How good are American roads?

The arm-pit state of Oklahoma, where I live, is considering a "mile tax" to support the maintenance of our road system. Of course we know it's also to offset EV vehicles gas tax loss. (which EV owners already have) Our roads are terrible and don't usually get repaired until they're almost dangerous.

This tax will hurt fixed income and poorer people the most. As Thomas Jefferson said: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” My state is so red, it's scarlet.

I can't figure out if you want the roads fixed or you don't want the tax.

People being too poor is a separate issue from bad tax systems incentivizing unsustainable behavior.

Tax liabilities that are a function of consumption are the right way to tax.

If the tax burden is deemed too high for poor people, then give them cash.

Two different problems, two different solutions, and it keeps the incentives aligned properly.

Every state has been getting lobbied to do this for at least the last 10 years. These bills come through the legislatures every year, and I think it will keep coming until finally one of them passes. There are manufacturers of the GPS trackers pushing for it, and companies who want to have the state-granted monopoly to manage the tracking and billing. They are frothing at the mouth to get this passed and make a ton of money billing every single person.

“This is your brain on politics.” (A reply to the grandparent comment.)

I think a miles traveled tax that accounts for vehicle weight would probably less regressive than the current gas tax.

EVs save substantially in running costs. I’d imagine it would charge those using 3/4 and 1-ton pickups as family cars the most.

Oregon has tried to implement a miles tax multiple times but failed to pass it. Instead they've opted for a surcharge on vehicle registrations for EVs and also on any vehicle that gets better than 20 mpg.

Counterproductive from a climate change standpoint for a "green" state but it preserved the road money.

Why wouldn't you just use a yearly odometer inspection by the DMV? Even if the legislature wanted to enact such a tax, why involve GPS and third party companies?

Internalizing the costs you create are good though. In a perfect world I would think weight x miles would be what you'd want to tax on. I say this as someone who owns an EV; I should have to account for the higher road deterioration my heavier vehicle causes. If someone's income is too low you fix that other ways than trying to subsidize their externalizing behaviors.

Why should we subsidize driving exactly? Charge per mile based on how much vehicle weighs and pollutes and charge enough to cover the cost of maintaining the roads. Many of the poorest people can't even afford a car. Insurance, fuel, maintenance are expensive and paying for roads is expensive.

My guess is they don't want DMV employees checking odometers, because they won't trust the vehicle owners and the possibility of odometer tampering, if they can still do that.

That would still leave the problem if determining what state they were driving in, or allocating all the revenue to their state of residence even when they drive in other states as well.

How this works in trucking is interesting. Whenever a truck fills up its tank, the driver pays the gas tax in that state. They then track how many miles they drive in each state, and then quarterly have to "correct" their gas tax by paying the states where they drive more miles than they paid taxes for and get refunded by states where they fueled but didn't drive as many miles. Trucks these days have automated systems for tracking all this.

If you are interested, this is part of IFTA, the International Fuel Tax Agreement.

That sounds just like the FairTax plan

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