Naming an extraordinarily unusual retailer does not bolster your point.
Of course it does. It's AN example of what I'm talking about. There are plenty of retailers who pay entry-level employees more than minimum wage. Why? Because they want to keep them around - churn is expensive, even at the stock/clerk level. Flipping burgers isn't supposed to be a career. You're not supposed to do things like have babies while you're on your first, menial job.
If it is fair to say the person using the roadway should pay it's cost because they get the benefit, it's fair to point out that 70-90% of the benefit is gotten by their employer.
Nonsense.
The employer personally uses the road to drive to his business. Done.
The employees use the road the same way. Done.
The business' customers also use the road the same way (when visiting that store). Done.
All of them spend a bit of time on the road, and pay taxes on the fuel they burn in order to pay for the service of having the road available to them.
When the business owner receives a shipment of new shoes, he's paying the freight company (or his supplier is, and passing that cost along in one way or another) to make that delivery. That's a different use of the road. Big rigs and busy commercial operators are (in most places) taxed differently because they are buying a different class of service from the city, county, state, or federal agency that maintains the road they're using. The business owner picks up a portion of that higher wear-and-tear cost by being a paying customer of the freight company that is being taxed based on their heavy vehicles/use.
Your world view, which includes the government being involved in the running of the shoe store and going over everyone's books to decide when a shoe sale is profitable so that the shoe store owner (who may actually lose money that year, even while his employees earn taxable income) can be capriciously taxed at a much higher rate as he drives his Hyundai the same 5 miles to work as his sales people, is just a thinly veiled dose of contempt for people who own businesses. The guy is already paying property taxes as he locates and operates his store, and countless other fees.
You want to use MORE tax dollars to keep a running tally on what percentage of the value of a road's use is reflected in the ebbing and flowing profitability of all of the businesses that might be located somewhere along or connected to a given municipality's various types of roads? Wow, it's a Progressive's wet dream! That would require enormous numbers of new bureaucrats, funded by whole new tax schemes, just to allow that to (badly) take place. All so that you punish the business owner, or his better-than-average sales person, for making more money than someone else at the end of exactly the same commute.
Even if your fantasy of "percentage of value" could EVER be calculated as millions of people and businesses use the roads in different ways on different days, what would be the point? I know: your point is that you don't like the idea of government being thought of as a service provider, you like it when they are directly involved in people's personal business decision making, as a forced partner in their budgeting and profit considerations. All of this in the service of what
If you're not 100% certain that the complete details of your trip will be stored for the indefinite future in Ft. Meade or Utah, I have a bridge across the Grand Canyon I'd like to sell to you.
Oh yes, and thank you, Edward Snowden, for courageously doing what is right.
Then you are compensating for the guy who only does 90% of his miles in Oregon, but the car is registered outside of the state.
Who cares? Because if you do 20k miles across the state line, you're going to be paying $6,000 to the state for activity you didn't conduct there. I don't care if it's the opposite for some other guy. I would care that this year, presto, my disposable income just dropped by $6,000 for no good reason.
This tax, and the one it replaces, would charge people commuting to McDonalds equally with the owners of McDonalds even though the owners get somewhere between 70-90% of the economic benefit from that road use.
So? The government is providing a service: a way for both the owner and the employee (and the customers, and the vendors/contractors, and the police if they're needed, etc) to get to that restaurant. If you use that service (by driving on the road), you should pay some amount towards the maintenance of the road. Why someone is using the road should be absolutely none of your business, or the government's. Your notion that road taxes should be higher if you make more money than someone when you get where you're going is
What about two shoe salesmen who drive down the same road to the same store to go to work? One is a poor communicator, never takes a shower, and can never seem to handle more than one customer at a time. His co-worker has his act together, and customers respond well by buying more shoes. He makes three times the commission, which translates to a much better income. You're suggesting that he (the better shoe salesman) should be charged more to use the same road because he's not a lazy idiot. Smart? Productive? Eeeeevil! Quick, tax that evil person for being more productive! Utter foolishness, and I'd just laugh it off
if they are taxing mileage, why don't they just look at your odometer instead of needing to install a GPS to track everywhere you go?
What if you put 90% of the year's miles on while doing a road trip that takes you out of Oregon?
Parent and grandparent - tell that to the Marines. An Osprey had a "hard landing" (hah!) in Hawaii May 18. One Marine was killed and 21 hospitalized. There was a pall of black smoke rising from the "hard landing".
Should also tell that to the service members who are killed or injured in (by comparison) quite frequent helicopter mis-haps? We're talking about crashes and hard landings in aircraft that have long, long histories of service. Shit happens when you're trying to land a big heavy machine with spinning rotors - happens with fixed-wing aircraft, too.
We are not talking about a single person, but a systematic attack on poor people
Really. How are poor people being attacked? Is it by giving them free education, if they'll only take advantage of it? Is it by giving them free health care, if they'll bother to show up? Is it by handing them "refunds" on income taxes they don't even pay, which are collected from somebody else?
the lack of social support
What? Social entitlement spending is the lion's share of our entire government budget. It's huge, and we're drowning in it. I know, if only we just spent even more, prosperity among poor people would suddenly erupt, right? Like, say, in Baltimore
I understand if you are particularly patriotic and don't like people pointing out shortcomings in "your country", but your response is doing nothing to address the real problems, meaning if they do exist, you are doing your utmost to make sure they are never fixed.
What are you talking about? I'm pointing out exactly what the problem is: household culture. I live in a county that is pure melting pot. 20 years in a neighborhood where I was in one of only two "white" households for blocks in every direction. What do I observe? Across the street, a family living in subsidized housing. Multiple generations of unemployable, functionally illiterate people under one roof. The kids from that house attend exactly the same school system as the kids the next house over
So you stand those two households next to each other. They "look" the same, they both could be said to be in exactly the same economic condition ten or fifteen years ago. But one is living on the dole, getting free housing from the county, food stamps, and regular visits from social services while their kids have grown up to be petty criminals in and out of brushes with the law while dropping out of high school. The other family has overcome a language barrier, the lack of funds, serious social displacement, and whatever extra burden may be perceived as coming along with having dark African skin tones
So who "fixed" their situation? They did. Who is trying to "fix" the perpetually poor family next door? A parade of government services people, programs, and tens of thousands of other people's dollars, year in, year out. Do you REALLY think that that household is poor because other people are prosperous? Your BS about the "wealth gap" is just that: BS. The amount of prosperity isn't fixed, it's grown with effort by those who put in the effort. I did, though, enjoy your ironic judgement of me while you're lecturing me about judging others. Hilarious! Keep up the good entertainment.
There aren't that many high paying wage or wage that pay above 15$ an hour and there is already a fierce competition for them.
Companies cannot find enough people with even modest intellectual skills to hire (and retain) for even modestly skilled jobs with much better than minimum wages paid. Hell, there are landscaping companies around here who will pay $20/hour for anyone that will consistently show up to shovel. Costco hires even the most basic, unskilled shelf-stackers for well above minimum wage (closer to $19).
Are you one of those which think the poor are lazy ?
Actually, in many cases that's exactly the problem. But kids born in to families where doing the work needed to become a decent high school graduate is considered unimportant or too much trouble have lazy parents to thank for that - the kids themselves usually don't know better until it's already too late to form decent habits.
You need money for a proper education
No, no you don't. The taxpayers around you will pay for your education through high school. And if you've don't anything even close to working hard, you'll have the academic background needed to get anything from substantial subsidies to full scholarships in higher education. I worked while in college, to have money. Did you?
Frankly your kind of thought are so short sighted , you should get glasses for your brain.
You have no idea where prosperity comes from, apparently.
(High-)School is mandatory and free here.
As it is in the US. But that doesn't mean that teenagers can be forced to actually attend, let alone to learn anything while they're there. Past a certain age, they can just walk away. The alternative would be to run bastions of learning as if they were literally prisons. The point is that in many cases the choice to ignore the opportunity to learn is just that: a choice. Dumb kids don't understand that choice, which is why parents matter.
"Engineering without management is art." -- Jeff Johnson