The Dutch government said Friday it wants to introduce a "green" road tax by the kilometre from 2012 aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent and halving congestion. "Each vehicle will be equipped with a GPS device that tracks how many kilometres are driven and when and where. This data will be then be sent to a collection agency that will send out the bill," the transport ministry said in a statement. Ownership and sales taxes, about a quarter of the cost of a new car, will be scrapped and replaced by the "price per kilometre" system aimed at cutting the Netherlands' carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent.
"Traffic jams will be halved and it helps the environment," the ministry said. Dutch motorists driving a standard family saloon will be charged 3 euro cents per kilometre (seven US cents per mile) in 2012. That would increase to 6.7 cents (16 US cents per mile) in 2018, according to the proposed law.
Now let me do a simple calculation. I go back and forth to MIT and now HMS almost weekly. I have an efficient Honda to do this and it is anywhere between 550 and 600 miles round trip. Now I do this gratis, free, da nada, and with the Professor Mankiw backed proposal it would cost me $0.16 per mile or $96.00 per trip! That is in addition to gas, tolls and parking. I get 35 mpg so gas is not too bad but parking is now $25 per day. Thus my donations would increase say $100 per week or $5200 per year. But those "donations" now go to the Government for their less than efficient use. Would not that money benefit humanity better if it went to my summer interns, my favorite charities, my grandchildren or some other value creating use. How about the money being invested in a new start up company. Why is the Government a better collector of the money than I am a distributor.
I am amazed by both the continued and factually defective proposals and lack of understanding of humanity by some economists. Oh well, I am doing this at an Engineering and Medical School, not on the pristine campus in Cambridge.
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