A quick thought: it’s entirely reasonable to say that taxes on gasoline are a much more sensible way to fund road maintenance than a mixture of property and income taxes, proceeds from state lotteries, and so on. But one problem here is that fuel-efficient vehicles are no less hard on roads than gas-guzzling ones, and so an approach like this is one which tends – again – to privilege the pocketbooks of a certain sort of wealthy, Prius-driving type over those of the rest. If the goal is to make drivers pay for wear and tear, then such an outcome is inequitable and unjust; if the purpose is simply to use the higher prices to discourage driving or at least encourage the purchase of cars that use less gas, then I’m on record as being troubled for reasons that are by now familiar. Things like congestion pricing, highway and bridge tolls, increased costs for parking, and nifty pay-per-mile schemes (whether publicly or privately run) are better ideas, so long as any such measure is offset by corresponding reductions in taxes of other sorts.
Filed under: energy, taxation, transportation
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