alexakarpov Posted June 8, 2014 Posted June 8, 2014 So they've got this new law in the Bay Area, where this Canadian is working now... http://www.callaborlaw.com/entry/s.f.-bay-area-employers-must-provide-commuter-benefits-by-september-30 At first, seeing an ad on the bus, saying "Your employer has to provide you with 40% savings for commuting....", I got angry - any time a government is passing a new law, that's my natural reaction. However, after getting to the source and reading up on the law details, I'm not so angry anymore: - it allows you to pay the pre-tax dollars for you commuting needs - it does not apply to companies below 50 employees, so doesn't hurt the small businesses since government, unfortunately, owns the roads, this is their way of dealing with traffic and air pollution *caused* by their own road-building subsidies. But it doesn't seem to be such a bad-thought-of law. Any comments on it? Am I missing something, and should be angry, or is it one of a rare cases where the government is doing an ok job of cleaning up their own mess?
st434u Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 It's bad. What if you have your own car? Now you have to pay for something you're not using. If the company you're working for has 52 employees, they will fire 3 people that they wouldn't have fired otherwise, so you may lose your job. If a company has 49 employees, they won't hire anybody else, whereas they might have done so if not for this law, hence you won't get a job you otherwise could've gotten. And of course in both cases the company is taking a loss on having to fire some productive workers, or not being able to hire more productive workers, it's just less of a loss than it would represent having to pay every worker this extra benefit. Just because they came up with a way to avoid taxes by deducting some expenses out of your earnings, is not necessarily a good thing if you are forced to spend that money even if you don't want to. A good thing would be if they just lowered taxes.
shirgall Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 - it does not apply to companies below 50 employees, so doesn't hurt the small businesses You might think so at first blush, but companies larger than that often lobby to get benefits, especially costly rules and regulations that serve as barriers to getting to market. It's the mid-sized businesses that pose the biggest threats to the bigs, and they are getting hit with a new massive cost. There are enough laws that treat the magical level of 50 employees as a dividing line that going above 50 just got another little bit harder in the Bay Area. Look at McDonald's, which traditionally pays better than minimum wage, agreeing with an increase in the minimum wage. They have a CEO that happens to come from a robots and electrical engineering background. Which company is likely to achieve the economy of scale necessary to reap the benefits of automating hamburger production further while other companies have to struggle with high-priced labor?
alexakarpov Posted June 10, 2014 Author Posted June 10, 2014 It's bad. What if you have your own car? Now you have to pay for something you're not using. If the company you're working for has 52 employees, they will fire 3 people that they wouldn't have fired otherwise, so you may lose your job. If a company has 49 employees, they won't hire anybody else, whereas they might have done so if not for this law, hence you won't get a job you otherwise could've gotten. And of course in both cases the company is taking a loss on having to fire some productive workers, or not being able to hire more productive workers, it's just less of a loss than it would represent having to pay every worker this extra benefit. Just because they came up with a way to avoid taxes by deducting some expenses out of your earnings, is not necessarily a good thing if you are forced to spend that money even if you don't want to. A good thing would be if they just lowered taxes.Amen for lowering taxes )I get the argument about 49/52, but because of the nature of the allowance (as an employee, you're not forced to elect any), I don't see a problem. The business must offer the option to pay for transit with pre-tax dollars, but you're not forced to either take it, or to pay for someone else who does.The business, of course, has to integrate with a system that offers the allowance. That is a bad thing; offering them, too, a tax break for doing so would be much better that "you must do this, or be fined". I suppose, this was done to generate extra revenue and bureaucratic, government jobs.All that said, it looks like the whole thing may actually achieve the declared goal (rather than making it worse, as it normally happens with government programs)?
fractional slacker Posted June 11, 2014 Posted June 11, 2014 Public transportation is a leech on everyone, particularly those who buy petrol/car owners. They only exist because they have A) the right to steal funds, B) prohibitied competition by putting the automobile at a competitive disadvantage through both fees/regulations and less subtle means such as limiting parking space and confiscating part of the roadway for bike lanes. It creates congestion in which they interpret as signal for more public transportation. In my city they steal from business owners to fund their pet projects, and in turn the business owners pass those costs to their customers. I guess that is an indirect theft/tax. Public transportation is 100% statist garbage. In a free society, it's safe to assume mass transit would not even resemble what we have today. It might not even be necessary.
JamesP Posted June 12, 2014 Posted June 12, 2014 I'm pretty sure that there would be some sort of mass transit option in free society cities of the future; if you live and work and play in a large city most of the time, you may not want to deal with the expense and maintenance of owning a car. Businesses would likely pony up for a rail or bus system that brought customers to their door from further away that was safe, fast, and had the convenience of not having to negotiate parking in a busy section of town. In the present, governments take the desire for mass transit and pervert it into the monstrosities you see in many cities, and use it to curry favors and all that crazy government bullshit.
alexakarpov Posted June 12, 2014 Author Posted June 12, 2014 In a free society, it's safe to assume mass transit would not even resemble what we have today. It might not even be necessary.I agree with this part completely - but not sure about the rest of the comment. I see a lot of people using the public transit; I prefer using it myself, because it is more convenient for me than driving a car. That said, I do agree that the way cities are built, housing is sprawling - heck, even the very size of the population and it's occupations - is all completely distorted by state intervention. But given this reality - the cities that we have, the population that we have - I do think that public transit makes sense. Like, imagine tomorrow a hardcore libertarian president/prime minister is elected. I can see them cutting off funding for military, public education, welfare, but I don't think abolishing public transit, given the geography and types of occupation and housing areas, is feasible. I hope you see my point..
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