I think increasing the payroll tax is a mistake. People who don't own a car should actually be rewarded because they pollute far less, they don't disable workers, they don't require traffic police, they don't emit CO2....
I would replace the payroll tax with a weight tax on huge SUVs.
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It's disappointing that this funding is coming from regressive sources (gas tax, registration fees, payroll taxes) rather than from the state income tax, since I doubt most working poor in Oregon have the luxury of choosing a car-free work situation (can't work near public transit or can't live near public transit or both or perhaps it is possible but the commute is not useful for shift work). But at least they didn't have to cut funding for other state services I guess?
The greatest trick ever pulled by oil industry PR was to convince leftists that the gas tax is regressive.
A gas tax makes sense because it directly pressures consumer behavior towards using less gas and producing less emissions, but it's still technically regressive because poor people are more obligated to drive and gas costs are a larger proportion of their budget. The way to make it not regressive would be to redistribute the revenue.
Technically (as in, as a term of art), it is not regressive. Rather, the gas tax is a flat tax. A regressive tax is one whereby the tax rate decreases as the taxed amount increases. A flat tax is one whereby the tax rate remains the same regardless of the taxed amount.
Sorry, but unless you are disabled...nobody is obligated to drive.
And in any case, USDOT statistics show wealthy and poor people have very similar cost burden (as percent of household budget) when it comes to gas costs. That is because income strongly correlates with vehicles miles driven; i.e. the wealthier you are the more you drive. That trend is seen in both rural and urban areas.
Now hold up.
I've had jobs I literally could not get to without driving. As in, public transit did not go from walking distance of where I was to walking distance of where my job was. At all.
I've lived in places without grocery stores within walking distance. Without hospitals, dentists, without pretty much anything but a shitty strip mall within walking distance because suburbia sucks.
Look, there are whole suburbs in the United States that open directly into highways. If you try to walk to or from those suburbs you will be arrested because it is illegal to walk on highways. Let me emphasize that one more time: in some places in the US you cannot legally leave your neighborhood without a car.
You can say these aren't obligations - people can just move or quit their job. But then you're circling back to the regressive policy issue, because it's a lot harder to do that when you're poor.
And "unless you're disabled"? One in four adults in the US is disabled. And that will inevitably include you if you live long enough to experience the side effects of old age. Yeah, not all disabilities impact one's ability to walk or take public transit, bet's not write off disability with an "unless".
There are degrees of obligation. The amount poor people would have to sacrifice in order to not drive is more. That's how 'regressiveness' works.
This is hard to believe because there is a maximum anyone could reasonably drive, a higher end income would dwarf the cost of that, there is a tradeoff between housing costs and commute distance (best way to avoid driving is living in an expensive city), genuinely wealthy people don't have to commute anyway, etc. could you link the source on this?
There is tons of stats at data.bts.gov, BLS, and Federal reserve FRED system. Image above is from https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Transportation-Economic-Trends-Transportation-Spen/ida7-k95k/
Basically, what we find is that wealthier people have bigger carbon footprint. They drive more miles, own more and bigger cars. They also fly more miles. What you are calling "degrees of obligation" is nothing more than a lifestyle choice. The suburbanite driving 50 miles a day in a BMW SUV is the one being impacted here, not the low-income worker taking the bus or driving an old Corolla.
Also note that driving is highly subsidized, and if the gas tax isn't raised to cover those costs then that money still has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is other government programs, which low-income are much more highly dependent on.
Transportation spending isn't just gas costs, I bet a lot of this is accounted for by how much more you can spend on newer, fancier cars, or even air travel.
Sure, I agree, again, I'm not arguing against a gas tax, I'm in favor of it because it's necessary, just saying that it should be acknowledged that it disproportionately affects the poor and that fact should be addressed in its implementation.
Indeed, if we want to call the gas tax regressive, then by that standard, the need to own a car to get anywhere is horribly regressive. If we're actually concerned about low-income people, we should be worrying about how much they're forced to pay for the gas itself, not the tax on it.
These taxes are also regressive because the cost of shipping goods is likely to be passed along onto the consumer too
It's super regressive. They should tie all of these to means.
I disagree, the climate isnt affected less if a poorer person emits a kilo of co2 than if musk does. It is regressive but it is essential to motivate people to move away from fossil fuels. The solution is to make up for it progressive measures elsewhere (e.g. tilting income and capital taxes to have a heavier burden on the rich).
That's a really good point, you don't have to solve everything in one bill. Since we don't and haven't though, it makes the approach of fighting for every inch on every bill the default since there is no trust anyone will fix the actually simple but hard pieces.