Re:The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally M...
by mruts on Thursday April 04, 2019 @01:58PM
(#19575223)
It's not like having carve outs makes it any less regressive. It just allows the government to paper over a very complex problem with a naive and simple "solution".
Unfortunately, this sort of thinking has been the dominant mode in politics and legislation since, I dunno, the Roman empire? Riddle your laws and regulations and tax-codes with exemptions and deductions and carve-outs so you can please the people who put you in power and who will keep your in power. And since almost everyone is part of some random interest group (and many, part of a lot interests groups like married home-owning couples with kids), it usually works.
This (like most other flat consumption taxes) is a regressive tax. It is a stated policy goal of the ruling party to reduce income inequality, not increase it.
The disabled are a group with very inflexible transportation demand, in that they are very unlikely to change their behavior in response to higher prices (because they can't); we already make a whole ton of legal accommodations for them like handicapped parking, and this fits into that overall policy.