Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year
by jacobolus on Wednesday October 06, 2021 @07:53PM
(#28779986)
The ideal would be to dramatically tax petroleum products (at least covering the massive environmental and social costs of air pollution and global climate change from their use), also tax cars (and especially large trucks) in general to fund road maintenance, and (a) distribute the proceeds from petroleum taxes uniformly to every resident, while also (b) better funding public transit, building bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure, etc. This would encourage people to move away from environmentally unsustainable modes of transportation while not unduly harming the poorest.
Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year
by kosievdmerwe on Wednesday October 06, 2021 @08:01PM
(#28780033)
It's like paying artists in "exposure". There's value, but it doesn't actually pay the bills.
It does, in social impact sense (gas taxes in the US are universally way too low to cover the impacts).
OTOH, diffuse social benefit doesn't pay for road maintenance, and states have legal and practical requirements for short-run operating budget balance. The right solution would probably be increase general taxation, in a way that misses the low end (e.g., bump income taxes, but not the lowest brackets), to cover the costs.