Privatization cp ddi 2012 1 Privatization + Coercion 1
Individual liberty comes first -- rejecting every instance of coercion is key
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- Raising taxes is normal means for any infrastructure development
Individual liberty comes first -- rejecting every instance of coercion is key.Petro, 1974 [Sylvester, Professor of Law at NYU, Toledo Law Review, Spring, p. 480, http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200304/0783.html] However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no importance because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Dijas. In sum, if one believed in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.
(Ryan and Lyle, “We Must Raise Connecticut's Gas Tax To Fix Roads, Bridges”, Last year, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed a 3-cent-per-gallon increase in the state's gas tax. The General Assembly rejected it out of hand. This year, the lawmakers had better find the courage to pass it, politically unpopular though it may be. The state's roads and bridges need to be repaired, and the people who repair them don't work for free. That the state faces major transportation challenges ought to be obvious to anyone who drives, bikes, walks or rides buses or trains. To wit: •75 percent of Connecticut's roads are in "less than good" condition and 34 percent of the state's bridges rank as "deficient," according to the Federal Highway Administration. •Pedestrians and cyclists face unnecessary fatalities and injuries because of outdated road designs that favor (speeding) automobiles over other users of the road. •Record transit ridership is challenging a creaking transit system. Step one in solving these challenges is to invest our transportation dollars wisely. This means repairing our existing roads and bridges rather than building new ones, and improving our bus and rail systems so that more people have an alternative to the car. Our transit systems support town centers. Development there means less demand for new infrastructure to subsidize inefficient, sprawling development patterns. But, as was highlighted a transportation finance forum this winter, no matter how strategic our decision-making, Connecticut's elected officials will still need to make tough decisions about transportation funding. If they don't, Connecticut's transportation network will continue to deteriorate, hindering economic development and burdening our environment. For years, elected officials have diverted millions of dollars from the main source of transportation revenue — gas taxes — to other state initiatives, a practice that has hobbled the ability to maintain transportation infrastructure. The fact that the state gas tax stands at 15 cents less than it was in 1998 hasn't helped shore up Connecticut's transportation system, either. Connecticut has relied heavily — some would say too heavily — on federal funds for highways, bridges and other infrastructure. For example, 54 percent of the state's current transit funding comes from federal sources. That revenue stream could slow to a trickle if the transportation bills being discussed in Congress become law. Highway funding will be level at best. The proposal before the House would slash transit funding, a prospect that does not bode well for the state. The transportation bill being discussed in the Senate is somewhat better for transit riders, but would cut dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure by about 30 percent from current levels. The House version of the bill could be even worse for safe street infrastructure: It would eliminate dedicated pedestrian safety programs such as those that create safer walking routes to schools. This translates to real dollars lost from Connecticut's transportation coffers. In 2011, at least 75 percent of Connecticut's funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure came from Washington. Although Gov. Malloy's proposed budget adjustment diverts revenues generated from recent hikes in bus and rail fares to uses other than transit, he did ensure that nearly $100 million more of the existing wholesale tax on gasoline went to its original purpose, transportation, in last year's budget. The reason the state needs the 3-cent hike in the gas tax is to generate $45 million to support a year's worth of the state's "Fix-it-First" bridge program, which rehabilitates aging bridges. Some of these bridges have to be fixed now. Because federal funding is increasingly unpredictable, the state must decrease its dependence on Washington. The 3-cent gas tax increase is a first step. The state must also look at other financing tools, such as congestion pricing or tolling of existing limited-access highways to support our transportation system into the future. These options will help create a fair, balanced and sustainable system — one that could be less reliant on the gas tax — for the future. Links – General – 2 Tax payers are unknowingly coerced into funding transportation infrastructure that only favors the individuals that pay moreWallis (Professor of Econ @ UMaryland) 2010 (John Joseph, “The Constitution of Coercion: An extension of Wicksellian thinking about violence and the ordering of society”, http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/images/coercion/WallisCoercion.pdf) chip The most frequent problems in the United States, however, did not involve coercion through violence but the coercion through structure of taxes and expenditures. Under a unanimity rule, individuals who receive higher benefits from expenditures should receive them if they are willing to pay higher taxes. Farmers in the old northwest (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) wanted to build better transportation infrastructure. They understood the logic of unanimity and obtained a political compromise to build canals using debt finance by switching their property taxes from per acre taxes to ad valorem taxes. The explicit argument was made that the those who benefit most from the canal should pay higher taxes, and since property values capitalized the value of lower transportation costs and ad valorem tax system enabled New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to obtain political consensus behind enormous investments in transportation (Wallis 2003, 2005). These investment looked good ex ante, but ex post they turned out to be real problems. After the economic downturn in 1839, states stopped construction on their canals, property values fell (particularly along proposed canal routes), and tax payers throughout the state ended up bearing an unexpected tax burden. Wicksell understood that the unanimity rule should not apply to taxation to repay debts. But taxpayers who were now forced to endure higher taxes to repay debts that were supposed to be serviced out of promised canal revenues. Voters and taxpayers could foresee this happening again and again. As a result, in the 1840s many American states began changing their constitutions. An important change was a movement to general taxation, which required that all property be assessed on the same basis and taxed at the same rate. States began requiring that legislatures pass general incorporation laws allowing any one to form a corporation and began prohibiting legislatures from creating special corporations with unique privileges. And to round out the package, state began requiring state wide bond referendums to approve higher taxes before any new debt could be issued. The motivating idea for these changes was not unanimity, but impersonality. State government learned that a wide a general political consensus could more easily be crafted by legislatures if they were allowed to treat different individuals differently (different in either their39 geographical or economic location). Ex ante these compromises looked good politically, but ex post if the compromise did not work out as anticipated, some groups were inevitably left holding a bigger bag than they anticipated. Links – General – 3 Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.35 Mb. Share with your friends:
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