• force@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Why shouldn’t you pay for using car infrastructure? You’re damaging the environment and damaging the roads, it’s a lot more sensical for the cost to be put on you, the driver, instead of burdening everyone else with higher income/sales taxes.

    • cryostars@lemmyf.uk
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      11 months ago

      Funding for the development and maintenance of roads in the U.S. come from a variety of taxes such as vehicle registration fees, wheel taxes and taxes on gasoline and motor fuel. So , we do pay for using car infrastructure

      • force@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes, but not nearly enough. Those kinds of taxes are extremely low (especially compared to e.g. the EU) and form only a fraction of the costs of car infrastructure.

        All those hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in infrastructure bills, all the regular car infrastructure maintanence costs, a large chunk is paid for by taxes that everyone gets regardless of how much they use a car. And all the extra non-tax costs (in both time and money) that non-drivers have to pay because car-dependent infrastructure fucks up transportation for everyone else, that is a massive charge.

        • ugh@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          People who don’t drive don’t pay any of those taxes that were used as examples. I’d love to see the numbers that you’re basing your argument on.

          • Square Singer@feddit.de
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            11 months ago

            Let me google that for you: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/

            There are literally tens of thousands of articles like this one.

            TLDR:

            • less than 50% of car infrastructure cost is paid for by driving related taxes
            • An average of $1100 in general tax per household per year is used to subsidise driving
            • Car infrastructure receives more subsidies from general tax than transit, passenger rail, cycling and pedestrian programs combined.

            No, drivers pull their own weight in regards to car related taxes.

        • theonyltruemupf@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          Even in the EU, car related taxes can’t pay for all the car related infrastructure. Building and maintaining roads is crazy expensive.