On the sustainability of incentives
The problem with basing funding for certain program on incentives or disincentives (as the case may be), is that eventually you become a victim of your own success. In SFGate today, there is an article, Recycling push puts Berkeley's budget in dumps, describing how the success of the city's recycling program caused a $4M budget shortfall. By charging only for trash collection service (and not for recycling collection service), the residents successfully downsized their the amount of trash they were creating, and thus, downsized the amount of money they were paying for the service. Since the recycling operation is not self-sufficient, this left a budget gap.
The same problem is happening all over our society right now, especially with the recession. It's very easy and politically convenient to continually demonize some behavior or group of people, and argue that those people should be subsidizing the services that you want to receive. However, this is never sustainable in the long term. If you jack up parking meter prices to subsidize transit, eventually this reaches a breaking point and backfires, resulting in less revenue. If you crack down on parking in order to raise ticket revenues, people stop parking illegally. Since the republicans took over with their no new taxes bullshit, our society has devolved one that feels entitled to rob someone else in order to pay for the things you want, and this is almost never sustainable, equitable, or progressive.
The same problem is happening all over our society right now, especially with the recession. It's very easy and politically convenient to continually demonize some behavior or group of people, and argue that those people should be subsidizing the services that you want to receive. However, this is never sustainable in the long term. If you jack up parking meter prices to subsidize transit, eventually this reaches a breaking point and backfires, resulting in less revenue. If you crack down on parking in order to raise ticket revenues, people stop parking illegally. Since the republicans took over with their no new taxes bullshit, our society has devolved one that feels entitled to rob someone else in order to pay for the things you want, and this is almost never sustainable, equitable, or progressive.