Salt Lake City tried somting like this. They needed more money (as always) so they raised the parking meter rates. Turns our people don’t like to pay for parking so not only did the amount raised from parking meters not go up, it actually went down. And the shoppers? They stayed away so sales tax revenue went down too.
I live outside Seattle and usually work in the city. I do not agree with the head tax but some big companies have created needless congestion in Seattle, most notably Amazon. There is no reason that a company that is not brick and mortar should be sprawling through the city.
There are better areas for Amazon to locate to the south most notably. Amazon employees are very well paid and many live in Seattle. If they were not in the city the rent prices would fall and more of the currently homeless could afford lodging
This solution, of course, would not provide a giant slush fund for the city to skim from as this head tax does.
They mandated government-controlled price caps for imported gasoline. Their fuel has to be shipped in by boat. They didn't cap prices at the pump however so service station owners charged whatever they wanted. Oil companies raised their prices to the maximum allowed under the caps but this still wasn't up high enough to compete in the free market.
Not only did prices at the pump go up instead of down, but the gasoline supplies started to slow down, as oil companies realized they weren't going to be paid market prices for their products.
Why sell to Hawaii for less if they could sell anywhere else for more? Simple economics.
Well, it only took the dumb liberals running the show 8 months to stop the program in its tracks in spring of 2006 before anymore damage was done.
A classic unforced error by the democRAT-led government. Unintended consequences is the only outcome liberals know.
They will be writing about this big failure in free-market economic understanding in college business textbooks for years to come.
why don’t cities and other cabals approach their need for money in the correct way?....stop spending...stop ridiculous contracts and if the unions don’t allow it, then stop hiring and close down depts....