> a fundamentally progressive plan - to internalize the cost of
> driving a car in densely trafficked areas ...
How is this progressive as opposed to, say, a simple raising of the New York City Business Tax for revenues above a certain level? New York City is an expensive place to run; the people who get the benefits of it -- streets, police, fire, transit -- should pay for it; bonus points if the payment is progressive.
Oh, that's right: unlike a lot of places, NYC _doesn't have a general business license_ which means that there's no mechanism to implement a progressive city business tax to pay for services.
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A car tax doesn't look at the situation of who is driving, and to Joseph's point, where the poor people will park outside of the zone because they can't afford the extra tax. It also completely ignores the well-known point that tolls are in inefficient way to collect taxes: toll booths create congestion; recent automation of tolls drives the price up (which is nice if you're the contractor, but lousy if you're the municipality).
It seems to me that you can't call a tax 'progressive' unless you're absolutely sure that it's targeting higher incomes to the benefit of lower ones. Congestion pricing fails this test easily.
/jordan