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Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

You can lament all you want, Ken Fluffernutter, but I will not work to pay for your vacation. That's not going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.

No amount of definition twisting and and grandstanding will change the fact that no, I will not pay for your plane tickets and parcel deliveries.

The taxes I pay are extracted from my income. And my income is compensation for the time I spend working away from my family, breaking my back or numbing my brain and a return on the the skills and education I spent years and many thousands of bucks to get. With the costs of living and housing rising sharply, it's difficult enough as it is. I will NOT spend a single dime on taxes to pay for the vacations of other people.

Not happening, Ken. Pay for your own stuff.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

Where did you learn to use a calculator? I didn't even check your sources and values, because the math, logic and subject area knowledge alone are terrible enough.

First, maths: you're off by one order of magnitude. 26,8 billion dollars for 16,4 million flights is 1'634 USD per flight. So it's 1,6k per plane, not 16k.

Second, logic: you've duly noted that only 55% of those 16,4 million flights are passenger flights, but calculate them as if they're all passenger flights with 104 pax average per flight, even compounding rounding errors as you go, omitting the 45% cargo-only flights and pretending that shippers for cargo don't need to pay for air traffic security.

Third, subject area knowledge: there are no true scheduled "passenger-only flights" in commercial aviation. What laypeople call "passenger flights" are actually only flights where some air cargo capacity is used by passengers and their luggage. Especially on transcontinental and long-haul flights, "passenger planes" carry an extraordinary amount of air freight and their profitability is hugely dependent on that as well. Making the airline passengers pay the entire flight security tax of that flight would mean the cargo shippers ride tax-free. That's not what we're after.

Cargo shippers, commercial operators, producers, assemblers, too, have their choice of using long-haul trucking, trains, air freight, boats, pigeon carriers or switching to localized production, bulk transport, to and from just-in-time logistics etc.. If company A wants to avoid setting up a warehouse near their production facilities to store all the bits and pieces they need on-site and with sufficient stock to allow for bulk transport, that's their prerogative. Only they can know if the capital assets locked in raw materials are too much compared to just-in-time logistics buying and transporting only the part that's actually needed right now. And air freight costs and air traffic costs play right into that. If company A wants to do just-in-time logistics and company B and C optimize their logistics, localize their production, keep reserves on site? Guess what, A pays the air traffic safety tax, B and C don't.

Same thing. And we can't count the number of boxes or metric tons of cargo vs. passenger counts and the number and weight of their luggage to even properly estimate the actual cost per passenger.

To re-use your simplification to get the absolute upper bound of that tax: if all those 16,4 million flights were passenger-only, air cargo didn't exist like you pretended, and all the flights had 104 passengers on average, then the cost would be 1,6k per flight or 15,71 USD per flight per passenger. Fifteen bucks per flight, at the very maximum, if air cargo didn't exist or was tax-free. And 104 passengers per plane is an absolutely ridiculously low number that applies only to the US domestic market. It doesn't even include the transcontinental flights coming and going to the US, because those are wide-body twin-aisle aircraft that have a LOT more than 104 seats. The top 10 current wide-body aircraft models for long-haul routes have over 200 (737) or over 800 seats (A380). Except these two extremes, most other types carry between 300 and 400 people. They're not flying 70% empty for that "104 passenger on average" number. If airlines actually allow to fly their planes half-empty, that's not a problem for the taxpayer to fix.

No taxation without representation. No taxation to correct or support voluntary and luxury decisions by others. You want it, you pay for it. End of story.

Comment Re: All I can say is duh! (Score 0) 80

My, we are an aggressively stupid dipshit today.

The only thing that meaningfully matters to a cargo ship is size.
Vessels are already slow sailing to artificially constrain bandwidth and prop up rates, and have been since COVID.

Nobody on earth is trying to build FASTER cargo ships, and haven't for 50 years. Jesus Christ. If only slashdot had a "doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about" filter.

Comment Re:Corporations have no social responsibility. (Score 1) 90

I genuinely don't understand why slashdots downvote mafia attacked my former post as troll. Unless I miss my guess I have a fair couple of stalkers that just downvote every post I make, and then pepper my comments with bottish AC replies about Trump and No Kings. :|

Anyway, to your point, if you haven't seen it, I offer for your amusement something relative to your comment from the great Trevor Moore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Comment Re: Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

Any plane will only be given takeoff clearance, if all the costs required to guide it safely to its destination have been paid for.

Anyone who takes off without that clearance gets forced to land by air defense and will be forced to pay for all the costs involving that. Nobody will risk that.

Anyone who lies about the payment of the costs to get that clearance gets docked with these costs and a punitive fine after that. People who risk that will pay later or lose their license to operate an aircraft.

And all of a sudden, all the air traffic safety expenses are paid in full, before the plane took off in the first place, so no plane is ever in the air without air traffic safety.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

If air traffic is a benefit to you, you can pay for air traffic.

I don't pay for your air traffic because you find it too expensive to pay for your air traffic all by yourself.

You can always choose a different mode of transport for you and your package. You chose air traffic, because you wanted that package tomorrow, not next week. You chose air traffic, because you chose to spend your vacation 1000's of miles away. You choose, you enjoy the benefits, you pay the costs. End of story.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

Of course we can attribute the ENTIRE cost structure of air transport to actual users of air transport. We can and we must do that.

If people decide to NOT transport themselves or their things by air they should NOT pay for others that do. Yes, services increase in price. But taxes will go down.

Yes, and we fully, absolutely, vehemently expect all the people who choose a mode of transport to pay for the cost of their chosen mode of transport.

And that includes taxing people for driving on public roads and excluding any and all road building and road maintenance costs from all other taxes. If that makes suburbian asphalt deserts unsustainable, too bad.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

And THAT is the correct interpretation.

The government collects a tax explicitly earmarked for air traffic and air safety from air passengers and air package deliveries. And then it lumps these taxes together with all other taxes and doesn't pay it out to the thing it was explicitly earmarked for.

That is corruption and a failed state. It is defrauding the tax payers.

Comment Re:Why does THE STATE have to pay for all this? (Score 1) 228

I want air passenges and air cargo recipients to pay for air transport. John who receives the package will pay for the cost of transport. Steve who does not receive the package does not pay for the cost of transport.

Cost of transport includes everything that is needed to make the transport safe.

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