I was a bit skeptical that road costs took a lot of our income taxes, so I looked it up. It was, at least, more than I thought it'd be. The U.S. will spend $65.3 billion of income tax payments on ground transportation costs in fiscal 2012, at least half of which is on highway costs.

Where do you get that figure? Does "ground transportation" include rail?

Wikipedia saith that, as of 2007, 93.5% of the Federal contribution to the Interstate Highway System was funded by gas and vehicle taxes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highways#Financing

And it notes that 1/6th of gas taxes and other user fee-like financing mechanisms are diverted toward public transit.

Sorry for not looping back earlier, it's from http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/united_states_total_spen... which is getting its data from a few sources but I think for the transportation piece you can look on page 125 here http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2012-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-2012... but may want to cross-reference with the other sources.

You both could be right.

I think pricing for a lot of things has a large component of historical pricing in it.

My favorite example: the price of books in the US and Canada. Just grabbed a random recent hardcover off my shelves. It's labeled "USA $25.95 Canada $32.50". I believe that price differential got established back when the US dollar was worth $1.25 Canadian -- but it still exists, even though the two currencies are now roughly on par. It's the exact same product with what is effectively a 25% markup for Canadians for no good reason.

This may be true to some degree, but I suspect less than it would suggest. Not all the bookshops follow the price on the cover.

True, but that's true in the US too. Unless you're suggesting many bookstores in Canada routinely offer a 25% discount on most books, my point still holds.

Not trolling here, genuinely curious:

I thought that our 19 cents/gallon tax on gasoline is what is used for road repairs etc. Is this not the case?

In theory, yes. But it hasn't been raised since the 90's and since it's a per-gallon tax and not a percent tax, its funding has decreased as Americans buy more efficient cars and thus fewer gallons of gas. I don't have links, but I've seen graphs indicating that the fund regularly runs at a shortfall now, and getting worse.

Maybe you can start digging from here: See here: https://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119...

And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...

$25 billion received via gas taxes at the federal level in 2006 (60% spent on roads). $70 billion spent by feds in 2012.

In practice, the gas tax covers only a small portion of road maintenance costs.

http://www.subsidyscope.com/transportation/direct-expenditur...