This is a great list. I’d like to suggest an addition to your list for Virginia to adopt a bill Montana has introduced to challenge Citizens United restricting corporate and big money donors.
This is a great list & I would certainly push for it as a bundle; but there is one item I would push back on: repealing the car tax. As a direct counterpoint, while it is true that the middle class owns cars at a higher rate than the rich, the people who own the least number of cars are the poor, as even cheap cars are going to be more expensive than any other commonly used form of transportation. There is a racial disparity component as well as white people own significantly more cars than people of color. Therefore, it's questionable to call a car tax regressive.
More broadly, Car infrastructure also costs the taxpayer the most amount of money per mile traveled out of any type of transportation, so even with the car tax motorists have much higher subsidies than transit users, cyclists, or pedestrians. They also generate massive amounts of carbon emissions, particulate matter, microplastics that rub off the tires and into rivers, insane amounts of noise pollution, are a leading cause of preventable deaths, and the infrastructure needed to accommodate them destroys once beautiful neighborhoods, as we can see via historical aerial/satellite imagery of downtowns. Certainly, a lot more systemic changes are needed to weed out the system of car dependency, but as a part of that system the economic rationale for taxing cars on the basis of negative externalities is fairly sound.
I say this currently living in Virginia, where I intentionally found a place near walkability/transit that I could rent for below the area average where I currently live on a below average salary with no car. Tax simplification & land value taxes are great, but there are a lot of other taxes that I would consider to be worse than a car tax that I would get rid of before this one.
On the one hand it is truly uniquely regressive, I suspect significantly more so than the sales tax (especially in car dependent areas).
However I also agree with everything you have to see about the uninternalized externalities of cars. Clearly the car tax doesn’t perfectly address these externalities. Most things you note are related to car use more so than just car ownership. The car tax hits someone who owns two sedans and rarely drives far worse than someone who owns one cheap truck and is constantly driving. Yet the latter is far more costly to society in every major way.
Is it, however better to have some tax on cars, even a sub optimal rather than none? I understand the perspective. Perhaps the ideal is to replace the car tax with a vehicle miles traveled tax?
ALOHA. From the COCONUT WIRELESS. ................ YES .. this the way to touch the people. We need leaders who is grounded on the principle of human dignity and well been for the people..... ... MUCH MAHALO... Take care to you and all of yours. .......... Defiance. .... strength, proud, loud and with Aloha........ Be safe.............. ALOHA...
This is a great list. I’d like to suggest an addition to your list for Virginia to adopt a bill Montana has introduced to challenge Citizens United restricting corporate and big money donors.
A good plan. Though Virginia Dems need to pass the redistricting referendum to keep their momentum going.
This is a great list & I would certainly push for it as a bundle; but there is one item I would push back on: repealing the car tax. As a direct counterpoint, while it is true that the middle class owns cars at a higher rate than the rich, the people who own the least number of cars are the poor, as even cheap cars are going to be more expensive than any other commonly used form of transportation. There is a racial disparity component as well as white people own significantly more cars than people of color. Therefore, it's questionable to call a car tax regressive.
More broadly, Car infrastructure also costs the taxpayer the most amount of money per mile traveled out of any type of transportation, so even with the car tax motorists have much higher subsidies than transit users, cyclists, or pedestrians. They also generate massive amounts of carbon emissions, particulate matter, microplastics that rub off the tires and into rivers, insane amounts of noise pollution, are a leading cause of preventable deaths, and the infrastructure needed to accommodate them destroys once beautiful neighborhoods, as we can see via historical aerial/satellite imagery of downtowns. Certainly, a lot more systemic changes are needed to weed out the system of car dependency, but as a part of that system the economic rationale for taxing cars on the basis of negative externalities is fairly sound.
I say this currently living in Virginia, where I intentionally found a place near walkability/transit that I could rent for below the area average where I currently live on a below average salary with no car. Tax simplification & land value taxes are great, but there are a lot of other taxes that I would consider to be worse than a car tax that I would get rid of before this one.
I have a strange relationship with the car tax.
On the one hand it is truly uniquely regressive, I suspect significantly more so than the sales tax (especially in car dependent areas).
However I also agree with everything you have to see about the uninternalized externalities of cars. Clearly the car tax doesn’t perfectly address these externalities. Most things you note are related to car use more so than just car ownership. The car tax hits someone who owns two sedans and rarely drives far worse than someone who owns one cheap truck and is constantly driving. Yet the latter is far more costly to society in every major way.
Is it, however better to have some tax on cars, even a sub optimal rather than none? I understand the perspective. Perhaps the ideal is to replace the car tax with a vehicle miles traveled tax?
ALOHA. From the COCONUT WIRELESS. ................ YES .. this the way to touch the people. We need leaders who is grounded on the principle of human dignity and well been for the people..... ... MUCH MAHALO... Take care to you and all of yours. .......... Defiance. .... strength, proud, loud and with Aloha........ Be safe.............. ALOHA...