Statements Without Evidence
By Mitch Berg
I’ve long advocated introducing toll roads to Minnesota, especially the metro area, as a substitute for generalized taxes to support road construction.
Mentioning this around DFLers, of course, draws offense; to the DFL’s statist senses, all public goods are a public duty, with “public” meaning “the whole public” (or at least that part not favored by tax breaks from the DFL-strangled legislature).
And as the standardbearer of all DFL folk “wisdom”, the Strib can’t help but vent for it, even when basically agreeing with the concept:
Tolls cannot substitute for government’s broad responsibility to raise the taxes needed to build and care for basic transportation.
Um – why?
I mean, if it were determined that tolls could somehow replace gas and other taxes, why wouldn’t we reassess this “responsibility?”
The Strib does, in fact, support the experimental addition of a toll lane to 35W in the South Metro…:
But tolls used specifically to relieve congestion and support transit on certain crowded roadways might be worth trying. Thus we applaud Minnesota’s application last week for federal money to refashion Interstate Hwy. 35W between Burnsville and downtown Minneapolis to include a toll lane for single drivers that would, in turn, help finance bus rapid transit service.
…but, naturally, all libertarian sense has been stripped from the proposal:
The idea is to free up more space in regular lanes, draw more commuters to transit and coax others to alternate routes or times. A similar experiment in Stockholm raised bus ridership and reduced congestion by 20 percent.
Indeed, tolls (like so much of the “Transit” mania gripping the local center-left) are to be tools, used to further the powers-that-be’s frenzy of social engineering:
Toll lanes should not be seen as “solving” the metro region’s severe shortfall in transportation funding. They cannot substitute for the Central or Southwest light-rail lines [Really? Why? – Ed]. Tolls should always be set high enough to retain transit’s competitive advantage.
Does anyone proof-read this crap?
What “competitive advantage” does transit have?
And care should be taken to assure that tolling doesn’t damage central business districts.
One wonders if the Strib editorial board has reviewed the ghastly toll that its’ beloved Central Corridor light rail line is going to take on the non-“central” business district in the Midway and Frogtown – a district that has been saved by small, Asian business that is going to be gutted by nearly a decade of rail construction, for a line that will detract from rather than enhance the neighborhood (it’ll be a light rail rather than trolley line).
One wonders if the Strib editorial board even understands any of this.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:07 am
How about this: Let’s put up a toll lane on the freeways, to maintain and improve the roads, and let’s have light rail riders pay a “toll” equal to the taxpayer subsidy (somewhere between 8 and 10 dollars) for each ride?
May 7th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Don’t fall into the trap that toll roads will replace all other sources of of road funding. Illinois used that “logic” to sell the toll road system “way back when” and then, in typical government fashion, they took the toll money AND the gas tax and, and, and…..and it’s NEVER been enough!
Once government gets it’s grubby fingers into your wallet, there is no prying them out. You of all people should know that Mitch!
LL
May 7th, 2007 at 6:29 am
“What ”competitive advantage” does transit have?”
The operators of private vehicles pay for both mass transit AND their vehicle, while the transit users only pay the fare. I’d say that’s a pretty solid advantage. If bus fares actually covered the cost of the MTC and contributed to the highway infrastructure there would be no advantage, but as we all know, the MTC is subsidized transportation.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Blog author Mitch asked, “Um – why?”, in response to the proposal of the larger theory that transportation funding is a bigger picture than simple, confiscatory regressive tax structures.
Simple answer to a simplistic question: As fair as it might seem to you and some others to have those who earn $10 an hour help pay for infrastructure by contributing a portion of their income when their free income is less than zero, it’s not actually fair. Will you ask the poor to go without food or just heat in order to keep you from paying what would otherwise be your share and more on point, the share to be paid those who benefit most by the system? It’s clear that the ability for the working poor to pay is essentially non-existent and companies and owners benefit from that transportation base. What’s unclear is whether you grasp that those who benefit from the system should pay for that system in some relation to the level in which they benefit or whether you think they should not have to do so. Perhaps you could clarify whether you think companies and those who own them should participate in paying the enormous costs in proportion to the enormous benefits they reap from that system? Specifically, the enormous benefits and offsetting upkeep expense of transportation networks? Considering most of the assets of large companies are held by a very small ownership class, a class that primarily wouldn’t use a public, toll-based transportation infrastructure on a daily basis, it doesn’t seem arguable that they would be paying anything like an equal percentage which you or the guy making $10 hour, does it? If so, how? Would you argue that Federal Transportation money is the offset? If so, no, not hardly, as currently dividend tax rates stand at 15%, and of course not all of that 15% goes to transportation, not even 1% of that 15% does. So if we assume a $3 per day expense to Average Joe, who earns maybe $80/day before taxes and probably someting like $62/day after all the other taxes are taken out, you want him to pay 5% of his income for roads, and Hadley Richbottom to have to pay nearly nothing for a road network that is helping to make him rich. Yes, that seems fair to me, I grasp it now. If that’s not what you’re advocating, maybe you can clarify.
If you’re going to be a boot-licker for the rich you ought to wear a sign. Taxes under the ‘conservatives’ have been anything but friendly to the average wage earner or small business. It’s true that taxes have fallen roughly 5% at the federal level over the past 26 years, but when factoring in state and local taxes, they’ve risen over the past 26 years for the bottom 80% of wage earners, mostly as an offset for the vast decrease the top 10% have seen. Taxes on the most wealthy 10% have fallen 60% in the same period when looking at state, federal and local taxes. At the same time, incomes have been flat for that same 80% during that period, a period where tax policy has mostly followed the suggestion of conservatives. If unburdening the rich of taxes should have resulted in a rising tide for all workers, where is that tide? Instead what has happened is that taxes previously paid for by the rich, are now paid by the middle and lower classes.
Pairing all the layers of the onion away, the promise of better life, better jobs, better economic fortunes for all based upon getting rid of regulation and taxes simply has not occured. Many industries deregulated, power, airlines, heating, telecommunications, and taxes on the investors in the coutntry have been reduced to relatively nothing, yet the promised economic boom in wages never occured outside the tech boom in the 90’s, something unrelated to taxes.
The simplistic hackneyed reaction of “spend less” as a way to lower taxes on the rest of the populace doesn’t reconcile against the fact that there simply isn’t the political or moral will to do so to say nothing of the fact that such cuts represent real cuts in services, like Pell Grants, to the middle class that the rich don’t need nor ever benefited from, but the middle class do rely upon. But that said, the ‘rising tide’ theory still should have worked, the rich were supposed to have invested this largesse, but they have not, not significantly enough to create lots of high paying, sustainable jobs. They’ve instead moved those jobs offshore, buying car parts from Mexico, tainted food products from China. The rich are far richer than they were in 1980, but the rest of us are not and suggesting that we again pay for a portion of taxes they used to pay to keep the roads and bridges and train lines up, is profoundly unfair.
May 7th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Long, incoherent, badly structured “argument”…obviously bogus name…many misspellings…
It’s yet anotherreturn of PB, isn’t it?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I think so, AK. That sure looks like a classic PB post.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Piling on adjectives . . . yep. Howya doing, PB?
May 7th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Oh God. “Pairing all the layers of the onion away”. Onions are not paired, you nitwit, they are ‘pared’. And not even that, really. The outer layer of an onion is ‘peeled’ away.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:59 am
There’s no way to respond to the inaccuracies of that post. So let me just respond to one:
Instead what has happened is that taxes previously paid for by the rich, are now paid by the middle and lower classes.
Both the federal and state budget offices would strongly disagree with you. In this state, the top 10% of income earners pay over 50% of the income taxes. The bottom 50% of the income earners not only pay nothing, they get money back in the form of various tax credits.