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Notes -
This a feature and not a bug.
The time of working class people is less valuable than those who make more than them per unit of time. If a working class person (or person of any class, really) deems $18 dollar a day to be too much, they can come in earlier and/or leave later, take alternative means of transportation (e.g., subway, bus, train), or arrange carpooling with others in a similar situation.
Plus, the working class is likely almost all lifetime net-tax consumers (especially in an area like NYC). Since they're free-riding on—or at least riding the coat-tails of—net-tax payers, if anyone gets last dibs at (quasi-)public goods, it should be them (other than the underclass).
No, the time of working class people is less valuable in dollars than the time of rich people, but dollars themselves are worth less to rich people than to working class people. A dollar comparison is not a utility comparison and a libertarian analysis should not pretend that it is.
No, your reply is by no means convincing, unless perhaps one has a noble savage view of working class persons.
A dollar being worth more to a working class person than to someone higher-earning is a feature, not a bug, as per my previous comment. Congestion pricing ultimately trades off time with money. People who value $X more than their unit of time can voluntarily select themselves out of traffic jams.
A "dollar comparison" has the advantage over a "utility comparison" in that a dollar comparison incorporates the opinion of third parties, namely their employers. The dollar comparison reflects the notion that the employers of the working class value the employee's time less than the employers of their employees who earn more per unit of time, skin in the game and all.
Plus, even if we moved toward a utility-based comparison, it's not axiomatic that everyone's utility should be equally valued by third parties. The utility comparison has very obvious failure states. Namely, utility monsters. Perhaps I value every marginal dollar I receive or don't infinitely relative to everyone else, should society cater to my interests? Perhaps I value my time infinitely relative to everyone else, should society cater to my interests?
People can value $x more than their unit of time because
The argument for congestion pricing depends on #1, not on #2, and in fact there's a motte and bailey here where the motte is "they value their time less" and the bailey is "they value their time using a smaller dollar amount" (which is not the same as valuing it less).
The employers are paying in dollars too, so claiming they "value the employee's time less than" their own bosses has the same problem--they value it less when measured in dollars, not when measured in utility (and especially not in utility to the employees).
But the argument that poor people "value their time less" implicitly assumes that you're comparing utility already, so you're stuck with it. There's no reason to care that they value their time less in dollars if dollars aren't proportional to utility.
While not forgetting utility monsters...
So now the claim, or at least a pathway for the introduction of obfuscation, is that the employers of high-earners pay more to their employees than the employers of low-earners because the employers of high-earners have lesser utility of dollars? McDonalds Corporation likely has little utility with respect to a given dollar, yet their burger-flippers aren't exactly getting splashed in cash.
Suppose members of Group A owned paintings that they have historically been observed to sell at on average $150 each, because they're willing to part with the paintings at such a price and buyers are willing to pay such a price. However, members of Group B are willing to sell their paintings at an average of $50, as observed by historical transactions, and buyers aren't willing to pay a price too much higher, on average, for the paintings Group B owns. I hardly doubt you'd quibble if someone remarked, "The paintings owned by Group B are less valuable than those owned by Group A."
The time of my surgeon neighbor is more valuable than the time of my nearby McDonald's manager (to circle-back to the previous reference), whose time in turn is more valuable than those who panhandle on our nearest main road. The working class versus higher-earning classes situation is just a generalization of that.
No thanks, I'm not stuck with anything. However, if we play along with the utility framework, and suppose that decreased wealth/income means increased utility with a given dollar we could consider:
Why might a low-earning person value a dollar more?
Because typically, they own fewer dollars.
Why might such a person own fewer dollars?
Because it's the accumulation of others not valuing his or her time as much as those of higher-earners, and such a low-earning person is willing to sell their time for fewer dollars than those of higher-earners. That is, we could say, this low-earning person's time is less valuable than that of higher-earners.
All roads lead back to lower earners' time being less valuable.
And if I were a net-tax payer in NYC (or anywhere), I'd much rather that any frictions in employment and/or hours-worked be incurred by low-earners than high-earners, as high-earners better help shoulder city, state, and federal taxes. Although granted, from an accelerationist standpoint, one might want to starve the beast, and deprive NYC/New York State/USA of tax dollars.
It is true that dollars are worth a lot to employees, and are worth little to McDonalds. But employees and McDonalds are also on opposite sides of the transaction.
Employees accept jobs which pay very little because they value dollars a lot. "Dollars are worth a lot" compensates for "it's few dollars". McDonalds has jobs which pay very little because McDonalds is on the other side of the transaction, so "it's few dollars" is not something they need to compensate for--it's something that's already good to them. The fact that dollars are not worth much to McDonalds just makes it better.
Comparing paintings usually takes place in a context where comparing dollar values is useful. If you tried to make an economic argument where the distinction between "costs more in dollars" and "is more valuable" actually mattered, then you could no longer just compare the dollar value of the paintings.
No, you couldn't say that. The low-earning person's time is less valuable than that of high earners, in dollars. Treating it as less valuable in utility is circular reasoning, since you're using it to justify treating dollars as like utility.
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I suspect that working class people present in lower manhattan have a reason to be there and should have their access made easier, rather than harder, because of that.
Every human or even non-human animal with sentience present in lower Manhattan presumably has a reason to be there. However, commuting from other areas into lower Manhattan entails limited space on roadways, which translates into limited time. And some peoples' time is worth more than others.
An area staffed and entered only by doctors, lawyers, accountants and so on is going to having leaky plumbing, dirty windows, and crumbling buildings. Plus all the nice-to-haves: shop workers, barbers and the like.
Wages are not a fixed edict from God, and can adjust if congestion pricing leads to a shortage of working class workers in Lower Manhattan.
Via supply and demand, wages can thus rise for working class workers. And meanwhile, if they so choose, doctors, lawyers, and accountants can DIY to fix their own plumbing, windows, and buildings, even though it's likely a rounding error for them as to a pay-bump for their in-house working class workers to compensate for a $9 (or $18? day surcharge).
There's also an abundance of lower-tier, lower-earning white-collar knowledge workers (e.g., compliance, operations) who live within lower Manhattan who would be first to DIY trades themselves, and perhaps serve as after-hours skilled-labor providers for those who make more.
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In the first place all those except tradespeople who require a van can, and indeed mostly do, commute in by transit - in the second place, all that will happen is that for things like plumbing in the area prices will simply rise by the cost of paying the charge, so in the end all the costs get passed on the users of the services, which would seem ideal.
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Perhaps, if you amortize the fixed costs of overpriced government evenly. But I suspect the "working class" are marginal taxpayers. They don't get much in the way of direct subsidies, and they pay a ridiculous amount of tax.
Even if we suppose somehow, someway, the NYC working class are marginal net-taxpayers if we squint and kick fixed costs under the refrigerator—as per my previous comment—the NYC working class would be still riding the coattails of those who earn more. If my brother and I buy a large pizza for $45, where he pays $35 and I pay $10, it'd certainly be understandable that he get first priority as to which slice he picks, and I would wait.
You're not buying a large pizza though. You're buying hooker and blow for Mayor Adams or something. Neither of you really wants to, neither of you is actually getting the benefits at all, so what difference does it make?
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