Gas Taxes

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by WolfyOne

I think it would be great if there was public transit everywhere, but it's not possible. Many rural areas where I live can't have it because the poor people wouldn't be able to pay for it. Even the town I'm in only runs regular scheduled bus service during the school year for the college. It's cheap, like 50 cents, but it could take three hours to get to your destination in town.

Basically, I just wanted to make everyone aware of what taxes are at the pump where they live. We get taxed on almost everything except maybe the air we breathe. I think the only ones that come out ahead in all this are the politicians who keep giving each other pay raises.

I'm curious, if not taxes, how do we go about paying for those things that make a civilization, well, civilized? A lot of folks complain about taxes and yet they never offer an alternative to taxes. If you're not taxed to pay for roads, how do they get paid for? I suppose private companies could build roads and then charge "whatever the market will bear" for use of those roads but is that really a good idea? If you're not taxed to pay for schools, police and fire departments how do they get paid for? How do we pay for the public libraries or, for that matter, the military?

You say the only ones who come out ahead are the politicians but consider that if it weren't for government then private companies would probably take up building roads and then charge whatever they can get away with charging (and they would have, literally, a captive audience since you would be required to pay for ANY use of the road). If private companies handled public safety (police and fire) do you want to have someone run your credit card *before* a cop or EMT is dispatched to your rescue? Don't you think it is a great thing that you can go to your public library and, for free, get books or DVDs which you only have to pay for if they are late and even then the fees are nominal? These are all benefits. Don't you think it is absolutely fabulous that you can, with a phone you can put comfortably into your pocket, call anyone with a phone anywhere on the planet? I do. The private companies don't put those satellites in orbit, NASA does. Without NASA those satellites wouldn't even exist.

We are ahead of where we would be in the arenas of public safety, public education and infrastructure if we didn't have taxes so I think that, in fact, we derive quite a large benefit for our taxes. As a Supreme Court justice remarked at the beginning of the last century "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society".

I'm open to the idea of paying for these things without taxes if that's possible. So what would you replace taxes with?

Cheers
Aj