California Community Mulls Driving Tax Amid Privacy Concerns | Hacker News Reader

California Community Mulls Driving Tax Amid Privacy Concerns

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7 pointssologoub23 comments

It's OK everybody, the police, authorities, government agencies, insurance companies and corporate partners won't have access to these detailed records without either a warrant, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, a good reason, an ongoing investigation, to rule you out from an investigation, or general curiosity. Also the data is going to be secured using all the latest secure security, so you can be secure in the knowledge it's as securely secure as secure can be. Nothing at all to be worried about. Unless you have something to hide that is. Those who have something to hide can register their complaints in writing in person at the Ministry of Homeland Secure Security, Obedience and Compliance. Be sure to bring your Show Me Card or other sanctioned federal identity documents.

Of course, the system will always be used for only its intended purpose, administering the gas tax, and future political bodies will never expand its scope to catch terrorists, child abductors, illegal immigrants, hate criminals like Chic-Fil-A's president, deadbeat dads, Occupy protestors, Wikileaks contributors, people with unpaid parking tickets...

If you want to tax cars more, up the gas tax which already affects people who drive SUVs more than small cars. Risking this level of abuse of the 5th amendment is just not worth the cost.

This type of tax is also about as anti-poor people as you can get. Any big tax that hits all at once is a killer.

That was my thought exactly: are gas taxes nothing more than 'per mile' taxes? Just raise those, gas is already cheaper in California than many places. Of course, it would be nice if that money were to go directly into funding full cover public transport for those who will no longer be able to afford to get to their low-paid job 50 miles away.

Over the long term, the gas tax encourages a change in consumption patterns. Take a job closer to home, move closer to your work, or telecommute more.

Per-mile tax does exactly the same thing, but with a ton of invasive technological monitoring.

That is also a simple solution. It is trivial to change the "tax" rate, and even later it by area. About the only thing you can't do is take time of day into account. But other solutions solve that like the car pool lanes you can go into if you have a toll transponder and agree to the price shown which are already available in the area.

I don't understand why they keep trying to come up with these complex technological solutions. Unless they are barring visitors not all cars will have whatever it is they want installed.

Something I find very strange.

Many criticize Pigouvian taxes as being "anti-poor people", on the grounds that they will disproportionately affect the behavior of the poor.

Yet it's quite uncommon for the same critics to levy their criticism at the poor for engaging in socially harmful behavior. Why is that?

What exactly are you considering "socially harmful behavior" in this situation?

The behavior that the pigouvian tax is designed to discourage.

In this particular case the behavior is driving, which the government proposing the tax believes is socially harmful.

I am a little confused. The gas tax is supposed to be a use tax to pay for the roads, not discourage a behavior.

"Proponents argue that a driving tax may be an effective way to curtail driving."

"...one of five ideas it has to reduce the environmental impact of traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area."

Not to mention, what about people that drive in from other cities/states, rental cars, etc.? You can't visit SF without getting a tracker installed? Imagine the effect on tourism revenue.

A gas tax is pretty close to a tax on miles driven, and significantly less complicated.

If they raise gas tax, people will notice immediately and scream. If they just add some new obscure tax they have reasonable chance people won't notice how much it is until that April 15th time, and it will be too late then. Or at least they think so.

It will provide a good example for oppressive governments worldwide. "Sure, we may arbitrarily prohibit you from leaving your hometown, but at least we don't monitor your every move like California."

The only way I'm willing to accept further taxes on driving is when California actually has real public transit coverage across the entire state. Until then, driving is the best option for many individuals.

There are large sections of even the more highly populated areas of California (like the bay area) that are not served by public transit, or are inadequately served by it (for example, Gilroy has only three trains per day during the week and none on the weekend/holidays).

You're not going to get it. They are spending their money on a train. It may work, it may not, but it is way over budget compared to what was on the ballot. How many more people would have been served by spending the money on buses, drivers, and bus exclusive lanes / roads?

At some point the roads will be used by what comes next so we might as well make sure they are maintained.

There are different definitions of "covered" too. I have a bus stop 2 minutes from my home, and next to my work. So I would be considered "covered", right? Only thing it's 20 minute drive and 2 hour bus ride with 2 changes and some of the routes don't operate the whole day, as you pointed out. So if I have choice of spending 4 hours of my life per day in buses and having next to zero mobility (if I need to go somewhere else before or after work I'm out of luck, that may make 2 hours into 3 or 4 hours commute) - against just hopping into a car and be done in 20 minutes, no way I will even consider public transport as an option. It may be fine for a big highly urbanized city (I've always preferred public transport when going to San Francisco, for example) but for something like the rest of Silicon Valley it's not even funny how bad it is.

This appears so far to be a teapot tempest -- just an item in list of potential options.

For what it's worth, Oregon is much closer to implementing such a thing, with much hand-wringing over the real privacy issues but also (according to one article I read) a bill ready for the 2013 legislature.

Putting GPS in a car to measure distance traveled is like putting cameras in your home pointed at your kitchen and bathroom sinks, shower and washing machine in order to measure water consumption.

Wouldn't it make more sense to install tamper-resistant odometers on cars, and measure them like gas or electric meters?

Actually that wouldn't make sense. The reason being is the tax is only valid in a specific geographic location. Employing GPS based tracking allows the city/county to tax only for the miles driven within its boundaries, which is going to be the only area it has the authority to levy a tax within.

This is why property tax makes so much sense at the local level. It doesn't hit people who pass through without making any commercial exchanges, but if they work or buy, then the establishments involved include the local rates in their prices.

It is already very, very illegal to tamper with and odometer. There are numerous federal and state laws with severe penalties.

The problem is that this is a big hit tax to poor and lower middle class people. It is very much like withholding too little and not realizing it until you fill out your taxes. Pay as you go use taxes (pay at pump gas tax) are easier to budget for and lead to less problems (such as pushing your registration because you cannot pay the registration tax this week).

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