General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Economics are why we should differentiate between taxes and fees.  Fees control consumption of limited resources by putting a price on them, that price should have nothing to do with the cost of that resource.  Taxes are used for two things, monetary policy, and funding the government.  But if we provide unlimited access to scarce resources, we'll run out of them really quick.  Some things, like public parks are cheap enough yet valuable enough to provide effectively unlimited amounts of them.  Some things like healthcare we limit access in a more egalitarian fashion (most critically ill first).  Other things, we use fees to limit access.  Roads could be one of these things, were we use the price to limit congestion instead of building more roads (which becomes prohibitively expensive eventually).

Of course, things in the real world are murkier, we use fees to fund transit, when it isn't really a limited resource (mostly because it's sucks compared with the very cheap driving situation).

But the real issue under discussion comes from people objecting to "subsidizing" transit because they see a fee which doesn't cover the costs of running it, but ignore the enormous subsidy paid to drivers in the form of effectively free and unlimited roads.

At the end of the day, there is a very fundamental difference between taxes and fees, they are very nearly opposites.

  You are correct Dan " there is a very fundamental difference between taxes and fees" and that difference is how each are paid and collected.  At the end of the day they still end up in the same "bank account " and our government decides how to use the funds.

  I don't think anybody should ever object to subsiding public transit, that is simply wrong as it is a necessity in any large community.  To say roads are effectively free is false and I think you know this.  They are no more free than is healthcare or education.

  Lastly, I'm not sure if you own a vehicle or not Dan but "the very cheap driving situation" is anything but cheap.

Cheers,

Roads are free in exactly the same way as healthcare and education, and different from the way in which mailing a letter is not free.

I really don’t understand why people can’t understand that general taxes, not use-related fees, pay for the roads (with minor exceptions primarily in the form of the gas tax, which probably isn’t as high as a proper carbon tax would be anyhow, so arguably it is a too-low carbon tax, not a road-use-related tax as such).