Our National Parks get less than 10 percent of their budget from entrance fees. In other words, people who don’t go to the parks are subsidizing people who do go to the parks. A 2015 report found that visitors paid $186 million in fees directly and $85 million via concessions (food and hotels) while the Park Service spent $3.1 billion.
Part of the reason for this is that prices are low. Not quite as low as in 1938, when the parks were free:
But an annual pass that enables 8 people in a minivan to spend 3-4 weeks in the parks is $80. I had already purchased a pass for the Vegas/Pahrump trip (Death Valley, Sheri’s Ranch to try to meet up with Hunter Biden, Corvette School, etc.) so it cost us $0 in fees to spend 3 weeks in the National Parks in June. Even if we had paid $80 that would have been less than the cost of housekeeping tips ($5 is the new $3).
Let’s assume a family of 4. What do the Navajo charge for them to look at something interesting? We took a one-hour tour of Antelope Canyon and it worked out to $100 per person. Here’s a photo from that excursion:
Let’s assume that a typical family won’t be able to pay $400 per hour every hour, but $100 per person per day is the “Navajo rate” for what could reasonably be charged. The National Park Service budget is up to $3.6 billion in Bidies. For the agency to be fully funded by visitors, therefore, they’d have to host 36 million person-days. Is that practical? State-sponsored NPR says that 312 million people visited in 2022. It is unclear if they’re counting how many days each person spent in the park and, of course, visitation would fall if Navajo pricing were established rather than give-away pricing, but it seems clear that the Park Service could easily fund itself from entrance fees.
For reference, the Chileans charge foreigners $35 per adult to visit their signature national park for one day. Even at Chilean prices it would seem that the NPS could easily be self-funded.
What about families where nobody has worked for 4 generations? How are they going to enjoy the Grand Canyon? As with museums, anyone with a SNAP/EBT card could be admitted for free.
What’s wrong with the current system? Nothing, if you’re a member of the elite! Since the NPS isn’t charging anything for park entry, the people who own hotels and restaurants in the parks (i.e., the cronies) can charge higher prices. It ends up costing about $1000/day to visit the parks in any degree of comfort, so the visitors themselves tend to be elite.
I guess it depends on what Phil means by “degree of comfort” but it seems to me Phil’s objective in traveling with the family is to waste as much money as is possible. Not clear why someone would waste $800 to visit some canyon on the NN, a place I lived one summer, when there are no limit of canyons in the western USA one can visit for nothing or next to nothing — note the Escalante Wilderness for example or Capital Reef or the Narrows at Zion. Spending 1K per day at the national parks seems like a real challenge unless you are staying and eating at the low quality high priced accommodations inside the parks rather than the towns that tend to be near the parks. That the parks are overrun with the nation’s elites eager to spend that kind of money has never been my experience. They typical people you run into seem about as middle class as they come.
It costs $20 to rent a tent site on the rim of Bryce Canyon. Included is a fire ring for cooking dinner and use of the shower facilities at the general store.
https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/234079?tab=info
But if you need two hotel rooms (one for the kids) @ $300/night and are eating lunch and dinner at the lodges @ $100/person I can see how you’d hit $1000 per day.
Chief Wampum says “It is the land of many budgets.”
jdc: Bidenflation has removed any obstacles to spending $1,000/day! By “degree of comfort” I mean staying in a hotel room rather than in a tent or RV (where the site must be reserved a year in advance). We paid $400-700/night, including tax, for hotels in or near the parks. Most of these rooms were far below the standard of a typical Hampton Inn (themselves now up to $250/night with taxes and fees!). Dinner for two adults and two kids was typically $120 with tip. “towns that tend to be near the parks”? Would it have been cheaper and better to go to Firehole BBQ in West Yellowstone, MT? Sure. That’s almost a two-hour round-trip drive to from Old Faithful Inn (where we stayed for $700+/night in one of the worst rooms of the trip (noisy; oppressive heat from stuck-on radiator; window mostly nailed shut so that we couldn’t let the heat out; etc.).
Don’t forget to include the rental car and gasoline. That’s about $100/day. And don’t forget airfare. $1200 is the new $500. For a family of four that’s $4800 or $230/day on a 21-day trip (potentially quite a bit more for folks coming from Europe).
For someone who lives in Phoenix, Denver, or SLC it could probably be done for less (take out the airfare and rental car).
Steve: camping is for people who can plan a year in advance! But remember that amortized airfare and rental car will add $300+/day to the cost that you cite (probably $400/day because if you add camping gear on a three-week trip a rental minivan will be required rather than a simple car). For a family that already owned all of the camping gear and that planned a year in advance and that cooked all meals maybe $500/day with food could work.
If you pay $600/year to https://campnab.com/ maybe you can get a camp site that someone else has canceled.
An interesting question: where does the $3B/year park budget get spent? Its nature park, why does it need so much $? Here in Canadastan, it seems most of the budget goes to supporting the bureaucracy of park employees. They seem to mostly spend their time checking cars + campsites + parking +fishing to make sure all the fees were paid, the same fees that pay their salaries. They also do interviews on TV a lot complaining about too many people visiting the parks.
According to Elon, AGI will drive down the cost of labor so dramatically that the government will have to create infinite money to achieve 2% inflation.
philg just tries to stretch his legs and keep riff-raff out of his way in National Parks. Never mind that National Parks is the thing we are supposedly are paying taxes for, including by patronizing tax-paying business to the tune of $1,000/day as he described in his comment. Maybe philg suggests privatizing National Parks? Then what makes them national?
Perhaps we should have sign-up sheet for them, similar how state parks campgrounds work.
The concessions (government cronies) are paying taxes? Xanterra, the crony that monopolizes Yellowstone National Park, is owned by a white billionaire, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz
We are informed by Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders that billionaires do not pay taxes.
To answer your question… I am not suggesting privatizing national parks, though returning them to the states to run would probably be better (local control and management, but to national standards). I am suggesting that the National Park Service charge enough so that a working class Black American isn’t subsidizing an elite white European tourist.
philg, how do you know that paying more for National Park entrance will end foreign tourist subsidy? Can you guarantee that money go to National Parks? It would be first time such thing happens. Will then Americans get tax relief, if National Parks are not to be funded from general tax revenues? Do you support extending this to all government spending including military spending? Let only immediate users pay for them? How National Park spending is different?
Foremost role of National Park is to be there and preserve natural beauty and precious history. Just by being there they perform their primary function.
In other economic posts you once mentioned that rich people pay non-proportionally high percentage of taxes and even they have to escape to Florida and North Dakota from such persecution. It does not apply to National Parks?
Anon: Of course, there is no situation in which peasants will get a tax cut. However, if general tax revenues aren’t necessary to fund NPS (because it gets sufficient money from entrance fees) that means that peasants might enjoy a boost in services from other parts of the federal government (or perhaps just less debt).
Or perhaps it will give better lifestyle to those closer to the pot, not generic public.
Anyway, your proposal logic could be related to any government expenditure. But this is not how taxation works. That’s why it is called “tax” so it funds all the programs funded by people representatives, ie US Congress. So you basically suggesting privatizing National Parks to make them profitable. No reason to have them part of the government under your proposal.
“working class Black American” Most black people do not work!
That’s what disneyland did. They used to charge normal amusement-park prices ( ~ 100 bidies/day/person), Then they realized that their patrons were spending thousands on hotels and airfare to get there and they jacked up the prices to capture some of that sweet revenue.
It probably costs about the same to maintain the national parks (minus the concessions) whether they are empty or full, so why charge more?
Also note that lots of amusement parks and ski resorts are going to the same model. Sell an annual pass: the one-timers pay a lot and the fanatics pay almost nothing per visit.
SuperMike: The Disney pass that corresponds to the $80 annual National Parks pass (no blackout dates; now renamed “BLOCKout dates”) is the Incredi-Pass. It is $1400 per year. For a family of four, therefore, the U.S. NPS is charging $80/year while Disney charges $5600. These aren’t directly comparable numbers, though, because the Disney pass is good only at Disney World, not at other Disney properties around the country/world.
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/passes/
When I went to visit a national park in Florida in an RV with my dad, we visited a Civilian Conservation Corps building there with some history about the CCC. It was basic setup during the Depression to give young men some jobs. They earned $30 (equivalent to $678 in current dollars) per month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families) and free room and board. There was an old timer there giving visitors the story. He lauded the CCC and the New Deal and Socialism since private industry at the time was retreating their capital. One interesting idea he had was to bring back the CCC and have all the immigrants work in the CCC. This, he argued, would help them integrate and contribute to the infrastructure of America. He was a Democrat of course, but I don’t know if (modern?) Democrats would consider this idea.
D: I think this idea is hate speech. The implication is that an immigrant who works is more valuable somehow than an immigrant who relaxes in public housing, shops with SNAP/EBT, gets health care via Medicaid, and calls the Old Country on an Obamaphone. Receiving millions of immigrants annually is its own reward. If those immigrants are elderly, disabled, burdened with 4 children under age 6, or merely choose not to work they aren’t “less than” immigrants who work 12 hours per day for exploiters (capitalists).
I forgot to mention, the young men got training in carpentry, plumbing, electric, and also night classes for high school degrees.
What puzzles me is this. Even with Bidenflation, vacation destinations are packed! Good luck finding rooms, and tickets, and when you make it to your vacation destination, expect to run into a packed crowd.
So Americans are spending like there is no tomorrow on narrowed money (most likely), are doing well, and have the spending power (less likely), or are expecting debt forgiveness from Biden (very likely, with cannabis).
All Americans are equal, but some are more equal than others.
All you do is complain, Phil, you sound like an angry old white guy!?! 🙄😂
I am not personally angry that the federal taxpayers of the US who don’t go to the parks subsidized our recent trip by covering 95% of the services that we received inside the parks. I am perhaps a little sad that we didn’t do the trip in a Tesla so that we could have gotten a subsidy on our car too!
The national parks belong to all Americans, regardless on whether they visit them or not. The numbers may be a bit outdated, but in 2015, I visited Saguaro National Park in five days and spent $314 all-inclusive of transportation from my home in California, food, and lodging costs: https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/saguaro-national-park-five-days/