I think an example of a highway that pays for itself is the 407 in Toronto. People were pissed that the government sold it to a private corporation with a 99 year lease, and that private corporation set a very high price (for a North American toll road). But the company that owns the 407 is responsible for maintaining it for 99 years, so they've priced it appropriately. The only reason it seems expensive is because... that's what roads cost! They should all be tolled that much!
I actually didn't know it was owned by a private company, that's crazy. At least the government holds it to the maintenance. But yes the *actual* price of highways and roads are way higher than what most people think.
This kind of approach only deals with the monetary cost and benefits of projects. The majority of the positive and negative impacts of a project like the 407 are non-monetary. Direct non monetary effects like loss of ecosystems services on the hundreds of square kilometers of forest and wetland that were paved over. Indirect non monetary effects like more people living sendentary, car based lives, and the negative physical and menthal health effects that come from that. I get the appeal of the toll road example, because it can shock people to see the real direct economic cost of a large road project that they feel entitled to. But we can't fight the problems that are caused by thinking of everything as a competitive set of economic exchanges by trying to build a more perfect competitive set of economic exchanges - that's literally what neoliberal ideology is, like going back to the Mont Pelerin society and the West German Ordoliberals. Instead of idealizing a more perfect accounting of monetary costs and benefits, we should be thinking about what resources we have, what kind of trade-offs we're willing to make, and what kind of world do we want to live in. Like the way Alan is thinking when he makes the argument for much broader investment in trolley buses. It's not a question of getting bus riders to pay for the catenary infrastructure through a "miles rided" tax, it's a question of how are we going to use social assets to pursue a sustainable society in which we can all live decent lives. In terms of electric cars, I think with respect to human-driven electric cars, Alan is 100% right - they have almost all the same problems as gasoline cars. But autonomous vehicles, that's I think something significantly different. If we think about the barriers, currently, to more public transportation, labour costs are a major issue. In Vancouver, Translink literally rolled out a whole new type of bus service ("Community Shuttles") primarily to save on labour costs - because the drivers would not be in the same union. Of course tech bros are just profit-seeking, basically anti-social characters that don't mind tearing at our social fabric. But - we have to recognize, that the car culture is part of our social fabric, and so this may be an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" moment when we consider Uber's stated aim of dismantling the culture of private car ownership. Yes, Uber exploits its drivers, I'm no fan of them as a company, I don't think they are driven by decent human values. But focussing too much on Uber as exploiting human labour I think is in danger of missing the point, that their goal is very much to transcend the need for human labour, at least human drivers for transportation and delivery vehicles. I think what we need to think about, and personally I find this very hard to imagine, is what kind of cities, suburbs, infrastructure, will be appropriate to a world where automated share taxi services makes living in relatively low density suburbs without private car ownership a viable option, at least from a transportation point of view. Of course, transportation is only one piece of the puzzle, and there are still of course the basic problems of the economic infeasibility of low density suburbs, in terms of the absurdly high cost of services per household, which shows up as soon as new developments cease and "development charges" can no longer pay for rebuilding infrastructure in around 25 year old suburbs. But, ultimately, I think sometimes we focus too much on these kinds of solid-asset community problems, and not enough on the decline in soft assets, specifically social capital, in suburban communities, with the decline of membership in social clubs (i.e. the whole "Bowling Alone" thing). Ultimately, I think regardless of where you live, if you live somewhere for 25 years and you don't know virtually anyone in your community, and that's pretty common in the suburbs, I think that's a pretty sad form of life - even if we could pay for it.
It's actually not as much as it costs to maintain it. The 407 commission have huge profit margins, and the actual quality of the road is much higher than safe acceptable margins. A better comparison is the Pennsylvania turnpike commission and the Penna turnpike. While still arguably expensive, they contend with paying for all their maintenance, and contributing 400 million annually to transit agencies.
I just heard about this! And then I tried it for the first time in years, and I was able to stay squatting on my heels the whole way up and down easily for what seems like the first time ever! I guess you really don't have to read theory to be a communist.
"Free speech" or "free beer"? Because highways are a bit less "free" in the former sense when there is a traffic jam, and less "free" in the latter sense when you realize that they are taxpayer-funded!
Nothing is free, ever. Remove that concept from your thinking entirely. There is no such thing as free highways, or other things like free healthcare. Everything has a cost and there is no avoiding it.
I am the President of a local nonprofit the Ozark Rail and Bus Transit Society. One of the things I have learned from my members is the importance of building walkable and livable communities. Your videos sum up so much of what we talk about. Thank you for making videos. It saves me from having to do it.
agreed, this would force more businesses to set up in central places where people can live closer or commute via transit, verses being out in the suburbs and car dependent
@@alanthefisher In addition, it could incentivize more businesses to encourage work from home options in industries where it makes sense to be remote...the workers would then spend less on travel for work and overall maintenance costs on their vehicles. And if many people find this an incentive to live in an area where they don't need a car for other kinds of trips...I like this logic. (By the way I'm a huge Pete fan and was a bit skeptical at the beginning but I appreciate that you considered his perspective despite not agreeing with him on other topics. Quite refreshing these days!)
@@Dragiux If they wont be employed then they could never really afford to live there anyway, because the rest of society was subsidizing their commute. Businesses need employees one way or another, so it will also help employ people living closer.
The problem people have with public transit in the US is that the only people who normally take it are the poor and destitute because its often so shitty the only ones who take it are the ones too desperate to have any other options. So for a lot of Americans there is this embedded idea that anything other than driving is a sign of poverty and isn't something we should strive for. I genuinely hate being stuck with either dog shit transit options or driving everything where.
This! I used to work at the local zoo. Ride from college to the zoo in my car? Less than 15 minutes. With public transportation, over an hour and the bus schedule and bus stops are not well maintained.
Also because of stupid zoning laws, there are only a handful of neighborhoods in the COUNTRY dense enough to support frequent, dense public transportation. Almost all of these are in NYC.
Tax vehicles on weight per axle, be they ICE or electric. Land barges are less efficient and cause significantly more wear & tear to roads, plus it may also be helpful in curbing the arms race going on with ever-larger SUVs & trucks
This. Also stop exempting certain industries(ie: agriculture) from regulations that allow them to use over-sized & extremely over-weight equipment that other industries such as trucking are restricted from using...
@@danielbishop1863 If that actually cuts down on the wear & tear, then isn't that fine? Put a rubber caterpillar track on it for all I care if that what's ends up cheapest.
@@stormveil funnily enough, continuous tracks actually eat roads for breakfast. At least military-grade ones, I guess I've never seen a track loader doing donut holes on asphalt before
I feel like you missed one big point, semi trucks put exponentially more stress on roads than cars do. Personally, I think a weight AND mileage tax would be more equitable and incentivize companies to switch to rail shipping and keep our roads better maintained; free from a clog of trucks.
@@joaquinjr2570: I believe it was said that even with that taken into account, lorries are still subsidised comparative to their damage compared to cars and other vehicles.
Putting tolls on currently "free" highways and increasing the rates on existing toll highways would probably have a bigger psychological effect. I think the tax system makes driving a car feel less expensive when people have to pay a fare to get on a train.
@@LMB222 Think that sometimes has happened in mainland China as I heard some areas have had too many expressways built & thus they're each more underutilised, so tolls for each vehicles are charged higher in order to recoup the same revenue for maintenance
@@locly4692 not really tbh. I save more with public transportation than a car. Edit: and that’s with the current poor public transportation system. Imagine if it was more used and more robust. Would be even cheaper than it is now!
@@jzdude01 give me a number. I mean the total cost you have to pay to own and maintain a private car. Public transportation? Do you know what's that mean?
That’s not even the problem, it’s mostly cause in America, we pride ourselves on independence of the individual, unfortunately this means for many that we want new nice things but want the other guy to pay for it. Aka you should pay it not me, that way I can use it for free
To be fair, i'm from France and even though our public transit system is better, you still hear just as many car-centric boomers who rant about railways being subsidized
Especially if you compare the amount of subsidizes. For Germany: on average cars pay for 30% of their infrastructure costs (this excludes any environmental, climate, damage) While the public transport pays for 85% of their costs. Most of this comes from ticket sales and advertising on stations and vehicles. So eighter cars have to get 330% more expensive (cuz 30% *3.3 =100%) or trains have to get 36% cheaper.
How about a vehicle property tax instead of miles driven tax? A miles driven tax (or gas tax) is a regressive tax. A property tax is mostly a progressive tax. People like Jay Leno who own dozens of hugely expensive cars would help pay for the roads, while less well off people could make due with just one nice car or two cheap cars. Price parity between EVs and ICEs is close, plus the lower operating costs of EVs means the vehicle property tax could even out between the two. Plus there's the problem of counting miles driven. Do you rely on self reporting, or do you stick big brother in everyone's cars? Both are highly problematic. I like this format fine, but it's like the 2nd video of yours I've seen so insert huge grain of salt :) Thanks for dissing CIA Pete.
So when it comes to subsidising public transport, it's been proven time and time again that even if the transport itself doesn't make money, that the resultant economic benefits to local businesses and the like more than outweigh the costs. An example would be my local city of Nottingham which is claimed to have the best public transport infrastructure outside of London, Manchester & Birmingham. Nottingham has heavily invested in busses and trams over the last 20 years and some 4000 local businesses claimed the reason they were able to do so well was due to easier public access allowing more people to come to their shops. It's just something to note that public transport investment results in businesses doing better and therefore the government earning more in tax so they can therefore invest more in public transport, it's a positive reinforcement cycle.
Here in Hong Kong, public transport is actually extremely profitable. I think it’s because it’s run by private companies in direct competition with each other. For example, for one journey across the harbour I could take a bus, or a ferry, or the MTR (metro). So this incentivises them to provide better service, which makes people want to ride them more, which means more profit.
Public transit can and does make money, as long as it is not up against a free to use road network that is subsidized by the government. If people payed $9 for a highway commute they would hop on the train in a heartbeat.
Guess none of ya'll have seen how disgustingly shitty NYC's public transport is and it contributes nothing to anything except being shitty, pissy and full of homeless people in the summer with the AC off.
Why should taxpayers subsidize the cost of public transportation just so business owners in the city center benefit? I see nothing wrong with raising tram/bus fares to accurately reflect the cost of the infrastructure.
Honestly the more I think about it, the more I realize the car only works if everyone used it as a replacement for the horse. When it replaced walking, trains, and public transit was when the concept hit the fan
Well, the infrastructure required for cars take up a lot more space and costs a lot more than that required for horses, which is just a semi-paved or dirt road.
“I mean, if Henry Ford canvassed people on whether or not he should build a motor car, they’d probably tell him what they really wanted was a faster horse.” - John McNeese 1999 Turns out those people woulda been right lol.
I'll be honest I'm not a big fan. The problem is that car-dependency is forced onto Americans. Government regulations make it impossible to build anything other than car-dependent places, and the failures of those places have always been bailed out by money taken from the taxpayers. It's just another way to make the taxpayers pay for the mistakes of the government. Things won't get better if you keep taking money from the citizens to force your terrible ideas to stay afloat, those ideas can't be ALLOWED to stay afloat if real changes are to happen.
Sadly, it may very well take towns going bankrupt all over the US to induce change. The gas tax is an example of how if a tax is affordable, oftentimes the public will just eat it up and the underlying city designs won't change, with the economy just adapting to higher fuel costs.
Solutions that pair nicely with a mileage tax: replace property tax with land value tax. Carbon tax and dividend. Incentivize building homes for longer so cheap mcmansions built to sell don’t become the only available option.
I would also replace income tax with higher land value and corporate gains taxes, and make land value taxes increase exponentially for each property one owns (plus rent control.) If the parasitic landlords and money flippers want to own more land, they should be paying more in taxes. They can't hide plots of land in the Cayman islands, after all.
@@joshuanewman5988 Property tax taxes the entire value of the property, including the land it sits on, while land value tax just taxes the lot itself, and not the building that sits on it.
Although I’m a city guy, I find British suburbs ideal and they’re definitely better than American ones, because they fit the description of your ideal transit oriented, densely built suburbia. Plus, British zoning laws allow corner shops within neighbourhoods so you can basically walk max 10 mins if you need a few eggs and a bottle of milk - instead of having to drive a long way to a big buck store. Needless to say, your GP would also be within walking distance too…
VMT feels like a tax on low income earners and people who commute far for work and school. Obviously we need to improve all aspects of our infrastructure and move towards a greener and sustainable economy, but a VMT will be a burden on people like me. With that being said however, if the VMT removes a gas tax or costs less for the average tax payer I could get behind that
@@LilliD3 I’m talking like the commute to and from work. A lot of the time companies will reimburse travel expenses if they were documented and for work purposes
You're quoting socialists in the "bad takes" section and then present everything under a free market capitalist lense. JFC, they're not bad takes, they're absolutely right in saying that another tax on low income earners is bad. Living close to a city center is often unaffordable. If anything, you have a pretty bad take if your only solution is to keep using the same tools that caused the problem in the first place.
A VMT isn't progressive but we could make other taxes more progressive like income tax and we can eliminate sales tax which is regressive. I understand not wanting to burden the poor but there are other ways to reduce there tax burden.
@@trent6319 as someone who lives in a state with more income tax and no sales tax I’d rather have sales tax, those people done understand having more than a third of your paycheck be gone before you get it
It sounds like a regressive tax, but I realized while watching this video that the issue with cars is much like the issue with suburbs. There are "externalities" that need to be charged back to the source. So in the same way suburbs are actually like ponzi schemes, cars are also not being priced correctly for their costs. So if the tax burden is reduced for people who don't use cars, and cities get redesigned so that normal people don't _need_ cars, then it is no longer regressive. Owning a car becomes a luxury that people can pay for if they want it.
But what is your confidence that a regressive tax scheme will actually produce the positive changes we desire? It's not that neoliberal solutions work but are just unfair, it's that they don't work in the first place and only lead to more neoliberal "solutions" to tinker around the edges when they inevitably make things worse.
@@andrewbecker1013 You misread my comment. I *hate* regressive taxes. I want to build cities where people are not forced into purchases that should by all logic be luxuries, like a personal automobile and a single-family home. If you _want_ those things and can afford them, I would not stand in your way. But the way we in the US build cities right now, there's almost no choice but to live like that, and more and more people are discovering that suburbs actually suck. We need to stop subsidizing cars and suburban developments, and allow the organic growth of high density neighborhoods where people can actually live near the places they want to be. Then connect those high density areas with public transportation. That's sustainable, and not regressive. It's how humans have naturally formed cities for millennia.
Kinda like every neo-liberal idea ive heard for the last couple decades, which basically dumb down to lets make society even harder to live in and wonder why people are getting so suicidal
Yeah, he was unable to engage with that topic. But to be fair, it is a tough issue to really solve. He did give a comment on it, but essentially hand waved it away.
This is literally just a poor tax. I'm homeless and live out of my car. I don't have money for living costs, that's how I'm homeless. Homelessness, car-dependency, and healthcare are all systems that impact one another and have to be tackled together, not independently.
I mean, it's almost as if the proposed tax was part of a massive infrastructure super-bill that included huge new spending for transit programs, or at least was supposed to
You're already paying this tax as part of the gas you buy. All they're talking about is changing how the $$ are obtained so people who use other types of cars don't avoid paying.
Actually, he basically says "since we've always been taxed to maintain roads, and electric vehicles are causing people to dodge the taxes, we can no longer afford the maintenance even more so than we couldn't before."
Another summary: how will road maintenance be paid for if we as a nation pay less gasoline tax? That's really all this is ... as long as we are a car based nation, roads must be maintained. That costs money. Where does that money come from, how is the cost allocated fairly? If more EVs are sold, the money collected from gasoline taxes goes down. How do we cover the shortfall? There is no perfect solution, just a few "least worst" ones. Vehicle miles traveled might still be bad, but it's a "least worst" tax. As far as the rural poor ... set up a tax credit where lower income people get a percentage of their mileage tax money back as an income tax credit. Sliding scale, so the poorest get 100% back, the upper middle class get nada. We already do that for other taxes. By the way, I don't have a dog in this fight ... I live in a nice part of a large American city and don't own a car any more.
I live in a city of 100k and we have no public transportation besides a super crappy bus. We had rail, but the main passenger line was turned into a bike trail and the rest of the lines are under 50 mph freight only. I'd be more supportive of a mileage tax if there was another option.
Two thoughts: 1. I think committing to transitioning away from cars and downsizing expensive car infrastructure is the only long-term strategy (cReAtEs JoBs too) 2. If we have to do a VMT tax as a band-aid, it should be on companies who use roads as free freight infrastructure, not on people who can't afford to live in the cities they work in.
There is no free infrastructure. The companies that use roads pay for the roads by subsidizing government through the taxes that they pay on their profits.
Thank you for that number 2 argument, by taxing the low and middle class for trying to become something you're hurting the country as a whole, nothing good ever came from suppressing those who want to work hard and move their way up, except socialism, which ISN'T good at all lol.
you need to also de-incentivize cars along with building up transit. The country is so car-depend that the culture must be changed through infrastructure and stuff like this.
I think you're really misunderstanding the actual debate topics! The argument that it hits poor, rural places the worst is because a VMT in a vacuum is a very poor policy. Yes, you are completely correct in that cars are highly subsidized, but they are subsidized by taxes which are not being paid by poor or even middle-income people. Effectively the rich subsidize the poor through infrastructure. By making everybody pay a mileage tax instead, you're net shifting tax burdens from the rich to the poor. THIS is the central issue. Any flat tax type proposal, regardless of policy area, is going to have this issue. The only way a VMT would work, is if car usage would be optional. So a VMT would work if you combine it with large investments into public transit and bike infrastructure. But not in isolation!
This right here. Written much better than I could have. A mix of lack of infrastructure that the poor, working, and middle classes can use and having to pay on top of that really just hits them harder than anything.
Should we eliminate all gas taxes because it hurts poor people more than the rich? He said gas tax is going away because mpg is getting higher and higher and electric. We have to make up that money somehow.
The UK has a “road tax” that is the same as registration in the us, the difference here is registration is used for road maintenance. A mileage tax is a bad idea, some people live in areas that trains do not and will not service. Unless they are going to have public transit in place running on a regular basis, even if it is at a loss first, you’re just penalizing those that live far from work and boosting the value and rents of properties closer to the work hubs and cities. I’m from the UK and I live in the us. My dad drives buses and in the UK bus lines do run at a loss to service areas.
If more people are forced to live closer to cities, then community pushes for public transit, cheaper housing, and all different kinds of community benefits will all stack up a lot higher, and in a smarter way, too. City life is no one’s problem until they’re forced to live in it. Just another example of how being Suburb-dominant is destroying America. I say this as a person currently living in a Rural area NOT as a luxury: Rural living should be a luxury and not a norm. Living somewhere in isolation from the rest of America does not do your average family any good, even if it _feels_ good. It’s not a good environment to raise kids in, not a good environment to live in without personal transportation, and overall just isn’t good for your mental, physical, or social health either. It _can_ be good for your health, but only if you know how to make it work for you. You NEED at least SOME community activity in your life, especially when you’re a kid. Otherwise, you simply will not have any cultural experience with the people around you, thus you will struggle dealing with the people around you and grow apart from everyone.
I think the hatred of the VMT also has to do with the mis-classification of working class. Like the "real" working class people live in rural areas and drive trucks. Only the "elites" bike or use public transit.
Have you ever been to any rural area? Most people drive to get to where they need to go because everything they need is at a distance away and, to top it off, light rail cannot work there because light rail still needs population concentration to work. People drive because it’s a necessity or else the alternative is walking 5+ miles to get to where you need to go, which could easily take half the day. The idea is bad and would only hurt rural communities disproportionately more than urban center. This is why urbanites should not make laws for the rest of the country and why rural areas always need disproportionate representation; least their concerns aren’t heard and they suffer the most.
@@userequaltoNull, which would be a considerable portion of the country, since much of the nation is rural to absolutely remote. It's that remoteness that made the US into a car-focused nation. It's also why nations, such as Russia, Finland, and so on, have a considerable car culture as well. Sparsely populated areas with low population density requires personal transportation.
@@MatthewChenault this is just simply not true at all. america had the most advanced and extensive passenger rail network in the world prior to the second world war. cars and the communities built around them have drastically lowered the quality of life for many americans.
i love how his response to the "what about poor people, or those that live in rural areas" argument is pretty much "whatever most people arnt them" talk about bad takes.
Yeah this really gets my goat. You can't tax us country people without giving us a solid alternative to driving everywhere. And something that isn't just "move to a big city" because we won't
The issues raised by people in rural communities worried about this say more about their life choices and their towns poor development than anything. If you’re using the road more because you chose to live somewhere with no access to materials, then you made a bad decision and you should face the consequences of that. Hopefully your shit tier town uses the funds correctly to make it easier for you to get to resources using trains or providing better planned shopping areas in the town
@@genevievewalsh2007 okay then you’re making the conscious decision to put more wear on the roads and you should have to pay for that. You’re an adult and can make your own cost decisions and you chose to live somewhere where you have to drive 20 minutes to do anything so you obviously should pay more than people who drive every once in a while to go on a trip but who would otherwise walk or use public transit to get to places.
@@MilkIsASauceTV bro i dont know how to explain this to you, but the entire world cannot be a city, nor should it be. Town development has nothing to even do with it, its about getting to the town you idiot. "bad decisions", dear lord... its not bad decisions, its a perfectly fine way to live your life made viable by trucks, and its honestly way better than living in a sardine can all your life. its only a "bad decision" if we had some more stupid totalitarian laws made up by idiots that have no clue how the world works outside of the city.
Is it just me or is there no way that if they introduce a new VMT that they'll actually get rid of the gas tax? I'm guessing we just end up paying two taxes.
In 1956 and ‘57 to help balance the budget the US Government increased taxation of Railroad Pensions and fiddled with the taxation of bankrupt Railroad corporations. Today there is no taxation of: Roads, Drivers, Vehicles to compare. Railroads built their system. Whereas road vehicle and airport users depended on Railroad taxation, other taxes and tricks to get funding to build Freeways, this is what much of the Interstate system is. New roads and maintenance is paid for by the entire country even if a person does not own a vehicle.
How about no? I have to drive a looooong distance to get to anything because I live rurally, I will never ever support this. I also have an old truck because it's all I could find. You're going to end up victimizing the very people you want to help in the pursuit of "progress" without regard for the human cost! Also my state doesn't even have vehicle inspections, so there's no way it'd even be enforceable if it *was* somehow implemented. Even if they did, I would lie about my mileage or roll the odometer back. And who put the idea in your head that governments are good with money? This whole thing is just something I have to disagree with vehemently.
At the very least, I can see this tax creating bad economics, especially when it comes to allowing people to grow and develop into the niches of a healthy economy. By imposing this tax without having the proper infrastructure in place to present a good alternative you will end up blocking people out of being able to have opportunity to grow. Most of the US is rural and a lot of people commute into cities or suburban environments to go to school and work. Without the infrastructure present to support them, the government will be limiting the access these people will have in society. They’ll be limiting people to areas with less jobs, generally weaker education, and lesser opportunities to grow in society. By cutting off a sizable portion of the US population this way, the government is hurting its chances to have someone fulfill a role in society that it might desperately need in the future. It’ll shift the demographic for the cycle of poverty. It’s just another tax that demands urban-centricism
But isn't the Tax needed before alternative infrastructure can be built to A: fund the new infrastrucure (by freeing up funds that are spent on car-centric transportation projects) B: Create an incentive for people to demand said alternatives to be built?
@@sirtobi8919 No on both accounts. A.) taxes are never brought in before an initiative is passed, taxes are used to maintain and grow social programs or reclaim money spent by the country on a macro scale. B.) the need for alternatives are already present. It’s been a growing and prevalent problem since the start of urban sprawl. The problem has been growing but legislators have been looking at other problems for a long time, it’s just not profitable to them because most of their constituents are in bigger cities, not the outlying rural areas
@@cactusjackNV I sincerely believe and hope that your assumption about almost nobody wanting to save the planet is wrong. The funds being needed to fund the communal good and not the obvious short-term benefit of individuals is the reason why they need to be collected as tax revenue rather than individual, voluntary investment. "those that cling onto progressive ideas" I think you misspelled "people who'd rather not live in the 1950s but survive the 2050s"
Railways were good when all you had were steam engines and small efficient engines and the rubber tire wasn’t even invented. Rails are inherently less flexible that cars. Also what is this fetish about being crammed in with dozens of strangers in small spaces? You like being around crazy people with BO? That’s typical of American public transportation.
I get the need for some kind of tax. I think just a straight tax per mile will harm rural poor people. Perhaps if the rate per mile changed depending on your income like income tax. But even then, I still see 2 issues. 1) how do we enforce it? Do we rely on the honor system? Do we have some way to track people? 2) It will be incredibly unpopular even if there is no tracking. Is it worth the political backlash it would cause, and would it survive under the next administration if people do vote against the administration that implement it?
My parents used to live in Jakarta, & they told me that the charge is less if you have multiple people in the car, to the point where unemployed people get paid to hitchhike.
Cities also adopted car infrastructure because cars were better for freight transportation than horses which were leaving so much manure around. Contrary to popular history, cars were quite readily used as a replacement for carriages and buggies and weren't just toys for the rich Also, the interstate system was also a major military project used to connect military bases to each other.
I disagree because at the current moment in the US most people have no choice but to drive. I wouldn't support it until there's adequate public transportation and people were able to walk or cycle safely. And didn't have to walk 2 hours just to get to the damn grocery store. So this alone will do nothing. Where I live it's almost impossible to live without a car. I was surprised to learn that we finally got a public transit, but you have to set up an appointment for it a day ahead... Why disincentivize people from driving when that's their only choice? That makes no sense and obviously won't work. There is no single solution. The entire country has to be redesigned, we need a major overhaul.
Well if that city becomes unliveable because of poor decisions by career politicans over a period of time. People move away from the city for better quality of life & I'm not a pro-highway guy, however I want balance in our transportation system. Also if you want city to do well stop trying to regulate everything you see & defunding the police doesn't help either. Yes the crime rate plays a massive part to white flight & the CCP virus lockdowns/restrictions didn't help either.
In my country, Argentina, we have the government run highways, and the privately run highways by way of lease for certain amount of years and they charge a lot in tolls, but the highway has to be very well maintained and you can’t have delays or traffic jams. If you wait more than 5 minutes to get to the toll plaza, you don’t pay. A highway like I87, I495, I278 in NY to be privately run, it would have to be a billiard table smooth, clean, lighted, etc
You are very much correct. You know what people forget about why trains are so popular in Japan? Because cars have to pay the ACTUAL market price for highways (the tolls are supposed to pay back the construction costs and all maintenance) As long as cars can freeload on the very expensive infrastructure they use, public transportation will never get a fair chance.
Love this channel! I feel that there are some problems with this though. I guess I just can't in good conscience support a milage tax without it explicitly being a progressive tax. No one below a certain bracket should be paying taxes at all, honestly. A progressive milage tax should be zero up to a certain income bracket and kick in around middle class levels, then go up from there. I know way too many people who desperately wish they could live somewhere where they could safely walk to work but can't - they drive by necessity. One friend of mine whose car breaks down pretty often has to walk for miles on a highway (the actual highway, not a frontage/feeder road) with no sidewalks. Depending on the percentage of a milage tax I don't think he could afford to keep his vehicle while paying both gas tax and a milage tax. Also skeptical of the idea that developers would respond correctly to the disincentive to build spread out communities. I'm not sure that would factor into their planning (not confident that I've thought that through enough tho). I really don't mean to be contrarian, I'm just super worried about how this would affect working class people, and as extreme as the case of my friend sounds, I don't think that's necessarily just an edge case. However, given that I live in the Houston area, this may be more of a Houston-specific problem? Not sure. I've been told this is one of the more extremely car-centric metro areas. Anyway I like this channel a lot and I'm sorry my first comment on it was semi-negative/argumentative
This is the epitome of a good faith argument/discussion about this. This is exactly the kind of discussion we should have while crafting good policies, not the bad faith whining that ancaps spew every time they hear "tax".
It is progressive. Wealthier people use higher weight vehicles and drive more. Carbon taxes are progressive for the same reason. Lower income people benefit more by having better infrastructure. Rich people can in part purchase alternatives to public goods/insulate against poor public provision.
while driving is a necessity in rural based america, 70% of americans live in major cities, or areas surrounding major cities. cars are incredibly inefficient for such a densely packed population.
Build proper villages (1 mile diameter, supermarket in the center and a main street through the middle). Unfortunately sprawl type development has even affected farming villages as well but that's neither smart nor is it sustainable. Farming villages, strong towns and big cities can be build properly, offering everything to everyones taste and needs and all within walking/biking distance and connected by buses and trains. It works and Europe is the proof. But as long as society/government subsidizes and even imposes sprawl instead of traditional villages, town and cities it will only get worse. People need to pay for it one way or the other, better make them personally responsible that way they see the true cost and vote with their wallets next time they vote or decide where to build or buy a house or open a business. If you hide the true cost from people then they will never demand better laws, better planing, better infrastructure and they will not hesitate to move to a sprawling development as long as everything gets subsidized to the point where that's the seemingly "cheaper" option.
Charged rhetoric aside, I don't actually in principle object to a mileage tax. The problem I have is with a mileage tax that just props up our current system. There needs to be a strategic vision in mind to reduce reliance on cars and to build sustainable, strong towns. Imposing a mileage tax as one part of a plan to realign incentives is one thing. But imposing a mileage tax to continue paying for our unsustainable system and continue building it ever higher and more unstable is another thing altogether.
For a sense of scale, the entire Apollo program cost 250 billion adjusted for inflation. It cost more than twice as much to build the interstates than to go to the moon.
Guess it depends on where you live/drive but there are a lot of toll roads/tunnels/bridges still in the NE corridor. Some private toll roads too like the Dulles Greenway in Northern VA. Absolutely agree, call me a cynic but I don't believe that creating a new tax will eliminate any older taxes, tolls or fees.
@@apocryphite_2 the rural and the poor with no access to public transit will be more significantly hurt by this VMT than anyone else. He just glossed over that in a "that's a topic for a later video" kinda way.
@@thelonelyphish youre replacing one tax for another, to spread out the tax to continue to apply to a larger demographic rather than be constrained to a dimishing demographic increasing correlated to poorer and/or more conservative groups. Now explain what is the problem?
@@Akriashi I agree with it concept, but in practice where I live (southern California) our local governments have no plan to replace the gas tax, just add on the mileage tax. I'm all for replacing the gas tax with a mileage tax, hell, I'd probably pay less considering my fuel bill is about $2000-$2500 a month and I could cut 1/5 of that off without the gas tax, but we're treating the mileage tax as an additional one. And contrary to what most people think, there are a lot of rural poor in Southern California that would get fucked over by effectively doubling their taxes for their only means of transportation.
@@thelonelyphishThe solution would be to lobby for the removal of a gas tax in place of other taxes. You still live in a democratic system, enough pressure on an issue can force it to change. If you don’t believe me then tell me where the Keystone XL Pipeline is right now.
I live in a suburb. The buses don't run out here in the evening, which means I need a car. Since I need a car I bought a car (sunk cost) and have to pay insurance (sunk cost). I've got a parking spot (included in my rent, but in practice that's a sunk cost even although someone else is paying it.) It's cheaper for me to drive somewhere than to take the bus (and there is no train option). I get 35 mpg and the bus fare is $1.50 each way. All the costs for cars are either fixed and front loaded (insurance, car payments) or just front loaded (gas, maintenance). I always thought one way to address the issue of front loading would be to add a surcharge to car insurance... it's been years since I read The High Cost of Free Parking but I remember in a lot of cities (not mine) you could get a really deep discount if you bought bus passes in bulk to give to your employees. It occurred to me that if you were to add a surcharge to car insurance but include an unlimited bus pass in the deal it could be a really useful tool. You could charge a discounted rate- a car owner wouldn't tend to be a high use rider- but having the free pass would change the math so that it actually would be cheaper to ride the bus when it was convenient to do so. It could encourage park and ride and by getting drivers to occasionally use the bus they would be more likely to care about how good the service is. The fee would also give an influx of money to the bus authority. The only thing I don't like about the mileage tax is that unlike the gas tax it doesn't push vehicle efficiency or take into account the wear and tear different sized vehicles create on the roads. You could, of course, take that into account and weight it by vehicle class. Me driving around in my tiny Chevy Spark doesn't put as much wear and tear on the roads as someone in a Mack Truck, or even an SUV. In a parallel parking situation where you don't have set space lengths I can also take up a lot less parking space, although most parking lots aren't set up to take advantage of that.
Cost and convenience are absolutely critical if public transit is to succeed, especially if you have any reason to already be paying for a car. I can't have to walk far to the bus stop. I can't have to wait long for the bus to arrive. I need the bus to travel at the times of day I need to use it. I need the bus to travel as fast or faster than I can by car. I need the bus to get me equally close to my destination.
I think the main idea is to stop the car dependent sprawl which is mainly caused by the car subsidies and their zoning laws. Without the subsidies a more natural, sustainable and traditional farming-village, small-town, urban big-city development pattern will emerge again (basically villages, towns and city districts with a 1 mile diameter making them easily walkable and stupidly easy to bike within just 2-3 minutes). Sure you need to connect to other villages, towns or the other city districts in a big city and that can be done by train, bus, car or bike but realistically living in one such neighbourhood that provides you with everything (school, small super market, jobs, shops and handymen) means you have very little reason to leave the neighbourhood so on the rare instances when you do you can just take the car, rent a car or car sharing if you don't own a car, take the bike or mess around with buses since it's a rare thing it doesn't really negate the idea of a walkable neighbourhood and cars are not outlawed anyway. Getting away from car dependent sprawl is the main idea.
As a “rural poor” myself, idk about this. It’s a 30mile drive to the closest store and a 72mile drive to my job (nothing in the area worth working at). I’d love to move but that’s just not feasible for myself or most people in similar situations. Saying “we will figure something out for them later” doesn’t give me much confidence lol
Read Ted Kaczynski , he was right. These urban people are willing to kill us to make numbers on a spread sheet go up. We rural people must oppose this in every way possible.
I mostly don't like this because I like to go on long road trips to hike and explore and setting those fees would limit my pastime and no existing infrastructure exists and probably won't exists for 10 to 20 years. I also imagine that vehicles will be self-driving interconnected through many level of connections where all routes and speeds are pre-determined, this has made me question conventional ways of mass transit.
As someone living in a transitless community who has to drive 30 minutes for my weekend job, I was naturally opposed to this, but if it means the return of C O N R A I L and usable cities, then tax the drivers. Tax them till they're riding a bike to work. edit: I love this ongoing meme of vaporwave conrail. As someone who was 1) wrong side of the country for conrail and 2) conrail was before my time, I have this sort of fascination with these trains. Also I like the color blue.
@@MatthewChenault I guess you can just drive to work over a bumpy dirt track then, because that's all you're going to get, unless someone pays for the infrastructure you use every day to drive your car to work on. Train operators have to pay for every single mile of track used by their trains, be it because they own and maintain the track or because they have to pay the company that owns and maintains it. Airports (and sometimes even airlines) are massively subsidised, and taxes on Kerosene are low or non-existent the world over. If you ever want to put transport modes on an even footing, you either increase taxes across the board to pay for nationally subsidized rail infrastructure and let operators use the track almost for free, just like trucking companies do with highways today, or you make those who use roads and airports pay for the actual cost of building and operating roads and airports.
@@mariusdufour9186 >Implying they actually spend money on infrastructure rather than spending 64% of my taxes on welfare of some sort. I'm surprised I'm *not* driving on dirt roads by now, since the federal government gives jack shit about doing their jobs and fixing the infrastructure. It's mostly the states and local governments trying to keep up with paving the roads. Even then, the cities still have trash roads.
@@MatthewChenault I'm not American, so I just looked up the US 2019 budget to see a situation before covid. The US federal government spent 1,36 trillion. This included 101,7 bn for the department of health, 86,6 bn for the Veteran's association, and 43,5 bn for the Dept of Housing and Urban development. Now, I'm not sure counting veteran's affairs is fair because that's not welfare but deferred military spending imo, and housing and urban development does more than just provide 'affordable housing'. If everything in the budget that could possibly be construed as welfare (those listed above plus the vast majority of the 180,7 bn in small programmes) was counted, you would just about reach 30%, this is a very high estimate based on the rough budget, it's likely less once you start looking into the nitty gritty. On the other hand, if you counted everything related to military spending, you'd get 716 bn for 'defense', and 86,6 bn for the VA, and 48,10 bn for homeland security, though that last one is also policing. Not counting black budgets, cia, nor homeland security, etc, you easily get to 60%, so no, 60% of your money isn't going to welfare, it's going to the military in one shape or another. Unless you consider the US military a welfare provider, in which case 80% of the budget goes to welfare. Source: www.thebalance.com/fy-2019-federal-budget-summary-of-revenue-and-spending-4589082#:~:text=The%20budget%20office%20estimated%20the,covered%20by%20the%20discretionary%20budget.
@@mariusdufour9186, you're looking at discretionary spending. Mandatory spending adds another 2-3 trillion dollars. This is from 2012, but the general spending budget hasn't changed much outside of its amount. In 2012, the total federal expenditure was 3.67 _Trillion_ dollars. Out of this, over *58%* of the total budget went to Social Security, Unemployment, Labor, Healthcare, and Medicare. www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2012/04/30/pie-week-first-total-federal-spending/
I assume that the government is going to make SURE this tax goes directly toward ROAD IMPROVEMENTS, just like the proceeds from lotteries go toward public education...?
I see 4 problems. 1) its a regressive tax. 2) Creating an annual tax/mileage fee would be self-destructive. No one likes getting a surprise $1000 tax bill, even if its on a payment plan, the gas tax was clever because it was "invisible" 3) Instituting this policy without changing the underlying city design factors that force people to use cars is just punitive, and will come off as a money grab.4) Even if you live in a walkable area and never use a car personally, your life is still highly dependent on other people using cars (usually businesses for deliveries) and that creates a 'freeloader' narrative [Raise business/income taxes the leftist cries! lol]
The current gas tax has the advantage of being a steady stream of money too versus people paying a tax bill annually. Nobody likes dealing with setting up an appointment to have their mileage checked especially if they don't already have an inspection.
How dare you bring reality into a discussion of public transportation and road policy! Don’t you know these discussions are supposed to revolve around pie-in-the-sky solutions that involve magical high speed rail networks popping up overnight and the Americans deciding overnight that they’re okay with losing a degree of freedom that they’re currently getting with cars.
@@Shadowfax-1980 your arguement is missing a few components. While yes, there will be a percentage of Americans that will still drive cars as their personal preference, it all boils down to a point of getting from point A to point B. Ridding cars of America isnt the task at hand here, its making public transportation more widley available to the public. The 70 year old narrative of how cars equal “freedom” is nothing but auto corporation propaganda that has embedded itself in American’s lives. We need to work on making more available mass transit systems so people dont go crazy sitting in a box for hours trying to commute.
1) Wealthier people drive heavier vehicles and more. I don't get how this is regressive especially if the VMT is based on weight. 2) If people come to expect a bill when they reregister their vehicle, then it is no longer a shock. Especially if there is an installment plan to pay off last years usage. 3) This policy creates incentives to reduce driving and change land use rules. 4) Logistics companies will adapt to use more rail freight and use lighter trucks. Delivery times will take longer for online purchases. There will be centralized pick ups for goods like in the EU instead of home delivery.
There should be some exemptions for rural and agricultural road use with progressive taxes on larger corporate fleets. This should be alongside improvement in and encouraged use of rail and water transport infrastructure.
@@leohale3464 Tbh, america could use more expensive food. Though of course I am aware of the issue with people in poverty not being able to afford food in such a situation. But one could over time move the money used to subsidize food production, and move it towards things like food stamps and welfare for people who aren't doing well economically. That way food would be more expensive, but only to people that are currently consuming too much of it.
I'm not sure the US is ready for such a thing yet. In lots of areas we lack the light rail and stuff that would replace all this. We could be in serious trouble trying this without preparing, and so it's better to be safe than sorry.
Preparing will not happen unless people feel why. When you can drive on the freeway for free, what's the point of building light rail and buying buses? Only when you have to pay $17 to get to Walmart will people finally accept the need for something else.
@@DanCojocaru2000 So then we get a chicken-and-egg problem. People will fiercely oppose a steep tax because there's no other (usable) method available, so no steep tax will be able to pass, but without the steep tax, people won't see the need for alternatives, leading to them complaining even more about the lack of alternatives the next time there's a tax increase. I think a gradually increasing tax would work- the rate goes slowly up and the money from that tax is used to fund alternatives. By the time the tax reaches the full cost of the roads, alternatives would've been built.
@@DanCojocaru2000 but for a lot of people, there is no other option. You’re not going to get a robust public transportation system in areas with low population density. This is, in effect, punishing people for living in rural areas, where everything’s much farther apart and cars are necessary to get around.
Yeah! Let's raise taxes on poor people trying to survive, so that billionaires don't have to pay any taxes at all! You sound like a great person. Really.
@@RainAndRay It sounds like you don't even know what the word "strawman" actually means. You just used it hoping no one would call you out on your ignorance. And I shudder to think which "industry" you're in. I'm sure it's just as reprehensible as you are.
You hadn’t convinced me until 13:20. Any suburban or rural town I’ve lived in has been inaccessible to foot traffic. 15 minutes by car to a grocery store that thing. But if they don’t replace the gas tax, they keep it goin, rural people are just going to be taxed twice
@@chessiesystem613 it's happening quickly. Yes, they are still a small percentage of the market share, but every big automaker is starting to pump them out in lieu of ice vehicles.
The highway infrastructure was built for national security reasons. Mainly to make it easier to move troops, weapons, missiles easier around the country. As such it is like GPS a military project that has some civilian purposes. Gas tax was meant to pay for the maintenance of the highway system. It is better than a mileage tax as it also encouraged more efficient cars. However either way it is a country tax.
@Alan Fisher You absolutely need to improve public transit options before trying implement more taxes on driving, you cannot force people to take a sub par badly run transit system. They are systems that were neglected and left to rot and then handed down to completely incompetent and corrupt people who have no sense of what it takes to actually run one of these systems, nor do they have any comprehension of what makes them function well in the first place. Before giving them more money, place people with integrity and knowledge in charge, they'll use what they have available more wisely. I would like nothing more than to see a viable rail option in the future and to see things like the Northeast corridor and all interchanging transit infrastructure work the way they were designed (these systems have been neutered and fragmented over many years and have been victims of stupid decision and policy making on part of the people that run them and the federal govt.) When running correctly and operated to serve people, they not only drastically improve the quality of life for everyone, but are immensely fascinating things to behold and ponder over. That being said, car culture and driving everywhere is cancer, but so is the current American passenger rail experience. But at least I can get to where I need to go faster and cheaper in an automobile than the train. I will never support taxing the common man into taking the more unfeasible transit alternative in the hopes that it will become feasible. It will not work that way, and furthermore any decision where we try and manipulate and make the lives of common people more difficult than it already is is blatantly vicious.
I must say... Alan has done a terrific job at influencing what my urban utopia looks like... Before discovering his channel, I would have been impressed with cities like Paris and Strasbourg for their public transport on my current European tour, but since watching his videos, I've come to also be impressed with places like Caen, Reims, Nancy, and wherever else I might end up, because of how the urban planning that went into some of them...
I travel between cities where I live on a weekly basis and I tell you what, I'd happily take a train if there was one for me to take. I dont enjoy driving 3 and a half hours / 214 miles one way... I don't like sitting in traffic, becoming traffic. Even if the train ride was the same amount of time, at least I'd be able to take a nap, or play phone games, or just look out the window at the trees and stuff and just think about something other than driving and the road.
One day y'all will understand that the only reason you disliked Pete was because he ran against Bernie. Pete is a wonderful and brilliant man, and I'm tired of him not getting the respect he deserves.
@@billbones92 Yup. The only thing Pete "did to Bernie" was win Iowa, according to the rules that Bernie agreed to. But that's all water under the bridge at this point, just like the Raritan canal.
Let's impose a regressive tax on working class people who need to commute. And don't say public transportation, when it doesn't go where people need to go.
@@alanthefisher But that was the solution 100 years ago. We've had a 100 years of automobile centric development that has resulted in development being randomly spread out in all directions for miles on end. The resulting lack of density makes effective public transportation pretty much impossible.
Mr. Fisher, I suspect you have not replied because you do not have a reply. My contention is that urbanists are planners without a plan. Urbanists lack any realistic solution for how the omnipresent open space suburban development can be made pedestrian centered. I live in a city precisely because I want to live in a walkable environment where I can bike ride and take public transit, which I do, but I also commuted to the suburbs to work as do about 40% of the people in my city, and if you take away our neighborhood urban parking spaces, you screw us over.
@@alanthefisher Transit doesn't work without density, which doesn't exist in the suburbs. Duh. That's why train stations in the suburbs have big parking lots, because people have to drive to them. When you drop someone off at one of those stations you drop them off at a location where they need a car to reach their destination.
I assume it would be during state inspections. Which would be interesting because some states don't even have that. Also I assume for jobs like farming, certain work vehicles would be exempt.
Personally I think we're better off sticking with raising the gas tax until electrics are actually common I've heard all the arguments about it but if we're actively subsidizing EV purchases with thousands of dollars in rebates still, I don't really see the purpose in trying to chase them down for a few hundred bucks a year over road costs, while the gas tax encourages smaller more efficient vehicles that do less wear
This is my line in the sand. Any state that pushes this will not receive a dollar from me. I'll never live in one or do business with any company that does business in that state. This will literally be the end of travel for poor people. DO NOT let them go through with this. Over 70% of the money from gas taxes is used for roads and the rest is used for transit and others things. Who is subsidizing who?
Better spent the money we already have & adding more taxes in the midst of a recession doesn't help the case. You are punishing thoses in the middle class or working class who can't live in the city who has well or better paying job. Transit doesn't exist in some places & taxing like crazy doesn't help if the money doesn't go to the projects you shooting for, especially when it's going to pay off their special interest buddies. We need to do the same thing Connecticut did for transportation funding have a constitutional lock Box & that money that's set aside for transportation goes to transportation no where else.
The video mainly points out that the current source of revenue for roads is the gas tax, and because of electric cars its going away. So eventually we need some other way to tax road vehicles other than gas to pay for roads. So if you have any suggestions other than a VMT I'm all ears.
@@alanthefisher Sorry for the late reply, but if your going to do a mileage tax you need to work out the details & who pays what. Because if it's blanket your not going to get it passed & you sure as hell not going to have an already over taxed public push back really hard.
Gas tax and mileage tax do nothing to stop the problem of too many cars are unsustainable car infrastructure. What it DOES do is put further strain on impoverished people who struggle to exist in a car centric infrastructure in the first place. People who can afford cars are not affected by petty taxes. Who is? People who barely afford cars in the first place. You can not just blindly tax without providing alternatives
Highways always lose money? In the Netherlands the government spends about €2.5B a year on highways, but road tax generates €6B and fuel tax €8.5B. Sure, that's only what's spend on highways, not local roads, but I would say car users pay for their roads over here. But this is a very densely populated country and gas cost about $9 per gallon, so I can see why this wouldn't work in America.
You didn’t actually address the argument that this negatively impacts people in rural areas. The vehicle mileage tax only works if the gas tax goes away - which is not a predetermined outcome. I’m very pro-train and public transit, but this puts the cost on the consumer when there aren’t built up alternatives. A vehicle mileage tax is not necessary - raising taxes on the wealthy to subsidize train construction has the same effect without draining the pockets of regular people.
In Austria, we have toles that pay for the huge Autobahnen which is great because ASFiNAG can focus on maintaining them. Wich has led to the situation that Austrians think of the german autobahn as bad because in Austria the potholes get fixed. Wich means that drivers pay for the Autobahn they use. And get fewer potholes as a result.
Connect the dots: IF the GOP wins the House in Nov AND their majority is based in rural and suburban districts (the most likely result as of now) THEN a Federal VMT tax is NOT on the table -- as the House is where tax bills MUST originate. A potential revenue source is a higher per gallon fuel tax indexed to inflation IF gas prices drop significantly... not a given under current policy.
Takes like this are dog shit because the people it really affects (unless you have actual good transit, even through the suburbs) are working class people. Cars are already expensive as fuck to own, we get taxed out the ass already for owning one, and we have no choice but to own one
Indeed. Instead of purely regressive taxation, multiply the VMT tax by vehicle weight. Heavy trucks cause more damage to roads in the same number of trips than a freaking Vespa.
For those knocking the VMT as a bad idea: what is your solution to maintain our roads once the gas tax becomes irrelevant? Roads need maintenance. Maintenance costs money. If the solution's not finding an alternative tax method, or severely cutting back on our road infrastructure, then what is it? You could toll every road... but that's just a VMT with extra steps. You could charge huge registration fees, or vehicle property taxes, but then people who use the road infrastructure the least (while still owning a car) are punished the most. A VMT scaled to the weight of your car is elegant because it scales with the problem; the more you drive the more wear you put on the road, and the more you pay to fix it. If you drive less then the state gets less money... but also theoretically has to do less road maintenance.
I think the best thing we can do, before all else, is to remove most if not all zoning and land use requirements. Denser neighborhoods will be built where in demand, and with that public transportation will become a more viable investment. When talking about urban planning you can make a broad appeal for economic sustainability.
They did that in Houston. It's a sprawling flooded mess of highways. If you don't require developers to make dense housing they won't because they're trying to convince rich people to pay for their ugly McMansions because they make more profit on that, and that's all the developers care about. If you don't zone for density you won't get it because they won't want to give it to you because they won't make enough money. With enough being like more money than God.
Yeah I'm not ever buying an electric or autonomous car or truck. Not putting GPS on my vehicle either. There is not enough electric generation capacity, or mineral components to make the batteries and if you believe in social justice and still buy an electric car, well maybe you should take a look at where those minerals come from and who is actually doing the digging.
please correct me if I'm wrong but we already paying taxes to government which pays for government subsidized roads so WTF we have to pay out of pocket for the same roads???
I love trains... Id love the ability to be able to take a train from my suburb down to the city to work. I'd actually consider a job if I didn't have to pay for parking. Stupid thing is we used to have a trolly line from my town to the city 100 years ago
I think an example of a highway that pays for itself is the 407 in Toronto. People were pissed that the government sold it to a private corporation with a 99 year lease, and that private corporation set a very high price (for a North American toll road).
But the company that owns the 407 is responsible for maintaining it for 99 years, so they've priced it appropriately. The only reason it seems expensive is because... that's what roads cost! They should all be tolled that much!
I actually didn't know it was owned by a private company, that's crazy. At least the government holds it to the maintenance.
But yes the *actual* price of highways and roads are way higher than what most people think.
I love the interaction between these two wonderful gents. Keep it coming guys, you're doing god's work here
This kind of approach only deals with the monetary cost and benefits of projects. The majority of the positive and negative impacts of a project like the 407 are non-monetary. Direct non monetary effects like loss of ecosystems services on the hundreds of square kilometers of forest and wetland that were paved over. Indirect non monetary effects like more people living sendentary, car based lives, and the negative physical and menthal health effects that come from that. I get the appeal of the toll road example, because it can shock people to see the real direct economic cost of a large road project that they feel entitled to. But we can't fight the problems that are caused by thinking of everything as a competitive set of economic exchanges by trying to build a more perfect competitive set of economic exchanges - that's literally what neoliberal ideology is, like going back to the Mont Pelerin society and the West German Ordoliberals.
Instead of idealizing a more perfect accounting of monetary costs and benefits, we should be thinking about what resources we have, what kind of trade-offs we're willing to make, and what kind of world do we want to live in. Like the way Alan is thinking when he makes the argument for much broader investment in trolley buses. It's not a question of getting bus riders to pay for the catenary infrastructure through a "miles rided" tax, it's a question of how are we going to use social assets to pursue a sustainable society in which we can all live decent lives.
In terms of electric cars, I think with respect to human-driven electric cars, Alan is 100% right - they have almost all the same problems as gasoline cars. But autonomous vehicles, that's I think something significantly different. If we think about the barriers, currently, to more public transportation, labour costs are a major issue. In Vancouver, Translink literally rolled out a whole new type of bus service ("Community Shuttles") primarily to save on labour costs - because the drivers would not be in the same union. Of course tech bros are just profit-seeking, basically anti-social characters that don't mind tearing at our social fabric. But - we have to recognize, that the car culture is part of our social fabric, and so this may be an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" moment when we consider Uber's stated aim of dismantling the culture of private car ownership. Yes, Uber exploits its drivers, I'm no fan of them as a company, I don't think they are driven by decent human values. But focussing too much on Uber as exploiting human labour I think is in danger of missing the point, that their goal is very much to transcend the need for human labour, at least human drivers for transportation and delivery vehicles.
I think what we need to think about, and personally I find this very hard to imagine, is what kind of cities, suburbs, infrastructure, will be appropriate to a world where automated share taxi services makes living in relatively low density suburbs without private car ownership a viable option, at least from a transportation point of view. Of course, transportation is only one piece of the puzzle, and there are still of course the basic problems of the economic infeasibility of low density suburbs, in terms of the absurdly high cost of services per household, which shows up as soon as new developments cease and "development charges" can no longer pay for rebuilding infrastructure in around 25 year old suburbs.
But, ultimately, I think sometimes we focus too much on these kinds of solid-asset community problems, and not enough on the decline in soft assets, specifically social capital, in suburban communities, with the decline of membership in social clubs (i.e. the whole "Bowling Alone" thing). Ultimately, I think regardless of where you live, if you live somewhere for 25 years and you don't know virtually anyone in your community, and that's pretty common in the suburbs, I think that's a pretty sad form of life - even if we could pay for it.
It's actually not as much as it costs to maintain it. The 407 commission have huge profit margins, and the actual quality of the road is much higher than safe acceptable margins. A better comparison is the Pennsylvania turnpike commission and the Penna turnpike. While still arguably expensive, they contend with paying for all their maintenance, and contributing 400 million annually to transit agencies.
@@ketch_up +
Wears Adidas and can't even squat properly. Tsk tsk, Western Spy
Heels in the sky? Western spy.
Heels on ground? Comrade found.
@@thelordchancellor3454 Отлично! Вы знаете правду.
@@frigginjerk If you squat on toes , your break your bones!
I just heard about this! And then I tried it for the first time in years, and I was able to stay squatting on my heels the whole way up and down easily for what seems like the first time ever! I guess you really don't have to read theory to be a communist.
“oH BuT HiGHwaYs ArE sO fRee”
yeah you wish they were “free”
Same as the once who says free healthcare is not free
Same with muh private airlines
"Free speech" or "free beer"? Because highways are a bit less "free" in the former sense when there is a traffic jam, and less "free" in the latter sense when you realize that they are taxpayer-funded!
And these people are usually against government subsidies
Nothing is free, ever. Remove that concept from your thinking entirely. There is no such thing as free highways, or other things like free healthcare. Everything has a cost and there is no avoiding it.
I am the President of a local nonprofit the Ozark Rail and Bus Transit Society. One of the things I have learned from my members is the importance of building walkable and livable communities. Your videos sum up so much of what we talk about. Thank you for making videos. It saves me from having to do it.
Vehicle miles traveled for work should be paid for by the business, not the employee.
agreed, this would force more businesses to set up in central places where people can live closer or commute via transit, verses being out in the suburbs and car dependent
@@alanthefisher In addition, it could incentivize more businesses to encourage work from home options in industries where it makes sense to be remote...the workers would then spend less on travel for work and overall maintenance costs on their vehicles. And if many people find this an incentive to live in an area where they don't need a car for other kinds of trips...I like this logic. (By the way I'm a huge Pete fan and was a bit skeptical at the beginning but I appreciate that you considered his perspective despite not agreeing with him on other topics. Quite refreshing these days!)
Now you won't be employed if you don't live near the business. Congratulations.
@@MusicSparkleStar09 yeah, working from home brought my gas spending down from probably $10,000 a year to at this point less than 1000, lol.
@@Dragiux If they wont be employed then they could never really afford to live there anyway, because the rest of society was subsidizing their commute. Businesses need employees one way or another, so it will also help employ people living closer.
The problem people have with public transit in the US is that the only people who normally take it are the poor and destitute because its often so shitty the only ones who take it are the ones too desperate to have any other options. So for a lot of Americans there is this embedded idea that anything other than driving is a sign of poverty and isn't something we should strive for.
I genuinely hate being stuck with either dog shit transit options or driving everything where.
This! I used to work at the local zoo. Ride from college to the zoo in my car? Less than 15 minutes. With public transportation, over an hour and the bus schedule and bus stops are not well maintained.
Also because of stupid zoning laws, there are only a handful of neighborhoods in the COUNTRY dense enough to support frequent, dense public transportation. Almost all of these are in NYC.
Tax vehicles on weight per axle, be they ICE or electric. Land barges are less efficient and cause significantly more wear & tear to roads, plus it may also be helpful in curbing the arms race going on with ever-larger SUVs & trucks
This. Also stop exempting certain industries(ie: agriculture) from regulations that allow them to use over-sized & extremely over-weight equipment that other industries such as trucking are restricted from using...
The damage done to an asphalt road is as the 4.2 power of the axle weight. This is why a max load truck does 10,000 times the damage of a light car.
Or the "arms race" will be adding axles, and 18-wheelers will be replaced with 36-wheelers.
@@danielbishop1863 If that actually cuts down on the wear & tear, then isn't that fine?
Put a rubber caterpillar track on it for all I care if that what's ends up cheapest.
@@stormveil funnily enough, continuous tracks actually eat roads for breakfast. At least military-grade ones, I guess I've never seen a track loader doing donut holes on asphalt before
I feel like you missed one big point, semi trucks put exponentially more stress on roads than cars do. Personally, I think a weight AND mileage tax would be more equitable and incentivize companies to switch to rail shipping and keep our roads better maintained; free from a clog of trucks.
Yes I agree, but this is a topic of another video... Maybe soon...
I believe that’s how they pay taxes on their vehicles in the UK they use how much your car weighs
Maybe it would also reverse the insane trend of cars getting bigger/more people buying luxury trucks and suv's.
Perhaps it could be simplified by not taxing vehicles under a certain weight,
@@joaquinjr2570: I believe it was said that even with that taken into account, lorries are still subsidised comparative to their damage compared to cars and other vehicles.
Putting tolls on currently "free" highways and increasing the rates on existing toll highways would probably have a bigger psychological effect. I think the tax system makes driving a car feel less expensive when people have to pay a fare to get on a train.
Problem is when you tell highways too high, trucks start using local roads.
No driving a car is not free. But it's cheaper than public transportation.
@@LMB222 Think that sometimes has happened in mainland China as I heard some areas have had too many expressways built & thus they're each more underutilised, so tolls for each vehicles are charged higher in order to recoup the same revenue for maintenance
@@locly4692 not really tbh. I save more with public transportation than a car.
Edit: and that’s with the current poor public transportation system. Imagine if it was more used and more robust. Would be even cheaper than it is now!
@@jzdude01 give me a number. I mean the total cost you have to pay to own and maintain a private car. Public transportation? Do you know what's that mean?
As a European watching this video I truly do find the opposition to subsidizing public transport mind-blowing
That’s not even the problem, it’s mostly cause in America, we pride ourselves on independence of the individual, unfortunately this means for many that we want new nice things but want the other guy to pay for it. Aka you should pay it not me, that way I can use it for free
To be fair, i'm from France and even though our public transit system is better, you still hear just as many car-centric boomers who rant about railways being subsidized
Texas cities have sales taxes subsidize public transit which I think is a better alternative then a mileage tax
Especially if you compare the amount of subsidizes.
For Germany: on average cars pay for 30% of their infrastructure costs (this excludes any environmental, climate, damage)
While the public transport pays for 85% of their costs. Most of this comes from ticket sales and advertising on stations and vehicles.
So eighter cars have to get 330% more expensive (cuz 30% *3.3 =100%) or trains have to get 36% cheaper.
@@briandynamite7942
Not really.
This video is a slightly different format than usual, so let me know what you like about this in person rant style more or less.
Definitely don't mind it. You managed to film outdoors with good audio which is just impressive imo
I thought it worked well, and I definitely enjoyed the visual puns.
Fireside rant
How about a vehicle property tax instead of miles driven tax?
A miles driven tax (or gas tax) is a regressive tax.
A property tax is mostly a progressive tax.
People like Jay Leno who own dozens of hugely expensive cars would help pay for the roads, while less well off people could make due with just one nice car or two cheap cars.
Price parity between EVs and ICEs is close, plus the lower operating costs of EVs means the vehicle property tax could even out between the two.
Plus there's the problem of counting miles driven. Do you rely on self reporting, or do you stick big brother in everyone's cars? Both are highly problematic.
I like this format fine, but it's like the 2nd video of yours I've seen so insert huge grain of salt :)
Thanks for dissing CIA Pete.
@@Jcewazhere On a completely unrelated note, what on earth is your profile picture?
So when it comes to subsidising public transport, it's been proven time and time again that even if the transport itself doesn't make money, that the resultant economic benefits to local businesses and the like more than outweigh the costs.
An example would be my local city of Nottingham which is claimed to have the best public transport infrastructure outside of London, Manchester & Birmingham. Nottingham has heavily invested in busses and trams over the last 20 years and some 4000 local businesses claimed the reason they were able to do so well was due to easier public access allowing more people to come to their shops.
It's just something to note that public transport investment results in businesses doing better and therefore the government earning more in tax so they can therefore invest more in public transport, it's a positive reinforcement cycle.
Here in Hong Kong, public transport is actually extremely profitable. I think it’s because it’s run by private companies in direct competition with each other. For example, for one journey across the harbour I could take a bus, or a ferry, or the MTR (metro). So this incentivises them to provide better service, which makes people want to ride them more, which means more profit.
Public transit can and does make money, as long as it is not up against a free to use road network that is subsidized by the government.
If people payed $9 for a highway commute they would hop on the train in a heartbeat.
Guess none of ya'll have seen how disgustingly shitty NYC's public transport is and it contributes nothing to anything except being shitty, pissy and full of homeless people in the summer with the AC off.
Why should taxpayers subsidize the cost of public transportation just so business owners in the city center benefit? I see nothing wrong with raising tram/bus fares to accurately reflect the cost of the infrastructure.
@@zaydansari4408 You realize public transportation is heavily subsidized, yes? You should be paying much more then $9.
Honestly the more I think about it, the more I realize the car only works if everyone used it as a replacement for the horse. When it replaced walking, trains, and public transit was when the concept hit the fan
Cars are necessary if you live out in the country, whether the US or Europe.
Not in cities, though.
@@LMB222 Agreed
@@LMB222 like horses were before the car
Well, the infrastructure required for cars take up a lot more space and costs a lot more than that required for horses, which is just a semi-paved or dirt road.
“I mean, if Henry Ford canvassed people on whether or not he should build a motor car, they’d probably tell him what they really wanted was a faster horse.” - John McNeese 1999
Turns out those people woulda been right lol.
I'll be honest I'm not a big fan. The problem is that car-dependency is forced onto Americans. Government regulations make it impossible to build anything other than car-dependent places, and the failures of those places have always been bailed out by money taken from the taxpayers.
It's just another way to make the taxpayers pay for the mistakes of the government. Things won't get better if you keep taking money from the citizens to force your terrible ideas to stay afloat, those ideas can't be ALLOWED to stay afloat if real changes are to happen.
a good idea would a slow increase so people can adope it, like first 1c per mile and increasing it every year until 1$ for example.
@@Neuzahnstein Zoning isn't fixed by tightening the screws on poor people.
@@Neuzahnstein $1 per mile! On avg, that'd be $14,263 a year!
Sadly, it may very well take towns going bankrupt all over the US to induce change. The gas tax is an example of how if a tax is affordable, oftentimes the public will just eat it up and the underlying city designs won't change, with the economy just adapting to higher fuel costs.
Solutions that pair nicely with a mileage tax: replace property tax with land value tax. Carbon tax and dividend. Incentivize building homes for longer so cheap mcmansions built to sell don’t become the only available option.
This is one of best comments that I've gotten, if you haven't joined the discord I would welcome you too :)
@@alanthefisher just joined from your recommendation. Hope to learn all the best cities:skylines strats with your discord’s help
I would also replace income tax with higher land value and corporate gains taxes, and make land value taxes increase exponentially for each property one owns (plus rent control.) If the parasitic landlords and money flippers want to own more land, they should be paying more in taxes. They can't hide plots of land in the Cayman islands, after all.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the difference between property taxes and the land value tax?
@@joshuanewman5988 Property tax taxes the entire value of the property, including the land it sits on, while land value tax just taxes the lot itself, and not the building that sits on it.
Although I’m a city guy, I find British suburbs ideal and they’re definitely better than American ones, because they fit the description of your ideal transit oriented, densely built suburbia. Plus, British zoning laws allow corner shops within neighbourhoods so you can basically walk max 10 mins if you need a few eggs and a bottle of milk - instead of having to drive a long way to a big buck store. Needless to say, your GP would also be within walking distance too…
VMT feels like a tax on low income earners and people who commute far for work and school. Obviously we need to improve all aspects of our infrastructure and move towards a greener and sustainable economy, but a VMT will be a burden on people like me. With that being said however, if the VMT removes a gas tax or costs less for the average tax payer I could get behind that
Do your employers not pay you for your trip to and from work? In Croatia you don't loose money for that trip but get it back from your company
@@LilliD3 I’m talking like the commute to and from work. A lot of the time companies will reimburse travel expenses if they were documented and for work purposes
@@joshuabrazezicke6495 I am also talking about the commute to and from work. In Croatia the company has to pay you to travel to and from work
@@LilliD3 Unfortunately it is very rare to have a company do that in the US.
@@LilliD3 not really, unless like you need a plane trip or driving a couple hours.
You're quoting socialists in the "bad takes" section and then present everything under a free market capitalist lense. JFC, they're not bad takes, they're absolutely right in saying that another tax on low income earners is bad. Living close to a city center is often unaffordable. If anything, you have a pretty bad take if your only solution is to keep using the same tools that caused the problem in the first place.
i thought by jfc you meant „john f cennedy“ and i was gonna correct you but igs just something people say
@@therosijedha It means Jesus F'n Christ.
@@raritania7581 ok
A VMT isn't progressive but we could make other taxes more progressive like income tax and we can eliminate sales tax which is regressive. I understand not wanting to burden the poor but there are other ways to reduce there tax burden.
@@trent6319 as someone who lives in a state with more income tax and no sales tax I’d rather have sales tax, those people done understand having more than a third of your paycheck be gone before you get it
Can't wait for your take on Amtrak's proposed expansion and new routes
The proposal lacks several long distance lines that must be restored (mainly from 1979 and 1997 cuts).
It sounds like a regressive tax, but I realized while watching this video that the issue with cars is much like the issue with suburbs. There are "externalities" that need to be charged back to the source. So in the same way suburbs are actually like ponzi schemes, cars are also not being priced correctly for their costs. So if the tax burden is reduced for people who don't use cars, and cities get redesigned so that normal people don't _need_ cars, then it is no longer regressive. Owning a car becomes a luxury that people can pay for if they want it.
But what is your confidence that a regressive tax scheme will actually produce the positive changes we desire? It's not that neoliberal solutions work but are just unfair, it's that they don't work in the first place and only lead to more neoliberal "solutions" to tinker around the edges when they inevitably make things worse.
@@andrewbecker1013 You misread my comment. I *hate* regressive taxes. I want to build cities where people are not forced into purchases that should by all logic be luxuries, like a personal automobile and a single-family home. If you _want_ those things and can afford them, I would not stand in your way. But the way we in the US build cities right now, there's almost no choice but to live like that, and more and more people are discovering that suburbs actually suck.
We need to stop subsidizing cars and suburban developments, and allow the organic growth of high density neighborhoods where people can actually live near the places they want to be. Then connect those high density areas with public transportation. That's sustainable, and not regressive. It's how humans have naturally formed cities for millennia.
Kinda like every neo-liberal idea ive heard for the last couple decades, which basically dumb down to lets make society even harder to live in and wonder why people are getting so suicidal
@@isaac6077 Making public transportation useful is the opposite of neoliberal. It is a Socialist policy.
@@LoveLearnShareGrow so how you gonna convince the rural areas? Rural areas will pay more but awe no benefit. Rural areas are already poorer
This seems like it would disproportionately affect rural communities that don’t have access to other options.
Yeah, he was unable to engage with that topic. But to be fair, it is a tough issue to really solve. He did give a comment on it, but essentially hand waved it away.
Rural people don’t exist to urbanists.
@@cheeseburgeroptimus9784 rural communities would likely receive a exemption due to being vital travel
Real good "rural" towns are built right. What you're referencing is sprawl.
Rural communities wont exist if climate change has its way with them.
This is literally just a poor tax. I'm homeless and live out of my car. I don't have money for living costs, that's how I'm homeless. Homelessness, car-dependency, and healthcare are all systems that impact one another and have to be tackled together, not independently.
I like this guy but he's definitely gives off more "progressive" noeliberal vibes.
I mean, it's almost as if the proposed tax was part of a massive infrastructure super-bill that included huge new spending for transit programs, or at least was supposed to
You're already paying this tax as part of the gas you buy. All they're talking about is changing how the $$ are obtained so people who use other types of cars don't avoid paying.
@@SC-gs8dc you're ignoring the fact that for a lot of people this is a net increase in taxes for people who need to drive a lot
To save you the 17 minutes, he basically says: since we've always been taxed to maintain roads just add more taxes.
Actually, he basically says "since we've always been taxed to maintain roads, and electric vehicles are causing people to dodge the taxes, we can no longer afford the maintenance even more so than we couldn't before."
anyone who pushes for more taxes, clearly isn't American
@@TwistyTrav Considering BEVs are heavier, the issue of funding is even worse.
Another summary: how will road maintenance be paid for if we as a nation pay less gasoline tax?
That's really all this is ... as long as we are a car based nation, roads must be maintained. That costs money. Where does that money come from, how is the cost allocated fairly?
If more EVs are sold, the money collected from gasoline taxes goes down. How do we cover the shortfall?
There is no perfect solution, just a few "least worst" ones. Vehicle miles traveled might still be bad, but it's a "least worst" tax.
As far as the rural poor ... set up a tax credit where lower income people get a percentage of their mileage tax money back as an income tax credit. Sliding scale, so the poorest get 100% back, the upper middle class get nada. We already do that for other taxes.
By the way, I don't have a dog in this fight ... I live in a nice part of a large American city and don't own a car any more.
Thx big dawg. I had a feeling this stuff was dumb a la, "You know who wouldn't waste our money? The government. We should give more to them."
I live in a city of 100k and we have no public transportation besides a super crappy bus. We had rail, but the main passenger line was turned into a bike trail and the rest of the lines are under 50 mph freight only. I'd be more supportive of a mileage tax if there was another option.
The goal is it would incentive bus travel which could improve if ridership went up. Busses require good ridership to be worth it.
@@trent6319 And good riders
Id sooner blow your brains out than share a bus with a minority
Two thoughts:
1. I think committing to transitioning away from cars and downsizing expensive car infrastructure is the only long-term strategy (cReAtEs JoBs too)
2. If we have to do a VMT tax as a band-aid, it should be on companies who use roads as free freight infrastructure, not on people who can't afford to live in the cities they work in.
You do know that company.s just either avoid the tax or pass it down as a consumption tax
There is no free infrastructure. The companies that use roads pay for the roads by subsidizing government through the taxes that they pay on their profits.
Thank you for that number 2 argument, by taxing the low and middle class for trying to become something you're hurting the country as a whole, nothing good ever came from suppressing those who want to work hard and move their way up, except socialism, which ISN'T good at all lol.
I disagree we need to improve public transit options before trying to implement something like this
you need to also de-incentivize cars along with building up transit. The country is so car-depend that the culture must be changed through infrastructure and stuff like this.
@@alanthefisher of course but I'm arguing your putting the cart before the horse here
@@AmericansAlwaysFree same, this video was kinda a letdown
I think that's why it was proposed in NYC where there is decent transport.
@@trent6319 but NYC already has pretty high percentage of people commuting just seems unnecessary
I disagree. Even with this tax, the government would end up continuing to not fix the roads in my state anyway.
Then you need to fix the problem: eat your governor.
@@LMB222 you want him to... eat his governor?
i think its a reference of eating the rich
@@derek9956 I think it's a reference to bofa
@@LMB222 ah the Dutch way
I think you're really misunderstanding the actual debate topics! The argument that it hits poor, rural places the worst is because a VMT in a vacuum is a very poor policy. Yes, you are completely correct in that cars are highly subsidized, but they are subsidized by taxes which are not being paid by poor or even middle-income people. Effectively the rich subsidize the poor through infrastructure. By making everybody pay a mileage tax instead, you're net shifting tax burdens from the rich to the poor. THIS is the central issue. Any flat tax type proposal, regardless of policy area, is going to have this issue.
The only way a VMT would work, is if car usage would be optional. So a VMT would work if you combine it with large investments into public transit and bike infrastructure. But not in isolation!
This right here. Written much better than I could have. A mix of lack of infrastructure that the poor, working, and middle classes can use and having to pay on top of that really just hits them harder than anything.
@@FunctionallyLiteratePerson same
Here's the thing. Until people will have to pay $17 to drive to Walmart, they won't invest into public transit and bike infrastructure.
@@DanCojocaru2000 hey genius, how am I supposed to get public transit and bike infrastructure when I live in the middle of nowhere?
Should we eliminate all gas taxes because it hurts poor people more than the rich? He said gas tax is going away because mpg is getting higher and higher and electric. We have to make up that money somehow.
The UK has a “road tax” that is the same as registration in the us, the difference here is registration is used for road maintenance. A mileage tax is a bad idea, some people live in areas that trains do not and will not service. Unless they are going to have public transit in place running on a regular basis, even if it is at a loss first, you’re just penalizing those that live far from work and boosting the value and rents of properties closer to the work hubs and cities. I’m from the UK and I live in the us. My dad drives buses and in the UK bus lines do run at a loss to service areas.
If more people are forced to live closer to cities, then community pushes for public transit, cheaper housing, and all different kinds of community benefits will all stack up a lot higher, and in a smarter way, too. City life is no one’s problem until they’re forced to live in it.
Just another example of how being Suburb-dominant is destroying America.
I say this as a person currently living in a Rural area NOT as a luxury: Rural living should be a luxury and not a norm. Living somewhere in isolation from the rest of America does not do your average family any good, even if it _feels_ good. It’s not a good environment to raise kids in, not a good environment to live in without personal transportation, and overall just isn’t good for your mental, physical, or social health either. It _can_ be good for your health, but only if you know how to make it work for you.
You NEED at least SOME community activity in your life, especially when you’re a kid. Otherwise, you simply will not have any cultural experience with the people around you, thus you will struggle dealing with the people around you and grow apart from everyone.
I think the hatred of the VMT also has to do with the mis-classification of working class.
Like the "real" working class people live in rural areas and drive trucks. Only the "elites" bike or use public transit.
Have you ever been to any rural area? Most people drive to get to where they need to go because everything they need is at a distance away and, to top it off, light rail cannot work there because light rail still needs population concentration to work.
People drive because it’s a necessity or else the alternative is walking 5+ miles to get to where you need to go, which could easily take half the day. The idea is bad and would only hurt rural communities disproportionately more than urban center.
This is why urbanites should not make laws for the rest of the country and why rural areas always need disproportionate representation; least their concerns aren’t heard and they suffer the most.
@@MatthewChenault yup. There would definitely have to be exceptions for truly rural areas.
@@userequaltoNull, which would be a considerable portion of the country, since much of the nation is rural to absolutely remote. It's that remoteness that made the US into a car-focused nation. It's also why nations, such as Russia, Finland, and so on, have a considerable car culture as well. Sparsely populated areas with low population density requires personal transportation.
@@MatthewChenault How is that different to the gas tax? Same rural people have to drive and use more gas and therefore pay more tax.
@@MatthewChenault this is just simply not true at all. america had the most advanced and extensive passenger rail network in the world prior to the second world war. cars and the communities built around them have drastically lowered the quality of life for many americans.
i love how his response to the "what about poor people, or those that live in rural areas" argument is pretty much "whatever most people arnt them" talk about bad takes.
Yeah this really gets my goat. You can't tax us country people without giving us a solid alternative to driving everywhere. And something that isn't just "move to a big city" because we won't
@@genevievewalsh2007 ruclips.net/video/y9KNax1QpD4/видео.html
The issues raised by people in rural communities worried about this say more about their life choices and their towns poor development than anything. If you’re using the road more because you chose to live somewhere with no access to materials, then you made a bad decision and you should face the consequences of that. Hopefully your shit tier town uses the funds correctly to make it easier for you to get to resources using trains or providing better planned shopping areas in the town
@@genevievewalsh2007 okay then you’re making the conscious decision to put more wear on the roads and you should have to pay for that. You’re an adult and can make your own cost decisions and you chose to live somewhere where you have to drive 20 minutes to do anything so you obviously should pay more than people who drive every once in a while to go on a trip but who would otherwise walk or use public transit to get to places.
@@MilkIsASauceTV bro i dont know how to explain this to you, but the entire world cannot be a city, nor should it be. Town development has nothing to even do with it, its about getting to the town you idiot. "bad decisions", dear lord... its not bad decisions, its a perfectly fine way to live your life made viable by trucks, and its honestly way better than living in a sardine can all your life. its only a "bad decision" if we had some more stupid totalitarian laws made up by idiots that have no clue how the world works outside of the city.
Is it just me or is there no way that if they introduce a new VMT that they'll actually get rid of the gas tax? I'm guessing we just end up paying two taxes.
Not only would they keep gas tax, they will use both to buy more military gear rather then funding theses "alternative transport" options.
Governments don't like getting rid of taxes, the federal income tax was originally billed as temporary
It's as if this guy doesn't realize we live in the dystopian hell scape that is Corporate America.
@@louiscypher4186 highways still cost the government more to maintain than they'd be getting in these taxes
@@ThomasBomb45 As would the missiles systems they'd buy.
In 1956 and ‘57 to help balance the budget the US Government increased taxation of Railroad Pensions and fiddled with the taxation of bankrupt Railroad corporations. Today there is no taxation of: Roads, Drivers, Vehicles to compare. Railroads built their system. Whereas road vehicle and airport users depended on Railroad taxation, other taxes and tricks to get funding to build Freeways, this is what much of the Interstate system is. New roads and maintenance is paid for by the entire country even if a person does not own a vehicle.
How about no? I have to drive a looooong distance to get to anything because I live rurally, I will never ever support this. I also have an old truck because it's all I could find. You're going to end up victimizing the very people you want to help in the pursuit of "progress" without regard for the human cost!
Also my state doesn't even have vehicle inspections, so there's no way it'd even be enforceable if it *was* somehow implemented. Even if they did, I would lie about my mileage or roll the odometer back. And who put the idea in your head that governments are good with money? This whole thing is just something I have to disagree with vehemently.
Maybe lower the rate in rural areas, but this is needed.
Do I get a refund for all the miles driven on UNPAVED and NON-government maintained roads?
At the very least, I can see this tax creating bad economics, especially when it comes to allowing people to grow and develop into the niches of a healthy economy. By imposing this tax without having the proper infrastructure in place to present a good alternative you will end up blocking people out of being able to have opportunity to grow. Most of the US is rural and a lot of people commute into cities or suburban environments to go to school and work. Without the infrastructure present to support them, the government will be limiting the access these people will have in society. They’ll be limiting people to areas with less jobs, generally weaker education, and lesser opportunities to grow in society. By cutting off a sizable portion of the US population this way, the government is hurting its chances to have someone fulfill a role in society that it might desperately need in the future. It’ll shift the demographic for the cycle of poverty. It’s just another tax that demands urban-centricism
you say exactly what i was thinking, and clearer than i ever could
But isn't the Tax needed before alternative infrastructure can be built to
A: fund the new infrastrucure (by freeing up funds that are spent on car-centric transportation projects)
B: Create an incentive for people to demand said alternatives to be built?
@@sirtobi8919
No on both accounts.
A.) taxes are never brought in before an initiative is passed, taxes are used to maintain and grow social programs or reclaim money spent by the country on a macro scale.
B.) the need for alternatives are already present. It’s been a growing and prevalent problem since the start of urban sprawl. The problem has been growing but legislators have been looking at other problems for a long time, it’s just not profitable to them because most of their constituents are in bigger cities, not the outlying rural areas
@@cactusjackNV I sincerely believe and hope that your assumption about almost nobody wanting to save the planet is wrong.
The funds being needed to fund the communal good and not the obvious short-term benefit of individuals is the reason why they need to be collected as tax revenue rather than individual, voluntary investment.
"those that cling onto progressive ideas" I think you misspelled "people who'd rather not live in the 1950s but survive the 2050s"
The problem is this guy will never see that because he is a socialist who wants to blindly support the poor because he had a penny once lmfao.
*“More cars! Built taller buildings! More room for anything! Close old railways! Everything we do is amazing!” :D*
- U.S. Government, probably...
Oh no they hate tall buildings here, they won’t even develop a parking lot in Manhattan into a tall building
I see you're also a Jay Foreman fan
So it's rather fortunate US private RR are private and were able to weather all the effort to nationalize them, isn't it?
Because of powerful donators and minority of voters who profit from suburban land arrangement
Railways were good when all you had were steam engines and small efficient engines and the rubber tire wasn’t even invented. Rails are inherently less flexible that cars. Also what is this fetish about being crammed in with dozens of strangers in small spaces? You like being around crazy people with BO? That’s typical of American public transportation.
I get the need for some kind of tax. I think just a straight tax per mile will harm rural poor people. Perhaps if the rate per mile changed depending on your income like income tax.
But even then, I still see 2 issues.
1) how do we enforce it? Do we rely on the honor system? Do we have some way to track people?
2) It will be incredibly unpopular even if there is no tracking. Is it worth the political backlash it would cause, and would it survive under the next administration if people do vote against the administration that implement it?
Odometers would probably be used. They are already fitted to almost all vehicles!
In Jakarta, all highways are tolled, to the point that going out to the burbs you pay twice, due to different companies owning highways here
hello, fellow JORR and lingkar dalam person 😁
My parents used to live in Jakarta, & they told me that the charge is less if you have multiple people in the car, to the point where unemployed people get paid to hitchhike.
Cities also adopted car infrastructure because cars were better for freight transportation than horses which were leaving so much manure around. Contrary to popular history, cars were quite readily used as a replacement for carriages and buggies and weren't just toys for the rich
Also, the interstate system was also a major military project used to connect military bases to each other.
I disagree because at the current moment in the US most people have no choice but to drive. I wouldn't support it until there's adequate public transportation and people were able to walk or cycle safely. And didn't have to walk 2 hours just to get to the damn grocery store. So this alone will do nothing. Where I live it's almost impossible to live without a car. I was surprised to learn that we finally got a public transit, but you have to set up an appointment for it a day ahead... Why disincentivize people from driving when that's their only choice? That makes no sense and obviously won't work.
There is no single solution. The entire country has to be redesigned, we need a major overhaul.
Exactly😌
The Trucks that destroy the roadways should be the ones paying extra because a single truck causes WAY WAY WAY more damage than a hundred cars can.
The most insane part about all this is that the cars create less livable places.
Well if that city becomes unliveable because of poor decisions by career politicans over a period of time. People move away from the city for better quality of life & I'm not a pro-highway guy, however I want balance in our transportation system. Also if you want city to do well stop trying to regulate everything you see & defunding the police doesn't help either. Yes the crime rate plays a massive part to white flight & the CCP virus lockdowns/restrictions didn't help either.
@@az196823 you're a very good satirist!
@@tylerzipay9536 I'm only speaking on experience & what I see happening on the ground.
@@tylerzipay9536 The MSM will not cover that.
@@az196823 so your personal anecdotes? aka worthless drivel?
The man who curated his own Wikipedia page is definitely not engaging in any form of astroturfing.
In my country, Argentina, we have the government run highways, and the privately run highways by way of lease for certain amount of years and they charge a lot in tolls, but the highway has to be very well maintained and you can’t have delays or traffic jams. If you wait more than 5 minutes to get to the toll plaza, you don’t pay.
A highway like I87, I495, I278 in NY to be privately run, it would have to be a billiard table smooth, clean, lighted, etc
You are very much correct. You know what people forget about why trains are so popular in Japan? Because cars have to pay the ACTUAL market price for highways (the tolls are supposed to pay back the construction costs and all maintenance)
As long as cars can freeload on the very expensive infrastructure they use, public transportation will never get a fair chance.
Love this channel! I feel that there are some problems with this though.
I guess I just can't in good conscience support a milage tax without it explicitly being a progressive tax. No one below a certain bracket should be paying taxes at all, honestly. A progressive milage tax should be zero up to a certain income bracket and kick in around middle class levels, then go up from there. I know way too many people who desperately wish they could live somewhere where they could safely walk to work but can't - they drive by necessity. One friend of mine whose car breaks down pretty often has to walk for miles on a highway (the actual highway, not a frontage/feeder road) with no sidewalks. Depending on the percentage of a milage tax I don't think he could afford to keep his vehicle while paying both gas tax and a milage tax.
Also skeptical of the idea that developers would respond correctly to the disincentive to build spread out communities. I'm not sure that would factor into their planning (not confident that I've thought that through enough tho).
I really don't mean to be contrarian, I'm just super worried about how this would affect working class people, and as extreme as the case of my friend sounds, I don't think that's necessarily just an edge case. However, given that I live in the Houston area, this may be more of a Houston-specific problem? Not sure. I've been told this is one of the more extremely car-centric metro areas.
Anyway I like this channel a lot and I'm sorry my first comment on it was semi-negative/argumentative
Oh I agree that there are problems with it, but it was mainly to point out that its not as bad as people were saying
@@alanthefisher Oh yeah totally, I agree. Your channel is awesome! Keep up the good work, I've been watching a lot of your videos lately
This is the epitome of a good faith argument/discussion about this. This is exactly the kind of discussion we should have while crafting good policies, not the bad faith whining that ancaps spew every time they hear "tax".
It is progressive. Wealthier people use higher weight vehicles and drive more. Carbon taxes are progressive for the same reason. Lower income people benefit more by having better infrastructure. Rich people can in part purchase alternatives to public goods/insulate against poor public provision.
@@keith5615 At least where I'm from in the rural Midwest, big trucks are often owned by the blue collar workers or farmers, not the wealthy
Ready for 8000 tutorials on how to rollback your car's miles
You ain't ever lived in a rural town if you think for a second most people can just "bIkE aRoUnD"
while driving is a necessity in rural based america, 70% of americans live in major cities, or areas surrounding major cities. cars are incredibly inefficient for such a densely packed population.
Build proper villages (1 mile diameter, supermarket in the center and a main street through the middle). Unfortunately sprawl type development has even affected farming villages as well but that's neither smart nor is it sustainable. Farming villages, strong towns and big cities can be build properly, offering everything to everyones taste and needs and all within walking/biking distance and connected by buses and trains. It works and Europe is the proof. But as long as society/government subsidizes and even imposes sprawl instead of traditional villages, town and cities it will only get worse. People need to pay for it one way or the other, better make them personally responsible that way they see the true cost and vote with their wallets next time they vote or decide where to build or buy a house or open a business. If you hide the true cost from people then they will never demand better laws, better planing, better infrastructure and they will not hesitate to move to a sprawling development as long as everything gets subsidized to the point where that's the seemingly "cheaper" option.
Charged rhetoric aside, I don't actually in principle object to a mileage tax. The problem I have is with a mileage tax that just props up our current system. There needs to be a strategic vision in mind to reduce reliance on cars and to build sustainable, strong towns. Imposing a mileage tax as one part of a plan to realign incentives is one thing. But imposing a mileage tax to continue paying for our unsustainable system and continue building it ever higher and more unstable is another thing altogether.
Its all gonna go to corrupt politians cause yalls have the memory of a gold fish
@@isaac6077 k
Car bad
VMT good
instead of further enslaving people with taxes about they build effective transit systems so that people won't be forced to use cars?
Yes! Finally someone with a brain in the comments.
but the question is: who and how will those effective public transit systems be funded and maintained?
For a sense of scale, the entire Apollo program cost 250 billion adjusted for inflation. It cost more than twice as much to build the interstates than to go to the moon.
Yes, but look at the usage numbers. Modern America doesn't exist today without the interstates.
Really not surprising.
After they add the mileage tax will they remove the tolls? NO
What tolls? There are barely any toll roads left in America.
Toll roads are mostly privately owned.
Guess it depends on where you live/drive but there are a lot of toll roads/tunnels/bridges still in the NE corridor. Some private toll roads too like the Dulles Greenway in Northern VA.
Absolutely agree, call me a cynic but I don't believe that creating a new tax will eliminate any older taxes, tolls or fees.
@@jimzecca3961 It never does once they start getting more money it never goes back down lol
love how he dismissed the biggest argument against the tax so nonchalantly, he should go into politics
what argument is that, exactly?
@@apocryphite_2 the rural and the poor with no access to public transit will be more significantly hurt by this VMT than anyone else. He just glossed over that in a "that's a topic for a later video" kinda way.
@@thelonelyphish youre replacing one tax for another, to spread out the tax to continue to apply to a larger demographic rather than be constrained to a dimishing demographic increasing correlated to poorer and/or more conservative groups. Now explain what is the problem?
@@Akriashi I agree with it concept, but in practice where I live (southern California) our local governments have no plan to replace the gas tax, just add on the mileage tax. I'm all for replacing the gas tax with a mileage tax, hell, I'd probably pay less considering my fuel bill is about $2000-$2500 a month and I could cut 1/5 of that off without the gas tax, but we're treating the mileage tax as an additional one. And contrary to what most people think, there are a lot of rural poor in Southern California that would get fucked over by effectively doubling their taxes for their only means of transportation.
@@thelonelyphishThe solution would be to lobby for the removal of a gas tax in place of other taxes. You still live in a democratic system, enough pressure on an issue can force it to change.
If you don’t believe me then tell me where the Keystone XL Pipeline is right now.
Damn, yesterday was literally walking around town cursing the cars🤣
I love that, it’s literally one of my favorite hobbies now 😁
I live in a suburb. The buses don't run out here in the evening, which means I need a car. Since I need a car I bought a car (sunk cost) and have to pay insurance (sunk cost). I've got a parking spot (included in my rent, but in practice that's a sunk cost even although someone else is paying it.) It's cheaper for me to drive somewhere than to take the bus (and there is no train option). I get 35 mpg and the bus fare is $1.50 each way.
All the costs for cars are either fixed and front loaded (insurance, car payments) or just front loaded (gas, maintenance). I always thought one way to address the issue of front loading would be to add a surcharge to car insurance... it's been years since I read The High Cost of Free Parking but I remember in a lot of cities (not mine) you could get a really deep discount if you bought bus passes in bulk to give to your employees. It occurred to me that if you were to add a surcharge to car insurance but include an unlimited bus pass in the deal it could be a really useful tool. You could charge a discounted rate- a car owner wouldn't tend to be a high use rider- but having the free pass would change the math so that it actually would be cheaper to ride the bus when it was convenient to do so. It could encourage park and ride and by getting drivers to occasionally use the bus they would be more likely to care about how good the service is. The fee would also give an influx of money to the bus authority.
The only thing I don't like about the mileage tax is that unlike the gas tax it doesn't push vehicle efficiency or take into account the wear and tear different sized vehicles create on the roads. You could, of course, take that into account and weight it by vehicle class. Me driving around in my tiny Chevy Spark doesn't put as much wear and tear on the roads as someone in a Mack Truck, or even an SUV. In a parallel parking situation where you don't have set space lengths I can also take up a lot less parking space, although most parking lots aren't set up to take advantage of that.
Yeah any kind of VMT should definitely account for weight of the vehicle.
The considerations in this comment needs to be at the forefront of this discussion.
Cost and convenience are absolutely critical if public transit is to succeed, especially if you have any reason to already be paying for a car. I can't have to walk far to the bus stop. I can't have to wait long for the bus to arrive. I need the bus to travel at the times of day I need to use it. I need the bus to travel as fast or faster than I can by car. I need the bus to get me equally close to my destination.
I think the main idea is to stop the car dependent sprawl which is mainly caused by the car subsidies and their zoning laws.
Without the subsidies a more natural, sustainable and traditional farming-village, small-town, urban big-city development pattern will emerge again (basically villages, towns and city districts with a 1 mile diameter making them easily walkable and stupidly easy to bike within just 2-3 minutes).
Sure you need to connect to other villages, towns or the other city districts in a big city and that can be done by train, bus, car or bike but realistically living in one such neighbourhood that provides you with everything (school, small super market, jobs, shops and handymen) means you have very little reason to leave the neighbourhood so on the rare instances when you do you can just take the car, rent a car or car sharing if you don't own a car, take the bike or mess around with buses since it's a rare thing it doesn't really negate the idea of a walkable neighbourhood and cars are not outlawed anyway.
Getting away from car dependent sprawl is the main idea.
As a “rural poor” myself, idk about this. It’s a 30mile drive to the closest store and a 72mile drive to my job (nothing in the area worth working at). I’d love to move but that’s just not feasible for myself or most people in similar situations.
Saying “we will figure something out for them later” doesn’t give me much confidence lol
Read Ted Kaczynski
, he was right. These urban people are willing to kill us to make numbers on a spread sheet go up. We rural people must oppose this in every way possible.
*"I don't like Pete for a lot of reasons, mainly for the whole Bernie situation..."*
Immediately liked
I mostly don't like this because I like to go on long road trips to hike and explore and setting those fees would limit my pastime and no existing infrastructure exists and probably won't exists for 10 to 20 years. I also imagine that vehicles will be self-driving interconnected through many level of connections where all routes and speeds are pre-determined, this has made me question conventional ways of mass transit.
As someone living in a transitless community who has to drive 30 minutes for my weekend job, I was naturally opposed to this, but if it means the return of C O N R A I L and usable cities, then tax the drivers. Tax them till they're riding a bike to work.
edit: I love this ongoing meme of vaporwave conrail. As someone who was 1) wrong side of the country for conrail and 2) conrail was before my time, I have this sort of fascination with these trains. Also I like the color blue.
No and screw anyone who wants to tax me for simply driving my car to work.
@@MatthewChenault I guess you can just drive to work over a bumpy dirt track then, because that's all you're going to get, unless someone pays for the infrastructure you use every day to drive your car to work on. Train operators have to pay for every single mile of track used by their trains, be it because they own and maintain the track or because they have to pay the company that owns and maintains it. Airports (and sometimes even airlines) are massively subsidised, and taxes on Kerosene are low or non-existent the world over. If you ever want to put transport modes on an even footing, you either increase taxes across the board to pay for nationally subsidized rail infrastructure and let operators use the track almost for free, just like trucking companies do with highways today, or you make those who use roads and airports pay for the actual cost of building and operating roads and airports.
@@mariusdufour9186
>Implying they actually spend money on infrastructure rather than spending 64% of my taxes on welfare of some sort.
I'm surprised I'm *not* driving on dirt roads by now, since the federal government gives jack shit about doing their jobs and fixing the infrastructure. It's mostly the states and local governments trying to keep up with paving the roads. Even then, the cities still have trash roads.
@@MatthewChenault I'm not American, so I just looked up the US 2019 budget to see a situation before covid. The US federal government spent 1,36 trillion. This included 101,7 bn for the department of health, 86,6 bn for the Veteran's association, and 43,5 bn for the Dept of Housing and Urban development. Now, I'm not sure counting veteran's affairs is fair because that's not welfare but deferred military spending imo, and housing and urban development does more than just provide 'affordable housing'. If everything in the budget that could possibly be construed as welfare (those listed above plus the vast majority of the 180,7 bn in small programmes) was counted, you would just about reach 30%, this is a very high estimate based on the rough budget, it's likely less once you start looking into the nitty gritty. On the other hand, if you counted everything related to military spending, you'd get 716 bn for 'defense', and 86,6 bn for the VA, and 48,10 bn for homeland security, though that last one is also policing. Not counting black budgets, cia, nor homeland security, etc, you easily get to 60%, so no, 60% of your money isn't going to welfare, it's going to the military in one shape or another. Unless you consider the US military a welfare provider, in which case 80% of the budget goes to welfare.
Source:
www.thebalance.com/fy-2019-federal-budget-summary-of-revenue-and-spending-4589082#:~:text=The%20budget%20office%20estimated%20the,covered%20by%20the%20discretionary%20budget.
@@mariusdufour9186, you're looking at discretionary spending. Mandatory spending adds another 2-3 trillion dollars.
This is from 2012, but the general spending budget hasn't changed much outside of its amount. In 2012, the total federal expenditure was 3.67 _Trillion_ dollars. Out of this, over *58%* of the total budget went to Social Security, Unemployment, Labor, Healthcare, and Medicare.
www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2012/04/30/pie-week-first-total-federal-spending/
I assume that the government is going to make SURE this tax goes directly toward ROAD IMPROVEMENTS, just like the proceeds from lotteries go toward public education...?
I see 4 problems. 1) its a regressive tax. 2) Creating an annual tax/mileage fee would be self-destructive. No one likes getting a surprise $1000 tax bill, even if its on a payment plan, the gas tax was clever because it was "invisible" 3) Instituting this policy without changing the underlying city design factors that force people to use cars is just punitive, and will come off as a money grab.4) Even if you live in a walkable area and never use a car personally, your life is still highly dependent on other people using cars (usually businesses for deliveries) and that creates a 'freeloader' narrative
[Raise business/income taxes the leftist cries! lol]
The current gas tax has the advantage of being a steady stream of money too versus people paying a tax bill annually. Nobody likes dealing with setting up an appointment to have their mileage checked especially if they don't already have an inspection.
How dare you bring reality into a discussion of public transportation and road policy! Don’t you know these discussions are supposed to revolve around pie-in-the-sky solutions that involve magical high speed rail networks popping up overnight and the Americans deciding overnight that they’re okay with losing a degree of freedom that they’re currently getting with cars.
@@Shadowfax-1980 your arguement is missing a few components. While yes, there will be a percentage of Americans that will still drive cars as their personal preference, it all boils down to a point of getting from point A to point B. Ridding cars of America isnt the task at hand here, its making public transportation more widley available to the public. The 70 year old narrative of how cars equal “freedom” is nothing but auto corporation propaganda that has embedded itself in American’s lives.
We need to work on making more available mass transit systems so people dont go crazy sitting in a box for hours trying to commute.
Exactly, it just feels like a punishment, and any company that operates vehicles will simply raise their prices to keep their bottom line.
1) Wealthier people drive heavier vehicles and more. I don't get how this is regressive especially if the VMT is based on weight. 2) If people come to expect a bill when they reregister their vehicle, then it is no longer a shock. Especially if there is an installment plan to pay off last years usage. 3) This policy creates incentives to reduce driving and change land use rules. 4) Logistics companies will adapt to use more rail freight and use lighter trucks. Delivery times will take longer for online purchases. There will be centralized pick ups for goods like in the EU instead of home delivery.
There should be some exemptions for rural and agricultural road use with progressive taxes on larger corporate fleets. This should be alongside improvement in and encouraged use of rail and water transport infrastructure.
Farmers need to get off welfare.
@@ednorton47
All aboard the destroying the California economy train.
@@ednorton47 Hope you like paying 2-3x as much for everything you eat or drink.
@@leohale3464 Tbh, america could use more expensive food. Though of course I am aware of the issue with people in poverty not being able to afford food in such a situation.
But one could over time move the money used to subsidize food production, and move it towards things like food stamps and welfare for people who aren't doing well economically. That way food would be more expensive, but only to people that are currently consuming too much of it.
@@vulduv So we should "get farmers off of welfare" so another group of people can get on welfare? Kind of defeats the purpose.
good thing I'm awake at 5am
Laughs in 1PM BST
I'm not sure the US is ready for such a thing yet. In lots of areas we lack the light rail and stuff that would replace all this. We could be in serious trouble trying this without preparing, and so it's better to be safe than sorry.
Preparing will not happen unless people feel why. When you can drive on the freeway for free, what's the point of building light rail and buying buses? Only when you have to pay $17 to get to Walmart will people finally accept the need for something else.
@@DanCojocaru2000 So then we get a chicken-and-egg problem. People will fiercely oppose a steep tax because there's no other (usable) method available, so no steep tax will be able to pass, but without the steep tax, people won't see the need for alternatives, leading to them complaining even more about the lack of alternatives the next time there's a tax increase.
I think a gradually increasing tax would work- the rate goes slowly up and the money from that tax is used to fund alternatives. By the time the tax reaches the full cost of the roads, alternatives would've been built.
@@DanCojocaru2000 but for a lot of people, there is no other option. You’re not going to get a robust public transportation system in areas with low population density. This is, in effect, punishing people for living in rural areas, where everything’s much farther apart and cars are necessary to get around.
Yeah! Let's raise taxes on poor people trying to survive, so that billionaires don't have to pay any taxes at all!
You sound like a great person. Really.
What do you expect from the average city boy socialist?
This is what we in the industry call a "strawman"
@@RainAndRay It sounds like you don't even know what the word "strawman" actually means. You just used it hoping no one would call you out on your ignorance.
And I shudder to think which "industry" you're in. I'm sure it's just as reprehensible as you are.
You hadn’t convinced me until 13:20. Any suburban or rural town I’ve lived in has been inaccessible to foot traffic. 15 minutes by car to a grocery store that thing. But if they don’t replace the gas tax, they keep it goin, rural people are just going to be taxed twice
Well, the thing is that at some point there won't be a gas tax because there won't be ICE vehicles.
@@andrewjazdzyk1215 electric vehicles have A LONG way to go before they are anything other than a city car for the rich
@@chessiesystem613 it's happening quickly. Yes, they are still a small percentage of the market share, but every big automaker is starting to pump them out in lieu of ice vehicles.
The highway infrastructure was built for national security reasons.
Mainly to make it easier to move troops, weapons, missiles easier around the country. As such it is like GPS a military project that has some civilian purposes.
Gas tax was meant to pay for the maintenance of the highway system.
It is better than a mileage tax as it also encouraged more efficient cars.
However either way it is a country tax.
I think that this comment sums up the issue better and more succinctly than the whole video
A mileage tax that accounts for weight per axle would generally encourage better efficiency as well.
Nah, that's not true. It was primarily made with civilian transportation and economic growth in mind.
@Alan Fisher You absolutely need to improve public transit options before trying implement more taxes on driving, you cannot force people to take a sub par badly run transit system. They are systems that were neglected and left to rot and then handed down to completely incompetent and corrupt people who have no sense of what it takes to actually run one of these systems, nor do they have any comprehension of what makes them function well in the first place. Before giving them more money, place people with integrity and knowledge in charge, they'll use what they have available more wisely.
I would like nothing more than to see a viable rail option in the future and to see things like the Northeast corridor and all interchanging transit infrastructure work the way they were designed (these systems have been neutered and fragmented over many years and have been victims of stupid decision and policy making on part of the people that run them and the federal govt.) When running correctly and operated to serve people, they not only drastically improve the quality of life for everyone, but are immensely fascinating things to behold and ponder over.
That being said, car culture and driving everywhere is cancer, but so is the current American passenger rail experience. But at least I can get to where I need to go faster and cheaper in an automobile than the train. I will never support taxing the common man into taking the more unfeasible transit alternative in the hopes that it will become feasible. It will not work that way, and furthermore any decision where we try and manipulate and make the lives of common people more difficult than it already is is blatantly vicious.
I must say... Alan has done a terrific job at influencing what my urban utopia looks like... Before discovering his channel, I would have been impressed with cities like Paris and Strasbourg for their public transport on my current European tour, but since watching his videos, I've come to also be impressed with places like Caen, Reims, Nancy, and wherever else I might end up, because of how the urban planning that went into some of them...
I travel between cities where I live on a weekly basis and I tell you what, I'd happily take a train if there was one for me to take. I dont enjoy driving 3 and a half hours / 214 miles one way... I don't like sitting in traffic, becoming traffic. Even if the train ride was the same amount of time, at least I'd be able to take a nap, or play phone games, or just look out the window at the trees and stuff and just think about something other than driving and the road.
I like how you said you agree with pete, unfortunately. I don't want to like him either, but he's actually opening up a lot of good conversations.
What are the points on which you disagree with him?
One day y'all will understand that the only reason you disliked Pete was because he ran against Bernie. Pete is a wonderful and brilliant man, and I'm tired of him not getting the respect he deserves.
@@billbones92 Yup. The only thing Pete "did to Bernie" was win Iowa, according to the rules that Bernie agreed to. But that's all water under the bridge at this point, just like the Raritan canal.
Pete should have been President!
@@bobfognozzle I would have voted for him. I was hoping to see him and Andrew Yang on the ticket.
Why wouldn’t I just disconnect my odometer? Don’t we pay tax on every gallon of gas? Guess they are using that money for other causes.
Let's impose a regressive tax on working class people who need to commute. And don't say public transportation, when it doesn't go where people need to go.
Then the solution is to build our towns and neighborhoods better to be more walkable and transit friendly.
@@alanthefisher But that was the solution 100 years ago. We've had a 100 years of automobile centric development that has resulted in development being randomly spread out in all directions for miles on end. The resulting lack of density makes effective public transportation pretty much impossible.
Mr. Fisher, I suspect you have not replied because you do not have a reply. My contention is that urbanists are planners without a plan. Urbanists lack any realistic solution for how the omnipresent open space suburban development can be made pedestrian centered.
I live in a city precisely because I want to live in a walkable environment where I can bike ride and take public transit, which I do, but I also commuted to the suburbs to work as do about 40% of the people in my city, and if you take away our neighborhood urban parking spaces, you screw us over.
@@Splenda257 build transit, duh
@@alanthefisher Transit doesn't work without density, which doesn't exist in the suburbs. Duh.
That's why train stations in the suburbs have big parking lots, because people have to drive to them. When you drop someone off at one of those stations you drop them off at a location where they need a car to reach their destination.
The government already steals too much of my hard earned money. Any taxes collected by this proposed policy will just be pissed away by the US Gov.
wow! within 2 days WTYP and NJB and Alan post about infrastructure spending. I love it!
How about doing it in proportion to damage caused to the damage done, and charge trucking companies 90% of the costs?
It would be interesting to see how you could implement this. You can't expect people to honestly report vehicle milage.
I assume it would be during state inspections. Which would be interesting because some states don't even have that.
Also I assume for jobs like farming, certain work vehicles would be exempt.
@@alanthefisher yep. That's why the great state of Iowa has some questionable vehicles roaming the highways.
One thing is that it can be cheated.
Even ignoring more in depth hacks, you can just lie to your car and say you've got small tires than you do.
Personally I think we're better off sticking with raising the gas tax until electrics are actually common
I've heard all the arguments about it but if we're actively subsidizing EV purchases with thousands of dollars in rebates still, I don't really see the purpose in trying to chase them down for a few hundred bucks a year over road costs, while the gas tax encourages smaller more efficient vehicles that do less wear
@TJ of Someplace During the inspection, the place doing it should just submit a simple form to the state tax agency.
This is my line in the sand. Any state that pushes this will not receive a dollar from me. I'll never live in one or do business with any company that does business in that state. This will literally be the end of travel for poor people. DO NOT let them go through with this. Over 70% of the money from gas taxes is used for roads and the rest is used for transit and others things. Who is subsidizing who?
Better spent the money we already have & adding more taxes in the midst of a recession doesn't help the case. You are punishing thoses in the middle class or working class who can't live in the city who has well or better paying job. Transit doesn't exist in some places & taxing like crazy doesn't help if the money doesn't go to the projects you shooting for, especially when it's going to pay off their special interest buddies. We need to do the same thing Connecticut did for transportation funding have a constitutional lock Box & that money that's set aside for transportation goes to transportation no where else.
The video mainly points out that the current source of revenue for roads is the gas tax, and because of electric cars its going away. So eventually we need some other way to tax road vehicles other than gas to pay for roads. So if you have any suggestions other than a VMT I'm all ears.
@@alanthefisher Sorry for the late reply, but if your going to do a mileage tax you need to work out the details & who pays what. Because if it's blanket your not going to get it passed & you sure as hell not going to have an already over taxed public push back really hard.
@@alanthefisher I get it nothing is free, however until you workout the issues & details it's DOA bro.
Gas tax and mileage tax do nothing to stop the problem of too many cars are unsustainable car infrastructure. What it DOES do is put further strain on impoverished people who struggle to exist in a car centric infrastructure in the first place. People who can afford cars are not affected by petty taxes. Who is? People who barely afford cars in the first place. You can not just blindly tax without providing alternatives
Yeah no this video is a bad take.
Highways always lose money? In the Netherlands the government spends about €2.5B a year on highways, but road tax generates €6B and fuel tax €8.5B. Sure, that's only what's spend on highways, not local roads, but I would say car users pay for their roads over here.
But this is a very densely populated country and gas cost about $9 per gallon, so I can see why this wouldn't work in America.
“Horseriders and pedestrians SHALL NOT PAY THIS TAX!!!” - The Concrete Gods
You didn’t actually address the argument that this negatively impacts people in rural areas. The vehicle mileage tax only works if the gas tax goes away - which is not a predetermined outcome. I’m very pro-train and public transit, but this puts the cost on the consumer when there aren’t built up alternatives. A vehicle mileage tax is not necessary - raising taxes on the wealthy to subsidize train construction has the same effect without draining the pockets of regular people.
In Austria, we have toles that pay for the huge Autobahnen which is great because ASFiNAG can focus on maintaining them. Wich has led to the situation that Austrians think of the german autobahn as bad because in Austria the potholes get fixed. Wich means that drivers pay for the Autobahn they use. And get fewer potholes as a result.
Connect the dots: IF the GOP wins the House in Nov AND their majority is based in rural and suburban districts (the most likely result as of now) THEN a Federal VMT tax is NOT on the table -- as the House is where tax bills MUST originate. A potential revenue source is a higher per gallon fuel tax indexed to inflation IF gas prices drop significantly... not a given under current policy.
Iconic moment in the beginning of the video
Takes like this are dog shit because the people it really affects (unless you have actual good transit, even through the suburbs) are working class people. Cars are already expensive as fuck to own, we get taxed out the ass already for owning one, and we have no choice but to own one
What I really wanna see is the trucking companies getting assraped by taxes, so that they are forced to use trains for long-distance transport.
this is the topic of a future video!
I just hope all the trucking companies avoid Connecticut like a plague. Then the citizens will actually understand how much they are needed.
@@brandonurbaniak1890 liking your own comments is like smelling your own farts
The imagery of assraped is pretty visceral. Lol.
Indeed. Instead of purely regressive taxation, multiply the VMT tax by vehicle weight. Heavy trucks cause more damage to roads in the same number of trips than a freaking Vespa.
Taxing and putting the burden on working class citizens is never the answer
The roads won't pay themselves.
What a great way to wake up! One of my favorite channels brings up news about a vehicle tax hopefully encouraging passenger rail!
For those knocking the VMT as a bad idea: what is your solution to maintain our roads once the gas tax becomes irrelevant? Roads need maintenance. Maintenance costs money. If the solution's not finding an alternative tax method, or severely cutting back on our road infrastructure, then what is it?
You could toll every road... but that's just a VMT with extra steps. You could charge huge registration fees, or vehicle property taxes, but then people who use the road infrastructure the least (while still owning a car) are punished the most. A VMT scaled to the weight of your car is elegant because it scales with the problem; the more you drive the more wear you put on the road, and the more you pay to fix it. If you drive less then the state gets less money... but also theoretically has to do less road maintenance.
I think the best thing we can do, before all else, is to remove most if not all zoning and land use requirements. Denser neighborhoods will be built where in demand, and with that public transportation will become a more viable investment. When talking about urban planning you can make a broad appeal for economic sustainability.
They did that in Houston. It's a sprawling flooded mess of highways. If you don't require developers to make dense housing they won't because they're trying to convince rich people to pay for their ugly McMansions because they make more profit on that, and that's all the developers care about. If you don't zone for density you won't get it because they won't want to give it to you because they won't make enough money. With enough being like more money than God.
Stupidest way to do is, implementing that without providing alternatives. Which America doesn't have in majority of the country.
Yeah I'm not ever buying an electric or autonomous car or truck. Not putting GPS on my vehicle either. There is not enough electric generation capacity, or mineral components to make the batteries and if you believe in social justice and still buy an electric car, well maybe you should take a look at where those minerals come from and who is actually doing the digging.
please correct me if I'm wrong but we already paying taxes to government which pays for government subsidized roads so WTF we have to pay out of pocket for the same roads???
I would love for my tax dollars to go towards the streetcar again. North dakota hasnt had them since the late 1930s
I love trains... Id love the ability to be able to take a train from my suburb down to the city to work. I'd actually consider a job if I didn't have to pay for parking. Stupid thing is we used to have a trolly line from my town to the city 100 years ago