California to ban selling new gas-powered cars by 2035

[JSH]

Originally Posted by freebeard

"All tax is theft"? Not my position, the first rebuttal that comes to mind.

Which the rebuttal to that is "Goods and Services cost money". People like having roads to drive on but they don't like paying taxes to pay for them. They always want to tax somebody else. Or as my high school government teacher used to said:

"Don't tax me, don't tax thee, we'll tax that man over behind the tree."

[oil pan 4]

I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew it would result in better services.
But that is not the case. The more you pay more that gets wasted on free stuff for people who don't want to work, pointless layers of government bureaucracy and failed social programs. It seems as little money as possible is spent on stuff for the tax payer.
I would gladly pay 5 cents more a gallon for the DMV to not suck. The way the government works is they will take the 5 cents and make the DMV worse.

[Piotrsko]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Trapped by her fame like a fly in amber in the La Brea tar pit, apparently.

There's amber in the tar pit? Thought it was asphalt the last time I was there. Might be some tree sap encapsulation so this metaphor is lost on me.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew it would result in better services.
But that is not the case. The more you pay more that gets wasted on free stuff for people who don't want to work, pointless layers of government bureaucracy and failed social programs. It seems as little money as possible is spent on stuff for the tax payer.
I would gladly pay 5 cents more a gallon for the DMV to not suck. The way the government works is they will take the 5 cents and make the DMV worse.

Your complaint and the perception that government is wasteful is why we don't have a simple tax structure with one pool of money that is divided up as needed like you claim you want. Instead we have this:

State Highway Fund
Oregon’s State Highway Fund collects resources from three main sources:

• Taxes on motor fuels, including gas tax and diesel tax.
• Taxes on heavy trucks, including the weight mile tax and truck registrations.
• Driver and vehicle fees, including licenses and vehicle title and registration.

Under the Oregon Constitution, State Highway Fund fees and taxes must be spent on roads, including bikeways and walkways within the highway right of way. State funds can be used for both construction projects and the day-to-day maintenance and operations of the state’s roads.

[oil pan 4]

In new mexico back around 2006 this was one of the few states to charge nearly $4 a gallon for gasoline.
The governor said the tax increase was necessary to "fix the roads". Well the roads didn't get fixed at all, they got worse. I don't know what they did with the money but it definitely wasn't spent on the roads. The state deficit was also exploded to a billion dollars during that time.
Roads didn't start systematically being fixed until about 2011.
So I say fight all motoring related tax hikes, all the time.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

...so this metaphor is lost on me.

It was a mash-up of two metaphors. Sorry.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by JSH

Your complaint and the perception that government is wasteful is why we don't have a simple tax structure with one pool of money that is divided up as needed like you claim you want. Instead we have this:

State Highway Fund
Oregon’s State Highway Fund collects resources from three main sources:

• Taxes on motor fuels, including gas tax and diesel tax.
• Taxes on heavy trucks, including the weight mile tax and truck registrations.
• Driver and vehicle fees, including licenses and vehicle title and registration.

Under the Oregon Constitution, State Highway Fund fees and taxes must be spent on roads, including bikeways and walkways within the highway right of way. State funds can be used for both construction projects and the day-to-day maintenance and operations of the state’s roads.

A single pool of funds can still maintain accountability for spending. To say that all of fund x must be spent on use x is kinda silly, because needs aren't always consistent and predictable. If there's an over funding in one area for a particular year, those funds should be shifted, refunded, or rainy day funded rather than wasted.

My wife and I have (in essence) a joint account. It's not like we budget for food and if we hit our food budget decide we're not eating for a few days, and likewise if we have excess food budget, don't splurge on fillet mignon.

Either certain services are both essential and best administered by the state and should come from the general fund, or they are inessential or better served by other entities and not funded at all. Everything else is incompetence, ignorance, or corruption.

[oil pan 4]

To spend a billion dollars in a few years in a state with a 7 billion dollar budget with out creating some obvious benefits for the tax payer, the only logical explanation is incompetence, ignorance and corruption,

[redneck]

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[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

A single pool of funds can still maintain accountability for spending. To say that all of fund x must be spent on use x is kinda silly, because needs aren't always consistent and predictable. If there's an over funding in one area for a particular year, those funds should be shifted, refunded, or rainy day funded rather than wasted.

My wife and I have (in essence) a joint account. It's not like we budget for food and if we hit our food budget decide we're not eating for a few days, and likewise if we have excess food budget, don't splurge on fillet mignon.

Either certain services are both essential and best administered by the state and should come from the general fund, or they are inessential or better served by other entities and not funded at all. Everything else is incompetence, ignorance, or corruption.

I agree - most people don't. (and I mixed up you with Oil Pan for some reason)

Oil Pan's comment.

I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew it would result in better services. But that is not the case. The more you pay more that gets wasted on free stuff for people who don't want to work, pointless layers of government bureaucracy and failed social programs. It seems as little money as possible is spent on stuff for the tax payer.

Plenty of people feel that way on both sides of the political divide. Pretty much every one has some items in the budget they think is wastefully and want cut. That makes it hard to get support for broad-based taxes that go into the general fund. They say "I'm not paying a penny more in taxes until we stop wasting money on XYZ". So instead we get a bunch of little taxes and fees that are dictated by law to fund one and only one thing.

Of course that is an elusion. In most states the general fund is still the largest and supports most types of spending. So a state can pass a $0.05 increase in the gas tax with the stipulation that money can only be spent on infrastructure. Now that the "infrastructure only" pot is bigger the state can spend less out of the general fund on infrastructure on move that money to something else.