01-30-2018, 09:42 AM
(01-29-2018, 09:19 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: What is ridiculous is people claiming that road costs are recovered from users of the roads when they plainly are not. The fact that there is a large overlap between taxpayers and road users does not affect this.
Lol. Of course it affects that claim. Just because it is inconvenient for your whole argument doesn't mean you get to ignore it. And the vast majority of people are going to care only if the money is coming out of their pocket - not whether its coming out of their left or right pocket.
(01-29-2018, 09:19 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: The same is true of transit: I’ll bet substantially all users of GRT pay taxes to local municipalities, either directly, or via their landlords. The whole point is that there is a difference between transit (some cost recovery) and roads (none, or almost no cost recovery).
Yes, there's a difference between the two. Although the percentage of transit users is much lower than the percentage of drivers in the general tax base, even counting indirect taxation through rent to a landlord. It is very likely that transit is more subsidized by "Non transit users" than driving is subsidized by "Non drivers". I don't have a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with you pointing out that the funding of transit and roads are different. The problem is when you jump to the illogical claim that driving is completely subsidized.
(01-29-2018, 09:19 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: I just thought of question that may shed some light on this: who pays for our local police, the WRPS? Taxpayers, or the users of the service?
Taxpayers - who are also the users of the service. Of course, even more than roads, a big chunk of the benefit is the presence of the service and not an actual explicit incidence of usage.