The other day, I posted about how some commentators have a habit of overstating the impact of the gas tax increase and understating the impact of personal choices.
If I support a gas tax increase, I'm imposing my choice on how to fund transportation on people who have made choices to burn more fuel and use roads more than I do. In his post "An argument worth having," King Banaian prefers to frame it differently:
Even if we accept the premise of our interlocutor, that we "need" roads and bridges and even if we assume that we actually will get roads and bridges and not just more transit projects, what makes Grandma [paying for roads through property taxes] more deserving of protection from government taxation than the family trying to better themselves, provide for their children, and producing goods and services people want to buy?
You can read his argument, which is based on principle. My bone is that he does the same thing as other fuzzy mathketeers. He talks about the gas tax increase, which is being phased in, as if the eventual amount would be paid now, and states the cost, paid in pennies a day, as a lump sum.
In that way, he comes up with a $172 cost for a hypothetical supercommuter who is actually paying about $65 a year from now, at a rate of about $1.30 a week.
As I left in a comment on his post, long before that $1.30 a week becomes $3.50, I'd be questioning the wisdom of paying for gas, insurance, depreciation, interest, etc. on a car driven nearly 40,000 miles a year just for work.
UPDATE: And as King gently pointed out, I was using an incorrect schedule for how fast the tax escalates. I believe the tax opponents are still wrong to use the ultimate gas tax cost to calculate immediate costs, but that does not excuse my error, which led me to understate the rise.
