re: #387 The Vicious Babushka

The motor fuels tax will hit all drivers directly, and consumers indirectly with a hike in costs. A sales tax hits everyone, but poor disproportionately because it’s a greater percentage of their budget slated for items that are normally taxable.

That’s a huge conundrum with paying for infrastructure. Impose tax/fee on all users (user fees - tolls) or use broader based taxes (sales, income, property) to pay for roads. Both options are more likely to disproportionately cost the poor a greater percentage than someone who was wealthy or well off or comfortably in the middle class.

A surcharge on high income earners to cover infrastructure would help close, but not completely fund the road investments they’re talking about, but it wouldn’t add to the already high burden on the poor for roads.

This is all what happens when states and localities and the feds ignore infrastructure and problems add up over time. The massive road building from the 1950s-1960s leaves the US with infrastructure that is nearing the end of its design life, so it has to be replaced. That’s a bill that can’t be undone or ignored. Bridges fail. Water mains fail. Infrastructure has to be maintained, even if it’s hidden from view (like say a 2 mile stretch of the NYC water aqueducts that has to be replaced because of a 35 million gallon leak every day near the Hudson River). It isn’t cheap. But doing nothing is even more expensive.