Senate Bill S.786 could kill NWS internet weather products

I agree a fuel tax is pretty simple, however, do you know how high that tax would have to be to support the entire aviation infrastructure? [...] I don't know where to get an accurate assessment of the real cost of our aviation system

Costs are only half the story. Benefits are the other half. There are
invisible benefits to the system (any system) which also need to be
figured in.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

I agree a fuel tax is pretty simple, however, do you know how high
that tax would have to be to support the entire aviation
infrastructure? [...] I don't know where to get an accurate
assessment of the real cost of our aviation system


Costs are only half the story. Benefits are the other half. There are
invisible benefits to the system (any system) which also need to be
figured in.

Such as?

Matt

Costs [of public infrastructure] are only half the story. Benefits are the other half. There are invisible benefits to the system (any system) which also need to be figured in.


Such as?

I'm not going to answer specifically, because I can't prove them. They
are hidden - that's what hidden means. But consider the following.

Where I live we recently discussed (with great heat) attracting
corporations to move into our town so that we would get a bigger tax
base. The more taxes paid by corporations, the less we'd have to pay in
property tax. The arithmetic is quite simple and very compelling. It's
also wrong. However, while we can all speculate as to why, it is
virtually impossible to prove. The only verifiable numbers are the tax
rolls, and they clearly show that corporations would pay tax that would
otherwise have to be paid by homeowners.

Nonetheless, looking at neighboring towns and graphing the mil rate
(homeowner tax rate) against the corporate percentage, those towns with
the highest corprorate presence have the highest mil rate. They have
the highest traffic density, the worst schools (schools are supported by
corporate and property tax), the highest prices in the stores... stuff
like that. The reason (I speculate) has to do with the impact of the
corporations on daily life - more cars parking, more roads to be built,
slower speeds, everything takes longer, wealthier people move out...
things like this that don't show up on the balance sheet.

I have no children, but it benefits me to have a good school system.
I'll leave you to figure out why (and it has nothing to do with my
screen name). Therefore, there is a benefit to non-users of the school
system.

The benefits to reliable mail service, reliable transportation (air and
otherwise), reliable telecommunications, extend to people who walk to
the store, don't have a phone, and burn all their mail. It means that
when I walk to the store, they will have what I want. OK, that makes me
an indirect user, but there are lots of indirect users of infrastructure
that are not tracked, but benefit from it.

We all benefit from our water system (unusual in the world in that even
our wash water is potable) because it reduces disease, even if I don't
use water from the system. It is not just the people with the tap that
benefit.

Street lighting could be seen as benefitting the drivers, and so should
be paid by the drivers. However in reducing accidents it also reduces
my health insurance premiums, and it reduces robberies to boot. These
are "invisible" benefits which accrue to non-drivers.

It's little things like this that add up all over the place, just like
little costs also add up all over the place, that make a strict "user
pay" accounting problematic.

Jose

--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

Costs [of public infrastructure] are only half the story. Benefits
are the other half. There are invisible benefits to the system (any
system) which also need to be figured in.



Such as?


I'm not going to answer specifically, because I can't prove them. They
are hidden - that's what hidden means. But consider the following.

Where I live we recently discussed (with great heat) attracting
corporations to move into our town so that we would get a bigger tax
base. The more taxes paid by corporations, the less we'd have to pay in
property tax. The arithmetic is quite simple and very compelling. It's
also wrong. However, while we can all speculate as to why, it is
virtually impossible to prove. The only verifiable numbers are the tax
rolls, and they clearly show that corporations would pay tax that would
otherwise have to be paid by homeowners.

Nonetheless, looking at neighboring towns and graphing the mil rate
(homeowner tax rate) against the corporate percentage, those towns with
the highest corprorate presence have the highest mil rate. They have
the highest traffic density, the worst schools (schools are supported by
corporate and property tax), the highest prices in the stores... stuff
like that. The reason (I speculate) has to do with the impact of the
corporations on daily life - more cars parking, more roads to be built,
slower speeds, everything takes longer, wealthier people move out...
things like this that don't show up on the balance sheet.


Those costs aren't hidden at all. It is fairly easy, admittedly very
tedious though, to figure them out. And, as you said, it is easy to
simply look at a town that looks like your town would look after you
attract large corporations. I don't see much hidden here. Large
companies need lots of workers, better fire fighting equipment,
hazardous waste response teams, etc. The cost of these is pretty easy
to figure out and, as you say, tends to offset the taxes that the
corporation pays.


I have no children, but it benefits me to have a good school system.
I'll leave you to figure out why (and it has nothing to do with my
screen name). Therefore, there is a benefit to non-users of the school
system.

If you are benefiting, then then you are a user of the system and should
help pay for it. :-)


The benefits to reliable mail service, reliable transportation (air and
otherwise), reliable telecommunications, extend to people who walk to
the store, don't have a phone, and burn all their mail. It means that
when I walk to the store, they will have what I want. OK, that makes me
an indirect user, but there are lots of indirect users of infrastructure
that are not tracked, but benefit from it.

Yep, same thing. You are still using the system, albeit it somewhat
indirectly.


We all benefit from our water system (unusual in the world in that even
our wash water is potable) because it reduces disease, even if I don't
use water from the system. It is not just the people with the tap that
benefit.

Street lighting could be seen as benefitting the drivers, and so should
be paid by the drivers. However in reducing accidents it also reduces
my health insurance premiums, and it reduces robberies to boot. These
are "invisible" benefits which accrue to non-drivers.

They aren't invisible. It isn't that hard to compare crime rates in
areas with street lights and those without.


It's little things like this that add up all over the place, just like
little costs also add up all over the place, that make a strict "user
pay" accounting problematic.

Yes, I agree it would be an accounting nightmare.


Matt

Those costs aren't hidden at all. It is fairly easy, admittedly very tedious though, to figure them out.

No, it is not easy at all to figure them out. How much of the price of
ham is due to the fact that it takes two minutes longer to get through
town? How much of my income is leaking away in little costs like this
because a developer put a corporate park next to the river? And even if
you could figure it out to your own satisfaction, could you do so well
enough to convince the voters?

If you are benefiting [from a good school system], then then you are a user of the system and should help pay for it. :-)

I am not a consumer of the school system in any shape or form.
Nonetheless, I benefit because my fellow citizens know how to add and
subtract, can reason properly, understand logarithmic progressions, and
are familiar with literature. This means for example that plays and
concerts are popular (which allows me to be a consumer of these events),
and that when a referendum comes by, I can count on people to think more
than react.

If the schools were funded simply by tuition, I'd be getting a free
ride. But if the schools are funded publicly, I might argue (like we
are doing in aviation) that I'm not a user of the system and shouldn't
pay for it - the money should come strictly out of the pockets of the
students.

I use the aviation system just by eating a ham sandwich (and not just
when I'm navigating . Why shouldn't I pay for it (in taxes) instead
of having pilots getting a weather briefing fork over their credit cards?

It isn't that hard to compare crime rates in areas with street lights and those without.

True, but as an indirect measure of an indirect benefit, it's subject to
much interpretation.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.