| > But here's a proposal: raise the gas tax, but refund the increase in costs on a means-tested basis. Poof, there goes the concern trolling, but the middle class is still on the hook and they really don't like it, because it might mean that they have to make different decisions about their lifestyle and location and habits The theory is sound, but the devil is in the implementation here. Some of the largest metropolitan areas in the US (and by extension the entire world) were built around the car, not public transit. The cost to implement effective transit in such suburban sprawls is exorbitant when compared with densely packed urban areas such as NYC or Vancouver for example. There's just too much pre-existing residential area to cover effectively. I don't think it can actually be done in such an area in a way that wouldn't be exponentially less convenient than a car. Additionally, due to the size of these cities and the number of people living in them, you're talking about completely upending the lives of quite literally tens of millions of people. If gas is $8 a gallon, should I move closer to where my office is? What if I get a different job? In Los Angeles for instance, there's not one central business district where I can generally expect to find work. The difference between Downtown and Santa Monica in Los Angeles is over an hour during rush hour. What about my spouse, if I have one? What if their job is in the opposite direction? Should we split the difference? What if there's no suitable housing in between the two locations? Are we going to move every time one of us changes jobs (every 3-5 years on average)? What if we have children? Do we put them in a different school every time we move? What if the schools in the area we're moving to are worse then where we are now? What about after-school activities? These are all very real issues for most lower to upper middle class Americans. And again, you need to multiply these problems by literally tens of millions of people. It's just not feasible to price people out of their own vehicles without giving them a reasonable alternative. The demographic we're discussing here usually votes, and there's no way they'd sit still for that. I know I wouldn't, simply because Los Angeles would become unlivable overnight. |