We're all part of society, of course non-users should pay for things which don't directly benefit them. Schools are vital and older people should pay for them. Highways are still needed, and the bike users should still help pay.

User fees are fine, but having none on most roads and high ones on most mass transport is just driving demand one way.

pacino wrote:We're all part of society, of course non-users should pay for things which don't directly benefit them. Schools are vital and older people should pay for them. Highways are still needed, and the bike users should still help pay.

User fees are fine, but having none on most roads and high ones on most mass transport is just driving demand one way.

You say "of course," but it's equally obvious to me that people should pay for what they use. There's no reason for users to get subsidized to do every activity which may or may not have a positive externality, or social benefit. It's not intrinsically so. This is just a preference that you have, that you'd rather force people to pay for things, whether it's distortionary or not, and whether the social benefits can be proven or not.

Would you like to pay for my lunch today? I need to eat, and it's better for society if I'm not starving.

If you qualify, there is food stamps.

Why should I need to qualify? Rich people can get "free" education, road usage, discounted stamps/train travel, etc, and poor people have to help pay for this stuff. Why don't you want to pay for my food, considering it's an essential thing with social benefits?

Edit: You said that it's obvious that nonusers should pay for stuff with a social benefit. That, of course old people should pay to educate their neighbor's children. I'm saying, it's ridiculous, and the only reason you think it's obvious is because that's how we currently do it.

Werthless wrote:We shouldn't be subsidizing driving and pollution, and should not pay for roads with other tax money. This is what tolls and gas taxes are meant to accomplish, to pay for the roads that government provides. I wish more governments would lease the roads to private companies to relieve congestion.

what

What does Amtrak bring to society? It's not that cheap (compared to buses), yet it's still losing money. We're subsidizing college kids and business travelers so they can travel cheaper and quicker. Great. What value. They can take the bus if they want cheap travel, or they can pay more. Their choice.

I am a champion of reductionism, except when it goes all ad absurdum. Why marshall resources for air travel standards, or highway right-of-ways, or clean water standards? Make all of that messy business a choice.

pacino wrote:why exactly should either the Postal Service or Amtrak make money? And who says they're inefficient at what they've been given?

The postal service is an enigma in that whether they claim they are a government entity or not depends on whatever stance benefits the situation at the time.

Amtrak... it's much cheaper to fly than take Amtrak in most cases. I couldn't believe how expensive it was to take Amtrak from FL to PA when I checked into it a few years ago.

I would love for cheap/affordable widely available rail... I'd wear my engineer hat and shout "woo woo" every time I'm on the train. Americans make decisions and choices based on the wallet. Making driving and flying more expensive for the benefit of rail can likely have an inverse affect in that it might take travel (or travel options) away from the commoner and make it more of a privilege for the elite (just like air travel was 50-60 years ago). Substantial decline in liesure travel (vacation, visiting family over the holidays, etc.), increased expense for commuters and business travel. Consumer cost for rail travel would have to be substantially reduced (by like 70-90%... which will never happen because as we all know from experience, consumer cost for anything never goes down that much).

Werthless wrote:OK, what is the compelling reason to bring high speed rail? Our government is bankrupt, and now we're going to invest hugely in infrastructure that gets us from A to B faster?

I haven't seen modeling on how much X level of transit investment (intra-city and inter-city) will reduce driving, but this seems like a pretty good idea if you believe, as I do, that climate change and peak oil are both real problems that will become entirely unmanageable if we don't take relatively dramatic action, relatively soon.

Not that I expect anything like this to happen. Our political system offers absolutely no incentive to address long-term problems, even if failing to do so exacerbates a potentially existential threat. Without expressing an opinion on whether it's particularly worthwhile legislation (because I really have no idea) I'll be very, very surprised even if the Waxman-Markey legislation or something like it is enacted... and even that has been criticized as potentially "worse than doing nothing" by the serious environmentalist types.

dajafi wrote:

Werthless wrote:OK, what is the compelling reason to bring high speed rail? Our government is bankrupt, and now we're going to invest hugely in infrastructure that gets us from A to B faster?

I haven't seen modeling on how much X level of transit investment (intra-city and inter-city) will reduce driving, but this seems like a pretty good idea if you believe, as I do, that climate change and peak oil are both real problems that will become entirely unmanageable if we don't take relatively dramatic action, relatively soon.

I'm not too worried about "peak oil" problems, because rising prices will help solve that problem when it arises. People and companies are extremely innovative when there are profits to be made. We've had this peak oil discussion before, so we don't need to rehash it. But I'd prefer to attack concerns about environmental degradation by preserving existing woodlands (which helps regulate C02 levels) and raising gas taxes. If we want people to use less gas because it pollutes, then charge more for gas. This attacks the problems directly, with fewer distortions and attempted behavior modifications. If we want less traffic, impose tolls and congestion pricing. And I just happen to believe that it is both more politically feasible and more effective if government hires a private company to make these changes.

Unilateral efforts to reduce gas consumption in the US are also a less compelling proposition when the policies of the east Asian countries are considered. If the US cuts back on gas usage, demand for gas falls, and prices fall. So countries like China, who pollute with little abandon, get cheaper oil to recklessly use. Our restrictions will hurt our domestic economy, while directly subsidizing the energy waste of other nations. We'd probably want to seek out a multilateral energy agreement, much like we have for trade agreements. Basically, Kyoto, except we include developing nations.

Not that I expect anything like this to happen. Our political system offers absolutely no incentive to address long-term problems, even if failing to do so exacerbates a potentially existential threat. Without expressing an opinion on whether it's particularly worthwhile legislation (because I really have no idea) I'll be very, very surprised even if the Waxman-Markey legislation or something like it is enacted... and even that has been criticized as potentially "worse than doing nothing" by the serious environmentalist types.

The only thing I know is that it will be costly. That isn't reason enough to oppose it, but it does impose a high hurdle to convince me that the legislation is worthwhile.

I too would prefer a straight carbon tax to more complicated mechanisms, and congestion pricing is near and dear to the heart of probably any non-car-owning goo-goo type in New York City... but in both cases, the politics don't seem to work. Which kind of goes back to my larger point: all the political incentives are lined up against useful action on issues like this. (We can't get congestion pricing in NYC because state legislators even in the outer boroughs, let alone the 'burbs, are more scared of angry drivers than we perpetually crapped-upon transit users.)

Same with your China point. It's valid--and frankly, mindful of the free-rider risks, I probably wouldn't vote for unilateral action either were I in Congress. But short of other hostile action, we don't have much leverage... and that could do much more harm than good. As I've said here many times, it's bad form to criticize your banker's manners.

I agree, which is why I want us to get our financial house in order. Our gross debt is around $10T now, which is crazy when you consider that world GDP is around $60T, and we're expanding the debt through a structural deficit of nearly $2T per year. It's hard to justify borrowing money on projects that meet vague social needs. These aren't pressing concerns; people aren't going to starve to death in this depression because we're not building extra greenhouses and high speed rails. We're going deep into debt because we are trying to shape how we live, and trying to meet our preferences. We prefer X over not having X, so we're borrowing to give everybody X. I'm saying, if we can't clearly justify X, we shouldn't be doing it now (since we can't afford it), because it jeopardizes the funding of food stamps and unemployment retraining (ie. something that would be considered higher priority), which are actually essential to people's survival. I feel we're jeopardizing our safety net to put steak on the table.

Werthless wrote:I agree, which is why I want us to get our financial house in order. Our gross debt is around $10T now, which is crazy when you consider that world GDP is around $60T, and we're expanding the debt through a structural deficit of nearly $2T per year.

Again, though, there's no political incentive to push for that... and you've got a variant of the same free-rider problem, just in domestic politics.

By which I mean that if I were David Axelrod, I'd probably see the world this way: "Reagan and Bush 41 exploded the national debt to a point far beyond anything we saw in the first 200 years of American history. Bill Clinton came in, cleaned up the mess to the point where we had surpluses... and his would-be successor still lost the election. Then Bush/Cheney came along and effectuated the largest upward redistribution of wealth ever, finished the job of disastrous deregulation of financial markets, got us into a trillion-dollar war of choice, and hugely enlarged deficits while failing to address any of the real needs of the country. Now my guy is supposed to be Mr. Eat Your Fiscal Veggies? Eff that."

Now, I know (and Axelrod probably knows) that this is a gross oversimplification: Democratic congresses went along with Reagan's deficit generation, Republican congresses probably did at least as much as Clinton to put us back in the black during the late '90s, etc. But particularly when you consider that Obama ran and won on a promise to fix health care and (at the end) turn around the economy, it's not realistic to expect him to turn around and say "We can't do these big things because structural deficits are ginormous and growing."

Semi-related, I read this article yesterday and thought you and others here might find it of interest:

Are Depressions Necessary?

I actually found the author's central metaphor strained: there's no obvious reason that a downturn can't be both what Samuelson and Krugman say it is. And I don't think he made the case (Krugman's case, unsurprisingly given the venue and who that guy is) as strongly as he seems to think. But just in setting out the two views, I thought it was a good read.

Werthless wrote:Why should I need to qualify? Rich people can get "free" education, road usage, discounted stamps/train travel, etc, and poor people have to help pay for this stuff. Why don't you want to pay for my food, considering it's an essential thing with social benefits?

Edit: You said that it's obvious that nonusers should pay for stuff with a social benefit. That, of course old people should pay to educate their neighbor's children. I'm saying, it's ridiculous, and the only reason you think it's obvious is because that's how we currently do it.

Payment always bears an imprecise relationship to receipt or expenditure of benefits. So, there's always "subsidy" in any economic model. Don't waste our time pretending otherwise.

drsmooth wrote:

Werthless wrote:Why should I need to qualify? Rich people can get "free" education, road usage, discounted stamps/train travel, etc, and poor people have to help pay for this stuff. Why don't you want to pay for my food, considering it's an essential thing with social benefits?

Edit: You said that it's obvious that nonusers should pay for stuff with a social benefit. That, of course old people should pay to educate their neighbor's children. I'm saying, it's ridiculous, and the only reason you think it's obvious is because that's how we currently do it.

Payment always bears an imprecise relationship to receipt or expenditure of benefits. So, there's always "subsidy" in any economic model. Don't waste our time pretending otherwise.

what

Werthless wrote:

Payment always bears an imprecise relationship to receipt or expenditure of benefits. So, there's always "subsidy" in any economic model. Don't waste our time pretending otherwise.

what

let's try this using your own assertions for our examples:

If we want people to use less gas because it pollutes, then charge more for gas. This attacks the problems directly, with fewer distortions and attempted behavior modifications.

but free market actors have no motive to "charge more for gas". There's no attack on the problem coming from that quarter. Free market actors have no incentive to incorporate externalities in their pricing. They quite likely capture some reward from not accounting for externalities in their pricing. Leaving issues of product toxicity to everyone else, unless under duress, means a simpler potentially more profitable business. Those are someone else's problem. All the "someone elses" in effect "subsidize" the gas-sellers.

If we want less traffic, impose tolls and congestion pricing. And I just happen to believe that it is both more politically feasible and more effective if government hires a private company to make these changes.

it's ok to believe that but be prepared for one or both of your declaratives to be untrue in a significant # of instances.

Possible compromise on labor legislation:

A half-dozen senators friendly to labor have decided to drop a central provision of a bill that would have made it easier to organize workers.

The so-called card-check provision — which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes — would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union. Currently, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election, a higher hurdle for unions.
...
Though some details remain to be worked out, under the expected revisions, union elections would have to be held within five or 10 days after 30 percent of workers signed cards favoring having a union. Currently, the campaigns often run two months.

To further address labor’s concerns that the election process is tilted in favor of employers, key senators are considering several measures. One would require employers to give union organizers access to company property. Another would bar employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union sessions that labor supporters deride as “captive audience meetings.”
...
“This bill will bring about dramatic changes, even if card check has fallen away,” said an A.F.L.-C.I.O. official who insisted on anonymity.

The official said the revised bill achieves the three things organized labor has been seeking.

“Our goals,” the official said, “have always been letting employees have a real choice, having real penalties against employers who break the law in fighting unions, and having some form of binding arbitration to prevent employers from dragging their feet forever to prevent reaching a contract.”

My sense throughout this whole debate has been that there are probably ways to move the playing field back closer to level without the card check provision, so I'm pleased to hear about this compromise. Then again, the business lobbies remain prone to make remarks of sufficient dickishness that I kind of just want to see them get mauled, e.g.:

Business leaders say the current system is fair, asserting that unions lose so many elections because workers oppose paying union dues and do not feel they need unions to represent them.

Corporate lobbyists have indicated they would oppose fast elections, arguing that such a provision would deny employers ample opportunity to educate employees about the downside of unionizing, such as strikes and union dues.

Right. They need that time to threaten firings and blacklist troublemakers.

Caption contest:



Article link

One more reason I think Corzine is cooked in that race: he's (sort of) tapped out.

Yeah, I read that last night. If he's putting in $25 and hoping to raise $15, while Christie's capped at $11, he's still got a huge leg up.

If his net worth is a mere 150 million, he could still easily lay out 50 million and not miss a meal.

drsmooth wrote:

Werthless wrote:

Payment always bears an imprecise relationship to receipt or expenditure of benefits. So, there's always "subsidy" in any economic model. Don't waste our time pretending otherwise.

what

let's try this using your own assertions for our examples:

If we want people to use less gas because it pollutes, then charge more for gas. This attacks the problems directly, with fewer distortions and attempted behavior modifications.

but free market actors have no motive to "charge more for gas". There's no attack on the problem coming from that quarter. Free market actors have no incentive to incorporate externalities in their pricing. They quite likely capture some reward from not accounting for externalities in their pricing. Leaving issues of product toxicity to everyone else, unless under duress, means a simpler potentially more profitable business. Those are someone else's problem. All the "someone elses" in effect "subsidize" the gas-sellers.

If we want less traffic, impose tolls and congestion pricing. And I just happen to believe that it is both more politically feasible and more effective if government hires a private company to make these changes.

it's ok to believe that but be prepared for one or both of your declaratives to be untrue in a significant # of instances.

I've said on more than 1 occasion that I'd be ok with raising the gas tax. That was obvious to everyone else but you, that I'm not asking private businesses to collude to charge higher prices.

He is the first Republican to be over 50% in an independent poll in 24 years, and some key Democratic insiders now believe Christie can win.

How sad is that?

The fact that Whitman won twice without ever breaking 50% in a poll is sort of mindboggling as well.