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Hot take: pick-up trucks should be illegal as daily drivers. You should need either a commercial license or permit. Vast majority of truck drivers don't need them regularly as a truck or to tow; they're just status symbols and make driving more dangerous for everyone else. Not to mention the inefficiency.
There's an easier solution. A vehicle weight tax that actual laborers are exempted from. Weight is what damages the roads, so a weight tax would accomplish practical and ideological goals.
Why should actual laborers be exempt from them? Do you mean to say that if they drive a company truck, then they wouldn't have to pay weight taxes? (I would think it wise to have the company pay taxes for miles driven and weight of the vehicle driven during those miles)
Yeah just because you’re an electrician for your day job doesn’t mean you need to own a pickup to drive to the company office where you’ll drive a company truck to job sites.
I was more thinking contractors or farmers who use their own truck for work. Not people using company trucks
Sure, if you’re a contractor using your own truck then you should be reimbursed by the company hiring you, which should offset the tax. If you’re a farmer, same thing, unless you own the farm, in which case your truck should be licensed as a commercial vehicle
I'm just trying to get the idea passed people and those two groups are always the ones sea lioned about.
I'm on a site with about 500 electricians right now. The vast majority of them don't drive company trucks. It's really just foremen, the general foreman, superintendent and various project managers and higher-ups.
A vehicle weight tax
These large vehicles use more gas, and thus people with these large vehicles pay more in taxes. People already pay a vehicle weight tax.
Both then. You can't tax just gas because EV semis/trucks put plenty of wear on the road.
Also the gas tax fluctuates based on prices but road wear does not.
EVs are currently taxed every time they fill-up. Every watt you pull has a tax on it.
Everything (?) is taxed multiple times at some point. How does that matter in this context?
The damage done by heavy vehicles is disproportionate to their weight and fuel use. The current system is clearly broken but we shrug when tens of thousands of people die every year, carbon emissions continue to rise, and our roads are disintegrating.
This sounds like the CAFE debacle all over again....
You could do that, but in southern states they’d just make it too easy to get the permit. See Oklahoma’s “commercial vehicle” loophole where everyone has their car zoned commercial to get a tax write off. Also electric pickup trucks are a thing.
That and there are plenty of people who need a truck regularly enough to justify owning one vs renting one, but don't use it comercially. The "permitting" for this would have so much gray area, it wouldn't be worth it. Additionally, if you told all those people they couldn't have a truck, they'd just go get an SUV and you wouldn't really accomplish anything.
So...good luck with that. In the meantime they continue to sell like hotcakes.
How else am I supposed to get my lumber from Home Depot every other week?
Is that for your job? You're in the extreme minority if you need 6'+ lumber twice a month. Also renting a $30 uhaul pickup for that will 100% be cheaper than buying and maintaining a pickup truck. $720/yr. You're just looking for reasons to drive a truck daily for the aesthetics.
Hot take: Let people enjoy what they want. Hypercars and planes are much worse than pick-up trucks.
Let's not. Some people's enjoyment causes a lot of pain for other people, and sometimes i mean literally
As long as the government lets people buy trucks, people will buy trucks.
Rich people jet-setting in their private are far worse than trucks but I rarely hear anyone talking about banning planes.
This is all I see. Instead of literally eating the rich, we're going to pile on ignorant dudes that buy big trucks. Sure, they're a problem but they pale in comparison to what corporations and super wealthy are doing.
It's mind blowing that it keeps working for the rich.
but I rarely hear anyone talking about banning planes.
Then do it, but in your own post.
I mean that literally, it would be good to ban private planes and cut down usage of other airplanes drastically. However using that to discredit people talking about other drivers of climate change is just plain whataboutism and sabotaging the movement.