On Apr 8, 2008, at 5:51 PM, shag wrote:
> well, then why not? Jordan's saying that the people who support a
> use tax
> are doing so because they *also* want to punish people in order to
> change
> their behavior.
Behavior undertaken in no small part because the costs of driving are not fully internalized. That's part of the rationale of a carbon tax - to make the actual cost of driving reflect its actual social and environmental costs. But even a carbon tax wouldn't fully capture the social costs of driving in Manhattan and other heavily congested areas.
It's the people who are engaging in below-cost driving who are doing the punishing.
Doug