People feel that incentive very differently. If the 101 is a $5 toll road during rush hour it barely changes my habits. In fact, it might actually encourage me to go in earlier because I expect traffic to be better. The cost of time spent in traffic already outweighs any congestion charge - for me.

There are, however, a lot of people for whom that $50 more in weekly commute costs, would be financially deadly and almost unavoidable.

It's easy for me to advocate for congestion charges; they clearly benefit me. Those who make a lot less than I do might feel very differently.

Well, maybe there is a lesson in that. We have to think about what the benefits of each person commuting is. Does it make sense to fill up highways with people going to work in e.g. fast food restaurants?

If the McDonalds employee has to pay $50 in fees to get to their job, it changes their financial calculations around whether that is a viable job. If enough of them decide to quit because of this, the restaurant will need to pay its employees more, subsidize their commutes or shut down.

If the restaurant shuts down, then it didn't make sense for them to be in an expensive urban hub, and the negative externality of the traffic their employees generated is gone. I suspect a lot of only-barely-viable jobs would go this way, and that's where traffic reduction would come from.

If they pay more, or subsidize commutes, they are paying to paying for the negative externality of filling up the highways to bring their employees in. The people who want cheap cheeseburgers in an expensive urban hub will decide if they want to pay more for cheap cheeseburgers to cover the cost. If they don't, it doesn't make sense for it to be there and the traffic isn't worth it.

As a software engineer who shows up at 11, I can tell you that there is a significant current against us late starters. I agree with you that it would be good for us to move this way, but it is hard for all the early birds to swallow.

Ha. "Early bird" is somebody who arrives before 11?

People who schedule meetings before 10am should be fired.

We should incentivize not driving as much.

What’s the point in me commuting to work to write code on a couch in an office that feels like my living room anyway?

yes but that’s also what makes it regressive

By that same logic, purchasing hamburgers is regressive.

No, you don’t have to purchase a hamburger to earn a living, but you probably have to travel.

Groceries are generally taxed differently because people need to eat. It is not a human necessity to travel long distances to work. It seems to me, if you subsidize travel for low earner you're subsidizing companies that pay their employees poorly, not benefiting the employees themselves. Maybe a subsidy for low earning jobs that are a public good make sense (teachers, for instance), but why should we give subsidies to private for-profit companies to allow them to avoid covering the externalities of their business?

Where their employees choose to live is not an externality caused by the business IMO.

Choosing to open a business that pays minimum wage in an area without housing that is affordable for minimum wage workers inherently generates traffic, doesn't it? I don't have a very solid opinion on all this, honestly, but it seems logical. What do you think?

I suppose that choosing to open a business not in someone’s house generates traffic.

The alternative is not Walmart paying stickers $50K/yr. The alternative is no or fewer Walmart jobs in locales with these laws. IMO, that makes things worse, not better, for prospective Walmart employees.

I also feel like where I live is none of my employer’s business, provided I can do the job. Maybe I’d make an exception for fire or police, but even there I’d rather not make the employer totally paternalistic.

You have to purchase food.

Yes, and taxing food would be regressive, just as taxing/tolling commuting would be. (It's for this reason that supermarket/unprepared food is often untaxed.)