And?
Almost everything we eat or otherwise need for a comfortable life is transported by truck at some point. We all benefit from that. So we either pay more for trucking so that they can pay more for roads, or we just pay for the roads directly.
Almost everything we eat or otherwise need for a comfortable life is transported by truck at some point. We all benefit from that. So we either pay more for trucking so that they can pay more for roads, or we just pay for the roads directly.
Local production within the communities may become competitive if we aren't subsidizing trucking. Local production has become uncompetitive because of these perverse incentives.
Consumers shouldn't pay anything at all for roads. Road costs should be entirely borne by businesses which are using them. The damage by cars is insignificant, too low to count. And consumers driving on roads see billboards, this is free eyeballs for businesses. Just like youtube is free with ads, roads should be free for car drivers with ads or some other form.
If consumers get value from roads they should pay. Consumer road damage is certainly measurable, since plenty of roads disallow heavy trucks.
It’s silly to claim because one can see a billboard that the billboard would subsidize the value a consumer derives from roads. Putting up a billboard didn’t cause consumer utility of having a road to become zero. And private property owners are generally free to put up plenty of things, billboards included, without this odd request they subsidize others that look onto their property.
Consumers are already paying heavy taxes for defense, trillions of dollars/year to protect business interests of the super rich everywhere.
(The super rich will still be super rich.)
I said this in another comment:
Imagine if we subsidized things that were an orange colour. Market prices of orange things would go down and consumption of orange things would go up. It wouldn't make sense to say "this is helping the many people that consume orange things therefore it is good".
This also gives a fighting chance for local production. Why are we hell bent on screwing local communities and protect the subsidies to the super rich?
I suspect many commenters here work in companies that expect their profit margins to be 10× that.
Unless it’s last minute which a surprising amount of it is, but consumers love overnight access to stuff
Take a trip on Amtrak and enjoy sitting still for 2 hours as freight trains go past you due to congestion / priority
The East Palestine disaster put an end to some tricks the railroads had been doing to squeeze out a little more capacity. The railroads are trying to expand switchyards and acquire old unused tracks like mad. My buddy who is in the union is pretty happy since this all means he’s moved up a few notches, gets day shifts now, and doesn’t need to travel as much.
Kindest regards from Ohio.
I happen to have a few acquaintances who ship by rail and things are consistently at capacity. They’d rather move by rail than truck considering how much cheaper rail is, but timeliness is an issue. Most people simply aren’t aware that MOST freight is moved by ship and rail. Trucks are for the last few miles, in terms of total tonnage.
To change this would require buying trillions of right of way to build more tracks.
Imagine if we subsidized things that were an orange colour. Market prices of orange things would go down and consumption of orange things would go up. It wouldn't make sense to say "this is helping the many people that consume orange things therefore it is good".