It turns out that France’s spectacular new Millau bridge, the tallest and surely the most beautiful ever built, was financed without taxes and at a fraction of the price taxpayers might have otherwise forked over. This SFChron article tries to come to terms with the price difference between this private brdige ($522 million) and the Bay Bridge ($5 billion).
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/2884/bridge-of-freedom/
Bridge of Freedom
Previous post: Body Worlds and Market Trades
Next post: Snowed by Road Statism
{ 5 comments }
Wait a minute Mr. Rockwell: Millau bridge may be beautiful but not sure at all. You drive among the clouds, two lanes, no escape way, strong winds,hence a funny dive from Tour Eiffel level. A little bit obsessed with private? Eiffage with the previous essays in Ldn Millenium Bridge and Terminal Paris Airport is not exactly the efficiency that take one to cross along its manufacts. Read well “recouping its cost over the next 75 years (?)”: you want invest in this business? Where are technology in a collapsing Air Terminal? All this enthusiasm, included that of the poor Maire of Millau, seems to me a little foolish. Trial and error, was saying that wienese philosopher of the same era of Mises. There are no two without three.
I suspect that San Francisco will come up with a “political solution.” They will not turn it over to a private company. They will not even stay within the 5 billion range, it will cost more than that. Not only will they build it with “public money” a euphemism for the citizens’ productivity, they will then have the audacity to charge a higher amount to cross than the Millau bridge.
If the Citizens of San Francisco areas were allowed to use the bridge without cost, that would be at least some motivation for the uneducated to support it. But to have tax extracted from the whole State of California (and probably some Federal) to build the bridge and then pay to use it seems at odds with common sense.
We have some temporary toll booths set up here in Ohio. They have been temporary for over 40 years. In Ohio in 1933 Governor White enacted a temporary State sales tax. It hoovers near 6 percent now, but take heart, it’s only temporary.
I suspect that San Francisco will come up with a “political solution.” They will not turn it over to a private company. They will not even stay within the 5 billion range, it will cost more than that. Not only will they build it with “public money” a euphemism for the citizens’ productivity, they will then have the audacity to charge a higher amount to cross than the Millau bridge.
If the Citizens of San Francisco areas were allowed to use the bridge without cost, that would be at least some motivation for the uneducated to support it. But to have tax extracted from the whole State of California (and probably some Federal) to build the bridge and then pay to use it seems at odds with common sense.
We have some temporary toll booths set up here in Ohio. They have been temporary for over 40 years. In Ohio in 1933 Governor White enacted a temporary State sales tax. It hoovers near 6 percent now, but take heart, it’s only temporary.
Edoardo has a very good point: Who would invest in a two-lane bridge with a payback point of 75 years?
But that’s also the point of getting government out of the way of building such things. A “better plan” would be required before money could be raised for such an endeavor, were it private.
The Bay Bridge will indeed go way over budget, there is not one element of incentive not to. The builders have job security only so long as it isn’t finished.
But mostly, it will be because the money being spent for the bridge isn’t investors money, it isn’t the contractors own money, it isn’t the money of the politicians and bureaucrats deciding to build it. It isn’t even the money of the people who will eventually use it, regardless of the tolls which have to be set low in order not to upset voters too much.
It is my money, and your money, and if either of us ever uses the bridge that’s just lucky chance. Taxation is the most inefficient method of funding a project, because it removes any incentives except re-election.
That’s why politicians never talk about the full load of taxes and regulations. They know that if people had to actually pay, up front, the full 50%+ of everything they make, they never would.
So we get a 6% here, a 23% there, 2% of the value of your home and car each year, etc etc etc.
“Oh, it’s only $20 from ever American to build the bridge, that’s a pittance. Only a self-absorbed miser would object to such a small sum.”
But Curt, it’s time to take into account finally a anarchist-libertarian revolution:group a half a dozen guys for swimming (naked) across the bay from Oackland to Sausalito, asking FOX tv to show the protest against the California state, sothat no more complaints in word:take action! Personally I cannot do this due to my age and the philosophy i bring on my shoulders almost from 30 years. When I was in Berkeley in the middle of 70s there was action following words, in economy, in politic and in girl intercourses too. Cheers.
Comments on this entry are closed.