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cwoolfe | 7 months ago

Governments also subsidize gasoline.

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mysterydip|7 months ago

Why do they tax it? Wouldn't it make more sense to lower the amount of subsidy?

toomuchtodo|7 months ago

Road maintenance. It's already not taxed enough to pay for existing roads. Auto fuel/mileage taxes will need to go up to continue to pay for roads in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund

(road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power (not square root) of axle weight (and linear with axle count), so it's heavy trucks doing most of the damage to road surfaces through a compression wave that penetrates into the asphalt surface, as axles travel over)

https://hackaday.com/2025/06/26/field-guide-to-the-north-ame...

ksherlock|7 months ago

Sometimes a subsidy is a big pile of cash. Sometimes a subsidy is an accelerated depreciation schedule.