Today in class we watched a documentary that made a gas tax on the entire nation seem like a solution to raising money to fix infrastructure. As it turns out, several states have enacted a gas tax for these reasons, including a 12 cent per gallon tax implemented in California in 2017 (https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article147437054.html). This tax is expected to help rais $52 billion dollars in the next decade.
And yet many people are against this tax. On the surface level, a lot of voters don't like gas taxes for two reasons. The first is that it is very obvious when gas taxes are unequal among states, and residents in states with slightly higher taxes get upset. The second is that gas tax, unlike income or other taxes, talks about money in easy to understand terms: dollars (not percents). Therefore, people feel like it affects them more.
On a larger scale, many people feel that this is targeting lower-income families. These are families that can't afford an electric vehicle and therefore have to pay for gas. Also, lower-income families often drive older, less fuel-efficient cars, and therefore will have to pay a larger than proportional percent of the gas tax.
While the current alternative includes toll fees, there doesn't seem to be another way proposed to raise so much money for infrastructure. Therefore, despite a lot of people's concerns, perhaps a gas tax is the best way to fix our roads.
I noticed you said that the gas tax is always talked about in terms of dollars. Do you think that if the gas tax increase was talked about in terms of a percentage, which would be more obscure for people to understand, that there would be less resistance? Of course there is always the concern for the lower income families, but just objectively, would changing the vocabulary used to describe the gas tax increase lower the amount of opposition? Obviously using complex/obscure terms to try and confuse the american people is not setting a great precedent (although it has been done before), but in this situation where this is looking like the only solution to fix the infrastructure issue, do you think it would work?
ReplyDeleteI think gas tax is interesting because it is a fairly simple way to raise money but also very controversial at the same time.In theory everyone would see that the tax is for the eventual greater good, but most people look at it as just another tax and the government just doing more to take their money. It will be interesting to see if the government can actually raise enough money through the tax to improve infrastructure.
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