Discussing VMT

 This came up in the week and it's worth a moment to pause over.

The new guy as Transportation Secretary....Pete Buttigieg....was being asked questions before his confirmation, and he came to the topic of a Biden idea....a 1-trillion infrastructure project (basically roads and bridges across the nation).

On one side....most everyone is agreeable to replacing or renovating a ton of bridges in the nation (more than 200k).  On the other side, no one can explain where this trillion will come from.

So Buttigieg stood there and said that he wants to create a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) program.  As you renewed your registration and got inspected....they would average out the miles and say you owe X-amount (probably figured to your registration fee for the tags, and be federally 'grabbed').

How much would this add up to?  Well....if you traveled 100 miles a day to your place of work....the general estimate would be around 1.7 cents per mile.  So you'd owe $1.70 (per day).  A week?  Adding up to $6.35.  A month?  Around $26.  But that's strictly for work-and-driving.  Then you add in the grocery shopping, your doctor visits, the veterinarian visits, the flea-market visits on Saturday, the pick-up of your pizza, visits to your cousin Earl, night-time rendezvous visits to the Piggly Wiggly cashier-lady who plays the banjo while indecently dressed, and visits to the farm-store for dog-food.  So your monthly tax is going to around $50-to-$70.  

Go figure per year, it'll amount to around $600 minimum and approaching $1000 for fifty-percent of folks.  

So there are three basic problems here.

1.  Would the 1.7-cent scheme stay there, or increase?  I'm of the mind that it'd go within four years to 2-cents and be hooked up to some type environmental policy that never makes sense except to 5th-grade kids.  At the 8-year point, it'd probably go to 2.4-cents per mile.

2.  How many folks would cheat and have the speedometer rigged up?  Ten-percent?  Twenty-percent?  Forty-percent?  I know some mechanically-minded folks in the Netherlands who can rig a speedometer system to any number you desire.  If you wanted to show only 100 miles per year driven....they'd rig it up to say that.  

3.  Why the big push?  Well....in ten to fifteen years....a fair number of cars in America will be electric, and the gas-tax business which pays for the roads and bridges....will be screwed-up entirely.  So arguing against the VMT is nearly impossible at this point.  

Just something to ponder upon.