> The taxes on the extra $10,000 don't have to be paid regardless, if you make $40,000 instead of $50,000. There is $10,000 in total being lost, but $5000 is being lost by the employee (which is equal to the congestion charge) and the other $5000 is being lost by the government (who doesn't get to choose which job the employee takes).
My friend, you are seriously, seriously confused about taxes. People making $50k per year are not in the 50% marginal tax bracket. If you want to work this out with real numbers, you'll see it's nowhere near as dire as you're pretending.
I would be willing to wager there is almost nobody making $50k who drives to work in lower Manhattan by themselves. They would already be priced out by the current tolls and parking. People at that wage are going to be taking the subway. You're arguing for a figment of your imagination.
You're not counting state and local taxes and benefits phase outs. The benefits phase outs are a bear -- for low and middle income people they often exceed the taxes.
> I would be willing to wager there is almost nobody making $50k who drives to work in lower Manhattan by themselves.
To wear a suit and work in an office? No, probably not. But many service workers don't get paid very well and nonetheless work in Manhattan. And it's hard for people making that amount of money to afford to live in Manhattan either -- because there isn't enough housing there.
> They would already be priced out by the current tolls and parking.
This is why the current tolls are also bad. (And Uber and Lyft have got a solution for the parking.)
But what about the principle is dependent on the income level to begin with? It's just an example. Isn't it also bad to force out the person making $70,000 who then takes another job somewhere else for $60,000?
How is congestion pricing better than building enough housing in the city that everyone who works there can afford to live there instead of having to commute in?
You have to use real numbers. The congestion charge is going to be about $3k per year, which is NOT a $10k difference in gross income at this level, no matter how many taxes you include. If someone happens to find a job that pays exactly the perfect amount less where they break even on paying the congestion charge, well, good for them, I guess? Salary is not the only reason people take jobs, and it's likely they'd have more opportunities to advance in the city anyway.
>How is congestion pricing better than building enough housing in the city that everyone who works there can afford to live there instead of having to commute in?
Here are several ways it is better:
1. Building housing costs money. Congestion fares raise money.
2. The city is generally not in the business of building housing. This is something the private sector does.
3. Again, there is absolutely no reason we can't do both.
The comparison isn't between coffee shops in Manhattan and coffee shops in the suburbs, it's between coffee shops within ten minutes of your office in Manhattan as measured at a walking pace compared to the speed of a motorized vehicle.
> Nobody. I mean, not one single person, who works in Manhattan below Central Park is currently traveling 3 miles anywhere, by any means for lunch. Nobody.
Because the transit situation is such a mess. You can get away with it because of the density, but that doesn't make it good that it's so inconvenient to get from one end of the island to the other. You have a huge relative advantage and then give half of it back because the MTA sucks.
> What? Congestion pricing is going to force people to give up $10000 rather than spend $5000? It's somehow going to make people forget how to do math? That seems unlikely. The state and federal taxes already exist and have to be paid regardless of whether there's congestion pricing, so those are a non-issue.
Apparently some people have already forgotten how to do math.
If you make $50,000, the various governments take $5000 or more of the top $10,000 in taxes and benefits phase outs. So if you made $40,000 instead, you wouldn't have $10,000 less money, you would have $5000 less money because you would also pay $5000 less in taxes. If keeping the $50,000 job also costs you $5000 in congestion charges, the job that "pays more" no longer does.
The taxes on the extra $10,000 don't have to be paid regardless, if you make $40,000 instead of $50,000. There is $10,000 in total being lost, but $5000 is being lost by the employee (which is equal to the congestion charge) and the other $5000 is being lost by the government (who doesn't get to choose which job the employee takes).
> For those that aren't, there will be subsidies.
Which makes no sense at all, because then they won't be deterred from driving at those times even though they're the most price sensitive and that's how congestion pricing operates. Is converting it from a tax on the poor to benefit the rich to a tax on the middle class to benefit the rich supposed to be some great advantage? And that requires you to raise the congestion charge even higher to achieve the same level of deterrence.
> The congestion isn't coming from the people who live there. They can already walk or take the subway. The congestion is people driving in from elsewhere.
That's the point. So you build more housing in the city and then more people can live there and take the subway.