Maintain roads? Let’s raise taxes!!

I’m all bent out of shape again today by the lack of common sense in our great bureaucracy.  Where is the incentive as a middle class American to not let this country just slip off into irrelevance by doing absolutely nothing?  The last time I checked, the middle class is getting closer to the lower class than the upper class.  So my question today is why do I pay extra taxes for the services I use?  Huh?  Whatever do you mean?  Let me give a short illustration that hopefully even a socialist or a bureaucrat could understand.

Let’s just say for arguments sake that I own a car and my friend, we’ll call him Bob, doesn’t.  I drive to work everyday while Bob takes a public bus.  In order for me to drive my car, it needs a special kind of liquid called “gasoline”.  When I buy gas, not only am I paying a premium to the company whose gas I am using, I also pay about 18 cents to the government for every gallon I purchase.  (Which by the way works out to about a 6% tax on gasoline per gallon)  Bob and I both travel on the same road to work everyday, a road paid for by both of our taxes.  The difference is that Bob didn’t have to pay an extra 6% tax to use the road like I did, instead he pays a small amount that goes towards the cost of public transportation; a system that is not self sustainable and only uses the money collected by passengers to offset its losses with the difference being made up by guess what, our tax dollars.  In a perfect world where Bob and I paid the same amount in taxes, this example would probably be a wash in the long run but what if I pay slightly more in tax than Bob does?  I’m getting screwed.  Plain and simple. 

Over at MSNBC.com, they have an article up that talks about our aging transportation system and how raising the gas tax will help us maintain roads, bridges, and everything else the government should already be doing.  Go read the whole article here.  The brilliant idea is to just raise the gas tax another .05 cents or so.  Like I already pointed out at the current price of gas, a 5 cent increase would bring the gas tax to about 8%.  And that is just the Federal portion.  In California, one has to tack on another 6% sales tax, 1.25% county tax, a 1.2 cents per gallon UST(underground storage tank) fee, and additional local sales taxes.  Altogether a driver in California is paying around a 16% tax on every gallon of gas purchased if Congress has their way and jacks up that extra nickel.  You can read more about individual state gas taxes at www.Gaspricewatch.com.

When will we stop giving money to the government to blow?  Excessive taxation led to this country’s formation; can our leaders be so naive as to believe that lightening can’t strike twice?  I’m not calling for a revolution, I am simply calling for accountability from our elected officials.  They can not go out and blow our money on pet projects and social programs without holding their feet to the fire when they come back asking for more of our tax dollars.  Just think, somehow generations before were able to build all the amazing transportation and infrastructure projects that we now neglect without taxing the nation to death.  We need to find a way to do the same kind of amazing works before their is only a few who will be able to drive their own car on the newly maintained roads.