Black Box DevicePolice ProblemDue to increasing automobile mileage, the American Highways Trust Fund is going bankrupt. Lawmakers are seeking a new source of revenue by taxing motorists based on the miles they drive rather than the number of gallons of gasoline they buy. Background The Highway Trust was established in 1956 by the Highway Revenue Act. Currently, motorists are taxed at approximately 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline as are other taxed items (annual heavy vehicle tax, a based on the load index on heavy-duty truck tires and a retail sales tax on truck and trailer sales). The revenue is then deposited into the Highway Trust Fund and subsequently allocated to states for their highway programs in accordance with legislative formularies. The Highway Trust Fund is currently broke. The current payment method for highway construction/repair is becoming obsolete and cannot generate enough revenue to cover expenses as automobile miles per gallon are increasing. Lawmakers have turned to a device currently known as a Black Box as a new means of revenue. The Black Box device will track every mile driven by a driver and that information will be passed on to administrators for tax purposes. Key Concerns Those who oppose the Black Box device, such as the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU), are concerned about the government using the device for means other than taxation. They worry about the device being used as a means of tracking the movement of citizens. Political alternatives.a. Alternative means of tracking miles driven besides GPS tracking.1. Ex. Loading miles via modem.b. Increase the current established tax rate.c. Increase the tax on hybrid/electric vehicles.d. Play a fixed rate in the absence of that... half of the card... the customer will use for each liter of petrol. However, new technology has made these average miles per gallon an unknown number. Motorists can no longer be taxed equally in a system where some consumers use 10 gallons of gasoline per month while others use 30 gallons of gasoline per month if they both drive the same amount of miles on the highway. The public service of a highway should be taxed fairly, and the best current alternative is to measure each consumer's usage by miles driven. The issue of not wanting to be tracked by the government is, in my opinion, lacking. Most people today have GPS devices on their cell phones that can be tracked and I don't hear any complaints about the government tracking them through these means. To conclude my argument for the black box, I turn to Adam Smith's first maxim which states that people should pay according to the benefits they receive.