Yeah, cause every city in America is so popular that they're congested terribly and need to tax people to ease traffic like SF does. The Liberal Joneses are coming!
"Officials in San Francisco are considering a plan to ease traffic by charging drivers a fee upon entering notoriously clogged sections of the city.
Using $1 million in federal funds, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying various “congestion pricing” options. If approved, such pricing would make San Francisco the first American city to charge cars a fee to enter certain neighborhoods at certain times. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/us/04congestion.html
And we all know how Liberal Democrats work, once one does it, then the rest try and keep up with the Liberal Joneses and think they are "behind" by not having the same "progressive" legislation.
"To argue against any breach of liberty from the ill use that may be made of it, is to argue against liberty itself, since all is capable of being abused." – Lord George Lyttleton (1709-1773)
Your children's future
Total debt:
Yeah, cause every city in America is so popular that they're congested terribly and need to tax people to ease traffic like SF does. The Liberal Joneses are coming!
Sounds like a good way to promote tourism.
Cities are faced with some difficult choices these days.
They are required to spend huge amounts of money maintaining roads, traffic controls, emergency reponse units and much more.
This is simply a way to tax those who use the most congested sections.
I am sure there are places you can park and make use of public transportation.
It seems a bit extreme, but not the worst I have heard. It beats the hell out of selling off city and state assets.
regressive
Q: Senator Obama, would you take the same pledge? No tax increases on people under $250,000?
OBAMA: I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes, I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes.
Of course they could *gasp* cut expenditures. That's what were doing here in the Great State of North Carolina.
Yeah, the goal is to make it less sexy to be driving your car. Of course all it seems to do is relegate the poor into "loser terrariums"... or "buses" as you might want to call them. Wasting their day standing at the side of the road waiting for a scheduled appearance...
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- -- Aristotle
Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.
- -- The Buddha
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- -- Aristotle
I don't suspect that people are using a route through downtown San-Fran during rush hour as a short cut. Obviously the people who are traveling in the congested areas are commuting, delivering goods, or are tourists; all associated with the area and therefore all part of the area commerce. If you punish someone for engaging in commerce then they will do less of it, therefore overall tax revenues will decrease.
Sexiness has nothing to do with it. Congested urban roads are, from a market standpoint, extremely inefficient on myriad levels and environmentally problematic, largely because the rational decision of the individual to drive becomes an irrational, inefficient mess when everyone does it.
Use the revenues from congestion pricing and build a better public transit system (BART is pretty good as it is).
You simply described exactly what I just said in different words and added, "Build a better system, it's pretty good anyway" to the end of it.
Idiomatic phrases notwithstanding, the "benefit" again is taking the poor off the streets to make the roads more efficient for the rich who are more capable of paying such punitive taxation. It will also serve to limit tourism...
It's a regressive taxation that serves to benefit the money rich by making them time rich as well.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- -- Aristotle
Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.
- -- The Buddha
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- -- Aristotle
spin anything to make a fee or tax look positive. who said that the power to tax was the power to destroy?
Bookmarks