If you don’t wan’t your dog to run away, you leash him. The government doesn’t want you to run away, either – but has a different kind of leash in mind.
The commuter tax.
It’s called the mileage tax but like so many things being pushed down our throats the term used doesn’t describe what’s actually meant.
What’s described by proponents such as Rep. Peter DeFazio, a liberal Democrat from Oregon who unfortunately chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is a merely modern replacement for the gas tax.
But what’s meant is a tax on driving – and the distinction is critical to grok.
When you buy gas, part of what you’re paying is tax, about 50 cents or so in federal and state taxes, folded into the price. But where – and how far – you go aren’t taxed.
The commuter tax (and DeFazio wants a federal commuter tax) will tax them both – punishing you for distance – which means punishing commuters and others who need to drive more rather than less to get to and from their place of employment.
As well as just driving, period.
Put another way, it will be a new nudge – to use the word favored by the the coercive utopians pushing this – to get people to not drive as far or as much. To nudge them closer to cities they want the proletariat herded into – by making it cost too much to live “too far” away from them.
Interestingly, it will do this by punishing people who bought an efficient car – for the sake of reducing their cost to drive.
Which will go up, if this new tax comes to pass – as DeFazio and others in Congress, including a number of “conservative” Republicans such as Rep. Same Graves of Missouri are demanding.
Unless new subsidies are created to compensate the owner of, say, a 40 MPG economy car he will pay the same tax on his driving as the owner of an 18 MPG SUV if they both drive the same distance. There will no longer be any good reason to buy an “economical” car.
And both will have their driving tracked by the government.
The gas tax is anonymous.
You can pay cash. You don’t have to show your “papers.” Uncle has no idea how far you drive – or where.
Or how much tax you’re paying – if you pay cash for your gas.
The commuter tax will require that your car be leashed – electronically – so that Uncle knows everywhere you go.
How else could he tax you for how far you go?
And you will be leashed, as well – since the tax is applied to a specific person – you, the car’s owner – rather than anonymously.
“Papers” will be required.
Among other things, this scheme is also a nudge toward the cashless economy dreamt of by the control freaks and busybodies who constitute “the government – who cannot stand the idea that every single transaction isn’t known unto them. Worst of all, that there might be people out there “getting away” with not paying their “fair share” of taxes by using that loathsomely anonymous mechanism for transacting their business – cash money.
The mileage tax will mean the end of privacy as regards our mobility – as well as economically.
And the commuter tax would nudge something else as well – us, out of cars that lack the “tech” to be taxed in this manner.
Cars made before the OBD era, specifically.
“OBD” is the acronym for On Board Diagnostics – which every new car has come standard with since the mid-1990s. Every car has a universal OBD port – like a USB port for your devices. This port serves as the umbilical connection for scanning tools used to obtain data from the car’s computer memory – including “trouble codes” stored indicating the need for service – but also such things as how many miles the car has been driven.
A “mileage meter” is plugged into the OBD port and automatically reports your mileage driven to the government, which then duns you – probably via automatic debit from your bank account.
It works like a Smart Meter. The power company no longer needs to send a guy out to your house.
And more.
Smart Meters monitor electricity usage, just as your driving will be monitored. And both lay all the necessary technical groundwork for controlling usage – and driving.
But this commuter tax only works on cars that have this electronic leash – so to speak. Older cars – and motorcycles – with mechanical speedometers (and without computers) can’t be kept track of remotely. They are free range transportation. Anonymous. Untraceable. Easily “tampered” with.
That probably won’t be allowed.
Not directly, of course. These creeps are subtler nowadays; they have learned it goes down easier if done elliptically. No outright ban on older vehicles. Just a new regulation – or several – that mandate compliance with the commuter tax in some functionally onerous or economically untenable manner, such as that they be fitted with the tech necessary to keep track of their mileage
If you can’t afford to modify your older car or motorcycle so that it is “compliant,” you can no longer drive it.
Easy Peesy.
“That’s where we’re headed in the future,” DeFazio recently eructed.
If so, it’s a worrisome future – if you worry about the implications of taxing people for driving – as such.
And despise the idea of herding people into urban hives – so that the countryside can be opened up for the elites, like DeFazio, who are behind the herding.