From: James Wetterau (jwjr@ignition.name.net)
Date: Tue Jun 06 2000 - 09:10:31 MDT
James Rogers says:
> On Mon, 05 Jun 2000, James Wetterau wrote:
> >
> > Privatize the roads! Make all transit user-pays.
> >
> > After all, do long-haul commuters
> > really pay their fair share of the road costs? (To tell you the
> > truth, I don't know the answer, but I suspect that the federal and
> > state governments end up subsidizing driving, at least for certain
> > drivers.
>
>
> Actually, I suspect that everyone pays more than their fair
> share. The problem isn't that some people aren't paying their fair share,
> rather it is that the government wastes 90+% of the money it takes for this
> purpose. As I've said before, I am an advocate of use-based taxation in
> principle, but more "fairness" could be extracted from the system merely
> by removing the gross inefficiencies from the process.
...
Allow me to distinguish my point from yours: I am in favor of selling
the roads as well as mass transit systems to private entities and
individuals, not some utopian scheme for better taxation.
I am against any and all taxation.
Only in a privately run system can we tell if people are paying a
reasonable amount. I suspect that traffic jams map to shortages.
Whether those are shortages of good roads, or shortages of good clean,
safe commuter railways, or both, I blame the government for
monopolizing those businesses and doing it poorly.
Regards,
James Wetterau
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