From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Subsidies for Roads and Cars in the USA
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 22:23:29 GMT

In article <donb.718313663@crash> donb@crash.cts.com (Donald Bowen) writes:
>In <1992Sep30.120521.16948@news.acns.nwu.edu> len@schur.math.nwu.edu (Len Evens) writes:
>	Fresh produce delivered by truck is speeded to your local salad
>bar over those roads you do not want to pay for.

Absolutely correct. If I wanted to subsidize long-distance farming,
I'd rather find a better way. As is, I *deliberately* avoid buying
such food, and encourage others to do the same. Here in the PNW, I can
grow or buy salad crops locally all year around. I humbly suggest that
those living in regions where this is not so easy either alter their
diets and/or seek methods of year-round farming that will work for the
foods they'd like to eat.

>	The cost of delivery by truck is paid for by the shipper.  The truck
>owner pays heafty fees and taxes to use the road.  

As has been pointed out many times, nowhere near as "heafty" [ sic] as
the damage they cause in relation to other road users.
						    
>	Trucks are taxed heavly because the taxes are hidden from most
>voters.  The well developed interstate and local highway system is what
>makes it possible for some of us to live in an apartment, ride bycicles to
>work and pretend that we get no benefit from the roads.

Local highways are not payed for out of the same pot as interstates,
so lets avoid mixing them up. Interstates do nothing to help me
pretend that I live anywhere, nor do they encourage me to ride my
bicycle to work. Local highways (by which I assume you mean state down
to city level) indeed are tremendously useful on a day-to-day basis,
and I pay for them in my property tax bill each year. 

I will agree with you if you're arguing that indirect benefits of
roads (gained mostly through transportation of goods) are so much
greater than direct benefits (gained by driving your car, or taking a
bus on them) that overall, virtually everyone derives the same
benefits (and thus should pay an amount toward them that is in some
sense "equivalent").

However, this is not even close to explicit in the current system, and
I believe that it is far from clear that indirect benefits equal, let
alone surpass, direct ones. I also have no idea on what the general
idea of the population would be if these issues *were* made explicit.

>	If you want to jump on road building, get after the political hacks
>that use road bulding "demonstration Projects" to buy votes and get fat
>campaign contributions.  Get after the people that have to drive a car to go
>2 blocks to the fast food joint because "it is to hard to walk in high heels."

I'd rather go after the "average" american who, by some accounts, will
not walk more than 1/4 mile to go anywhere, high-heels or not, and who
thinks that tomatoes year round is a normal way of life.

-- paul

-- 
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a
little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider
price only are this man's lawful prey.
						John Raskin
From: curry@hplred.HP.COM (Bo Curry)
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 20:03:48 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: . . . Radioactive Sand Proves Nuclear Reprocessing Unlawful
Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto CA