World Economic Forum on Twitter, 18 November 2016.
California has the highest income tax rate in the USA (top tier of 14.4 per cent), the highest statewide sales tax rate (7.25 per cent, plus local sales taxes), and the highest fuel tax rate ($0.78 per gallon). The old joke is that California would tax the air we breathe if it could. Well, California’s latest tax proposal comes close. The state is recruiting drivers for a pilot program to track and tax the miles they drive.
The plan is borne from the fact that Californians have switched to electric and hybrid vehicles at a faster rate than other US states because of the state’s green initiative which has convinced Californians to switch to hybrid or electric vehicles from combustion engine vehicles.
While electric vehicles are more expensive, Californians were enticed to buy them because of the subsidies and savings they would enjoy by no longer having to buy gas. But like most government programmes, this was not well thought out. California has lost millions in tax revenue because of this scheme and now needs to make up for that. From the many options available to it, it has chosen a plan to begin tracking drivers with GPS monitors.
Under the new plan, according to Caltrans, mileage could be tracked by plugging an electronic device into a vehicle or using the vehicle’s tracking system.
There’s no telling what the government may use this new information for. The main page of the Caltrans website for the program, entitled “California Road Charge,” presents the tagline “Funding transportation in an equitable way.” There’s that word again. Government-imposed “equity” can take any number of forms. On the next page, it states that the charge is “Fair. Transparent. Sustainable.”
By charging an exorbitant fee per mile, it could effectively reduce the number of cars on the road to reduce climate change. It could also easily charge varying fees based on driver income to impose “equity.”
It could also charge varying fees based on miles driven, penalising those who the government determines drive too much.
In California, basic needs such as roads, schools, and safety take a back seat. State politicians are more focused on changing the earth’s temperature, rectifying the scourge of slavery and building housing for all.
The above is paraphrased from the article ‘California’s Latest Tax Idea: Charge Drivers by the Mile’ published by The Epoch Times. You can read the full article HERE. Sharing excerpts from the article, Patrick Wood made the following comment.
By Patrick Wood
This Technocratic lunacy has been building for years. I wrote three years ago: “Oregon was the first state to consider a mileage tax that would track all of your mileage, with a GPS device, on which roads or streets you drove, and then send a personalised tax bill to each driver. Excess mileage could be charged an extra carbon tax. Now Buttigieg is bringing this to the national level.”
Why own a car? This pay-to-drive scheme essentially turns your car into a rental (think Hertz) where you absorb all the capital and maintenance costs, and then pay a mileage fee to boot. When consumers figure this out, the auto industry is kaput. Thereafter, it is Technocracy.
The Technocracy Study Course addressed this clearly in 1934:
Whereas, at the present time, one buys an expensive automobile, and leaves it parked the greater part of the time in front of his house as evidence of conspicuous consumption, the automobiles that we are speaking of would have to be kept in operation. This would be accomplished by instituting what would resemble a national ‘drive it yourself’ system.
The Automotive Branch of Transportation would provide a network of garages at convenient places all over the country from which automobiles could be had at any hour of the night or day. No automobiles would be privately owned. When one wished to use an automobile, he would merely call at the garage, present his driver’s license, and a car of the type needed would be assigned to him.
When he was through with the car, he would return it either to the same garage, or to any other garage that happened to be convenient, and surrender his Energy Certificates in payment for the cost incurred while he was using it.
Don’t tell me that Technocracy is not in play here…