Government is Asking You to Foot the Bill….Again

People of all political persuasions agree on two things: Roads need to exist and federal gas taxes are much too high. And while those points seem contradictory, they are both exactly right.

The federal government spends trillions of dollars every year, yet our infrastructure falls behind other Western countries. On the same note, Americans are taxed at a high percentage rate for infrastructure, and it seems like that is only going to get worse.

At a recent press conference, the new head of the Department of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, announced that he is heavily considering proposing a hike on federal gas taxes. As if we don’t pay enough already.

Much like the recent talks of raising the minimum wage, this is a policy that most affects the middle class and poor. Transportation is a necessary expense, and a federal tax would take a larger portion of their income while impacting the wealthy a lot less.

For an administration that claims to be “looking out for the little guy,” they sure have done a lot to put the little guy at a disadvantage.

Not only would this tax be an awful burden on taxpayers, it would be ineffective. In the long history of government increasing spending, when have they actually used that money to improve what they said they were going to improve?

Most of the time, an increased tax is used to pad the pockets of ineffective government departments. This happens so often because bureaucrats and politicians are not held accountable for their actions and results are rarely ever expected.

This is a stark contrast from the free market where companies live and die by their results, which is why the best solution to this infrastructure issue would be to delegate it out to private industries that rely on said infrastructure. Companies that need this infrastructure need it to work correctly, and the engineers who work at these companies are much better equipped to handle it than politicians. (Which is the same reason I don’t want the government involved in health care — politicians are NOT engineers and they are NOT doctors.)

In The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil, the twins learn the importance of the free market and how it works.

Knowing how the free market works makes it obvious how ineffective government programs are and how essential it is to privatize as many industries as possible. That’s why, when a company like Domino’s starts to fill potholes, it gets done without taxpayer dollars.

—Connor