California Considers Placing A Mileage Tax On Drivers

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Yes, I’m okay paying for services I don’t want or need if it establishes a baseline for everyone. And I’ll vote for those taxes every time.
 
A lot of towns where I live have volunteer fire departments. And men freely choose to devote their own time and energy and freely choose to risk their own lives without ever seeing a single penny. That’s Christian Charity.
Fire fighting for profit? What a disgusting notion.
 
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Lemuel said:
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Rhubarb:
Something like fire departments are a practical protection for the community as a whole. Not just a single person or family.
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In my 35 years of experience, I have never seen one instance where government did a better, or even as good of a job at building infrastructure and at a much greater cost.
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When you make this determination, what criterion are you using to say if one plan is better that another? Is it the quality of the road? The longevity of the bridge? If so, you are using the wrong measure. Something that is used by all the people is better when it serves the common good better. That means people - all of them. Not just the ones who paid for it. The utopia you describe might serve some of the people really well, but not the common good. There is something called the common good. It is referred to many times in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is my guide for right and wrong.
 
It just puzzles me that people on this thread seem to have the notion that taxation is somehow anti-American and antithetical to the founding fathers.

That has no foundation in actual history.

The gasoline tax is an excise tax. The mileage tax would be too. Excise taxes, tariffs, direct taxes on property, capitation— these ALL go back to the beginnings of the country and before. The founding fathers had no issue with taxation, merely with taxation of colonial goods without parliamentary representation.

Taxation has never been viewed as undesirable, or unnecessary, or overreach by the government. There were questions regarding whether income taxes were direct or indirect— solved by the 16th Amendment.
 
You must look deeper because volunteer doesn’t always mean unpaid in this case.

Volunteer fire departments vary. Most classify volunteers as part time responders and they are paid an hourly rate versus a full time employee who would have a wage and benefits. Also, most times the actual infrastructure such as firehouse, trucks, equipment are paid for by taxes, the local government unit determines whether they use full time professional firefighters, “volunteers”, or a mix of both. They are not pure “volunteer” endeavors as local government still oversees and runs them in some manner even if no one is paid.
 
Rhubarb said:
Yes, I’m okay paying for services I don’t want or need if it establishes a baseline for everyone. And I’ll vote for those taxes every time.
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Like I said earlier . . . I get it. I know that some people can’t sleep at night unless they know they are controlling others. You seem to be one of those who has the need to control others. You are among many and I understand that.

It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money, isn’t it?

It’s easy to say, “I know how you should spend your money better than you do,” isn’t it?

It’s easy to spend money when you don’t have to be accountable for it, isn’t it?

I get it . . .
 
LeafByNiggle said:
When you make this determination, what criterion are you using to say if one plan is better that another? Is it the quality of the road? The longevity of the bridge? If so, you are using the wrong measure. Something that is used by all the people is better when it serves the common good better. That means people - all of them. Not just the ones who paid for it. The utopia you describe might serve some of the people really well, but not the common good. There is something called the common good. It is referred to many times in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is my guide for right and wrong.
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I would say that everything else being equal, the common good would be to spend less of everyone’s money. If you have a bridge and let it out under private contract, you can get it built for half the price as you would under a government contract. And you would get the SAME bridge. On the other hand, if you had X amount of dollars to spend on a bridge, you would get a much better bridge built under a private contract than you would under a government contract. That’s just how it is. I’ve been there, done that for decades. How does spending money unnecessarily serve the common good?
 
1ke said:
Taxation has never been viewed as undesirable, or unnecessary, or overreach by the government.
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Seriously? You really said this?

Eating has never been viewed as undesirable, or unnecessary, or overreach by humans.
 
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Uh, yeah, I really said that. Because the framers wrote taxation right into the constitution. They understood that providing for the common good came with the need for monetary support through taxation.
 
Charity is what you do with your money. It has nothing to do with how you use other people’s money. Christ taught us to take care of the needy. I guess I missed the part of the Bible where he taught us to compel our brothers and sisters to do the same. Perhaps you can show me.
 
I think you misunderstood me. I’m not talking about financial charity. I’m talking about conversational charity. Like refraining from putting words in people’s mouths. Or insinuating nonsense about a person. Or being insulting, ungraceful, and combative. But if you want to be a *%&! like that, I can’t help that I guess. Good day.
 
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1ke said:
Electric cars don’t use gasoline
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However, the amount of fossil fuel an electric car uses is dependent on the local power generation source. According to Scientific American, if the car is recharged from a is fossil fuel generation plant, the electric car actually accounts for about the same amount of greenhouse gasses as a gasoline powered car. Also, electric cars take more energy to produce and the batteries, which have to be replaced every 10 years, are hazardous waste.
 
Oh, yes, I totally understand that. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. My point is, road revenues cannot be collected at the pump through the traditional gasoline excise tax when a person drives an electric car.
 
Private fire departments usually have a deal with an insurance company. If you buy the insurance, they respond to your fire for free. If you have a government run department, it still costs the same, but the taxpayers pay for it. Taxpayers wind up paying the $20,000, and more, over time, whether they have a fire or not.
 
Here on the East Coast, 14 states have something called E Z Pass. It is a transponder mounted on the windshield that is “read” by a computer as you pass through a toll booth. The toll is then deducted off a credit card on file. Works quite well, in fact you are crazy to drive the N.J. Turnpike in NO. NJ without EZ Pass.

I think it is the future. IN ten years every car will have to have this device and it will be connected to a credit card or possibly added to your taxes. People who use the interstates pay for the usage, people who don’t don’t pay. I foresee the Federal Government instituting this system for every federally funded interstate. For instance, if the tax was $.01 per mile, a drive from NYC to FLA and back at $.01 per mile would be about 2000 miles and the tax would be $20 bucks. Figure that for every truck, car, and van on the federal interstates and you would have a fair tax for those who use those roads. Of course, voters would approve it if the gas tax was lowered at the federal level (although that is problematic getting the clowns on capitol hill to give up a tax might be a pipe dream). But it would work for all. Gas taxes would be lowered, people with electric cars or fuel efficient vehicles would contribute to maintenance of the roads, and the tax burden would be lifted off those who do not use the roads as much as others.
 
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Lemuel said:
I would say that everything else being equal, the common good would be to spend less of everyone’s money. If you have a bridge and let it out under private contract, you can get it built for half the price as you would under a government contract.
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Who is letting out the contract? The government? Or a private individual? If it is a private individual, it is unlikely that private individual would decide to let out a contract that he would pay for that built a bridge for everyone to use freely. So either it is for his private use or he is making it a money-making toll bridge. Either way, the common good is not well served. On the other hand, if it is the government letting out a contract to a private construction company, there is nothing wrong with that. It happens a lot, I assume.
 
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