PS: I pay to park most places around me, and I take slightly fewer trips because of this. The net effect of which is I spend less money on my car and buy more stuff when I do go out.
Please explain. Let's use my circumstances for an example.
I live an hour from any city. I do well enough financially, so parking taxes will not effect me one way or the other (neither would a gasoline tax). Within an mile of where I live, there are probably another 100 families. Most of them do not do so well. I live in a very rural and poor area. One family I know is a single mom and teenage daughter. While their housing is provided by family, each of them makes minimum wage and have to drive to the city to work. They barely keep one car running and the lights on at home.
Now I believe you are saying we should tax them for parking in the city. Then give everybody the money back from the tax. Perhaps at the end of the year when they file their taxes.
This would be devastating to these folks. Sure, you'd cut down on car use, but at what cost? For every middle-income person who took a few less trips, how many low-income people did you just kick out of work?
Did I understand that correctly? And please, no "but those folks are living the wrong way!" comments. These people are living as best as they can. One social engineering event per conversation, please. The point is to defend, explain, or analyze the article in question. The essay seemed to me to be the kind of pontificating that looks good from the ivory tower living in the city, but has very limited real application to the rest of the country, aside from hurting people for a noble cause.
Of all the many possible subsidies the government could or does provide, do you really think free parking is the most beneficial?
>One social engineering event per conversation, please.
Wasn't the central 'event' of the article social engineering?
The central point of the article seemed to be the assertion that people who are that poor and should not be living so far from their place of employ would be better off if we did this. Yes, they would lose their jobs if they stayed where they are.
But the taxes on parking would discourage borderline-poor from owning cars in the city, which in turn would bring down housing costs in the city, making it possible for your neighbors to live more cheaply and healthfully by biking/busing to their now nearby job.
Yes, there would be hardship involved. But the alternative is waiting until fossil fuels rise to such a cost that they can't afford to drive to the city anyway. We've then destroyed their chance of earning a livelihood by chasing their short-term comfort.
Too often the pattern in "what do do about problem X" is to write an essay espousing that we do "A"
Usually these essays gloss over, ignore, or belittle side-effects because a discussion of all the edge cases and results doesn't make a good essay (or a good book). In addition, most things in life are complicated, and authors need to make a succinct point, quickly.
The problem is that what makes for good essays, what makes for good political talk, very rarely is as clear-cut as the essayists make out to be. So along comes some schmuck (I volunteer for this role in my story) and points out the half-dozen or so unstated implications of A.
No problem, the supporters say, we'll just add B and C in there. Now, that fixes all your concerns.
Well yes, but are we talking about A, or A, B, and C. You're just adding in more stuff. Because now we need to talk about the implications of B and C, which you probably haven't thought that much about and are probably worse than the ones for A.
"No problem," folks say, because when we do B and C, obviously D, E, and F come along. They're needed to take care of C.
This can continue ad infinitum, with each addition of terms being less and less thought out, and the implications more and more unpleasant.
The thesis of the article, if I understood it, was that the cost to society for parking in the city (and he seemed to be saying the suburbs as well, although I might have misread) outweighs the benefits. A tax, or elimination of some parking would produce more good than bad.
I take issue with that conclusion, although I grant his premise -- costs of stuff keep going up -- to be true. I take issue with it for many reasons: cost to the rural poor and middle-class, cost to the urban poor, view of the problem from an academic standpoint instead of a practical one, using a long-term problem without clear costs (fossil fuel issues) to directly hurt people living today. There are all kinds of reasons I take issue with his thesis. In addition, the premise was trite. Mundane. The conclusion I found supercilious. It was just really bad. I'm sure the author is a great guy and wonderful and all, and I agree with his cause, but that doesn't mean I have to like this essay. I don't.
The mortgage tax credit is a great example of this. It promoted an increase in the average home price because people without home mortgages where subsidizing those with them. It also reduced the value of existing homes because they where built before the increase in average size etc etc. It destabilized the economy by promoting excessive borrowing... (why pay down your mortgage with an effective rate of 3.5% when you can invest in other things etc.)
The people that benefited from it loved it. However, if you had just given the same people that money without the subsidy they would have spent it on other things and been happier.
There are times when subsidies seem to create short term benefit, however it's always more effective to tax what you don't like than subsidize what we do like or simply have the government build it outright.
You are overstating your case. In a completely free market, public goods (goods which are non-rivalrous and non-excludible) will be under provisioned, since people will have an incentive to freeload of the people who do pay. Subsidies for public goods, or even private goods with a positive external benefit can (if the level is chosen correctly) prevent this under provisioning.
Granted, parking (and owning a home) are private goods, so the point is moot for the purposes of this article and your example.
However, that's not what is generally considered a subsidy. A targeted tax break on wind farms is the the class of activity I am talking about. When governments directly provide services there is little incentive to increase production beyond what is useful and significant incentive to cut back production. However, with farm (food) subsidies there is by definition overproduction which prevents non subsidized actors from competing and distorts consumption.
PS: Thanks, I should have been more clear.
Not necessarily. Please see "The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance contracts" ( http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/PrivateProvision.pdf)
I am a free rider when possible so his logic falls apart. People make irrational choices all the time so charites are capable of gathering relativly small amounts of money (total from all of them is 2.2% GDP and there are a lot of such orginizations). However, there is a reason expencive things like building ITER are not based on cheritable donations.
But the taxes on parking would discourage borderline-poor
from owning cars in the city, which in turn would bring
down housing costs in the city, making it possible for
your neighbors to live more cheaply and healthfully by
biking/busing to their now nearby job.
If this increases prices, that's good, because it lets people more accurately understand the cost of their habitation and transportation.
Alternately, if that's bad, I think the burden of proof is on you to show why inaccurate pricing results in more wealth overall.
* there are about 100 families within a mile or so of you
* they need to spend an hour or so to drive into the city
* they can already barely afford a car and "to keep the lights on"
Also, economies are complex systems. If low income people can't afford to commute into the city, the jobs wouldn't disappear, as the work wouldn't disappear. So someone closer who was previously unemployed might get the job. Or in response to the shortage of workers, the wages of these jobs might be raised.
Didn't someone mention on HN a startup that intends to do for taxis what airbnb is doing for hotels? This could be at least part of a solution.
Also, just from a practical standpoint, telling some people "your jobs won't disappear... other people will have them!" is, uh, problematic. At best.
Perhaps customers and employees should be treated as a form of pollution, just another toxic resource used by business. Wouldn't that justify business having to pay?? If given only enough wealth to survive, aren't we saying that employees have no function except to work and consume?
How far do we have to tax people before it becomes institutionalized slavery?
Cars have been a part of the American dream for a long time. Unless/until our cities are made where everyone can easily function without them, pricing some people out of them equates to a serious impairment and loss of freedom.
Taxing things that impact society isn't always the answer. Try taxing children and see how far that goes.
The wages of city employees keep going up more than that of the poor in the communities they "serve". What do some cities do to fuel that? Bring in more people, more box stores, tax it all.
Perhaps there is a fundamental conflict of interest in the way some city/county/state/national taxes and spending are handled?