Posted on 12/29/2014 3:44:05 PM PST by TurboZamboni
Like they would not add the mile tax and raise the gas tax. The government never gets rid of a tax and if they do, it is not for long. Liberals want a per mile tax so bad, they can taste it.
Wisdom, thou name is not libertarian. But I have to admit, he’s a “free thinker.”
Bite me, Poole.
Per-mile tolling reflects greater fairness, since those who drive mostly on Interstates will pay higher rates than those who drive mostly on local streets.
Right, and mostly rural poor who do not live in congested cities and travel longer distances will get screwed harder than the liberal city leftists that drive their Smart Cars.
If per-mile tolling is implemented as a true user fee, it will be self-limiting
BULLPUCKEY. Name for me ONE GOVERNMENT TAX PROGRAM THAT IS SELF LIMITING. Government and taxes only ever EXPAND and NEVER limit themselves.
Per-mile tolling will guarantee proper ongoing maintenance of the tolled corridors, since bond-buyers and other investors legally require this as a condition of providing the funds.
BULLPUCKEY. Research ANY existing tollway authority and the corruption, graft and crumbling road structures that exist upon them as they remain under permanent 'construction' with little to no improvements whatsoever.
Per-mile tolling also provides a ready source of funding for future improvements to the tolled corridor.
Pure bovine excrement. We have the existing Tollway authorities for proof of how absurd that empty promise is.
Per-mile tolling would be the first big step toward replacing fuel taxes
GROSS GARGANTUAN BOVINE EXCREMENT. There is NEVER a government tax program that is ever "replaced". This will simply be dumped on top of the existing fuel taxes with excuses made and plans drawn up to apply fuel taxes to "other needy investments".
Not to mention this is nothing but a plan to restrict and punish our movements as a people.
The problem with [road funding] is that the money obtained through numerous taxing schemes, is that the taxes collected. I attended a local county meeting where an environmentalist group bragged at the meeting how Senator Carl Levin (D) helped them secure more than 3 million tax dollars from the federal road fund for “regional planning” that had nothing to do with maintaining or improving our existing roads.
The Michigan Road Builders Association, many unions, environmental groups, and other special interest have used the [road funding] as their personal piggy bank from which they take money for what ever the cause de jure of the moment is! The majority of the road funding never gets spent on maintaining or improving our roads. When Michigan Legislators began wringing their hands over how to raise taxes again to increase revenue to the road fund for roads, it was predicted that most Michiganders said HELL NO! The tax payers have no guarantee the tax dollars will be spent to fix and maintain our roads, in fact, the liberal socialist are demanding funding from the road fund for public schools as well!
This is why central government control and government taxes do not work to maintain what the tax was instituted for in the first place. In Michigan, Townships maintained township roads, counties maintained county roads, and the State maintained State roads. With this funding sharing scheme (redistribution) nothing is funded except the unions pensions funds, and special interest groups causes!
If a road in our Township needed to be fixed and/or maintained, we would have a Township meeting where the cost was explained, bids were requested so that we could get the best job done for the least cost to the tax payer, and the tax payer actually had a say in whether the job would be approved or not. The tax dollars stayed in the local community instead of being redistributed to failed liberal socialist cities where the taxes are diverted without the knowledge of the tax payer. The same at the county and State level. Prior to 1963, all taxes collected stayed in the communities from where they were paid. In order to keep the failed liberal socialist cities afloat, after 1963, the State began redistribution of our taxes to these failed cities while we watched as our property taxes keep going up and up and up.
December 31, 1968, our budget for our entire county was 1,200.00 dollars (population of 27,000 people). Today, our county budget is more than 16,000,000.00 (that's 16 million dollars with less population being 25,000), 17 million of unfunded liabilities (Union retirement pensions funds) and the county is sitting on more than three (3) million dollars in local bank accounts while they continue to raise our taxes and kick people out of their homes for non payment of property taxes!
Now Michigan wants the people to vote to amend the State Constitution to increase tax dollars for roads and schools. Unions demanding more tax dollars and the tax payers on the other side saying enough taxes already, no more!
That’s why I would like to see most of our road funding returned to the states. Its easier to keep a state under control than it is to keep the feds under control.
The highway system was designed and built during the Eisenhower administration. Taxes paid for thier construction. The federal gas tax is suppose to cover the upkeep of these roads.
Obviously, our representatives have squandered this money. Your plan is to give them more money by paying them to drive on the highways we already paid for.
What happened to the trillion dollars that was suppose to go to Obama’s “shovel ready” infrastructure program?
The current tax on a gallon of gas is already based on miles.
If my driving habits were to change and I were only driving on surface streets, I would naturally use less gallons, as I would be driving less miles.
For the record, in any given year I drive 30,000 to 50,000 miles.
Just to to do my job requires about 22,000 miles and the reast is for my jaunts across the country, down to Hollywood & Palm Springs and as far north as Canada.
The biggest portion of leisure miles is just for going to Lake Tahoe.
That is a lot of taxes and let’s take a typical year of 40,000 miles for everything.
40,000 miles ÷ 34mpg = 1,176 gallons per year @ .71 cents per gallon or about $893.76 a year in taxes, on my gas.
This, when gas today is $2.50 per gallon, making the government the single largest profiteer per gallon, comprising nearly 30% of the cost.
By contrast, the oil companies only average 6-7%.
The government is the real cartel.
Interesting concept and actually not that far away from
being implemented should the powers that be decide to.
I suspect most of live in a state or county that issues some
type registration/inspection for the vehicle and usually once a
year it must be renewed. At that renewal all they have to do is
collect the odometer reading and issue a bill for miles driven.
Granted this doesn’t apply to specific roads but all roads in general
from county/state/federal/private.
We pay numerous fees and taxes for items related to travel. Where do these fees and taxes go? The general funds, either at the federal or state level. These revenues are paying for patronage jobs, juicy benefits' packages, political favors, union largesse, and numerous other government waste. A more efficient revenue-collection plan is not the concern; the concern is the wasteful administration of those revenues by our government.
I’m pretty sure that it’d end up being per-mile-tolling in addition to a gas tax.
It’s kind of funny. As you can tell from the comments, people would rather pay a tax they can pretend isn’t there than pay their way as they go. They hate tolls because they notice that it costs money.
This is why it’s easy to raise the gas tax when gas prices are low.
I don’t care, a tax is a tax, a fee is a fee. You drive, you’ll pay one way or the other, or both. The secret to tolls is to sunset them when the road is paid for, lowering them to cover only maintenance. At with a toll you know what you are paying for.
I am envious.
reason magazine used to be libertarian. I have a current subscription and tried to comment at mr. pooles article. They don’t allow comments. A libertarian solution would be to revert to state or private control. The infrastructure in this country was built privately (yes we did build that) but when tolls were fair they were instituted by private companies to erect and keep the infrastructure which they built functional. i would support a totally private infrastructure as it was created. when the states then feds took it over their purpose was to extract fees and pay for other government crap.
i would prefer this method cuz i don’t drive that much. and they wouldn’t know where i went. The article however is not that creative with suggestions. also the tax would have to be a state tax with the feds completely out of the picture.
I average over 100 miles per day on the ranch plus I maintain the roads.
I will accept this when they start charging school taxes based on how many kids you have attending that screwl.
Per-mile tolls are a scam!
The fuel taxes will not go away.
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Because government is not intrusive enough?
I doubt any such system would rely on the odometers in cars. They would be GPS based. Unless there are safeguards, they could create a tremendous decrease in privacy. They could not only track total mileage within each political jurisdiction, they could track second by second, one's car's exact position to within 10 meters and velocity to within 0.1 meters per second for an entire year. They could also be used to automatically issue traffic tickets for exceeding speed limits.
>> “It’s kind of funny. As you can tell from the comments, people would rather pay a tax they can pretend isn’t there than pay their way as they go” <<
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Tolls will give us BOTH!
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