On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 1:31 PM, frank theriault <knarftheria...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 1:14 PM, P. J. Alling <p_all...@hotmail.com> wrote: > <snip> >> In the US road taxes, in the form of gasoline taxes not only pay for road >> repair but also subsidize various rail systems, which cannot pay for >> themselves out operating revenue. > > That rather rankles me. > > Gas taxes don't go into some special fund which is only used to pay > for the upkeep of roads and pay for money-losing railways. > > Like all other taxes, gas taxes go into the general coffers of the > government and are used to pay for all government expenditures. > > You make it sound like motorists "pay their own way" (ie: they alone > are paying for road repairs) as well as subsidize railways, when in > fact ~all~ tax payers (motorists or not) contribute for the upkeep of > roads and railways. > > cheers, > frank >
Depends on the jurisdiction, in some gas taxes go into a transportation fund (which typically ends up paying for roads, bridges, airports and rail), in others its general fund. The tendency has been to move to the latter so that politicians can fund social services via lucrative gas taxes. Note that if you're merely talking subsidy level, indirect subsidies of the airlines are far higher than anything else per passenger mile. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
