Oh for fuck's sake

[andrewducker]

There's a BBC News story here saying that the government shouldn't put up petrol taxes...because theey'll hit the poor harder than the rich.

OF COURSE THEY WILL!!!!!

All taxes, except for ones that are (in some way) means-tested, hit the poor harder, because the poor have less money.

If the tax didn't affect people by making it harder to drive everywhere all the damn time, it would be a tad pointless, especially when this is something the government has said it's supposed to encourage.

Oh, the stupidity.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Of course it's a regressive tax - any tax on products is. I can't see any way of taxing petrol that isn't - any more than I can see a way of taxing cigarettes that isn't. But that doesn't stop me being heavily in favour of it.

I'm also largely in favour of bloody-minded environmentalism. But in this case I feel largely justified - Graph 4.1d here shows that spending on public transport has gone up by over 20% since 2001, and while I can't find any figures at the moment, I'm sure I've read that investment in both buses and trains is up quite a lot over the last 10 years.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It depends what kind of investment. While I was at university and still going home every holiday, there were huge amounts being put into the rail in the southeast.

Most of it appeared to be going on simply replacing old trains with new expensive ones that had the same capacity and not actually changing anything else. That might make it cleaner and nicer and safer (all good things, true) but didn't actually do anything to allow more people to travel.

Does that spending on public transport increase include fuel costs? That's gone up a bit since 2001, remember. :-p