Forum Post: $67 to get a new license - Driving as a privilege, criminalizing poverty.
Posted 11 years ago on Oct. 15, 2012, 8:39 p.m. EST by richardkentgates
(3269)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I didn't lose it, it expired. I went to the DMV and was notified I had to spend $10 more dollars to get my birth certificate. This isn't a lot of money to most of you and it really isn't a lot of money for the privilege of using the roads and cops to keep drivers orderly and safe.
...on the other hand. I live in an area without a serious public transit system. We have short buses that cost $100 to ride and run from 8am to 5pm. If you're work the afternoon shift, it won't get you home. If you working in the morning, it won't get you to work. It's a beautiful way of catering to the tourists and keeping the naves from making uses of it. So here, we drive. If you have kids and no drive, soon you have no kids because you won't be able to work and be where you need to be when your kids get out of school, it just becomes an impossible scenario. You drive, thats it. So back to the $77 dollars I dished out, after taxes, that is one work day of pay. What bill gets shorted? If you don't pay, you don't work, you can't provide for family. So, in this election season, I say "why bother?".
It's simply not true that driving is mandatory. I drove my car today for the first time in about seven months, mainly just to start the engine to keep it running. And to move it to a different parking space so that the cops don't think that it's an abandoned car.
I don't need my car because I intentionally engineered my life to not require a car. I did that because I worked for years as a volunteer firefighter/EMT, and the experience taught me the real cost of driving. I decided that it's not worth the risk, and so I did what was necessary to reduce the amount of driving in my life, thereby increasing my life expectancy and reducing the odds of dying the kind of horrible death that I've witnessed in fire-rescue.
I won't take a job that involves a commute. I moved to an area where I can live a pedestrian lifestyle. I moved to an area with public transportation. I walk to get groceries and I bring them home in a wheely cart. (Or lately, in a stroller.) I make decent money now, but that wasn't what enabled me to live a driving-free lifestyle because I was very poor 11 years ago when I first moved to a town where I could walk to get anything that I needed.
The only difference between me and anybody reading this is that I made not-driving a priority years ago and you probably didn't. Anybody can do it, but most people have other priorities. It's as simple as that. After working as a firefighter, not driving became one of my top priorities. Most people are slaves to convenience and they're just not willing to make the changes necessary to eliminate driving from their lives. But that's like saying that you have no choice other than to keep smoking. If you truly prioritized quitting smoking then you would accomplish that goal. I really, truly prioritized not-driving and so now I don't.
Wow, somebody on this forum who thinks! Kudos.
I don't drive autos too much either (I ride bicycles a lot which is probably more dangerous than an commuting in an auto) as I saw a lot of this economic mess coming about fifteen years ago. Though my reasoning was different than yours, I adjusted my lifestyle to suit my circumstances too.
Auto driving truly is optional.
My reasoning also includes health and economics. It's better in many ways to burn calories than gasoline.
But recognizing the true cost of our driving culture is what motivated me to move to an area where I don't have to drive. There are four different medium-large grocery stores within blocks of where I live, which is at the end of a pedestrian shopping mall. I can go in one direction to go kayaking on water, or another direction to go skating on land. The only difference between me and the guy who has an hour-long commute every day is that I set out with a clear objective of living a pedestrian lifestyle and I focused on that until I made it happen. Anybody can do it if they truly prioritize it. It does involve sacrifice, but so does accomplishing any objective.
Yes absolutely! and may I add the "sacrifice" is more like kicking a bad habit. Sure it is hard at first, but after going without for a while, one is happier and healthier because of going without.
Not only personally, but community wise too; not driving is the way to go. I hope others get into not driving too.
Of course you have to pay more. Who is going to pay all of those extra employees at the DMV?
id still rather not spend a dime on government, and outfit my car with machine guns, and rows of 2x4s, I can rule myself just as good as a government police state.
On another note, I have a vehicle Im not using and have been saving for a daughter when she turns 16. the government says I cant park it on public roads, well last week I got a fine for parking it on my property unregistered. Im feeling more of my liberties slip away and its making me more tense.
We are suppose to have a right to travel in this country.
I also love that you have to get your "vehicle" registered every year. Nothing has changed in the last year, but you have to go and reregister it anyways. $80 down the tube. Wtf.
Exactly. This is why I like the idea of a flat tax, no more games and convoluted BS, just send us a bill and let us move on with our lives instead of entangling us with a part time job of dealing with bureaucratic offices and hiding the real cost to us behind shells like the DMV.
LAst time I was the DMV, the ladies behind the counter and I had a discussion. They said they only made 10/hr. I said that was bullshit.
Then the head manager came in, I asked him how much he was making, because someoen must be making some money off this bullshit registration trick..
Needless to say they wanted me out of there :)
why is that bullshit
We were talking about the amount of money they were generating, by the people coming in all day and paying 88 to reregister, which is a total shake down policy.
oops sorry
yeah i didnt pay that much when i registered i think it was around 40 for me
You can afford a car, you can afford to toss in your "FAIR SHARE":. Welfare isn't free. It comes from Government taxes, fees, etc. You know how much tax is in that gallon of gas you just bought? Much more in taxes than big oli makes per gallon.
Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, you give your sugar daddy, congressman Paul, a bad reputation. If he is got Idiotic people like you, considering our federal gas tax is only 18.4 cents per gallon, campaigning for him, then he has his work cut out for him.
Edit: Oh, I see, you got your misinformation from your sugar daddy. You know, he lied to you.
In the state I live....Indiana, the state taxes gas at 39.8. Add that to 18.4 and then apply our 7% sales tax (not sure of it is applied to the combined fed and state of almost 58, at $4.gal it's at least 22, so the totatl ..gov tax.gal at $4 is about $.80. a good 20%.
BTW, who/where is that SUgar Daddy I have spent a lifetime hoping for?
Go to the Phillipines or Thailand, and tuck your balls in.
Paint up your face, and learn to give good head.
No balls to tuck....learned to give head to get that first husband :-) unfortunately, he was no Sugar Daddy so had to cut him loose and have since sharpened my teeth!
Hahahahahaha. Sorry "ronnie" What can I say?
Yup..... .gov taxing us to bloody death
The problem isn't the DMV. The problem is wages are too low. We need to unionize and collectively bargain to raise them to a fair level. Walmart workers have been walking out recently in various areas. Low wage earners need to join with them and form unions. We can't wait for the minimum wage to be raised by Congress. We must do it ourselves.
http://www.calaborfed.org/index.php/site/page/how_to_form_a_union_where_you_work
The real problem is the money we have is not worth anything, and is getting worth less day by day. Its called inflation.
If we stopped inflation today, will that raise our wages tomorrow?
Most likely not, but stopping inflation would stop us from having to ask for a wage raise so often. Yes, I agree that wages need to be bumped up too in order to get economics back in alignment again.
We must keep in mind though, low wages are not the root problem, and raising wages is not the root solution. What used to be a good wage yesterday, is no longer a good wage today. We all know that. We also need to realize that the Fed needs to get our money supply under control which in turn is driven by massive debt obligations which the powers to be are out trying to dilute. What also falls out of this are these ultra-low interest rates which allow companies, banks, and other financial institutions to not have to pay out investors like a lot of retired and other fixed income folks who (used to) live off interest income. So a retired person who used to make $50,000 on a half mil nest egg, is now making only about $8,000. That person now needs to go to Wal-mart and work for scraps ( Something to look forward to huh.) These are things Unions need to address in addition to lobbying for a general wage raise.
But to take this discussion back to this guy complaining in the original post. A lot of these price hikes for government services are often due to the setting of prices to the real cost of the service since the service can no longer be subsidized because people are not paying enough taxes to do so. Common folk are not paying enough taxes because they are not making enough money to tax enough, and rich folk are not paying enough taxes because they're greedy.
We need to both raise wages and lower inflation, but raising wages alone is still more effective than lowering inflation alone. We can't wait for government to lower spending, we need to raise wages now! Every extra dollar we make is one dollar less that the corporations can use to bribe Congress.
Raising wages without stopping inflation will give a few folks an extra boost to keep them from going belly up for a short while, but give it a year or two those same folks will again find themselves in the same situation they are now. Its all a package deal.
Besides try getting somebody to give you a general wage raise right now. The big corps will laugh, and the small corps will cry.
Good Post
Bleed us dry----No end in sight
Bleed us dry, good description. Pretty damn accurate.
Dude, what's your CMS named again? Do you have a copy on github?
MCMS Print. I don't have anything on git but I plan on releasing an updated version of the framework (not the entire CMS) on one of the open source channels. I will probably see about using launchpad instead though as it's far more advanced.
Bazaar is definitely not more advanced than Git. There is a reason why Git almost instantly became the standard over Subversion. Bazaar has a distributed architecture going for it but it lacks the effortless branching and merging and the high performance that have made Git the universal VCS for professional and open-source developers. Launchpad is mainly useful for its Ubuntu tie-ins. Bazaar is barely what you could consider free software (free as in liberty, not just free as in beer) and Launchpad still has no API.
Git, and GitHub are the way to distribute open-source software in 2012.
Yup..... .gov taxing us to bloody death
If the US constitution were written today the first amendment would be the right to operate a motor vehicle and no license or vehicle registration shall be required .
Absolutely. I just wonder why gun racks don't come standard with every motor vehicle produced today.
Ever wonder why your driver's license is in all capital letters?
Do yourself a favor, get out of that state.