Gas Taxes

[WolfyOne]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I'm curious, if not taxes, how do we go about paying for those things that make a civilization, well, civilized? A lot of folks complain about taxes and yet they never offer an alternative to taxes. If you're not taxed to pay for roads, how do they get paid for? I suppose private companies could build roads and then charge "whatever the market will bear" for use of those roads but is that really a good idea? If you're not taxed to pay for schools, police and fire departments how do they get paid for? How do we pay for the public libraries or, for that matter, the military?

You say the only ones who come out ahead are the politicians but consider that if it weren't for government then private companies would probably take up building roads and then charge whatever they can get away with charging (and they would have, literally, a captive audience since you would be required to pay for ANY use of the road). If private companies handled public safety (police and fire) do you want to have someone run your credit card *before* a cop or EMT is dispatched to your rescue? Don't you think it is a great thing that you can go to your public library and, for free, get books or DVDs which you only have to pay for if they are late and even then the fees are nominal? These are all benefits. Don't you think it is absolutely fabulous that you can, with a phone you can put comfortably into your pocket, call anyone with a phone anywhere on the planet? I do. The private companies don't put those satellites in orbit, NASA does. Without NASA those satellites wouldn't even exist.

We are ahead of where we would be in the arenas of public safety, public education and infrastructure if we didn't have taxes so I think that, in fact, we derive quite a large benefit for our taxes. As a Supreme Court justice remarked at the beginning of the last century "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society".

I'm open to the idea of paying for these things without taxes if that's possible. So what would you replace taxes with?

Cheers
Aj

Aj, I didn't post the thread to debate you because you happen to know way more than many of us here. My sole purpose was to enlighten others to the taxes they pay in their state at the pump. I personally don't have solutions to a problem that started long ago. I always thought the tolls we paid on the roads were to go to fix the roads as needed, but perhaps I'm wrong. I also think if taxes were taken out of paychecks for roads and really anything else we may need to sustain us in this civilized society, we'd at least know how to budget better with what we have left over. Seems government has figured out what to take from our checks to pay for federal, state, social security, etc. I also think everything you said is great and yes, we've come a long way as a civilized society.