ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics	For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum.

ampage archive

Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Tolls

12/15/2004 2:49 PM

Dutch

Re: Tolls

quote:
"we had to borrow money to send out all those $300+ checks to every american. "

Not every American got one of those checks--the poorest ones (who could have used it the most) got left out....

C ya,
Dutch

12/15/2004 2:59 PM
Darin	Oh I hear you Dutch. I wrote it like this for brevity. What gets me the most is that the poorest folks got nothing, then it would be that the richest got the lions share. Everyone in between got a consolation prize of a couple hundred bucks.

12/16/2004 7:33 AM

bob p

quote:
"Not every American got one of those checks--the poorest ones (who could have used it the most) got left out.... "

i'm not trying to defend the idea, but IIRC the idea of the checks wasn't to give away free money to everyone -- it was to give a tax refund to anyone who pays taxes. if you're poor enough to not pay taxes, you don't get a tax refund. its a pretty simple concept really. again - i'm not defending it, but i think that there's a major misconception of what a tax cut is when people complain that poor people don't get them. there are different programs for that.

tax refund != welfare check

as it turned out that year, i was not employed and i had to live off of savings. my taxable income was below the poverty level, but i still had enough income to pay taxes. i was one of the happy people to get one of those checks -- in a year that my income was low, it helped alot. but i understood that it wasn't a welfare check. i never applied for welfare, for philosophical reasons.

12/16/2004 6:50 PM

Dutch

quote:
"the idea of the checks wasn't to give away free money to everyone -- it was to give a tax refund to anyone who pays taxes. if you're poor enough to not pay taxes, you don't get a tax refund. "

Bob--
Well, that may be the case, but it really sucked for those of us who were working just as hard as everyone else (if not harder!) and didn't get a nickel, while the recipients (most of which needed an extra $300 a whole lot less than you or I) ended up with a nice check. IMHO, it just goes to reinforce the image of W's apparant prejudice against the working poor....

No offense taken--just offering a description of what it's like at the other end of the stick.

C ya,
Dutch

12/15/2004 1:20 PM
Stefaan Van Slycken	I live in a toll-free country (belgium), but France has toll booths on its large roads and from what I heard today Germany started with a toll system, although i think that one applies only to trucks and busses (although I might be wrong). I thought the same thing when I heard it on the radio: they have to make a lot of costs to collect the toll, but I think that when you count the number of cars per minute and multiply that with the toll, you'd be surprised at the amount of money it yields. My first idea is it's a fair system, this way the people that use the roads pay for their maintenance, and the people that rarely travel don't have to pay even more taxes for roads that are mostly worn down because of heavy transportation that uses it year in year out. OTOH, as you staded: does it really pay off?

12/15/2004 1:20 PM

Stefaan Van Slycken

I live in a toll-free country (belgium), but France has toll booths on its large roads and from what I heard today Germany started with a toll system, although i think that one applies only to trucks and busses (although I might be wrong). I thought the same thing when I heard it on the radio: they have to make a lot of costs to collect the toll, but I think that when you count the number of cars per minute and multiply that with the toll, you'd be surprised at the amount of money it yields.
My first idea is it's a fair system, this way the people that use the roads pay for their maintenance, and the people that rarely travel don't have to pay even more taxes for roads that are mostly worn down because of heavy transportation that uses it year in year out.
OTOH, as you staded: does it really pay off?

12/15/2004 9:17 PM
Enzo	I got no $300 check, I am too poor. Serious. I am about to make my annual drive from my home here in Michigan to the Washington DC area to be with family for Xmas. I have driven the route many times over the last forty years. I will drive down to Ohio, take the Ohio turnpike all the way across the state where it turns into the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I follow that another 165 miles until I get off and head south through Maryland on I-70. I pay tolls on the two turnpikes. I will not be paying any taxes in those states. A very large portion of the traffic on those roads is just passing through. They don't pay Ohio taxes either. Raise your taxes all you want, but you are still paying for others to use your road and I am not. I might buy a tank of gas there or I might not. A full tank in Michigan gets me as far as Pittsburg. So they may or may not get a couple bucks in gas tax. Same deal out east. The Baltimore tunnel or the road through Richmond or whatever are along I95, a real busy road, and full of trucks and folks heading somewhere between Boston and FLorida. Taking the Jersey going from DC to NYC doesn't pay anything to NJ unless they toll me. Most toll roads are on busy throughways - roads that have a higher than average percentage of users from outside the area, just passing through. No politician in his right mind would propose to raise your taxes so we can stop charging tolls on the through traffic. It is actually an effective way to support the highway.

12/15/2004 9:17 PM

Enzo

I got no $300 check, I am too poor. Serious.

I am about to make my annual drive from my home here in Michigan to the Washington DC area to be with family for Xmas. I have driven the route many times over the last forty years. I will drive down to Ohio, take the Ohio turnpike all the way across the state where it turns into the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I follow that another 165 miles until I get off and head south through Maryland on I-70.

I pay tolls on the two turnpikes. I will not be paying any taxes in those states. A very large portion of the traffic on those roads is just passing through. They don't pay Ohio taxes either. Raise your taxes all you want, but you are still paying for others to use your road and I am not. I might buy a tank of gas there or I might not. A full tank in Michigan gets me as far as Pittsburg. So they may or may not get a couple bucks in gas tax.

Same deal out east. The Baltimore tunnel or the road through Richmond or whatever are along I95, a real busy road, and full of trucks and folks heading somewhere between Boston and FLorida. Taking the Jersey going from DC to NYC doesn't pay anything to NJ unless they toll me.

Most toll roads are on busy throughways - roads that have a higher than average percentage of users from outside the area, just passing through. No politician in his right mind would propose to raise your taxes so we can stop charging tolls on the through traffic.

It is actually an effective way to support the highway.

12/16/2004 6:00 AM

Matt

quote:
"You can certainly tax for it, but that is a very hard sell whether it's property tax, sales tax, gas tax, whatever type of tax increase you may choose. There is always going to be people who will complain about it in any form."

I agree with that, people just don't get it when it comes to taxes. There have been votes here in Florida on items such as mandating smaller class sizes and people overwhelmingly voted to reduce class sizes yet they also vote to not increase taxes to pay for it. Hello?

Regarding the tolls paid by people passing through; you may not pay taxes in those states you pass through but the folks from those states don't pay taxes in your state (which they may pass through) so that's a push. I can 'almost' see tolls making sense for Turnpikes that allow people to drive across the state, but we have them on all kinds of roads in Florida. The Florida Turnpike is a toll road, I-95 is not. When you get into south Florida those two roads run parallel and you can look over and see the other road.

I did use the Jersey Turnpike once, I thought I was making good time until I had to wait over an hour to pay the toll.

Tolls, lotteries; sure they 'work' to some degree but there are better, more efficient ways.

Page 2 of 3