It amazes me that people are OK with paying $60k+ only to be constantly tracked everywhere they go by a process that destroys the product they purchased. I don't even like being tracked in a free web browser.
Much cheaper than the tax portion of a year's gasoline consumption.
(amount is from the rough average annual mileage of 13,500mi/year, assuming 30mpg, and the 82c/gallon tax).
Incentivizing the failure to replace wear items is bad policy.
> Incentivizing the failure to replace wear items is bad policy.
I see it as the least bad option out of the ones that we can field. Every kind of taxation policy will have pros and cons, and IMO the tire tax is potentially the one with the least amount of friction to implement and enforce.
except that EVs don't have smog tests
I'd rather they just charged a higher registration fee or something. Maybe pay for road maintenance out of the general fund? (Tire taxes as suggested by a sibling comment is an interesting option.) For the moment it seems like it's mostly a non-issue, until we start having EVs be a much larger proportion of vehicles on the road.
I've wondered if maybe the tracking device is a sort of straw-man proposal so they can propose something less Orwellian and have it be accepted because it's better than the alternative. But on the other hand, the people proposing it may just not care about the privacy implications.
edit to add: per-mile road taxes are also regressive. Paying per mile makes a certain amount of sense, but it's a burden that falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class (unless the policy explicitly has different rates depending on income). That's a good reason to just pay for road maintenance out of the general fund. I'm okay with keeping gas taxes because they reflect some of the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels and they're comically low anyways.
What is the logic behind this? I get that "cars bad" but do they seriously believe they're so bad that tradesmen who lives way out there so they can afford homes should pay more? They're already paying with their time.
The beauty of the free market is that increases in cost of shipping and transportation trickle down to prices paid by consumers, who can then vote with their wallet. If the cost of road usage is factored into the price of a good, I can choose to buy a good that results in less road usage, because it's cheaper.
Gas taxes (as opposed to mileage taxes) are decent enough driver of environmental policy, but they don't accurately capture road usage, especially in a world that's moving towards electric cars.
But it still seems wildly incompatible with the "equity over equality" theme that most other new and upcoming CA government policy is based off of. Especially so considering that road wear is mostly from heavy trucks.
>Gas taxes (as opposed to mileage taxes) are decent enough driver of environmental policy, but they don't accurately capture road usage, especially in a world that's moving towards electric cars.
But the people who are moving to electric cars are already the ones who will benefit most from a mileage based tax since they tend to be wealthier and already have shorter commutes. It's not like CA is going to stop taxing gas.
Wealthier people buy more goods and services, which get delivered to their local store/home on roads. While they personally won't pay more mileage taxes, they will end up paying more of them through their purchases.
I get it, this isn't the most progressive form of taxation, but neither are gas taxes (if they don't come with a dividend, like they do in BC.) If anything, poor people pay disproportionately more in gas taxes, than they would in road use taxes, because they tend to drive longer distances in less fuel efficient vehicles. That's a double-whammy.
Cheaper, less fuel efficient vehicles (like an old work truck) would effectively taxed less than a Prius, although I think weight per axle is also intended to factor into this.