Comments on: Hurricanes and bureaucracy

By: markm

markm — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:00:22 +0000

“Yeah, tell that to the guy who delivers pizza for a living.” He needs to re-negotiate his contract. If the market is working right, the price of getting pizza delivered just went up. If the pizza parlors won’t raise the pay, is this actually the only job the guy can get?

By: tgirsch

tgirsch — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:34:44 +0000

The guy who delivers pizza for a living will demand a raise or find another job. Don’t you remember, the market is magical and omnipotent, and will fix all such ills! The market will respond! The market knows all! All hail the market!

Otherwise, Manish is right: current gas taxes don’t even come close to covering the true cost of gas and/or driving. Never mind roads and so forth, look at the cost of US foreign policy in the middle east, much of which is concerned with preserving “cheap” oil. None of that ever finds its way into your gas prices.

And remember, in Libertarian Fantasy Land ™ we’d all be paying use taxes, which means the pizza delivery driver would be getting absolutely raped, based on his disproportionate use of resources and infrastructure.

By: Manish

Manish — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 23:04:45 +0000

How about just using taxes to have people pay for the cost of driving? Gas taxes don’t nearly cover that. And whats wrong with influencing people to drive less? The roads are a public resource. Anything causing people to use a public resource less will ultimately cost the government less to maintain. I thought conservatives/libertarians liked use taxes.

By: Ravenwood

Ravenwood — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 20:39:37 +0000

Ahh.. using taxes to influence behavior. Such is the progressive mentality.

By: SayUncle

SayUncle — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:43:31 +0000

Yeah, tell that to the guy who delivers pizza for a living.

By: tgirsch

tgirsch — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:28:39 +0000

If anything, we should be increasing the gas tax, not decreasing or eliminating it. If high gas prices bug you, then maybe you shouldn’t have bought that 18 mpg SUV and that home in the suburbs 20 or 30 miles from where you actually work. I’m tired of people whining about high gas prices but not giving half a shit about efficiency. I don’t care if my gas addiction gives money to the Saudis, I wanna drive my Excursion!

Oh, and many (if not most) of the “working people” that Campfield talks about could carpool or take a bus. (You want to exempt buses from the gas tax? Fine by me. I’ll even grant a partial exemption to commercial trucks if you want.)