What did tax do for me today?
It provided the road I drove along to take my sons out this morning.
Nothing else will ever pay for roads in a rural area.
That’s the Joy of Tax.
It facilitates communication.
The alternative is:
No tax, no roads. No future.
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Of course, some spend is beneficial. Surely the issue is “who decides what to spend it on?”. I support localism and devolution wherever possible. This doesn’t mean that rural areas wouldn’t have roads – but it may mean that the investment in infrastructure is proportional to it’s predicted local benefit.
Yeah, because there are no private alternatives to road building… 🙄
Hi Richard,
From the CIA factbook:
UK: 61,284,806 people with 398,366km of road in 241,930km^2
Roads: 153km of road per person, 1.65 km of road per km^2
Jersey: 91,812 people with 576km of road in 116 km^2
Roads: 159km of road per person, 4.96km of road per km^2
I’m not sure Green New Deal argues for more roads, but if you say that’s a good measure for tax, seems all are about equal.
@Noel Scoper
How do you think roads in jersey are paid for?
@Bobski
Yeah, cos there’s bound to be loads of private investors prepared to build miles of country lanes to join up remote villages!! :rolleyes:
Toll roads,.. and roads built as condition of achieving planning approval for housing developments. (!!!!!)
I do however agree, what seems to be the most socially useful way seems to be via taxation, however I do take issue with the principles of Vehicle Excise Duty and the like of general taxation as means of funding roads/communication infrastructure. I would like to suggest a Duty being applied to every litre of fuel intended for transport as a fairer and more responsible alternative. I envisage this being far better at encoraging ecologically sensitive usage patterns of our vehicles than the CO2 banding system of VED currently implemented. The more a vehicle is driven, the more aggressively it is driven, the more fuel will need to be bought for it, and in that purchase, the more fuel duty will be paid to fund road building, maintenance, public transportation alternatives etc. I think its plausible to suggest that vehicle owners who leave their vehicles parked for when they really need it and walk/cycle/make alternative arrangements for the greater proportion of their journeys will be responsible for proportionately less of the damage to the roads and associated pollution etc than their neighbour who drives aggressively at every opportunity, for example. And I’d expect that might continue to be true even if the vehicle of the responsible driver were a six cylinder ten year old 4×4 and the driver who drove tens of thousands of needless miles every year had deliberately sought out a £0 VED vehicle under the scrappage scheme.
The principle of PAYG duty on fuel for road usage could easily be extended to pay for statutory third party motor insurance. Then, no driver would be able to drive without that statutory insurance so long as the fuel in their vehicle was legitimately purchased. Its reasonable to then suggest we would save on police, court and prison costs relating to detecting and prosecuting driving without that insurance, and the insurance fraud which I would expect to presently be perpetrated by many parents who have been shocked by the quotations for insurance premium for their newly qualified teenagers would also stop. And because every vehicle being driven on the roads would have had its premium paid, there would be no need for claims made against uninsured drivers to be passed on for settlement to the Motor Insurance Bureau, who fund their claim settlements from a levy on our motor insurance premiums (well those of us who buy our insurance instead of choosing to drive uninsured).
Drivers could elect to purchase comprehensive motor policies much as they do now, although I expect with no element of TP insurance to pay for, it should be much cheaper. Dangerous driving etc can continue to be dealt with through the courts with sanctions like withdrawl of licence, mandatory retraining being used to maintain adequate driving standards.
And the duty would not need to be applied at the retail forecourt.. a litre is a litre if its measured at the retail level or the wholesale level, so that duty can be paid to the treasury by the wholesalers/refineries.
Additional.. I omitted to acknowledge that the retail price of our road fuel already contains a considerable element of tax/duty. Perhaps I also feel that this should be made clear at the forecourt till!
why do we need roads? what would be wrong with trying to live locally and concentrating more on what is immediate and meaningful rather than on the endless pursuit of things that are by definition out of our reach? it is probably no coincidence that since the advent of the car there has been no spiritual or artistic human endeavour that can sensibly compare with the works of the five preceding centuries. nothing has been so responsible for increasing our pace of life – and thus decreasing our all round level of contemplation and reflection – than the urge to build roads.
without roads we would be more resourceful and would build vibrant communities. roads, like most of the other “benefits” of taxation, are used to break down all forms of society in favour of a centrist state. they promote the distant and new over the familiar and close. and it is interesting that last week richard was saying that there is no society other than the state. roads are like television: once there, you use it. but without it, your life would be better.
@BenM
Toll roads and Turnpikes (any place called a Turnpike used to be one end of a toll road) used to exist in the UK, people would pay for the directness and security (because they would be patrolled (remember that this is before Robert Peel formed the modern Police)) that they offered over ‘common’ roads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_road_association
So Private roads to towns, villages and hamlets do exist
There are also Toll roads in the US that are almost always faster, more direct and better maintained because it is in the interest of the owner that the interest of the customer is fulfilled.
[…] an example. Earlier today I wrote about the things that tax pays for — and referred to roads. So this comment came back from a regular far right contributor: Toll roads and Turnpikes (any place called a […]
@Frank Black
Without roads there would be no pharmaceuticals delivered to the local chemist, no grain going to the bakers so no bread. Locally you cannot produce all the things you need to stay healthy, how long before the big cities run out of all the food they need. How long before the rural areas run out of medicines and vaccines they need to cure and avoid diseases.
You talk of the loss of culture but without roads you cannot see the artistic endeavour you feel has been lost.
Or do you feel that Rail could take its place but how are you to get to the station, oh I know, by road.
“locally you cannot produce all the things you need to stay healthy”
funny how we pretty much managed it for thousands of years before the road. the road is the key tool of globalisation and the disempowerment of individuals. if you want to be alienated from society and forced to buy what you could produce yourself, roads are the key to your serfdom.
food, drink, fuel can all be sourced locally. some pharmaceuticals cannot, agreed. but look at the cost-benefits of roads: huge environmental damage, the destruction of local communities, the atomisation of families, the subsequent total reliance upon the agro-chemical industrial complex.
as for culture, communities used to tell each other stories and sing each other songs. now kids watch bump and grind on mtv. progress?
@Frank Black
I’m really not keen on going back to the Middle Ages
Sorry
I live in the real world
So, to clarify, your point is that tax allows roads to be built in rural areas to a standard which would not be possible with privately financed roads.
That might, as you claim, facilitate communication, but it also facilitates increased long distance commuting, fuel burning and air pollution, so, from my perspective, it’s not an arrangement which warrants an expression of unmitigated joy.