
Roads? Where we’re going, we won’t have any roads - matthewfcarlson
https://medium.com/@matthewfcarlson/roads-where-were-going-we-won-t-have-any-roads-dd9e5a27c30d
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dhosek
The gas tax has been kept artificially low which is a big part of the problem.
The last time the federal gas tax was increased was 1993, and it's not indexed
for inflation which would have raised it 77% in the intervening 27 years.
Similar stories apply for all the local gas taxes. Illinois had a bill to
increase the gas tax in 2019 (I don't know what the fate of it was) but before
that hadn't increased its gas tax since 1990 despite, Wikipedia's table of
state tax rates noting that Illinois and only Illinois has a gas tax rate that
can be adjusted for inflation.

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matthewfcarlson
That's a fascinating point. I wonder if states increasing the gas tax would
help the small budgets states offer for roads to be more effective at
mitigating the burden to cities and counties. I'm surprised that this is
something that's been so low for so long considering the rate property taxes
of been going up here in Seattle (on top of home prices increasing massively
and the county assessors taking full advantage of it).

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dhosek
Property taxes have been structured in such a way that annual increases are
part of the design. That hasn't stopped anti-tax activists from doing their
best to decimate them as well (see California's Prop 13). The acolytes of the
anti-tax movement have done a great job of instilling in people the idea that
_all_ tax increases are bad, even if they aren't, and even if they're an
attempt to make a tax system fairer (see, for example, the current attempt in
Illinois to amend the constitution to eliminate the requirement that the state
income tax have a single flat rate—I see a lot of people arguing in bad faith
to scare people that this will raise their taxes when, in fact, the overall
tax increase from the proposed new rates is low and will be a decrease for
most residents, but heaven forbid that people with high six figure incomes
have to pay more). There's been a destructive movement in this country against
any and all taxes for over forty years and the state of roads is just one
symptom of that movement.

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matthewfcarlson
Outline link if you're medium-averse:
[https://outline.com/9nffJB](https://outline.com/9nffJB)

