(10-20-2017 05:47 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(10-20-2017 05:30 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  For new highway infrastructure, I think user fees may make sense because we already did a great job creating a highway system that spans the country, but even still, I'm not a huge fan of relying on them to connect our growing population centers. The risk with going just on user fees is that you then only connect areas with high population densities and you have the potential to under serve or completely neglect rural areas that can't support the construction of new infrastructure. And I think user fees are bad for existing infrastructure for the same reason.
A place like Houston would have no problem surviving off of infrastructure paid for by user fees. But when you start getting outside of Houston, to the farms that provide goods to Houston, it becomes problematic. So OK, the farmer could then increase their prices so that they can afford to pay the usage fees for their roadways that would likely be considerably higher than people in Houston. But what happens if he has a bad harvest and his income stream is severely restricted, and then his only means of transportation for the goods he has is the long-winding rural roads, that I assume are paid for by taxes and also aren't user-fee based, because if they happen to be user-fee based, there's a chance that he can't even leave his home.
And you are right that Obama was talking about a collectivist agenda, but I don't buy the redistribution part of it. In his speech speech he focused on the idea that when the country unites and works as a collective, we produce better results than if we work as single individuals. He also described many things we have collectively done as a country over the years that have been greater than the sum of the parts. So his comment about how individuals relied on the work of others, even if they didn't realize it, fits in that narrative, not in a redistribution one. Just read the words for yourself.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/you-did...-unedited/

I've read the words many times. They come across as nothing but a collectivist screed. They don't to you. Neither of us is likely to change.

And where did I say farm-to-market roads should be based on user fees. Perhaps you should read my post as closely as I have read your link.

I agree it is a collectivist screed - just not that it suggests anything about redistribution. You're creating that argument from your opinion about Obama, not about what he said.

And I didn't suggest you said farm-to-markets should be based on user fees. Please re-read my bolded sentence. I literally assumed that you didn't think they would be a fee-based road and that they would be paid for by taxes.