Associated Press – June 7, 2007:
New York City, where tolls are $6 and putting your car in a parking garage for just an hour can run you $20, is already an expensive place to drive. Now the mayor wants to make it so costly some people won’t even bother driving and will take mass transit instead.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing to reduce traffic and pollution by charging cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan.
Backers say the plan would cut traffic jams and pollution by discouraging driving, and would also generate nearly $400 million in just its first year — money that could go toward buses, subways and other mass transit.
“This is a tax on middle-class people,” said state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat from suburban Westchester County who is chairman of one of the committees that will hold a hearing on the plan Friday. “This will stop the Chevrolets from coming in, not the BMWs.”
#27 Scott
I get the point about value and resources but I would point out you based everything on “if the rules are different” so the arguement beomes about perceived value and that is in the end of the beholder. I see no value in living in a place where there is an associated cost to being mobile and that trumps the perceived value of having all of the culture, enterainment, and sports for everyday life with in walking distance. Great place to visit though because you don’t need to rent a car. So to me it is NYC the Urban theme park.
#26 OFTLO Fly over states!! LoL…I guess you live in the soon to be submerged states then. I love the city I just don’t want to live there. “Suburbia is the place to be, Neighborhood living is the life for me” come along and sing along with me I am sure you know the tune.
#31 – Of course it’s easier to pay more when you make more. You haven’t answered the question of why you should. If someone somehow was given more and you then feel they should give more back, that’s one thing. If that person earned more, why shouldn’t they get to keep it?
“These developments offer a far better lifestyle than cul-de-sacs that go nowhere and getting into a car to drive 0.6 miles to a supermarket. – This is your (and OFTLO’s) subjective opinion. We don’t all feel that way. In fact, better than the cul-de-sac, is the semi-rural highway with well setback houses every quarter mile or so. (Yes, this is my subjective opinion, but I’m not alone in it.) Congregating crowds is exactly what I want to be as far as possible from.
#32 – is that the theme from that new show “Concrete Acres” ?
#33 – TGW,
This time I wasn’t in the mode of arguing against a truly rural, or better yet, remote lifestyle. (Rural to me means farms, necessary, but yecch!)
I can certainly see the attraction to living far from the total human devastation of any of cities, farms, or suburbia. Suburbia, IMHO, is all of the worst features of city life (yes there are many) combined with all of the worst features of remote living (yes there are many there too) and none of the advantages of either (many advantages to both extremes). Of course, as pointed out repeatedly, this is strongly subjective.
The reasons I sell cities over remote living are:
1. The planet has a better chance of being able to support a larger percentage of our current population if people are living in cities. Understand, I do not believe that the planet can sustainably support our current numbers no matter what we do. We have this many people now because we are stealing from future generations to feed this one.
2. When I go someplace remote, I don’t want to come across your house when I get there. I want a truly pristine environment. If enough people have planted their houses there, I need to find another place to go.
#31, people will want their own cars whether they are fueled by gasoline, or hydrogen or by water. But the effects of sprawl are not a cost of that fuel particular. As it is, the position of that paper is equivalent to saying that the real price of animal feed should include the cost of cows on the environment and our lives because we like to eat beef – which is completely nonsensical.
#35 – Mike,
Are you making my point or yours??!!?
Of course beef should include the costs to the environment. Then bison will take over for steaks!! Seriously. Buffalo, being evolved for this continent, really do take a much lower toll on the ecosystem. Farms should also include the costs of the fertilizers that wash down the rivers to create enormous hypoxic dead zones in the ocean and in the Gulf of Mexico. All of this needs to be accurately accounted for. We need a national balance sheet. Instead, we don’t even have an income statement. We just keep track of transactions. All are considered positive. It’s insane.
Follow up: What I’m really saying is that I find the idea of externalization of costs morally repugnant.
Scott, care to list your preferred tax rates?
#36, no, I’m saying that sprawl is not a cost of gasoline, just like the environmental and health effects of eating cows is not a cost of their feed. Cost is something you give up in order to use or acquire something else. We don’t give up open spaces and sit in traffic for gasoline, we do them because we don’t all want to be crammed into large cities. If anything, the situation would be much worse if we all started driving solar powered cars, as there would be less monetary cost to people for spreading out. So what then, sprawl is a cost of using solar power? Still, the answer would be no.
#38 – MikeN,
Sorry, I would need a lot more information about our financial needs as a country and the number of dollars. Ideally, it would be a curve rising more steeply at the beginning and flattening out, but never going totally flat, as income increases. I’d probably also start the curve at the minimum point at which people could afford to pay some taxes, say a bit over the poverty line. Don’t ask for an exact number on that either.
That said, I would hope that a curve asymptotically approaching 25 or 30 percent might do it when everyone is paying for all types of income and there are no deductions.
The exact numbers are really quite unimportant, however, as this is pure dreamland. Maybe we can implement this in either Utopia or Erewhon.
#36 – Mike,
From the article:
The sprawling lowdensity land use patterns that have characterized development in the second half of the 20th century has
been largely facilitated by American subsidization of motor vehicles to the detriment of other modes of trans-Annual road de-icing and runoff costs may reach $5.2 billion. port. The external costs of sprawl run the gamut from ecological damage to the breakdown of community
cohesion and quality of life.
So, if you choose to discount the costs associated with sprawl and to deny their claim that subsidization of motor vehicles contributed to the problem, one of the great things about this article is that they give you each section’s number. Do the math and subtract out that number. What’s left will be your opinion of the real cost of gasoline. But, why throw out all of the other costs mentioned in the article just because you don’t agree with this one? Doesn’t this bring babies and bathwater to your mind?
#40, this all seems like of function of there just being too many people than one of gasoline usage. Maybe we should add them as an external cost of our healthcare systems for allowing use to live longer and closer together in greater numbers. :-/
Mike, I think Scott considers the population problem more serious than I do. Although, I would NOT agree with some stuff a I read a few years ago claiming we should easily be able to support 10Bn. Maybe at bare subsistence level – but ugh.
Instead of cutting back though, in my dream world we would approach the problem from the other direction: Go full speed ahead with wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, powersats – build ’em all as fast as possible. Pound fuel cells, electric, whatever so the vehicles don’t have to get smaller. Just plain generate so much energy that it can practically be given away. With nearly free energy a LOT of problems could be solved. Unfortunately that’s also Utopia or Erewhon.
#32 – #26 OFTLO Fly over states!! LoL…I guess you live in the soon to be submerged states then.
In live in Indiana at the moment, which is what I would call a “should be submerged” state. Don’t waste time telling me to move if I don’t like it. I’ve been work on that a long time and I’m not giving up now.
——
There is nothing wrong with a progressive tax and indeed the rich should pay more. They certainly get more benefit from being Americans. Paris Hilton seems to be getting more out of the justice system than I would…
But you know, that isn’t the point.
The real issue is that our money isn’t buying what it should. Leave aside the current day debate about the money wasted on our taxpayer funded corporate excursion into Iraq… As a nation we aren’t spending well, we aren’t demanding accountability, and we aren’t getting results.
The crowd that says our schools are bad are wrong. But the crowd that says our inner city schools and rural schools are facing huge problems and the quality of education there is suffering is right. Many systems that support those schools, from police, to health services, to civic groups, to the availability of jobs, to many other things… are failing miserably.
Congress is putting billions into boondoggle pork projects but not into active solutions that address issues and offer a return on investment…
And I know that ever one of you free market Ayn Rand worshipping conservatives like a return on investment, and I know that neither you nor I are getting that for our tax dollars.
Seriously, would you be complaining that you pay too much is health and education services were second to none? If our transporation infrastructure was an example to the world? If our military was properly equipped at realistic prices and not the ball sucking good old boy back scratching prices? If there were enough cops on the street and those cops were all exceptional at serving and protecting? If the cumulative effect of a well run machine was a greater economy, greater personal earnings and a higher standard of living, and a better world and future for out children…?
It isn’t how much we are taxed, it’s how we spend, and who is accountable for that spending. Some good old fashioned fiscal conservatism coupled with some good old fashioned social liberalism might just set us back on track.
It’s good living for a fraction of us, but life sucks on the street and America is not a beacon of greatness for the world. If it were, we wouldn’t have this dumb debate over how much we paid in taxes.
#43 – I actually agree with most of what you said. Let’s just focus on fixing the spending problems first before diving right into tax increases – otherwise it’s just money down a black hole on Mars.
(My wife is from Indiana but she would tell you Kansas should be submerged. 😉 )
Oh yeah, everyone in America gets the same benefit: the chance to earn to their potential. If someone earns their wealth why should they pay more? Your example falls short because the Parasite didn’t earn her money.
#44 – (and I would also agree with your wife) 🙂
#45 – Because the more you make, the more you have benefited or will benefit from government resources. Police and fire departments are more dedicated to protecting the wealthy than the poor, as just one example…
My taxes pay for the SEC… but I do not benefit from the SEC. Just another example.
Frankly, I don’t think taxes should be all that high until you enter into the uber rich category, and two people who agree with me are named Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
#47 – #43 – OFTLO,
Wow!! Excellent post.
You are surprised?
#49 – OFTLO – No. Just impressed and more informed than before I read it.
In concept, I agree about not having taxes all that high. I’m not even sure how high they need to get. Once everyone is paying their fair share, I expect those of us that have been paying quite a bit more than fair will feel some relief. Or, perhaps we might make it so that most people stay around the same and get better services.
Nationalized health care may take a bit of money up front. But, at 15% of our GDP now (and the next highest developed democratic nation at 9%) and with the 47th best health care in the world (quite good by third world standards, but not up with the first world), we would probably even see a reduction there. And remember, most of us would be seeing a much smaller chunk or no chunk taken from our paycheck to pay for health insurance.
Other examples probably exist as well for where service can be improved. Perhaps, as long as we’re dreaming, we can imagine paying a bit less with uber-wealthy people paying their share and a tremendous improvement in service.
#43, There is nothing wrong with a progressive tax and indeed the rich should pay more…
Yes, there is something fundamentally wrong with it if you are a believer that the government is obligated to treat everybody equally. And that is the one aspect of government which should be demanded above all others.
#51 – No there is not. You benefit more. You pay more.
Everyone thinks this FairTax scheme is somehow gonna solve all the problems. It isn’t. It isn’t a good idea, and it isn’t balanced or fair. It is actually a diabolical scheme to shift the tax burden down the scale toward the middle class and the poor.
#52, how does the fairtax do that? everybody pays the same proportional amout of tax of the things they purchase, and people with more money generally tend to buy more things, and usually more expensive too. There is also the prebate which effectively exempts every household from paying the tax on purchases up to the federally established poverty line.
#52, and as to your first remark – do you not believe that people earning $1,000,000 would pay more in taxes, at a rate of let’s say 15%, than those earning $35,000 taxed at the same rate? Did you even take a math class growing up are you just so in love with this “the rich should pay more because they have benefited more” notion to support your progressive tax that you don’t mind appearing totally oblivious to the obvious?
I also reject your premise that people are rich because they have gained more benefit from society than those who aren’t, so therefore should be required to “pay back” more of a share than the rest. If the laws and are applied equally (as they should be), then it is a person’s ability, industry… and yes, sometimes chance or luck, that achieves for him a “better” or “worse” outcome than those of others. But it is not the role of government, in my belief, to provide or punish outcome; only to provide an even system of laws and institutions as a foundation for people’s own pursuits.
#53 – Because the level of discretionary spending done by the wealthy is different.
I think FairTax proponent numbers are cooked and I am not alone. Google “against fair tax” because I’m clocking out in a few minutes and going into the world where I don’t sit glued to a screen all day.
But if I had to pick one reason and one reason only to oppose “Fair Tax” it would be this:
Rich people support it
#54 I also reject your premise that people are rich because they have gained more benefit from society than those who aren’t, so therefore should be required to “pay back” more of a share than the rest.
I didn’t say that.
I did not say they are rich because benefited more from society.
I said because they are rich they benefit more from the services that governments provide.
well i dont live in new york, but i dont care at all
#54, Mike
But it is not the role of government, in my belief, to provide or punish outcome; only to provide an even system of laws and institutions as a foundation for people’s own pursuits.
You make it sound like “Government” is some monolithic creature out to get us. The solution to that is to VOTE.
You see, the “Government” is actually all of us. If you don’t like something, let your representative know. If the “Government” does something else, then maybe it is because the majority want it that way.
Flat tax is bad for the simple math of it. If someone is making $30,000/yr, they are barely able to put food on the table and can’t afford $4,500. If someone is making $1,000,000/yr and pays $150,000, they still have $850,000 left. I firmly believe that, as previously stated a number of different ways, flat tax is an attempt to have rich people pay even less than they do now.