Instead of penalizing change, why not encourage it? When you work from home, you don't put anywhere near the carbon into the atmosphere that you would commuting. You also spend a lot less on lunch, and you don't need to put your children into state-run schools that are really there to function as daycare centers as much as they are to educate.
If all of that office space in downtown areas stays dark, and the zoning laws are altered or removed, it can be redeveloped into housing that's actually affordable.
We really are running into a wall on the methane crisis, and we we simply don't have the time to integrate these changes at a slower pace.
Let's focus on changing our regulations that prohibit building neighborhoods for pedestrians. Let's work on getting homes with solar roofs and big batteries. Let's get drone delivery everywhere. Let's electrify the transport system with electric cars, electric trucks, eVTOL aircraft. Let's tunnel underneath and between cities and connect them with hyperloops. Let's connect people in rural areas with low-cost, low-latency satellite internet access.
Doing these things will directly provide a great number of jobs for a great number of people. It will make a great number of new jobs possible. It will improve the natural environment. I think this is a much more positive direction to take than to try to slow things down.
They can't help but penalize change. Work from home is a change that is resulting in much lower tax revenue, and they need new income streams to make up for it.
"It argues this is only fair, as those who work from home are saving money and not paying into the system like those who go out to work."
They simply need more people to "pay into the system" again.
I get your point, and don't disagree with it, but the analogy you used is still off. In the case of fuel taxes, they're mostly used to fund road maintenance. Since the amount of road damage (and therefore maintenance cost) increases exponentially/geometrically with axle weight[1], it doesn't make sense to tax cyclists because the amount of cost they incur is negligible. On the other hand, it does make sense to charge electric vehicles extra $$$, because they incur road wear but don't pay for it via fuel taxes.
Taxing fuel as an indicator of road use is outdated now with the advent of electric cars. There should also be additional taxes for gasoline due to the environmental costs, and the simplest way to make things fair is to stop taxing analogues and taxing directly instead.
I don't believe it has anything to do with change.
I believe it has everything to do with isolating a vulnerable subset of society to exploit them. Divide and conquer. They want a bigger chunk of your hard earned money, thus they fabricate a tall tale of entitlement to vilify and turn the peole against you, and proceed to rob you of your paycheck because they want your hard earned money.
So raise tax revenue across the board. Will that make the commuting lifestyle unaffordable? Well that might just be because it's not economically viable and heavily subsidized.
Saving money? I spending more money than before I worked from home.
More money on electricity, heating, had to get better internet etc. Spending more on food as I am snacking and drinks more at home. It's not like the employers are sharing in this increased cost. The independent owned coffee place near my home is more expensive than the coffee can buy in the work canteen.
I think this is an immune response by capital. If people don’t need multiple spaces for living, that has a big impact on the people who own property and land. Shifting to things like drone delivery, etc, which I think is a great idea, would be an imposition to edified capital interests. I am pessimistic that our system has the will or momentum to shift toward what individual laborers and human groups need, but it is heartening to see that the fight itself is becoming so overt.
Deutsche Bank obviously wants this tax to prop up real estate. This is a general unemployment problem yet they somehow suggest a tax that is supposed to make one type of worker worse off even though every worker should be taxed to help the unemployed? The irony is that we are in an economic situation in which we actually need the opposite: Tax cuts everywhere.
If all of that office space in downtown areas stays dark, and the zoning laws are altered or removed, it can be redeveloped into housing that's actually affordable.
We really are running into a wall on the methane crisis, and we we simply don't have the time to integrate these changes at a slower pace.
Let's focus on changing our regulations that prohibit building neighborhoods for pedestrians. Let's work on getting homes with solar roofs and big batteries. Let's get drone delivery everywhere. Let's electrify the transport system with electric cars, electric trucks, eVTOL aircraft. Let's tunnel underneath and between cities and connect them with hyperloops. Let's connect people in rural areas with low-cost, low-latency satellite internet access.
Doing these things will directly provide a great number of jobs for a great number of people. It will make a great number of new jobs possible. It will improve the natural environment. I think this is a much more positive direction to take than to try to slow things down.