Shaping the infrastructure bill

They are talking about a big infrastructure bill. Paying for it is the hard part. Maybe they should just print the money? Eventually, there might be bad consequences to that.

Raising taxes is not easy to do. Gas taxes pay for a lot of the infrastructure since a big chunk of it is transportation.

I've often thought that the idea of a carbon tax could be combined with the idea of infrastructure. Have the carbon tax go to infrastructure as one of the big needs is making the infrastructure more green.

A carbon tax would hit gasoline heavily, but it would also hit electric power, heating, manufacturing and so forth that uses fossil fuels. It would create an advantage for non fossil fuel sources for these things.

Still a hard sell as these kind of taxes tend to be regressive. They hit consumers, but of course it's consumers that are consuming.

Taxing the rich is kind of a way around this, but it does seem like an argument against taxing the rich still holds sway with a lot of Americans. Too many people still feel that taxing the rich puts a drag on the economy and kills jobs.

It's like they kind of have us over the barrel on that.

I've often liked the idea of carbon taxes, but in the world of transportation, an opposite need is growing. Cars that don't use fossil fuels, such as electric cars, still use the roads. Eventually, they need to pay for their use of the roads also.

This wouldn't be a carbon tax if their electricity comes from non fossil fuel sources. It would have to be something like a per mile tax and also a weight tax for wear and tear on the roads.

Then there is the thought about all the space cars take up in a city. Parking, highway lanes and so forth. Promoting public transit, walking, bicycling and density is better, in my opinion, than sprawl.

This could be figured into the infrastructure bill also.

So many contradicting demands. It isn't an easy thing to do. Like so many things, it starts with how Americans wish to live and build our towns, cities and countryside. Everyone has different ideas.

Maybe there will be consensus evolving that leads us to a different future, but seems also likely to just bog down, as usual. I hope we can at least evolve somewhat. Take some steps.