Cars and Taxes.

I know that one of the the things I have gone on about on this blog is the relationship between Americans and their cars. I can't think of any other accessory that makes people act more selfish than the automobile. Let some slight and weak individual get behind the wheel, and soon he/she is acting like they are the"alpha male" of his/her tribe. Somehow the 1000 lbs+ of metal and plastic armor surrounding them makes folks pretty bold. Things they would never consider doing when approaching a stranger on a back alley night-time street become standard operating procedure. I know you've seen examples of what I'm talking about. Soccer moms flip you the bird. Little men in suits tail your bumper. Wizened elders act like they own the road. Pull up next to one of these drivers and try to confront them through their open window, and you get a sense of their perceived invulnerability. It's a lot of big, big talk.

Considering the way advertising portrays car ownership, I guess it's easy to understand why so many are afflicted with preposterous ideas. Cars are one of the most obvious conveyances of status in this society. Americans revel in their ability to purchase the biggest, most expensive automobiles- regardless of the effects their decisions have on the environment, politics, the economy, or their fellow human beings. People justify their consumer choice with platitudes of their own self-importance. They will point out that they have worked to realize their dream of owning a Hummer. They believe that others will admire them for owning a Lexus SUV. They are keeping up with the Joneses. Their convertible sports car will get them laid in their middle age. Their Porsches and BMWs will help them "close the deal". Or otherwise they are merely enjoying their God-given "freedoms".

Take a look at how self-satisfied and smug your fellow drivers are, as they chat on their cellphones and blindly cut you off in traffic. Or just bring up the topic in conversation. It seems that a lot of folks don't even need to be in their cars to think and act completely irrationally when it comes to their vehicular "rights". Americans lose all sense of logic and fairness when it comes to their automobiles. A recently proposed bill in the PA state legislature and the resulting "discussion" on AM talk radio clearly illustrate the perceptions of many of our fellow citizens. Under a GOP plan, tolls would be places on PA interstates 78, 79, 80, 81, and 95. The rationale behind this legislation is that it is needed for bridge and road repair. It's an alternative to leasing the PA turnpike or increasing the state fuel tax. The tolls would be administered by the Turnpike Commission.

What are the responses to these tolls? They are predictably almost universally negative. Put aside for a moment the irony of Republican party politicians advocating that drivers pay for the services they use, while they bitch about high taxes on gasoline out of the other side of their mouths. These are the exact same guys that would like to see the entire interstate system privatized- as if that would increase the accountability of the people that maintain the roads... as if making it a for-profit venture is going to reduce the ultimate costs for drivers. Most people simply don't want to pay for a road system out of their own pockets. If they pay at the pump- then the government is gouging them, and the oil companies can blame our leaders for the high prices. When you bring up the prospect of tolls, you hear a lot of crying about how the politicians are corrupt and inefficiently spending what tax monies they do collect. They say that PennDot shouldn't require anymore money whatsoever. No matter what the government does to remedy the condition of our roads, they will always be charged with corruption and waste.

Simultaneously, the same people that bitch about the flaws in the government's operation and maintenance of the interstates will whine whenever there is talk of an increase in the funding of public transportation. Why should suburbanites and exurbanites have to pay for city folk to get around? Never mind that the lives of those outside the cities are subsidized by federal and state tax dollars that urbanites pay out of their wages. The factors that have allowed people to escape and ignore the social problems in the city are cheap oil and the public subsidization of interstate roads. People bitch about the (actually very small) percentage of their tax dollars that is earmarked for social programs to help the lower classes. Yet no one ever talks about the fact that our federal government artificially depresses the price of gasoline in this country with an aggressive and costly foreign policy. It's a vicious cycle that keeps our economy wholly dependent on the rapidly failing oil paradigm.

Somehow this reality never gets talked about on AM radio, or among "free market" conservatives. And while cities can be transformed to meet the changing variables of time, suburban/exurban development and its accompanying "car-culture" are not only unsustainable- but also so artificial and wasteful that they can't ever be transformed into something useful. The strip malls and the sprawl model of development are only possible with the state and federal government subsidization. The only source of such funding is taxes. Period. Now shut up and pay.