Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobmoe | Hacker News Reader

If inequality is your concern, guaranteeing that everyone sit in gridlock together is about the worst possible way you could go about it. Taxing people who want to drive and using that money on public transportation is an obviously more effective way of addressing "economic asymmetry", particularly in NYC where driving is already not the norm. Driving isn't a right, especially not in NYC. You could apply your logic to anything and get the same result: scarcity.

View on HN

I agree.

Only I think the tax should be indexed, and increase semi-exponentially based on the price of your vehicle.

That would satisfy both sides of the argument. The wealthy would pay WAY more for their ego-mobiles. The poor and middle class would be paying next to nothing for their Honda Civics. And all the money collected would be made available to improve public transit.

The problem with these "progressive" modifications is that they complicate a simple idea, add points of contention and ultimately kill the whole thing.

Just pass the tax in it's simplest form and then see if further adjustment is needed, the perfect being the enemy of the good and what not.

I agree in general, but think you might have it backwards in this particular case. Simple is better, but if the only way to ensure it gets through is to make it more complicated, then let's add the modifications.

Gotcha.

Making the tax different based on the type of car is not the kind of 'complexity' that risks the nature of the tax. In fact, that's pretty easy.

Getting 'right of way', building permits, hiring firms, planning massive construction projects involving 'new technology' etc. etc - this is 'complicated' beyond the threshold that I would trust the NYC government.

But some kind of tax on cars is within feasibility.

There really can be no points of contention here. I mean, everyone is paying the same tax as you, providing they drive the same car. You own a stretch limo, fine, so long as you want to pay the tax. And everyone else owning that limo would pay the same tax as you. You own a tiny Civic or Corolla, fine, you pay the same tax as everyone else who owns that tiny car of yours.

I mean really, what's to argue? You could argue whether there should be a tax at all I suppose. But not much else.

The price of the vehicle doesn't matter; a Lexus takes up as much space as a Sentra. Vehicles should be taxed on factors that matter. In Manhattan, that means they should be paying congestion charges for using limited roadway, parking fees for using limited parking space, and emissions charges relative to emissions. Yes, that means that a "luxury" Tesla would be taxed less than a Sentra. I don't care. I don't have a car at all, but I do have lungs. Same for most Manhattanites. Get these gasoline and especially diesel burners outta here.

Look, there is a congestion tax for people too, only we implement it as "rent".

Guess what, you live in a large, crappy place in the worst parts of the Bronx, you pay less than the guy who lives in the tiny apartment in the luxury building in Manhattan. The small apartment likely even uses, less water, less power, less heat, and fewer city services like police and fire.

But so what?

You know why we do it that way? Because it only makes sense to do it that way.

Sorry, but of course it should be based on price. All things of this sort are.

The community in most urban areas has soundly rejected market allocation of housing, at least for new construction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com