I guess it depends on which end of the political spectrum you are, but this sounds absolutely obscene to me.
I mean, you certainly could argue that this is unfair, but at that point you’re basically arguing for a different concept of money and commerce, which is a rather bigger subject than the unfairness of tolls.
I agree with you that the price of government-owned parking is generally too low, and that it should be increased to a level to which available spaces nearby are reliably guaranteed.
The article isn't arguing that parking prices should depend on the price of the car being parked, just that having the same parking price for everybody is not any less inequitable than congestion pricing.
Sweden (I believe it is) in fact does this.
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Regardless, yes as the OP says if you think it's fair to charge a flat fine, then surely it's fair to charge a flat fee. The point is relative and thus holds whether you define fine equitability in terms of amount paid or difficulty in making the payment.
A car uses a parking spot. The spot is no longer available for someone else- regardless of your income. Incomes is orthogonal to the problem.
Flat taxes are the fairest taxes.
Take trash taxes for example: you produce 100 lbs of trash, you pay for 100 lbs of trash because disposing of 100 lbs of trash in a landfill or a recycling facility won't be affected by the income of the person having produced said trash.
Want to pay less taxes? Produce less trash.
I think the parking spot item is more like a meal at a fine restaurant - there is no incentive or disincentive from a social standpoint that should justify variable pricing on income. But to the extend there is, say via congestion, pollution, etc, it is reasonable to vary pricing in order to equally apply the disincentive.
No, it's not reasonable. The goal is not to discourage use, but to price in the negative externality.
> For your example of trash collection, by having a fixed fee the state creates a greater incentive among the poor to reduce their trash production,
And that's good, even if we suppose your argument is right. Bear with me: what's the percentage of the population in your country that you would call "rich"? Let's say 20%.
Do you think that 20% of the population can create more bags of trash than 80% of the population? I don't think so.
In the parking example, do you think 20% of the population can park more cars than 80% of the population? I don't think so either.
Someone rich may have more than one car, but I strongly doubt they are able to drive 2 cars at once.
But we are talking about parking spaces, and production of trash within a country.
I live in a wealthy household, our discarded amazon packaging, food and meal delivery garbage is easily 4x the garbage produced by a penny pinching household. And so far my housemates and I haven't reduced our consumption because the garbage collection fees do not outweigh the convenience of online shopping.
But I don't think your reasoning hold either.
If you have more money, it's easier to take less parking space, and produce less trash.
I can certainly attest that it's easier for me now: I can afford a private parking lot and taxis, I can buy food in expensive organic shops that have less packaging, I can pay people to do things for me, that would result in more work, but less waste.
Basically, when you have money, you can optimize for way more things than when you are constrained financially.
If you're poor, a tax - no matter how small - affects things like food expenditure.
If you're income rich, the difference tax makes affects things like what kind of car you buy or what quality of hotel you stay at when you're on vacation.
These are not like for like tradeoffs, they're qualitatively different.
Another theory is hedonic adaptation- you adapt to whatever and regress to a baseline.
Finally, there seems to be proof that some people do not spent their money on what will make them happier, the typical example being buying an object instead of an experience.