> tend to forget how good we have it

That is an interesting perspective. We do not forget how good we have it, because we choose not to put high taxes on gasoline and diesel. Do drivers in the UK tend to forget that taxes are more than half the retail price they pay at the pump? Sometimes way over half. That is a policy decision.

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amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the US, roads are paid for by other taxes instead. Property taxes for local roads, and general fund monies (income, sales, and inflation) for highways. Unfortunately that hides the real cost of using the roads, and makes it harder for people to make good choices. This seems unlikely to change though.

	▲	rootusrootus 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think it is a complicated issue. People who do not drive still benefit from having a road going to their house. Either for deliveries, or for emergency vehicles, or whatever personal transportation they do end up using. So we want to spread the cost around a bit so everyone is paying something, in a perfect world as close as possible to how much they benefit from it. I imagine it also varies somewhat across the US. Locally, our city does not use property taxes for road maintenance, we have a pavement fee which is billed through the utilities system (same one that handles water & sewer, for example). Plus gas tax from the state. It could be argued that the distinction between the pavement fee and property taxes is subtle, though.

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zdragnar 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most of us laugh at the high taxes and prices in California, not realizing that their prices are reasonable, perhaps even cheap compared to overseas.

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lostlogin 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Depending on where this crisis goes, it’ll be interesting to see what effect it has.

America seems to have a lot of large vehicles that use a lot of fuel. The UK less so.

The tax will have played a part in this (how much?).

	▲	rootusrootus 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I hope we can get the kinks worked out. Even in many 'blue' states, we have created a situation where the road maintenance tax paid by EV owners is twice or more what the typical ICEV driver is paying. I sort of expected that in 'red' states, since punishing EV owners is a political priority, but we see that same crap in Oregon & Washington, for example.