What would you pay for? (Part 2)

[downtown]

Ok, lets see if I can fix this without ruinous typos!

Let's say every public service was switched to a user fee. What would you pay for? Let's assume that the hypothetical fee is not outrageous, but enough that you would miss it if you paid it.

Would you only pay for services you, specifically, use? What stuff is worth paying for? Let's also assume that if enough people aren't willing to pay for it, the service is no longer provided.


POLL COMIN'

 

[Boundless]

Essentially the UK do sort of pay for all this with tax!... I'd pay for health though.

Edit: totally didn't read the op right. I'd still pay for health services though.

 

[Tani Coyote]

All of the above. We either use all of them or need insurance against bad things. Ergo, they should all be paid for.

Of course, if someone else doesn't want the police or fire department to save them when they're in trouble, that's their choice.

 

[Synobun]

Sorry, if everything becomes a user fee, I'll handle my problems myself. The ones I would pay for is trash and maintenance, which is something I'd be willing to pay for anyways. But if the police need a fee just to stop crime, sorry bros, seems like I'll be carrying a gun. I would also leave the country in any way possible to get away from a system which involves everything having a direct fee.

 

[warpus]

I would pay for everything that I pay now (either by tax or a fee), except for roads.

I would funnel that money into the public transit budget, if possible.

Assuming of course that this isn't a realistic scenario, cause if it was.. society would crumble.

 

[Defiant47]

What can I afford? If I'm middle-class with a stable income, I can probably get them all, and stuff on top. But if I'm living in a trailer, I might need to pass up the fire protection fee for a month so that I can tow my car and pay the repair fees, allowing me to still get to work and make an income, and just risk it for a little while.

 

[MjM]

I'm fine in my log cabin.

 

[Maniacal]

There is a very good reason why those services are often part of various taxes you have to pay, if people only funded the ones they wanted they likely would receive very little or skewed funding, not too mention it would only make life harder for the poor.

 

[History_Buff]

Assuming I could afford it and still feed/house myself? All of them.

 

[amadeus]

I would pay for the things that I use. This would be police, fire, medical, utilities, roads, and street lights. I would not pay for city parks or recreation facilities, libraries, or schools. I would also not pay for mass transportation.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I would pay for everything that I pay now (either by tax or a fee), except for roads.

I would funnel that money into the public transit budget, if possible.

Assuming of course that this isn't a realistic scenario, cause if it was.. society would crumble.

What would the public transit run on, if not roads? We don't all have subways, above-ground trains, elevated trains, or horses built for 50.

I suppose I could say I don't need to pay for k-12 schools since I've already had my education and I don't have any offspring/grand-offspring who would need them. But since I don't like the idea of the next generations growing up illiterate and stupid, I'd gladly pay for schools (and did, back when I paid property taxes).

Everything else is essential, except a log cabin and downtown (sorry, but I've managed to exist without the OP for this long... )

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

All of it, since either directly or indirectly I'm still using it. And I'd have to pay for it on way or the other. For instance, I don't use the highways that often, but the companies from which I buy products do. If I stopped paying for highway maintenance, companies would have to pay more and the costs of that product would go up with the costs of highway maintenance plus a profit margin. So in the end we'd be paying more.

 

[Mise]

What would I lose if I didn't pay? If I didn't pay for the police, could I get a friend/flatmate to report it stolen instead? I live in a block of flats: if my flat is on fire, will the fire service be forced to put it out in order to prevent my neighbour's flat from setting alight?

Similarly, sewage and plumbing is shared: can I "tap" my neighbour's taps and pay for water, but refuse to pay for sewage and drainage? Can I dump my trash in my neighbour's trash? Could I do any of those things if my neighbour and I had agreed to share the fees, or with the consent of the neighbour?

I can clearly refuse to pay for streetlights and have them still work, since there appears to be enough people doing that. I can refuse to pay for roads and still drive on them. At any rate I walk everywhere now...

I've never used a court or even the police at any point in my life, but I still benefit from the protection, prevention and deterrent roles that those things play in society. I could refuse to pay for courts and still benefit from the laws and contracts it enforces.

 

[Zelig]

I'd pay for all of those things, and I'd strongly object to allowing other people to opt out of any of those fees.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

What stuff would keep you in a city Downtown? Are libraries part of that?

 

[downtown]

Yeah, I'm embarrassed I forgot about libraries.

I wouldn't support funding any of these on a purely user fee basis. I pay city taxes to cover all of these services. If we made say, public schools a purely user fee enterprise, they would not longer be public, and we'd have hundreds of thousands of students unable to attend school.

 

[Mise]

Well a lot of these are the definition of a public good. Non-excludable and non-rivalrous. The reason why they're provided by the government isn't because they're uniquely valuable or important, but because the market provides them either suboptimally or not at all.

 

[Defiant47]

but because the market provides them either suboptimally or not at all.

Now, what if the market truly provides everything suboptimally, including wages to workers, eh?

Sorry, I'll skedaddle outta here now

 

[GoodGame]

User fees make sense when someone uses a service way out of proportion to their taxable income, or what the normal usage is.

Prepaid user fees don't make a lot of sense for "common good" city services, as in forget to prepay your fire bill and the city lets your house burn down.

 

[warpus]

What would the public transit run on, if not roads? We don't all have subways, above-ground trains, elevated trains, or horses built for 50.

I suppose I could say I don't need to pay for k-12 schools since I've already had my education and I don't have any offspring/grand-offspring who would need them. But since I don't like the idea of the next generations growing up illiterate and stupid, I'd gladly pay for schools (and did, back when I paid property taxes).

Everything else is essential, except a log cabin and downtown (sorry, but I've managed to exist without the OP for this long... )

Oh, we'd still have roads, plenty of other people would fund those with their tax dollars I'm sure. It'd just be me and a couple like-minded people funneling that money towards public transit.