SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Lately folks are worried about how to fund the roads with electric vehicles. Of course, there are very few EVs on the road… yet. They’re talking about some onerous taxes with privacy implications. Tax mileage, so you would have to take your car to the DMV every year, or worse, attach a device that always lets the state and federal government know where you are. Law enforcement and the NSA love that idea.
But I say do away with road taxes altogether. Before the 20th century, neither the state nor federal governments built roads. Many of the larger cities did, but not states; roads aren’t necessary for horses and wagons. The first drivers of autos bought gasoline in five gallon cans from hardware stores.
By the 1920s states had started paving roads, and in 1919 Oregon instituted the first gasoline tax, one cent per gallon. In 1919, few people had autos and most goods were still transported by water, rail, and horse drawn wagons. It made perfect sense that those who needed roads should pay for them; why should horse owners, whose steeds were expensive enough, have to pay to provide roads for the rich with cars? In Vachel Lindsay’s 1920 book The Golden Book of Springfield about the year 2018, cars and airplanes were still toys for the rich.
But the real 2018 was nothing like Lindsay’s 2018. Today, horses are toys for the rich, and cars, buses, and trucks haul the goods and people. Everyone needs the roads and highways today. What’s more, commerce does almost all damage to roads, why should automobile drivers have to pay for them?
The states and the federal government should just let gas taxes slide, and fix the roads with the same funds used to fund everything else. Just keep the gas tax to nudge people towards electric vehicles. Gasoline and its exhaust stinks, especially with a poorly tuned engine. The sooner gasoline and diesel are gone, the better.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 01 2021, @06:55PM (7 children)
Tax Tires? (but this will be unfair when hover cars are introduced, or people who buy new tires for a swing on a tree branch.)
Tax Miles on the odometer. Integrate that tax process with annual vehicle registration. Make odometers even more tamper proof and vastly increase penalties for tampering with them. Possibly randomly inspect some odometers during registration. Nobody needs to know where you go and who you visit. But it's not unreasonable to know how many miles you drive on the roads in order to pay for them.
Tax certain commercial users based on how much their vehicles damage the road. Taxes on commercial trucking end up getting paid by everyone who uses products that were shipped by commercial trucking. So that actually seems fair. It might even encourage purchase of products built, grown or stolen locally.
Now if only we could figure out what items to tax in order to help pay for the $280 billion annual cost of gun violence. [everytownresearch.org]
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:06PM
The problem with a tire tax is that people would run them longer than they should, which is dangerous. We might even see black-market re-treads which are perhaps even more dangerous. Bald tires are already too common, and making tires more expensive would aggravate that.
If taxing miles is the answer, the odometer tax makes the most sense, doesn't track you, and is built-in to older vehicles already. Taxing miles *and* vehicle weight together makes sense too, and shouldn't introduce too many safety issues since even when a vehicle is light it still has to meet safety standards.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:14PM (2 children)
It's easier to leave laws alone than to change them and we want to subsidize electric cars to fight global warming.
So I say leave the gas taxes as-is.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:27PM (1 child)
I don't have a problem with that, in the short term.
However, eventually, as we all hope, the ratio of ICEs to EVs begins to invert. At that point we need a new way to pay for our road infrastructure.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:54PM
There is no shortage of fundage. Just redirect a small percentage of the Wall Street bailouts.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 01 2021, @08:55PM (2 children)
Can't believe you link to Everytown. Mikey Bloomber's mouthpiece is not a reliable source for anything, least of all 2nd amendment issues.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @10:26PM (1 child)
Says the dumb fuck that reads brett's fart and thinks NewsMax is MAX NEWZ!
Seriously, you are an embarassment, and after the orange dumbo that is saying something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2021, @08:08PM
Forum software misspelled 1, Inciteful.