The French are required to keep yellow safety vests in their cars! NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley says the protesters have shut down Paris.
Not only the fuel tax but everything else that goes up.
Coming to a neighborhood near you…
I keep reading articles (one clown in a local newspaper) and seeing some folks in the U.S.A. who want punitive taxes on virtually anything they perceive as fossil fuel or carbon dioxide producer.
Punitive tax brings the reaction they are getting in France. It would happen here, too!
I believe that if you want to change the behavior of consumers then you are much better served to reward (tax incentives) “good” behavior and not punish (punitive taxes) “bad” behavior.
I don’t have any HOV lanes on roads near me and only see them coming and going to Florida. I am neither a fan nor a foe of them, but giving an example of rewarding desired behavior.
I just paid my Florida Property tax and it’s a bit higher than my property tax up north, but I don’t mind at all. Rather than react negatively to higher tax I greatly appreciate seeing my tax dollars at work in Florida, nearly everywhere I look!
Up north, not so much. I pay property tax and do not see any bang for my buck. Rather what I get is constant millage proposals for everything under the sun that should be covered by the property tax.
CSA
3 Likes
CO2 is creating an expense for everyone in fires, floods, hurricanes, cooling bills; a tax that recovered the cost of CO2 emissions would be appropriate. Spend it on concrete roads, white roofs, more efficient refrigeration, energy efficiency, insulation, flood control…
We don’t collect enough in fuel taxes to pay for roads now; we transfer money from general revenue. A fuel tax that funded safe roads would be appropriate.
Some states lack income taxes and sales taxes, collect a high property tax instead. One has to compare the total tax load.
Should roads? I have 6 property-tax entities in Albuquerque, none of them explicitly for roads. I suspect some of the general city and county taxes go for for roads, but I’d rather they collect it all in the fuel tax.
60% of France’s fuel cost is tax; it’s less than 10% in the US. Considering the high prices we tolerated in the past, I don’t foresee protests from increasing it to match inflation over the last 20 years.
Maybe in some states.
Here in Washington state we pay a 49.4 cents a gallon tax plus the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon,
That’s a total 67.8 cents a gallon.
that’s almost 20% here.
My northern location has some of the highest gas prices in the nation because of taxes for roads. The roads are some of the worst. Besides tax on gas we pay increased car registration fees for roads, and county road commission tax for roads, and voters just renewed additional millage for roads. Our roads suck… little to no bike lanes, program that paints road line marking every-other-year even though snow plows remove them annually, broken pavement to the point of danger, pot holes, etc.
Most government agencies accept additional tax contributions. Anybody who feels they don’t pay enough and are worried can send it in. Please do. Problem solved.
I pay enough, more than enough. Some folks pay little or none. Warning: I’m one of those tax payers that will become unglued with all that carbon tax crap.
How much additional money have you contributed to date?
CSA
1 Like
The state and federal governments enjoy the option to use various charts and graphs as needed to convince an audience to agree with a proposed tax or expense. The state of Mississippi taxes its residents enough to cover 60% of state funding of roads and education and hands the bill for the balance over to various federal agencies. When money is spent on education and roads local & state political leaders take credit for the spending with no hint of gratitude to the states that are over taxed for their 40% of the funding and no one here cares to hear the truth reported. Our governor is truly appreciative to his constituents for their lack of concern.
Florida has no income tax. The FL county I live in has no income tax. The property taxes are 1/3 what they were in Ohio for the same home value. Sales tax a bit more. Car registration is the same I paid in Ohio. Fuel taxes are higher but gas, overall is pretty cheap. The roads are in great shape as are the bridges.
Florida spends about $4408 per resident compared to New Mexico’s $8716 per capita spending. Are you getting twice the value for your tax dollar?
1 Like
I understand why there’d be some vocal opposition there in France. The French don’t seem to just sit idly by when they feel affronted. Reminds me of the time I was on my way to a short Paris holiday some years ago. When the plane landed at the Paris international airport I looked out the window to watch the parking sequence. Instead of pulling the plane up to a skyway gate, the pilot parked the plane right on the tarmac, runway level. Then somebody brought some stairs for everyone in the plane to climb down. The pilot comes on the intercom and says “sorry passengers, but the bag handlers union just called a wildcat strike. You won’t be able to pick up your luggage at the normal carousels. Instead, please climb down the stairs and wait while we unload it from the plane ourselves.” Sure enough, it was the two pilots and the in-cabin assistants that pulled all the luggage out of the plane and sat it on the tarmac, sort of like taking a Greyhound bus trip 
Actually I sort of liked that method. I had to carry it further, but since I stand there & watch them as the unload the plane, less chance for my stuff to get damaged, pilfered, or lost.
Remember when gas was 29.9c/gal? The tax then was 10c. That comes out to around 34%, now its less than 20%. I wouldn’t mind paying a higher gas tax as long as it goes into roads and bridges to reduce traffic congestion. I don’t want it to go to anything else.
But, I’ve been to France. They have 35 hour workweeks, long summer vacations and a 1000% excise tax on anything imported, but God forbid that we should put an excise tax on anything coming from France.
These numbers look wrong. Look who’s highest: North Dakota and Oregon, with exactly the same number, $18,273. Massachusetts is low.
Medicaid and schools are the biggest part of the budget, so it doesn’t inure to me directly, though I want all kids educated so I support it.
What’s the tax and the price? Rural locations have expensive gas because they’re remote and there’s no competition.
I remember when it was always like that. I remember when Dulles was built, it had ‘people-movers’, bus-like things with ramps on both ends. It docked to the plane, passengers got off, it moved to the terminal, docked with the door on the other end, we went into the terminal. It was a fancy modern advance.
I recommend we divide up the Federal fuel tax to the states on the basis of the fuel taxes each collects.
I don’t know if all the state’s data are correct but Florida and New Mexico’s are. Super easy to check, search each state budget and population and divide.
As for schools, this US News and World Report article has Florida ranked 4th and NM 43rd. Doesn’t seem like your state’s kids are getting the benefits of those additional dollars.
1 Like
The people mover buses were used for all flights until recently. I think they are used for international flights now, at least arrivals.
NM is a lot poorer, has the largest fraction of Native American kids, the largest fraction of English-not-first-language kids, lots of small towns (it’s cheaper to teach a 1,000 students in 1 school than 10). I’m sure we do worse, but the task is harder. And a lot of education is in local budgets, not the state budget.
I haven’t flown out of Dullest in 40 years. What do they do know? After I wrote that message, I remembered that you could get a ride on the people-movers just for ‘fun’ when it opened, back when if you took the off-ramp from 495 you had to go all the way to the airport to turn around.
There’s a train that runs from the Dulles main terminal to the two remote terminals. International departures leave from the same remote terminals, but arrivals have to go to customs first. IIRC, they still move international arrivals from the arrival gate to customs on the buses you mentioned. The Dulles access road still takes you from the beltway to the airport with no exit, but there is a parallel toll road for all other stops in between. The area is completely built up now.
re: “people mover” vehicles at Dulles airport
I’ve only been to DC once, flew in from Boston, and flew out towards Belgium. I don’t recall any “people movers”, seems to me it was just the normal walk off the plane through the skyway, but my memory may be incorrect, that was quite some time ago. Also may not have been the Dulles airport, don’t recall. But the arrival was a domestic flight, and the departure was an international flight.
BTW, Washington DC is a great place for a short holiday. I really enjoyed my few days there.
I’ll be sure to mention NM’s educational difficulties to some of our migrant farm workers here in Florida. In Spanish, of course since they come from Mexico or Guatamala. Or the Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Many working in the metropoli of LaBelle, Immokale, Belle Glade or Clewiston.
Not necessarily. The tax on a pack of cigarettes is almost 6 bucks in NYC, which is incredibly punitive. Don’t see much rioting over it. I think it’s important to remember that France riots at the drop of a hat. We… Don’t. We maybe should more often than we do, to be frank, but we don’t.
I do agree that we should reward good behavior, but as long as both Priuses and Hummers exist on the same planet, incentivizing things like EV’s is only part of the solution. You can’t charge the Prius a discounted tax rate to reward it for being efficient, because getting the gas pump to tell the difference between a Prius and a Hummer would be unworkable.
Sounds like your northern location is in Pennsylvania…
I agree, my wife and I took a short honeymoon there after we got married and really enjoyed ourselves. Plus it’s not really a very long drive for us (usually 2-3 hours depending on traffic), so we usually take the kids down once a year to go to the zoo
I’ve only seen two municipalities with the financial discipline to budget for the future only to have newcomers in control raid it to pay for something else. One city had a water treatment surplus designed to address future infrastructure needs and for expected maintenance. Robbed and put into general fund to provide salary increases for govt employees. Other one kept ambulance fees to pay for new fire engine. Robbed and put into general fund to address bond requirements for new school…I see no hope that raised taxes enough to fully fund roads wouldn’t suffer the same fate…