[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

Yes, you are consistently saying we should just raise the gas tax (You are also constantly saying we shouldn't have a gas tax and should fund roads through income taxes)

My consistently saying that to reduce consumption of something, the appropriate measure is to increase taxation on it. Infrastructure funding is a separate topic, and it isn't reasonable to fund it via gasoline tax when gasoline consumption is variable, yet infrastructure is crucial. Infrastructure needs to come from the general fund like everything else we consider to be a crucial government function.

The problem with a gas tax is that it is regressive.

Regressive means treating people disproportionately such that the wealthy stand to profit more or lose less than the unwealthy. An example of this is tax subsidies for wealthy people to purchase new EVs.

An example of a flat tax is 17 cents per gallon of gasoline. It's agnostic to the wealth of who is purchasing the product because the proportion of tax remains the same if you purchase a gallon, or 50,000.

The people most effected by the gas tax are the poor. It is not ethical to punish the poor because you want the wealthy to change their buying behavior.

Those with less means are always at a disadvantage. It's practically the same definition. Taxation isn't punishment to anyone, but a requirement of funding government functions society deems necessary. The use of the word "punishment" is inappropriate because no definition fits what is happening.

If you raise the gas tax to a level that would get upper and middle classes to buy an new EV because it was cheaper than a gas car you would price people in lower income brackets out of driving altogether.

You're underestimating the ingenuity of humans to solve problems. Driving a fuel inefficient car isn't the only way to get from point A to point B. Creating the disincentive to consume fossil fuels maximizes ingenuity to solve the problem, whereas prescribing the solution minimizes it. Poor people aren't incapable of adaptive creativity.

Most of the USA doesn't have public transportation so suddenly low income people can't go to work. If you want the poor to still be able to go to work and provide those services we like then you would have to give them money so they could buy gas. Suddenly the simple solution isn't simple anymore. If you think raising the gas tax is unpopular try pairing it with universal basic income.

Most of the poor in the US do have access to public transportation because most of the poor live in cities and surrounding suburbs.

Though it's generally not a good idea to give anything to those with no skin in the game, I'm undecided about UBI. We're already taking money from those with greater means (and from future generations) and distributing to those with fewer in thousands of different ways. Perhaps consolidating some of those thousands of ways into a simpler plan would be more efficient.

If (and I'm not affirming this conclusion) CO2 emissions are necessary to reduce, it has to be across the board. The "poor people" exception isn't going to cut it. It's like saying poor people don't need to obey traffic laws because we need to maximize their ability to get to their destination to earn at the peril of everyone else.