’ve used public transportation in some of those places. The only places where I’d prefer it to driving around is where driving around sucks more.
Outside of the big cities with lots of traffic, I would absolutely uber over bus/subway/tram, etc. AINEC.
Having said that, I’ll agree all public transportation sucks was a bit hyperbolic on my part. In those places it’s OK.
this ffs
“Where’d all the white people go?”
“Way over yonder thereabouts.”
“Hm. Ok, well, let’s build them a factory and a bunch of other shit, we don’t want racism to be inconvenient.”
I like trains too, but in a lot of intraeuropean travel they were more expensive than planes.
I paid about 25% more to go from Madrid to Barcelona by high speed train than plane tickets + airport transportation would have cost. Maybe that was an anomaly.
But if we’re including planes and trains, then I’m with you. I hate driving long distances. My absolute limit is 200 miles and is rapidly declining as I age.
Here’s an idea, and bear with me here… How about we raise income taxes on the top 2 percent by 4 percent and fund the entire infrastructure of the nation?
You’re wearing coal miner lumberjack clothes and you’re not a coal miner nor a lumberjack. That’s exhibit A.
I see your point though and I wouldn’t have stated it as hardline as Pocket Chads’ did 
Lol, you live in Europe, right? There’s no fucking mass transit to speak of in like 90 percent of the US (by land mass not population ldo).
nice
We had to drop the rental car off at the airport that day and as it was Vegas baby during the morning the 2 euromugs decided to walk back to the hotel, why not, we can see the place in the distance and its sunny.
A couple of milkshakes and off we got, sandals and sunscreen, shorts with taps aff Ofcourse, were glaswegians ffs, tough as nails, about an hour in or so Boaby turns around and says in his I’m not worried look “It’s warm in’it” “sure pal, so’s that vodka, now hand it over”.
2 hours or so on and we’re like hmmm, Scots though, tough as nails, “I think we should go get some food bud”, “Yeah, that’s the plan *********” “that’s the plan” and off we went, to the nearest food stop, a burger place with noodles and shit, talked ourselves out from the rest of the way and jumped a bus for the rest of the journey, then the real shit took off when a John Connor looking kinda dude looks us over and started his thing, Vegas man, fuck, well everyone got a story here so, and then it rained and did it rain so much we got stuck outside MGM and could not get off until the water ran down the side of the casino and bus, geez.
About 15 mins later we got off and I promised myself if given the chance all over again I’d have went without the bus ride.
Unlucky I guess but there’s some strange people on those gray hounds and I’ve been a few places.
settle down Lenin
To be clear, the VMT is one method that is being looked at to shore up the Highway Trust Fund, which is what is currently funded by gas taxes. As people pay less gas tax (it’s already happening), this will need to be funded in other ways.
You’re right in that I have conflated some things, and been less than clear. I am also not arguing for a VMT as the only method of doing this. I am more arguing that the knee-jerk reaction against it is just that…knee-jerk, and that it shouldn’t just be summarily thrown away because we haven’t yet nailed down how it would work as one method to generate revenue.
The future we want is fewer cars and better public transit. If we reach or approach these goals, the HTF will be even more underfunded. As a bit of history, before 1956, roads were paid for and maintained out of the US General fund (which is where our other taxes go, and where taxes on the wealthy would go). When Eisenhower created the Interstates, the HTF was designated as the sole fund used to pay for roads/maintenance. This is funded with the gas tax.
You may be thinking, “why not just eliminate the HTF and go back to using the General fund?” and sure, we could do that, but look at California to see what happens practically when we do. All of a sudden, infrastructure gets put on the back burner. The original idea behind the HTF was to have an untouchable pot of money that is ONLY for roads.
Now we have a problem that was unforeseen in 1956. We have people using the roads but not contributing to the gas tax (or not contributing a fair share), and the fund is depleting faster than it can be funded. None of this has been restructured or looked at for decades. I’m not just talking about EVs here. Think of the number of delivery trucks on the road today vs. 1993, which is the last time anything having to do with this fund was passed.
What Pete and others are considering is a complete overhaul of the entire HTF funding system, which might include a VMT, will probably include higher rates for commercial outfits, possibly a carbon tax, or other revenue-generating methods.
Unfortunately, all this can’t fit into a 30-second sound bite recap video made by a media aggregator site with a clickbait headline. It also takes some study and digging, and possibly listening to a 5-hour testimony to the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee that I totally did NOT have on in the background the other day when everyone else was yelling about Biden’s press conference
I heard a little bit about the whole flag controversy. It’s wild how different politics is from the crazy jingoistic shitshow that is USA#1.
Welcome to 5 fucking hours ago when I said I had no concerns with doing that and in fact suggest much higher tax increases.
Ding ding!
An NBZ post asking for rivers of blood in the streets signifies the next round of this enthralling debate.
Just tax the loaded more not only on income but on wealth. Simple.
I’ll listen to technocrats when they deploy their formidable intellects towards taxing unrealized capital gains and large estates. Until that occurs they can kindly fuck off. Asking literally anyone to pay more tax while Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos pay zero is some guillotine shit.
Re: Adelson
Making up the loss in revenue for the fund with a wealth tax seems pretty damn straightforward. There is no reason the HFT revenue streams need to be directly tied with use.
99% of the damage to highways is from heavy truck/vehicles.
Diesel and truck taxes pay for about 30% of the Highway Trust fund.
Raise the taxes on trucking if you want the people who do the damage to the highways to pay for them and put the burden on consumers and at least hit people who consume more and the companies that are shipping these products. Use the gas tax to push people into making choices with lower external harms. (remember that academic paper that was posted earlier*)
VMT on regular cars, people driving to work and driving to shop and even to go on vacation is the subsidizing business tax.
Indeed, a 1976 California study often cited by those in the transportation industry found that all but 1 percent of the damage to the state’s roads and bridges by vehicles was caused by heavy trucks and buses.
A VMT tax has the potential to generate a more stable stream of
revenues than a gasoline tax because motorists cannot reduce their
tax burden by driving more fuel efficient vehicles.