[Gsnds]

>It's a very progressive tax and will be extremely effective.

anything the government gets their greasy hands on instantly becomes the most inefficient and cost overrun thing on the face of the earth. Hasn't their track record proven it by far and large?

[scotty79]

Just the government? Private sector is way better at overrunning services that everybody needs with unnecessary cost and deforming them to extract even more money. Like US healthcare, US prison system, US bail bonds ... basically any US public service that is not run by the government (but financed with some sort of involuntary payment from people).

We need combustibles to become more expensive (because markets don't act well if the true cost is hidden) and government is actually the only entity that can do that, that has a chance of not bleeding us dry and creating bloodsucking monstrosity in the process.

[radicalbyte]

No, not at all. Or at least not until you get the big private contractors involved. Or until you get, say, the spoilt toff of a London Mayor (Johnson, now PM) throwing away $60m on a "garden bridge" project.

The day-to-day stuff is generally more efficient: that's why the US's private healthcare system is extremely expensive when compared to the UK's public healthcare system (evan at times when the latter was properly funded).

[erikpukinskis]

No, actually that track record is not nearly as consistent as you seem to think. Many government projects throughout history have and continue to be very effective.

[shawnz]

And yet we are mostly living extremely comfortable lives taking advantage of some of the most effective infrastructure anywhere in the world.