[quote]tmay11 wrote:
[quote]scj119 wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]scj119 wrote:
[quote]Gaius Octavius wrote:
You know, you could eliminate the income tax by scaling back the size of the federal government to the year 2000. IIRC you still had roads, air travel, defenses and all that back then.
Besides, air travel and roads belong with the private sector. A traffic jam is what happens when socialism can’t build roads fast enough to keep up with capitalism making cars.[/quote]
Either a troll job or one of the most ignorant posts I’ve ever seen.
You have any idea how much it would cost to fly anywhere if people were responsible for paying the salaries of air traffic controllers and the airspace infrastructure if it wasn’t gov’t funded? You don’t think people should be allowed to cross the ocean unless they are millionaires?[/quote]
Yes, actually I do.
Not that only millionaires should be able to fly, but that the true cost of flying should be shouldered by those that fly.
In related news, trucks wear down the roads orders of magnitudes faster than private cars and should pay that too.
Amtrak, same story.
Because, you know, if someone enjoys the benefits, he should pay for the privilege.
[/quote]
Agree with you in spirit but road travel and airline flight are for the public good. Are you telling me we’re better off when the average person wouldn’t be able to fly? I agree there should be some additional tax for trucks that goes directly to road repair. [/quote]
If it was indeed true that the average person could not fly were it not sub subsidized we would indeed be better off because then we would be wasting money flying.
Given the off chance that people would get to keep the money that is used to subsidize flying.
[/quote]
Subsidize? The gov’t isn’t paying part of your airline ticket if that’s what you’re implying. The gov’t is paying to support the infrastructure that allows you to fly without crashing.
The airlines pay for crew, operating costs of planes, maintenance of planes, and other staff (such as airline dispatchers that file flight plans). This is paid for by our ticket-purchasing directly.
The FAA pays for air traffic controllers, airport maintenance, hardware/software needed to track flights, etc… infrastructure stuff. This is the part that is paid for by taxes.
Privatizing all of that crap would mean the airlines have to pay for it which would make ticket prices many orders of magnitude higher. It would also eliminate a fuckton of jobs in a market that is already struggling with unemployment.
Yeah, great idea. Saving 20 bucks on your taxes is totally worth not being able to travel more than a few hundred miles.[/quote]
Your reasoning is wrong. If people choose not to fly when they are charged the full market cost of flying then they should not be flying. There is no “job creation” in the government support of the airline industry. If people were not to fly and the industry to shrink to it’s appropriate size the capital would simply be put into some other appropriate use - the money doesn’t simply “disappear”.
The market as a whole would in fact grow as the full cost of flying would be known and people could make proper decisions as to whether the trip was worth the cost or not. As it stands now people make inaccurate(in one sense of the word…) decisions as a result of the artificial support. Example - A business wishes to send an employee somewhere for the weekend and it’s thought his presence will produce a value of “1000”, the round trip flight and accommodations etc will cost 800(assume no opportunity cost for simplicity). They therefore correctly reason that the trip make sense and send him. Behind the scenes though there is an extra 300 that is putting put forth by the government so the TRUE cost of the trip is 1100. We now see that the trip does not make sense and in fact has a net NEGATIVE effect on the economy(it destroys capital).
When you say that people would not fly if there were no government support of airlines you are in fact admitting that presently resources are being misallocated. This is never a good thing.
A person making the argument that we would lose jobs has likely made two different errors 1- they assume there is a finite amount of work to be done(this is equivalent to saying that all human beings are materially satisfied and desire nothing more) and 2- that there is no expense to their jobs, that is, they only provide and have no cost.
If you still think that there would be a net loss of jobs from shrinking the airline industry we can get into more detail. [/quote]
This is my last post on the matter because this is getting frustrating.
The real world is more complicated than a macroeconomics economics textbook, I hate to tell you. There are some inefficiencies in the airspace system, but you can’t simply even them out by privatizing it. The problem is we have a working civilization with an ALREADY ESTABLISHED transportation infrastructure. In other words, the cost to prop up the airspace system is less than the cost it would take to build a whole bunch of roads, widen existing roads, and expand the train transport system across the country. You would have to purchase so much land and knock down so many houses, the cost would be astronomical. Or would you rather people just not travel outside of their town?
Besides, the air transport system is just one of the many facets of govt spending that I happened to zero in on as an example because that’s where my job is - but do you think our entire DOT should be privatized? Should we privatize energy and emissions regulations? Because if everything was privatized who is going to enforce rules that inhibit maximal profits (or do you not believe in global warming)? You think anyone is going to make money by starting a regulations company from scratch? Where would their income be? Who’s going to regulate banks, loans, and insider trading? Who is going to sentence murderers and rapists to prison, and who will keep them there? These are not things that are profitable ventures.
