--- Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> Maybe our knitting circles are different, but plenty
> of people (rightly,
> IMHO) call tolls regressive taxes; we don't have
> toolbooths on city
> streets (and they don't scan your EzPass when the
> Fire Department sends
> paramedics), and yet that's what a bridge is: a
> street, which the whole
> population benefits from, whether or not you
> actually drive on them. In
> the case of a bridge maintained by a government,
> charging a toll is
> exacting a tax. Call them "user fees" if you must,
> but in a country
> where the Income Tax is already decently
> progressive, almost any user
> fee is a regressive tax. I think I've mentioned
> this before, but I
> think the best way to pay for the maintenance of
> transportation
> infrastructure (and many other things besides) is
> through the General
> Fund.
[WS:] You are consistently missing the point, Jordan, and since you are a smart guy, it looks to me like a deliberate avoidance, if not a knee-jerk defense of the status quo.
We are not talking about maintenance of the infrastucture - we are talking about fees as the means of changing human behavior. Price has two diffrent functions - one is to procure resources to cover the cost of the goods or service, and the other one is to provide a signal about the value of that good or service to users, producers, and society at large. One is logically independent of the other - and I made that point clear in my yesterady's response to Angelus Novus on the subject of social and health benefits.
Stated differently, it is possible to use general tax as the means of paying for a good or a service, and yet add user fees to act as signals of the value of that service to users, producers, and society. I gave an example of health service providers who charge nominal user fees for services that are fully funded from other sources. They do so to change consumer behavior that was causing them problems in the past - i.e. broken apointments that left their staff idle when other patients could have utilized that time.
The same pertains to transportation. While I agree with you that transit infrastructure and operations should be paid by general tax, I also think that different modes should have differentiated user fees to encourgae or discourage excessive or inefficient uses of any particular mode. I do not think that anyone on this list, including yourself, questions that overuse of the autmobile-based mode poses substantial disutility to both users and society at large under certain circumstances. This is a variation on the theme of the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons in which a single persons utility eventually creates disutlity for all, including that person.
In such situations, using a control mechanism via price system seems very rational and indeed superior to administrative rationing. And if some people complain that paying that price is painful - that is the prima facie evidence that the system is working the way it is supposed to - it penalizes certain behavior in oreder to discourgae people from engaging in it.
Wojtek
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