From: johniac@austin.ibm.com (John Iacoletti/100000)
Subject: Re: The end of the Reagan Era
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 23:03:54 GMT
Organization: IBM Advanced Workstations and Systems, Austin, TX
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fred j mccall 575-3539 (mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote:
: So do I need to apologize because I know more about economics that you
: do?  Well, pardon the hell out of me.

It depends on what your purpose for being here is.  If it's to impress
everybody with your knowledge, it's not working.  If it's to convey information
to other people, then it would be nice if you'd take off the "I'm an economics
god, you're not worthy" broken record, and back up your statements with 
substance.  If you can't explain your assumptions behind your claim that
full-costing and free-riders applies to gasoline, then don't make the claim.
No, you don't have to explain the terms in great detail--I can (and did) look
them up.  If you can't describe these assumptions in one paragraph, then I
submit to you that you're bullshitting, never mind a thousand pages.

: >The government doesn't use gas tax money to do anything about air 
: >pollution.  
: 
: What the government currently does is irrelevant to a discussion of
: tax policy as a corrective action insofar as full costing goes.  The
: government makes no effort to impose full costing via tax policy.
: However, last time I checked the discussion was over hypothetical
: changes, not over what we're doing now.

OK.  You tell me -- why do we pay taxes RIGHT NOW on gasoline?

: >Are you talking about road maintenance?  
: 
: In part.  Also about impacts on other economic choices from land use
: for highways and roadways, the cost of injuries and deaths caused by
: automobiles to society, the impact (cost) to others when one more
: person elects to use roadways during a peak use period, and a number
: of other things.

Note that gasoline doesn't do any of these things, so why do we pay taxes on
gasoline?  If I have an electric car, I get a free ride.  If I put gasoline
in my lawn mower, I'm paying for nothing.  Shouldn't externalities be 
handled at the closest point to which they occur?  You know where this is
leading of course -- users fees.

: funniest is that libertarians almost inevitably don't really
: understand the concept because their whole philosophy ASSUMES that the
: market is already imposing full costs on consumers.

If it doesn't, it's usually because of government intervention or wealth
redistribution.  The cost to register your car in most states has nothing to
do with how much pollution it generates or how much wear and tear it puts on 
the roads.  WHY?

: and unfortunately, the market DOESN'T impose such costs.  Hence
: consumers make non-optimal choices on allocation of economic
: resources, buying 'too much' of one thing and 'not enough' of another.

If they do, then they'll have too much of one thing and not enough of another.
Stuff happens.  Better luck next time.

: >people who buy gasoline, but don't use public roads?  
: 
: Any significant user in that class has never had to pay the fuel taxes
: in the first place.  

Why do I have to be a "significant" user to avoid paying for something I don't
use?  The obvious answer is to "tax" the people who use the ROADS if you want
to pay for the roads, not people who buy gasoline.

: Horseshit.  If you understood what full costing means, you wouldn't
: have to 'guess' because what I'm talking about pretty much falls out
: of understanding the concept.

They way you explain how full-costing applies to a particular thing is to 
give examples of the indirect costs.  Instead, you do your little superior dance
around the issue.

--
John Iacoletti       IBM AWS Austin       Internet: johniac@austin.ibm.com
        My opinions do not reflect the views of the IBM Corporation
"When you're following an angel, does it mean you have to throw your body off a 
 building?" -- TMBG
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections