So they tell us to drive less or more efficiently and we do. Now they complain about lower tax revs???
What next? Telling us to smoke again because they are collecting lower tobacco tax revs?
Genius. Pure genius.
When our own started "free" recycling, the amount of revenue the trash company collected dropped a huge amount. People recycled everything they could. Didn't take long before rates for the now-puny garbage cans shot up to compensate.
Government is chock-full of marketing geniuses who know all about human behavior and incentives.
Nothing more than the law of unintended consequences at work. First you listen to long nose busybodies concerned with “environmental destruction” by us humans, and laws are changed because they demand it, and what do you know, ten years later when all the vehicles get more reasonable fuel mileage, states start to notice that their fuel tax revenue has taken a pretty big hit. Of course no one factored in an economy on the fritz, people driving less, and the better fuel economy.
If I read the tea leaves correctly, all states have started to notice, and so the move to charge for travel on the highways, rather than the arbitrary gasoline tax. Going to be a tough sell I think, but then I’ve been surprised many times of late.
They'll tax you for breathing second/third/fourth hand smoke.
Then they'll charge an import tax because sensors near your home measured pollutants that originated in factories in China.