Originally Posted by
Gresp15C
Taking use taxes to the point of absurdity, matching every penny of tax with a corresponding penny's worth of use, would require a bureaucracy bigger than the number of taxpayers. Assigning use taxes on a less fine grained basis requires theories about how things are used and money is spent -- those theories are unavoidably political. So you're back with what we have right now, which is a hodgepodge of user fees based on what the policy-makers consider to be politically palatable. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing -- it's how a representative democracy works.
In our society, it's unavoidable that each of us pays for goodies that we don't benefit from, but that someone else does, while enjoying the overall rise in prosperity supported by a complex, modern economy.
I have another concern about the tax, which is that I have several bikes, but can only ride one of them at the time. My state has a $15/y user fee for the state bike trails, but at least I can use it with any bike. And I pay no fee for state parks if I arrive by bike.
Agree with your points. There is an efficiency in folks recognizing that some "overlap" in what they pay is less costly and intrusive than strict allocation. That said, there are an awful lot of cases where revenues go into the general fund, ostensibly to support "X", and "X" never sees a penny. This is called corrupt representative democracy!
My SIL is a teacher in the Chicago area, and the union and local goverment negotiated away the teacher's rights to particiate in Social Security. So they don't pay FICA, their money goes to local government. Guess who's not gonna see her full pension? But the money was supposed to go into sequestered accounts!
Another Chicago example, from the Chicago Trib: " ...in an unprecedented analysis of Chicago’s finances, a Tribune investigation found that city officials have long abused their borrowing privileges, spending funds meant for long-term initiatives on problematic short-term expenses from library books to legal settlements. " And " Between 2000 and 2012, Chicago spent $9.8 billion in general obligation bond proceeds with few restrictions and virtually no oversight. "