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On funding Road Transportation
For funding Road Transportation we have the following requirements:
In principle the American people support capitalism and a free market. In reality, individuals and institutions do everything in their power to develop a monopoly to increase their benefits at the expense of their fellow human beings. The political process has become an extension of this behavior.
A free market will make good decisions if left to market forces. We need to capture the benefits of Capitalism without excessive intrusion by the government.
Case in point, we need to stop subsidizing the use of the automobile. If everything we use had its true cost attached to its use, we could make intelligent choices about how much of it to use. Road building and maintenance needs to be funded by a fuel tax, not a sales tax or an income tax. Making these kinds of changes would alter the financial landscape. But, it would also allow us to establish a more realistic problem solving process for future decision making and resource utilization.
With regard to funding for road construction and maintenance, the users of a government service should pay for that service. Increasing taxes on automobile ownership and maintenance is the wrong approach. Roads are not required because people own automobiles. Roads are required when people use their automobiles. Therefore we should be charged a fee when we actually use the roads.
Rather than just placing a toll on local bridges and tunnels, let's place a toll on all bridges, tunnels and roads. And rather than building toll booths and paying people (or machines) to collect the tolls, let's collect the toll when the users of these facilities purchase the fuels for their vehicles (fuel tax). The most cost effective way to charge for road usage is by setting the fuel tax at a rate high enough to fund all road construction and maintenance.
Toll facilities can be used to provide premium services, such as access to the HOV lanes which are currently underutilized.
If we can agree to only use money from these tolls to build and maintain the roadway transportation system and not to use these tolls for any other purpose, then the people can control the funds available for roads by their usage of the facilities and by adjusting the toll rates through their government representatives.
If individuals want to reduce their taxes (tolls) they can use more fuel efficient vehicles. If they desire better (or fewer) roadways they can ask their representatives to raise (or lower) the tolls.
This way, roads would no longer have to compete with other government services for limited tax dollars. The fuel tax is the fairest, most efficient way to get income to build roads - a single, simple, fair tax on the users of the service provided by our government which has real value for the citizens. We all benefit from and need a good transportation system.
A proper balance between efficiency and fairness can be achieved by making government more transparent to the people. The Internet gives government a powerful tool to educate the people on the operation and performance of government in providing our common needs and wants.
To that end, each department of government should build a web site which clearly shows the function of that department, the results of that department, the cost of the department and the source of funds for that department.
Each state department of transportation should present on their web site an easy to understand income and expense table by district. This table should have the funds collected from the fuel tax and the state funds spent for each district by year.
This information should allow the citizens to determine the level of fuel tax required to fully fund the state contribution.
It should also indicate if higher levels of tax would be required by region to support the necessary level of service desired by the citizens of each district over time.
Government operations should be transparent for efficient government.
It is in the best interest of American society that we begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The American people make financial decisions. The price of gasoline needs to go up. Funding road construction and maintenance completely (over time) on a fuel tax is a good and easily understood way to help this process and make government easier to understand for the average citizen. We want to be an educated people. We need to use the benefits of this education in making decisions on how we organize our lives.
We need to shift the source of taxes; not increase the level of taxes. We need to reformulate government to be more responsive to the people's real needs. We need to adjust the entire state budget so that it is clear which service the citizens get for each tax paid. The citizens can influence their taxes by adjusting the service level desired.