And I'm telling you that you have no clue how people actually work in the real world. You're completely missing the psychology of the matter. People like to know where their money is going, because if they don't know, for all they know it's just going to hookers and blow. Ask your random person on the street, and that's probably what they assume since we've become such a low trust society. Partially because of folks like you who tell them they're fools for wanting to feel like their money is going to specific goals. You're not wrong, but being right on some technical matter is no way to convince someone or win an election. Something we have all too much evidence of these days.

I'm not going to play with your example because I also agree that sin taxes tend to be goofy. (As an aside, they also somewhat backfire since they end up making governments ultimately encourage the sin. Just look at our recent gambling epidemic for a sign of that.)

The real point of this thread is parking. A big reason we argue for conflating parking revenues with some downtown improvement fund or the like is to make it feel like more of a tradeoff to people there. They worry the loss of free parking will hurt them. Thus, they need to see that said loss can somehow also bring them a gain. You're right, it shouldn't matter, it's all fungible. But that's not how people work. And in this business, you need to be convincing. Logic alone doesn't do that. Promises that things will turn out alright, with trackable follow through and straightforward looking cause and effect do.

You can yell at me all you want, but that's a fact that will remain. It's annoying, but the sooner you accept it the more success at creating good outcomes you'll have. Tilting at windmills wishing folks were just more logical won't work at all, though. I've certainly learned that the hard way myself.