A incorrect solution would be taxing this food beyond reason...

Instead of taxing food, allowing the market to determine the price would make bringing in food from outside more profitable, encouraging suppliers to do so, provided there isn't a monopoly/oligopoly on food.

If travel demand was a liquid as you thought that congestion would be a self fixing problem. You would pay this extra tax in time and frustration and before long demand for the road would go down to reasonable limits.

And that's exactly what's happening. The amount of traffic congestion may be more than what you consider to be reasonable, but obviously not more than what others tolerate or they wouldn't be sitting in traffic and contributing to it. For them, sitting in traffic is better than their feasible alternatives.

Then the tolls came in and the tunnel is now largely unused with less than 1/6th of the forecast traffic...

Then the tolls are too high--above market equilibrium. Remember, I said the tolls should be "a variable price set at the market equilibrium rate".

But like I explained, we are already paying market price.

Obviously not, or there wouldn't be a shortage of road space for the people who want to use it. Remember, when demand exceeds supply, it's because the price is below what people are willing to pay--the "market price."

So you price the roads till you remove congestion, and you've eliminated *necessary* journeys.

No, because journeys were already eliminated due to congestion.

Preventing people from travelling/taxing it beyond reason is only something you would want to do if you wanted to stifle the economy.

If setting the price of something at market equilibrium is "taxing it beyond reason," then you must think eBay's prices are unreasonably high.

Increasing traffic throughput improves the economy, but diminishing returns says that at some point, it's no longer worth the cost. Before you choose to widen a road, you should determine whether the benefits are actually worth the cost.

Adding tolls to roads does not fix congestion, it just makes it more expensive to sit in congestion.

False. Perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory. If people are still sitting in congestion, then the toll is still too low for that particular time of day and day of the week. The solution is to remove the price ceiling.

The idea that most people causing the congestion are on that road unnecessarily and can be induced to not take the journey if you charge them enough.

Of course they can. Perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory.

if the roads are sufficient then you don't have congestion.

That's correct, and when the price of using them is set at the market equilibrium price, the roads will be sufficient in that supply and demand will be in equilibrium. Setting the price below the market equilibrium rate is never a good long-term strategy.

The optimal amount of road lane-miles is not the amount where there's never any congestion when the price is zero, but the amount where the cost of traffic congestion equals the price of the tolls or the cost of adding more road.

Variable pricing does not fix capacity, it rewards incompetence.

And that's why restaurant managers who set different lunch and dinner prices do so because they are incompetent.

No, incompetence is setting the price below the market equilibrium rate as a long-term strategy.

Air is a public good because it is "both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others." Freeways are not public goods because a vehicle taking up space on the road reduces availability of the road to others.

"Nobody drives on the 405 anymore. There's too much traffic." --Yogi Berra

Widening the 405 is an expensive and only temporary band-aid to the problem of traffic congestion. The hamburger analogy explains why:

Let's give everyone free McDonald's hamburgers. Let's put 10,000 hamburgers a day on a table in front of the Capitol (or wherever).

What would happen? People would take and eat the hamburgers, and once word got out, all 10,000 hamburgers would be taken very quickly every day. We may thus infer that because people need food and they really seemed to like those burgers, McDonald's hamburgers are an important public good.

A city planner might notice a problem: those 10,000 hamburgers just aren't enough. They get taken very early in the morning, so not everybody has a chance to get a hamburger. The obvious solution--because burgers are a highly-valued public good--is to provide more free burgers. So the city planner starts to provide 20,000 hamburgers a day.

You can see where this is going. People start going out of their way to get the free hamburgers, and planning their day around that trip. The city has to keep providing more and more free burgers--eventually millions a day--to keep satisfying the demand for free hamburgers.

Free hamburgers are like unpriced freeway lanes. Eventually they will all get taken up. Any city planner (and Elon Musk) should know that a shortage happens when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand. It's much, much easier and cheaper to fix the problem of traffic congestion once and for all with a variable price set at the market equilibrium rate than by trying to build your way out of traffic congestion. Even Randal O'Toole agrees.

If I were a renter looking to buy, I would be looking at neighborhoods whose property values are rising, not at those whose property values are lower but not rising.

More Walmarts will bring jobs.

Will a Wal-Mart bring more prosperity per dollar of incentives than a non-Walmart retailer?

Your $60k house that you paid $415k for...

Who pays $415k for a $60k house? People pay $60k for a house they value at $60k, and $415k for a house they value at $415k.

Don't. Every state already has the power to equalize internet and local sales taxes, by abolishing its local sales tax.

The sales tax is regressive and discourages commerce. Because this goes contrary to the welfare and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government should be actively discouraging the use of a sales tax, not encouraging it.

Further, the sales tax encourages cities to offer incentives to big-box stores and give them a competitive advantage over small businesses. On the other hand, a property tax encourages cities to make land-use decisions that increase property values. I would rather have higher property values in my city than more Wal-Marts, wouldn't you?

We need legislation based on evidence (not dogma), budget items prioritized by Return on Investment (any increase in expected tax revenue as a result of government spending), and market failures corrected (polluter pays, etc.).