Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them.
The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.
Which may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure.
The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?")
Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different.
It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us.
There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.
We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's ,
were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams.
The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving
times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me!
It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.
Edited because I admit original statement below is incorrect.
"You could say they are a flat tax since every driver pays the same per usage. You could even argue it is a progressive tax since richer people use toll roads more. The only way you CAN'T describe a toll is a regressive tax. Words have meaning."
This is completely incorrect. A flat tax has a constant tax rate, which is why it's often referred to as a "proportional tax." Under a true flat tax system, everyone pays the same percentage of their income.
A toll is absolutely regressive because the burden it imposes is constant, irrespective of income; poorer individuals will pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income than wealthier counterparts. As income increases the "effective rate" asymptotically approaches zero, which is regressive by definition.
If you read the literature[1], they're regressive - less regressive than sales tax, but still regressive despite being utilized more by higher income drivers.
The mechanism technically exists but we haven't had a budget vote in years. We get "continuing resolutions" and periodic government shutdown brinksmanship games.
Your existing customers probably know of others who have similar needs. They might not want to refer you to a competitor but they might be happy to refer you to a complementary organization.
Well only with a fairly fixed amount of gold available. If suddenly a vast new supply of gold is discovered, its not shocking that there would be inflation.
This is one of the lesser bad-professor archetypes (the personal errand slaver) that surprisingly exists in real life. And much worse archetypes also exist and persist.
Like many professors behaving badly, you'd think they'd get exposed and corrected. But grad students and postdocs (in a position to know what's going on) don't want to throw away their careers. They need the recommendations, they need to not be seen as damaged goods from a bad advisor, and they need to not have sketchy university administrators getting rid of the messenger. And if admin assistants notice, they probably need the job, especially if their kid is getting a tuition deal because the parent works at the university. To a bad professor, the environment is like a heartless business, only less accountable.
When a friend was telling me about this brand new grad student, who'd be working with professor X, I said "Oh, no..." and that X was bad to students (which I knew from one of their students). Friend, who was from a prominent academic lineage, immediately responded crossly, that I shouldn't say such things, hurting people's reputations. Soon after, friend came back and apologized, that I had been right, and the student realized their terrible career move, getting that advisor. Friend later connected some prospective student to me, to warn them about a different bad (worse) professor in the whisper network.
But universities have terrible institutional memories, with students always leaving. So a bad professor tends to persist.
Though, occasionally, you'll hear of a bad professor from the whisper network leaving their job, without explanation. So presumably a wronged student or staff finally sued.
Probably both. Apple Silicon macbooks seem to never actually sleep, they just switch to the energy efficient cores, similar to how iPhones / iPads never truly sleep either. You can tell by leaving e.g. a while loop in zsh running and printing the date + sleep, and when you reopen the lid you'll see quite a few iterations actually completed.
When the self checkout machine gets confused, as it frequently does, and needs a human to intervene, you get a little bit of connection there. You can both gripe about how stupid the machines are.
Of course. I took it to be referring the 98% of other paper mail that that goes straight to the trash. Often unopened. I don't know if I'm typical but the number of personal cards/letters I received in 2025 I could count on one hand.
> Of course. I took it to be referring the 98% of other paper mail that that goes straight to the trash. Often unopened. I don't know if I'm typical but the number of personal cards/letters I received in 2025 I could count on one hand.
Yes so this is why the reason why person card/letters really matter because most people sheldom get any and if you know a person in your life / in any (community/project) that you deeply admire, sending them a handwritten mail can be one of the highest gestures which shows that you took the time out of your day and you really cared about them so much in a way.
Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought. For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet.
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