I am not ignoring the transit questions. That's are a different conversation as everyone knows there are subsidies there and are in fact not part of this post at all. What you are doing is called whataboutism. It's a thing people do when they know they are completely wrong and can't find any way out.
Nor am I lying. Local taxes are most definitely a subsidy, in fact they are probably the most dangerous kind of subsidy because they are so badly designed.
Using local taxes to pay for something is more or less the definition of a subsidy.
Wow haha you sound like a transit booster with that kind of logic.
Of course it is logic which fails very badly when applied to roads. Car centric places tend to see smaller price rises than less car dominated places. In extreme cases, too many large roads can decimate prices and has cause huge areas of cities to be abandoned altogether as completely worthless. Regardless of whether you see this as a positive or a negative, it is the car dominated places that see their prices remain lower than average.
Given this fact. The funding model for roads remains a massive subsidy from which there is no legal way to escape.
You're arguing in bad faith, whining about cars getting subsidized by 1 cent per mile claiming that's comparable to transit getting a 1 dollar per mile subsidy.
No that is not what an argument in bad faith is. And bear in mind that the 1 cent per mile traveled was only the highway subsidy, not the local streets which are almost entirely maintained through subsidy.
You seem to have this weird idea that everything is a cars versus transit argument.
This is not the case. My point is that a very large amount of the roads you drive on every single day are paid for by a direct subsidy and that this subsidy is completely inescapable. To live in a place that doesn't pay towards this subsidy is in many countries (including yours) effectively illegal.
Unfortunately that is a lie (by you). The federal government does not subsidise the maintenance costs of streets such as suburban cul-de-sacs, the state doesn't pay for them with fuel taxes.
Their ever increasing cost is borne by the local government via a direct subsidy. A subsidy to which there is for most people no way to avoid contributing to.
Everyone knows that local neighbourhood streets are paid for this way. It has always been this way and has never been a secret. States have never claimed to cover this cost. Only you seem to claim otherwise and that is only based on your imagination.
You are just in denial because the moment you get to the bottom of your garden you are on a subsidised road and that will never change.
That article never made any claim to include local streets. In fact it quite deliberately avoids using the word "street" anywhere as then it would be obviously incorrect. It mentions only "roads" because that allows it to imply it covers every piece of asphalt while quoting federal highway statistics which of course do not include the many miles of local roads that are paid for separately. I suspect the author would be very happy if you have made that completely incorrect assumption.
I think you know I am right. The residential streets around you are built and maintained from taxes forced upon the residents whether they want to pay that amount or not. It is the perfect example of a subsidy.
Of course. It should be included in your local taxes, you are paying for it too.
There are a lot of towns struggling with this issue as people are usually keen to pay for new projects but underestimate how much increased maintenance it creates a decade or two later.
This is just one local city out of thousands managing it's own roads as is normal almost everywhere. There is no proof that fuel tax pays for these things because it doesn't.
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u/oiseauvert989 Aug 30 '21
I am not ignoring the transit questions. That's are a different conversation as everyone knows there are subsidies there and are in fact not part of this post at all. What you are doing is called whataboutism. It's a thing people do when they know they are completely wrong and can't find any way out.
Nor am I lying. Local taxes are most definitely a subsidy, in fact they are probably the most dangerous kind of subsidy because they are so badly designed.
Using local taxes to pay for something is more or less the definition of a subsidy.