This is chicken-and-egg time: you have to have the infrastructure in place before you raise the tax, because raising the tax is an immediate hardship on those who you want to switch. In the US, we've pretty much found that there's an insensitivity to raising the cost of driving -- but this is only because there is no alternative in most cases, so those at the bottom stop eating enough. That's a lousy idea, IMHO.
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Agreed.
In the years and years it would take to re-engineer US infrastructure to bring these lofty goals into 3 dimensions there would be tremendous distress.
The idea we can gas tax our way to a greater collective sense of environmental responsibility (or at least, a demand for alternatives, such as more extensive rail, that will result in reduced pollution and other desirable outcomes) is built, it seems to me, on two shaky pillars:
One, only (or mostly) people with disposable income will feel the pinch and use their middle and upper middle class political clout to force change.
A good example of this thinking is found right in Yoshie's post:
from -
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060109/028770.html>
<quote>
The cost of higher gasoline taxes will be borne by a very broad middle-income swathe of the population (the poorest, often carless, already use mass transportation, and the richest will feel no immediate impact). They won't like that, but they may be persuaded that the sacrifice is worth it for the sake of the environment.
<end>
And two, a belief the most likely reaction will be a demand for the sorts of measures tax-for-the-environment advocates wish to see.
Where I live, I see many, many poor people driving old, barely functioning vehicles each and every day. No doubt, they're driving for the same reason their more well-to-do cousins in shinier machines do: to get to work, to get food and other provisions, in short, to carry on with the business of living using the available tools.
These people would be immediately hurt, and rather deeply, by the sorts of price hikes via taxation being advocated.
Also, the reaction to higher gas tax would undoubtedly be a demand the tax be repealed or substantially scaled back - not for more buses and trains. Indeed, the advocates of such a plan might be viewed as the source of pain and, therefore, untrustworthy, weakening the appeal of their core, environmental arguments.
Jordan is right: the alternatives must be in place or very close to completion in each area where this taxation would hit or the response would be pain, anger and resistance.
.d.