I live in the SF Bay Area. For a family weekend day trip to SF, taking BART costs $50+, and we always elect to just drive.
I wonder how much the traffic would improve in/out of SF if BART is cheaper.
I wonder how much the traffic would improve in/out of SF if BART is cheaper.
It adds up super fast; even “kids ride free with parent” would go a long way.
On a side note we should drop the public bit of this because it implies a bus is “publicly funded” but highways aren’t. Both are subsidized by the taxpayer.
Arguably, neither of them should be. Give poor people money, instead of giving free highway access (and bus transit) to rich and poor alike. Rich people don't need our help, and poor people would rather have the money to spend as they wish instead of other people deciding for them what alms they should consume.
Individual cars have worse externalities than busses, so that means we should tax them more than busses. Though I suspect once drivers of cars and busses are paying non-subsidised prices for road access and fuel, busses will naturally look better in comparison, no extra tax differential needed.
> In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good)[1] is a commodity, product or service that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous [...]
That's because roads are rather excludable (see toll roads), and if you've ever been in a traffic jam, you'll notice that road use is rivalrous.
It's independent of the argument against giving well-off people free stuff.
Note that I don't know how to identify people who cannot handle money. I know individuals, but how to you fairly do this in a way that doesn't get abused or abuse someone - both have been major problems with every plan to help the poor in the past.
Welfare (nor any other undertaking) doesn't have to be perfect. Good enough is good enough. And you can always optimise over time, as you learn. There's plenty of programmes out in the real world and throughout history to learn from: the good programmes as examples to perhaps imitate, the bad programmes as illustrations of what to avoid.
> If we need to identify those who cannot handle money then we may as well use that same effort to identify who doesn't need help in the first place.
Isn't that perfectly compatible with what I'm suggesting? (Though I'm not quite sure they are actually the same kind of effort. Looking at eg people's taxable income is rather different from judging their mental state.)
I'm making two points:
(A) Don't bother giving welfare to the well-off.
(B) Prefer cash payments over in-kind provision, where possible.
You convinced me to add the 'where possible' clause, because there are some cases were people can't handle money. Though I hold that these spendthrifts should be dealt with as a special case, and not be the default template for how we treat everyone else.
I'm not really in favor of or against UBI, but I think that your assessment here isn't quite right. It's not that there are some cases where people can't handle money, it's actually the norm that people can't handle money, at least in America. And when you expand your scope to include folks with steady jobs and such and "can" handle money, they don't really make enough money such that their better handling of money will make a difference either. UBI kind of rests on this assumption that people will "spend their money wisely" or spend their money efficiently - but people will spend their money in obviously stupid ways and then we'll deal with the consequences anyway because as a society we are not willing to let people die on the street. To be fair, not all who would make use of UBI would do so in a poor fashion, and like you said don't let perfect become the enemy of good.
Most people who are competent and kind enough to look at these kinds of problems and want to provide a great solution for them out of the kindness of their heart, in my estimation, just do not have experience dealing with the target population and understanding the true limitations of just giving a little bit of help.
If you grew up in a roughly middle class environment, went to college afterward, etc. and you didn't know any crackheads in your family, you probably should stay far away from trying to find solutions for these problems because you're just going to wind up frustrated and wrong about worthwhile solutions for the rest of your life which will distract anyone from actually making progress. I'm not suggesting this about you or anything, just speaking broadly. Most of the time people working on these issues are like product managers who just care about what the data says instead of having a really good intuition for the "customer" or the "problem".
Back to UBI itself I actually think it should go to everyone, because at the end of the day those who are high earners are just going to net out paying for it, and it'll be simpler to administer if "everyone gets it" and there's less room to complain about it and less hand-wringing and adjustments for whatever excuse people come up with for who gets some and who gets more. If everyone gets it, there's much less arguing about that stuff.
The best part about a potential UBI implementation is that we can replace all of the government workers administering and declaring who is eligible for benefits whether that's SNAP or Welfare and one dude can be sitting at home and push the big red "send checks" button with an offshore team in India in case that guy is too drunk to do his job.
Maybe just providing free healthcare and dental care, job training and education, and a sack of fresh produce is the way to go too. I'm not sure.
> If you grew up in a roughly middle class environment, went to college afterward, etc. and you didn't know any crackheads in your family, you probably should stay far away from trying to find solutions for these problems because you're just going to wind up frustrated and wrong about worthwhile solutions for the rest of your life which will distract anyone from actually making progress.
I grew up on welfare in the place formerly known as East Germany. Bleak times. Not sure that will get me past the gate you are keeping here.
(As late as 2006 a government spokesman warned foreign football fans coming for the world cup of no-go areas that they should avoid, if they want to survive. Compared to the 1990s, the late 2000s were the Good Times.)
> Back to UBI itself I actually think it should go to everyone, because at the end of the day those who are high earners are just going to net out paying for it, and it'll be simpler to administer if "everyone gets it" and there's less room to complain about it and less hand-wringing and adjustments for whatever excuse people come up with for who gets some and who gets more. If everyone gets it, there's much less arguing about that stuff.
Someone has to pay the taxes to finance the redistribution. The average person can't get more out of the system than they pay in (by definition of how averaging works).
I would suggest to pay attention to the net effective marginal tax you charge people across the spectrum of incomes. Basically, for every level of income ask: taking account of welfare phase-outs and marginal income tax, how many cents of net income would a person get for an extra dollar in gross income?
This effective marginal tax rate matters a lot more than how you split the rate between welfare phase-outs and other taxes. Yes, for simplicity you could have no welfare phase-outs (aka UBI) and create the whole shape of the taxation graph simply with progressive income tax rates. Or you could merge both systems, and call your UBI a negative income tax.
In any case, what you want to really avoid are sudden cliffs, where an extra dollar in gross income costs you more than a dollar in net income. And ideally, you also want to avoid unduly high marginal rates (even if they are still below 100%) from phasing out multiple, uncoordinated welfare payments.
> The best part about a potential UBI implementation is that we can replace all of the government workers administering and declaring who is eligible for benefits whether that's SNAP or Welfare and one dude can be sitting at home and push the big red "send checks" button with an offshore team in India in case that guy is too drunk to do his job.
Well, as described above at the moment we have (at least) two arms of the government that assess how much you earn: the tax people and the welfare people. My suggestion would be to streamline that into one organisation. At least, if you want to keep an income tax around at all.
In the American context that's the generally agreed upon "alternative". There's no appetite for, say, all of the existing welfare programs and also handing out cash. I don't think there's a meaningful distinction between "handing out cash" and "UBI", but of course I want to acknowledge that cash paid or services rendered (healthcare, etc.) can be a mix in an overall scheme and that UBI typically refers to a specific program. To me it's all the same thing with just a mix of how you want to do it but it's not fair of me to suggest that you think of it the same way so I apologize for that.
> Not sure that will get me past the gate you are keeping here.
If you haven't personally deal with or lived with crackheads, homeless, hustlers, etc. you have little to no insight into how to effectively work with people who are experiencing those issues or lifestyle challenges and you just make the problem worse in general while also wasting money.
It's not gatekeeping to suggest one must have more experience with something in order to make informed decisions or create helpful and fair programs. But if you want to call that gatekeeping I'm happy to gate-keep.
Last Tuesday I called the local police because a homeless guy was standing on the side of the road with a good chunk (the size of an average hand or so) of his leg missing, out in the rain at night, in 40 degree weather. He's not doing that because he just needs some UBI or healthcare, and there's no clinic or pamphlet that will "fix" that person's problems.
The ivory tower will tell you we just need to get that person help, a safe place to live, etc. but they're wrong. I'm sure you see a lot of that in Germany too? What do you guys usually do when you see a homeless person in such circumstances? Do you give the money and does that fix the issues?
> Someone has to pay the taxes to finance the redistribution. The average person can't get more out of the system than they pay in (by definition of how averaging works).
That doesn't make any sense at all. Plenty of people in the United States at least get more than they pay in, even if it's not exactly a cash reimbursement. Not that I have a problem with that.
> In any case, what you want to really avoid are sudden cliffs, where an extra dollar in gross income costs you more than a dollar in net income. And ideally, you also want to avoid unduly high marginal rates (even if they are still below 100%) from phasing out multiple, uncoordinated welfare payments.
Right and we can just avoid those by not having restrictions on the income. It doesn't matter if Bill Gates gets a $2,000 UBI check, he's going to more than make up for it in overall taxes (ideally, unfortunately our government is all too happy to tax anyone but the ultra wealthy). I think the same is true for many other folks too and don't think it's a worthwhile concern.
How the "Users Pay" Myth Gets in the Way of Solving America's Transportation Problems
Road Taxes and Funding by State, 2025
Most states fail to collect enough in user fees to fully provide for roadway spending. This necessitates transfers from general funds or other revenue sources that are unrelated to road use to pay for road construction and maintenance.
Only three states—Delaware, Montana, and New Jersey—raise enough revenue to fully cover their highway spending. The remaining 47 states and the District of Columbia must make up the difference with tax revenues from other sources.
The states that raise the lowest proportion of their highway funds from transportation-related sources are Alaska (19.4 percent) and North Dakota (35.1 percent), both states which rely heavily on revenue from severance taxes.There are benefits too and all, just saying we don’t really have a full cost readily available for comparison because it’s hard to measure, never mind the literal dollars and cents that go into funding.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-road-taxes-fu...
that's about what I expected. And that's not even including sales tax from car purchases, and maintenance related spending. Suffice to say, without cars, a year bus pass would need to run ~ however much the average person spends per year on all car related taxes.
In Ohio we just spend $2bn on about 2 miles of road to effectively temporarily ease congestion. That’s $2bn paid for by taxpayers regardless of how it’s paid, that we didn’t necessarily need to spend.
I’d also like to add, yes that “bus ticket” (I’m no fan of busses for short term travel) might be a little more expensive but consumer costs overall would’ve likely to go down. Why? Well in addition to already paying for highway infrastructure you’re paying $30,000, $50,000, &c . on a vehicle, plus insurance, gas, repairs, tires, maintenance, interest on loans, &c. So while I think it’s hard to compare apples to apples, I think it’s good to have this information in mind as well when discussing this topic broadly.
The only exceptions are the places with free public transit and expensive parking, like Luxembourg.
To me this is big reason why transit has to be basically free to attract riders. It has to compete with marginal cost per kilometer of private car use, not total cost.
Where I live and with what I drive, once there is a single passenger, the car breaks even on the milage. But parking can shift things back in favor of public transit. It's close enough that traffic is always the deciding factor for which mode I take.
If transit were free, I would probably just take it most of the time.
Small amounts of cost sharing are a useful technique for incentivizing people to make wise decisions in general, so there’s some value in having token small fares. It’s the same difference that shows up when you list something for $10 in your local classifieds as opposed to listing it as FREE. Most people who use classifieds learn early on that listing things for free is just asking for people to waste your time, but listing for any price at all seems to make people care a little more and put some thought into their decisions. I’ve often given things away for free after listing them for small amounts in classifieds because it filters for people who are less likely to waste your time.
> I was stunned by how little the fares covered operating costs.
(And I'm talking about buses -- there's not a ton of construction involved.)
[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patio11+%22pathological+custom...
In a sane world you would either not have any public parking spots, or parking spots that cost so much that about 10-20% of them are empty, and you would have a road use tax (like Singapore).
And American transit systems are uniquely bad at fare recovery because they are just uniquely bad at everything.
Strong Towns talks quite a bit about how especially suburban roads are not financially sustainable.
US cars get 1 cent per passenger mile.
US Transit gets $2.39 per passenger mile.
https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=22027
Also look up the Farebox Recovery Ratio.
There are values for many US cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_...
From :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01660...
Our measure of environmental performance is a transit agency's average carbon dioxide emissions per passenger-mile or vehicle-mile.
During the period of analysis, the sector's carbon dioxide emissions declined by 12.8%, while vehicle-miles travelled increased by 7.1% and passenger-miles increased by 10.5%.
Thus, the emissions intensity of public transit has shrunk since 2002 using both measures.
Yet, compared with public transit emissions in the United Kingdom and Germany, we document that the U.S. bus fleets had the highest carbon emissions per mile and the smallest efficiency progress.