AmericanThinker: […] On the surface – and for all you shallow thinkers out there who are besotted with the idea of “fairness” – the proposal makes sense. Those who use the highways more should pay more, right?
Um, no, not really. The idea that the government should be able to monitor your driving is antithetical to the idea of liberty. And does anyone believe that the monitoring would stop there? There would be calls to install breathalyzers in every car, governors to prevent you from exceeding the speed limit. Perhaps they’d figure out a way to charge you for excess emissions. MORE
Yay fairness!
It never works in the real world.
Suicide by Alphabet.
The Great State of California announced this week they are looking for volunteers to test out the concept of charing by mile. B Brad and I have signed up.
The problem is one government created with electric cars and fuel efficiency mandates coupled with wasteful spending practices.
Until electric cars are brought into the equation, the existing fuel tax is very “fair’ as heavier vehicles cause more wear and pay more in gas taxes.
Gas users subsidize the wear caused by heavy trucks, but consumers pay goods transportation costs in the end anyway.
We could solve the electric car problem easily. Just end the subsidies and they would practically disappear overnight.
The wasteful spending is more difficult to address.
The dumbfuk lefties keep bringing that up here in Orygone and they know they will get their asses kicked out of office. I always tell them to put a tax on fukin’ bicycles!
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/back-seat-driver/article65862542.html
I don’t use the highways I take the bus
Add special taxes for Volt, Tesla, Leaf, etc. owners to make it fair since their drivers aren’t paying their fair share of fuel taxes.
Seriously, roads and infrastructure are financed by fuel taxes. Force people to drive smaller cars with more efficient engines, and the taxes collected are reduced. Who couldn’t se that one coming?
$850,000 per 2-lane mile average run. 170,000 vehicles travel a typical 20 mile stretch of outskirt urban highway per day. If each vehicle is charged a low-rate of 20 cents per 20 mile run (1 cent per mile, duh), the whole piece of piss is paid for in 25 days and the bureaucrats can sit around doubling their money every 25 days while you drive over potholes for the next 25 years.
All elected officials should be required to enroll in a tax addiction recovery program! Failure to pass the course would require immediate termination from the elected office!
I’m still waiting for toll booths to charge me less for riding my motorcycle. Should I hold my breath?
If we had a free market and private companies owned and maintained the roadways then I’d be happy to pay by the mile. But when the govt does it, the amount paid has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with the free market: it is a tax cash cow that will of course be used to fund kindergarten anti-gun propaganda and free butt plugs for everybody whether they want one or not. Bend over, serfs!
Put a tax on all the bicyclists who get their heads squashed when they try to accelerate like a car. That will pay ALL the debt. Not that there is a debt… but we have to pretend that we are autistic.
Bicycles suck. And Bicyclists are worse.
I agree on the concept. While there are still old cars around.
Let those Prius drivers pay by the mile, monitor them
But I think the end game is for the State to know all and see all and when you get lippy on some website they rappel into your room and announce the RFD chips in your tires have alerted the authorities that you are a habitual speeder amassing over two hundred speed violations and innumerable other traffic infractions.
Then, if mandatory social reprogramming doesn’t take they can either euthanize or put you to work on those community gardens they are always going on about
You are correct uncleAl. Here in CA ‘public’ transportation was privately owned.
The big auto makers had difficulty competing, so they bought them up and shut them down.
The government could have just created permanent right of ways and new enterprises would have sprung up as fast as existing ones were taken down, but they saw the profits and wanted them for themselves.
The rest is history. We have crappy public transport and overcrowded roads.
Government takeover usually works as well as giving a 15 year old a 5th of whiskey and the car keys.
One day, there will be a young adult who couldn’t continue to afford the fucking toll, crossing the Verrazano from Brooklyn to Staten Island to take care care of his dying mother.
Huzzah! Tax those damn bicycles.
Registration fee, and tax
License (includes test) and tax
Road use tax
Bike Lane tax
Silly outfit tax
Put a chip in the bike that triggers the horn of any nearby car if they cross the white line into the road.
I have added an extra wash nozzle for my wipers and pointed it to the right, but I grow tired of trying to police the world
@JohnS – Parliament of Whores fan? That was a good read. Too bad P.J.’s lost it and is just another boring whiner now.
UncleAl, actually, fan of Mark Twain in that regard. Never really appreciated P.J.’s humor. Not that it was bad, it just couldn’t hold my attention.
JohnS – Perhaps PJ stole the idea from Twain (wouldn’t surprise me). The exact O’Rourke quotation from P of W is:
…so you can see why I jumped to that conclusion.
Twain’s much better – and smarter – and funnier – of course.
Twain is the font of all that is good and right in the world
I’ll gladly pay $1.00 per inch I can shove a red-hot poker up the ass of these lawmakers.
So what is so wrong with the present system we have, i.e. a tax per gallon? It should be a progressives dream; the more fuel you use the more tax you pay. The real reason the gov’t wants “pay-by-mile” is to keep track of our every move.
Those that support this crack pot of an idea are the same who would need a fainting couch if you proposed that those who have no children attending public schools should have their property taxes reduced drastically (or conversely increasing the taxes of families with PS attendees).
I think NOT.
finally!
we should all just pay one tax to live.
now we have multiple taxes on:
the air we breathe
the energy we consume
the food we eat
the clothes we wear
the homes we live in
the children we give birth to
our educations
our lottery winnings
our retirement earningour inheritances
water tax
sewer tax
the medical care we engage
the money we earn
and soon the money we save when rates go negative
have the overlords missed anything?
oh, sunlight! they missed sunlight!