Poll of the Day > lmao trump may suggest a 25 cent per gallon gas tax to pay for infrastructure

(+) Yeah! (+)

Infrastructure should be relegated through local and state governments as it's needed. The feds need to keep out of our pockets. But hey, this proposal shows that Trump is more liberal than conservative on spending, so I look forward to watching the dems spin their wheels to demonize it.
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Stupid Pirate Guy posted...

Infrastructure should be relegated through local and state governments as it's needed. The feds need to keep out of our pockets. But hey, this proposal shows that Trump is more liberal than conservative on spending, so I look forward to watching the dems spin their wheels to demonize it.

i'm literally demonizing it now. how is raising the gas tax after you just released a budget showing you're adding the deficit with all the tax cuts you just doled out a democrat issue?
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Well you should know that dems are highly in favor of regulations and spending. Infrastructure has traditionally been a liberal point of interest. Perhaps you are a conservative and you don't even know it?
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Stupid Pirate Guy posted...

Infrastructure has traditionally been a liberal point of interest.

Which is stupid. It is in everyone's interest to have updated infrastructural systems in place. Our highway, bridge, and rail systems are in drastic need of repair. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Some of these projects haven't been repaired in nearly 60 years.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

Stupid Pirate Guy posted...

Infrastructure has traditionally been a liberal point of interest.

Which is stupid. It is in everyone's interest to have updated infrastructural systems in place. Our highway, bridge, and rail systems are in drastic need of repair. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Some of these projects haven't been repaired in nearly 60 years.

That's why I said it should be relegated to local and state governments as needed. The fact that I have to pay for a road in Kansas when I live in Maryland is moronic.
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I mean... it's in the name interstate. These systems reach across the country and affect millions of taxpayers. I don't know if you're confusing interstate roads with local roads or what.
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one of the roads in town was just redid last year, right

well now that the snow and slush has all melted on it, you can see how shitty of a job whoever the city paid to do it did

holes and chucks missing from it everywhere. it's pretty much the road you drive on if you want to completely fuck your tires and suspension up now

RCtheWSBC posted...

BADoglick posted...

Taxation is theft

Then leave our country and society, thanks

"Taxation is the price we pay to live in a civilized society" is the quote inscribed on the IRS building. So you're literally just parroting the ones who steal from you.
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BADoglick posted...

RCtheWSBC posted...

BADoglick posted...

Taxation is theft

Then leave our country and society, thanks

"Taxation is the price we pay to live in a civilized society" is the quote inscribed on the IRS building. So you're literally just parroting the ones who steal from you.

No one is stealing from me. If you have a problem with funding your country's society, then leave it. Go off the grid. No one is forcing you to stay.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

I mean... it's in the name interstate. These systems reach across the country and affect millions of taxpayers. I don't know if you're confusing interstate roads with local roads or what.

This is a silly point to make. Interstates don't need federal oversight, just local governments communicating with one another.
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Stupid Pirate Guy posted...

RCtheWSBC posted...

I mean... it's in the name interstate. These systems reach across the country and affect millions of taxpayers. I don't know if you're confusing interstate roads with local roads or what.

This is a silly point to make. Interstates don't need federal oversight, just local governments communicating with one another.

It isn't a silly point. That's one of the roles of federal government. Commerce Clause, dude.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

Stupid Pirate Guy posted...

RCtheWSBC posted...

I mean... it's in the name interstate. These systems reach across the country and affect millions of taxpayers. I don't know if you're confusing interstate roads with local roads or what.

This is a silly point to make. Interstates don't need federal oversight, just local governments communicating with one another.

It isn't a silly point. That's one of the roles of federal government. Commerce Clause, dude.

Yes it's a role, that's not my point. It's unnecessary and should be relegated on a local level. Why do you love giving the feds your money so much?
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if you don't like it, you can literally just leave

You aren't explaining why it'd be so much easier for local municipalities to govern interstate commerce. Just saying, "it'd be easier" isn't really justification. Why do you think it would be easier?
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RCtheWSBC posted...

You aren't explaining why it'd be so much easier for local municipalities to govern interstate commerce. Just saying, "it'd be easier" isn't really justification. Why do you think it would be easier?

It would lower federal taxes. It's that simple.

Also without Federal oversight it will eliminate a lot of red tape making it more efficient for things to get done if they are handled locally. It will still be the same workers doing the work potentially.
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No, it isn't. That is not how actual policies and regulations get decided. Sorry, you're talking to someone who has worked for the government and has studied public policy and administration for years. You saying "it'll lower federal taxes" without any actual cost-benefit analysis behind you is shallow.

I don't mean to sound condescending either. But saying "it's that simple" is usually never the case. Our systems are very complicated. Politicians get away with trying to make proposals sound simple to sell them to voters.
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I know that's not how things get decided. I merely presenting a hypothetical situation. You don't have to be an expert to know that fewer regulations equals less cost.
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Again, I posit a cost-benefit analysis: is the cost-savings from fewer regulations worth the risk of inter-state disagreements, potential lawsuits, contractual disputes?

It isn't always a 1+1=2 kind of decision.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

Again, I posit a cost-benefit analysis: is the cost-savings from fewer regulations worth the risk of inter-state disagreements, potential lawsuits, contractual disputes?

It isn't always a 1+1=2 kind of decision.

To the individual Federal taxpayer it absolutely does. Those disputes would be handled on a local level
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You're not giving any more detail or rationale behind your perspective. If a state has to sue another state over an interstate highway disagreement, both states' taxpayers would lose out. And that suit would end up in front of the Supreme Court, again becoming a federal issue.

We are a country built on federalism.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

You're not giving any more detail or rationale behind your perspective. If a state has to sue another state over an interstate highway disagreement, both states' taxpayers would lose out.

This is true. That would give incentive to those local communities to get involved and what is going on in their local governments. The people have more of a say in smaller communities and if they were being forced to pay higher taxes due to disputes they could put pressure on their local governments to come to a resolution. I find it to be a much better solution do I have people get involved in their communities then to have the federal government oversee and make all the decisions for everyone which will cost everyone money in turn
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I am also for local municipalities taking respective ownership over areas of governance that they can reasonably control. That isn't to say that federal and state/local governments can't work together to make sure those areas are streamlined effectively. Again, we're a country built on federalism. I think the federal government can be better utilized to empower local communities more than our current standard.
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Grendel posted...

Jen0125 posted...

what was the point of the fucking tax breaks if you're just going to add a tax somewhere else?

Well if you remove things like income and estate taxes and shift them to things like sales and gas taxes then you've effectively pushed some of the tax burden off the rich and onto the poor.

Exactly this.
The point wasn't to cut taxes. The point was to cut taxes for the rich.

In any case, the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1994 (it's a flat amount, not %-based like most taxes) and thus has fallen way behind inflation. It's a serious problem and we haven't had the money to keep roads and bridges repaired and safe for years now. So raising it is a good idea.
But Trump's infrastructure plan itself is not a good idea.

streamofthesky posted...

In any case, the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1994 (it's a flat amount, not %-based like most taxes) and thus has fallen way behind inflation. It's a serious problem and we haven't had the money to keep roads and bridges repaired and safe for years now. So raising it is a good idea.
But Trump's infrastructure plan itself is not a good idea.

sure maybe if they want to raise all these taxes for lay folk though they should raise minimum wage to keep up with inflation? if tax goes up with inflation why doesn't our pay?
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Jen0125 posted...

streamofthesky posted...

In any case, the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1994 (it's a flat amount, not %-based like most taxes) and thus has fallen way behind inflation. It's a serious problem and we haven't had the money to keep roads and bridges repaired and safe for years now. So raising it is a good idea.
But Trump's infrastructure plan itself is not a good idea.

sure maybe if they want to raise all these taxes for lay folk though they should raise minimum wage to keep up with inflation? if tax goes up with inflation why doesn't our pay?

I agree with you. Gas tax and minimum wage should both be indexed to inflation.

streamofthesky posted...

Jen0125 posted...

streamofthesky posted...

In any case, the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1994 (it's a flat amount, not %-based like most taxes) and thus has fallen way behind inflation. It's a serious problem and we haven't had the money to keep roads and bridges repaired and safe for years now. So raising it is a good idea.
But Trump's infrastructure plan itself is not a good idea.

sure maybe if they want to raise all these taxes for lay folk though they should raise minimum wage to keep up with inflation? if tax goes up with inflation why doesn't our pay?

I agree with you. Gas tax and minimum wage should both be indexed to inflation.

it's craziness
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Our taxes make rich people richer. That's all.
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RCtheWSBC posted...

No one is stealing from me. If you have a problem with funding your country's society, then leave it. Go off the grid. No one is forcing you to stay.

The only argument I have against this is tax returns.

When you pay taxes, and give them more than what they need, they'll give you a refund, right? Basically what they're doing is holding on to your money interest-free before giving it back to you...Y'know...just in case they need it for something.

Every other banking institution in the world will charge interest to those who borrow money from them; why should we be ok with that?

I'm all for taxes to an extent, but I'd much rather government be small enough to operate simply on sales and import taxes rather than income taxes. Idk.

It's been 5 days and I have the top and only comment on the article... may be fake news
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Our infrastructure hasn't had any real major upgrades since the Eisenhower administration, and infrastructure has always been one of my stumps so I'm actually ok with this if we can get some high speed internet and fast breeder/molten salt/thorium nuclear reactors written into this deal.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

nuclear reactors

I'm still pro-nuclear, it's safe enough - but now that solar prices have crashed there's no reason not to solar now.
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Isnt there not nearly enough uranium on earth to make global nuclear power a thing?

We need to get started on a Dyson sphere already
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Lokarin posted...

WhiskeyDisk posted...

nuclear reactors

I'm still pro-nuclear, it's safe enough - but now that solar prices have crashed there's no reason not to solar now.

No matter how "good" solar is getting, it still has some major shortcomings inherent to it that don't sit well with me. You're going to lose 10% of it's efficiency as soon as its installed to dust and crap on the panels no matter how much you clean the panels. Then you have the potential difference from cell to cell that burns them out as soon as a leaf blows onto the panel for any length of time. Then you have the fact that our planet is dark for half the day.

FBR/MSR/thorium reactors can be made the size of a bus to power communities at a local level, they can eat all the waste of previous generations of reactors, and if there is a failure, they pretty much just shut down rather than go critical. The only reason the technology has been suppressed (and we have manbearpig to thank in large part for that) is because it can't be used to enrich weapons grade nuclear materials and the suppression of that technology is practically a crime against humanity in my eyes. We could have been doing this 20+ years ago and we're letting France and China beat us to the punch on this technology.
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Mead posted...

We need to get started on a Dyson sphere already

A Dyson sphere is very, very impractical and would require more material than we have lying about the solar system to construct even around our relatively modest star. From a practicality standpoint a Dyson sphere is merely a theoretical construct. A Dyson ring or Dyson swarm is at least feasible, although we've all but managed to lose even the technology to put men on the moon so we're mostly starting from scratch just leaving earth orbit.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Mead posted...

We need to get started on a Dyson sphere already

A Dyson sphere is very, very impractical and would require more material than we have lying about the solar system to construct even around our relatively modest star. From a practicality standpoint a Dyson sphere is merely a theoretical construct. A Dyson ring or Dyson swarm is at least feasible, although we've all but managed to lose even the technology to put men on the moon so we're mostly starting from scratch just leaving earth orbit.

That's one of those funny quote things, much like the Stephen J Gould misquotes. Dyson outright stated that a total encapsulation was the LEAST probable way to do his Dyson sphere
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