Road Taxes Based on Miles Driven, Not Fuel: Take a Hike, Fuel Efficiency!

Nobody ever accused government of being smart except for those who are actually in government. In a world where gasoline-powered vehicles are supposedly the cause of all of our environmental worries, government is stepping in to...take away your incentive for buying a fuel-efficient vehicle, of course. What else would they do?

This headline from Yahoo! news is illustrative of how this works...and how they'll invade your privacy in order to do it: Oregon looks at taxing mileage instead of gasoline

Welcome to the New World Order (of stupidity) chum. I have an idea: why not just tax each vehicle when it's registered and have the money go into the county's road maintenance coffers (as it does now). Then the state can tax the counties for the state-run roads that run through them. That would eliminate the gasoline tax altogether and mean no more worries about who drives how far and how much and how you're going to track it. It just taxes your vehicle's registration, which makes it legally drive-able on public roads.

Those who don't use public roads (e.g. show cars, cars that are trailered-only, such as racing vehicles, and garaged museum pieces) don't get taxed, since there's no point either. Plus the tax is flat: the fairest kind of tax there is. If taxes can ever be called "fair," that is.

Here's another idea: tax the tires people buy to put on their cars that drive on those roads. New tires mean taxes paid. The more you drive, the more often you'll buy tires. Hey! Novel concept! Easy to understand and nobody needs to register anything or be tracked and accounted for.

Nope, these concepts are too easy and logical for government work. Better come up with something that's as complicated, unwieldy, and unfair as possible. Preferably something that creates more government overhead and more government "jobs." Bureaucracy loves to grow, after all. Efficiency is not allowed in government. The two words shouldn't even be in the same sentence.

Ya, welcome to the New World Order (of stupidity).