Taxing by the Mile

by Dave Blount | May 6, 2011 1:31 pm

The primary purpose of federal taxes is not to raise revenue. If it were, the Laffer Curve[1] dictates that rates be lowered, as Reagan and JFK illustrated. Since Big Government prints all the money it wants, essentially taxing us through inflation, the only point of direction taxation is to exert control. That’s why the Obama Regime has come up with a plan to tax drivers by the mile[2]:

The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly. …

News of the draft follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

In addition to giving Big Government a pretext to install tracking devices on our cars, it will also give birth to yet another new bureaucracy devoted to looting us:

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

The proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office.

The liberal ruling class has made it clear at every opportunity that the less we drive, the better they like it. This is not because they are dumb enough to believe that driving your car makes it be too hot out for the polar bears, but because they are smart enough to understand that a mobile population is a difficult population to control. This explains why Comrade Obama has been driving up gas prices by going out of his way to suppress domestic production.

It also explains why the revenue raised would go toward Obama’s high-speed rail boondoggle (PDF[3]), which in addition to throwing our money at his union cronies has the advantage of allowing government to determine where we go and when.

No one traveled around the Third Reich or the Soviet Union without the proper papers. As our soft tyranny congeals into a hard one, transportation will become as critical an issue as disarming us and tightening control on the Internet.

On tips from Kevin R, G. Fox, SR, and wingmann. Cross-posted at Moonbattery[4].

Endnotes:
  1. Laffer Curve: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/06/the-laffer-curve-past-present-and-future
  2. drivers by the mile: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/159397-obama-floats-plan-to-tax-cars-by-the-mile
  3. PDF: http://thehill.com/images/stories/blogs/flooraction/Jan2011/draftdot.pdf
  4. Moonbattery: http://www.moonbattery.com/

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