#1 place not to speed

[RWebb]

"For Granny when taxes go up, I agree it's a problem. When land values go up through gentrification, why do government costs (taxes) have to go up as well?"

This often happens b/c of yet another subsidy! Developers rarely pay the full cost of extending public services to their new developments (termed Systems Development Fees in Orygun). Thus, new development causes taxes to rise in order to pay for fire, police, roads, maint., etc. Also, newer and richer occupants often desire higher service levels than the former occupants, esp. in a formerly rural area. Against that, is that a 'granny' will require higher service levels - e.g. more freq. ambulance calls, due to age-related health issues.

One problem with a complete user fee based system, as Hugh espouses, is that it tends to result in a lack of social cohesion. The poor tend to not be interested in serving in the armed forces for example.

2nd problem is the very high transactional costs that arise when someone (the govt.) tries to figure out exactly how much each person needs to pay for every individual societal service. Of course, this also arises for the income based traffic fines -- maybe it should be based on net worth? Or on Net, not Gross income? What deductions are allowed? See where that is going?

[Dave L]

Taking off of Hugh's post;

What about quotas? There are people that view traffic tickets as nothing more than a means to generate revenue. Are the Police now going to specifically target high income earners to hand out their fines?

If there are the 2 cars speeding past the school, the Yugo dishwasher and Bill in his 959 who is the cop going to pull over? The one that will put $20 towards his quota or the one that will put $100k?

The idea of scaling fines to income is a scary proposition. If you want to hurt Yugo or Bill equally then they should each do the same amount of community service work.