ricecake

No idea, and not entirely sure why it matters. If your goal is to sell an asset and maximize proceeds, it's a known and unsurprising strategy, particularly since it gives higher returns when there are few bidders.

So it's unfortunately not actually a sale until the judge approves it, it's just an accepted bid.
Sorta like when buying a car. The salesman tells you the price for the vehicle, overpriced perks, and how much your trade in is worth, and you accept the final price. Then the salesman has to get the floor manager to agree, which they always do, because they're the ones with authority to approve the sale. Then you can sign the paperwork and exchange money and you've actually processed the sale. Until then either party can walk away for any reason.

In this case, it's like the floor manager rejected the sale because the cash part of the sale price was less than MSRP, and they didn't think the trade in value mattered.
It's not common for the sale to get rejected, and it's even weirder for them to reject "not cash" instead of paying attention to value.

The judge saying the estate can't accept debt forgiveness in lieu of cash is just odd, since it reduces the debt more than the cash would.

Sealed buds are usually better for that.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sealed-bid-auction.asp

Each party is incentivised to make the highest offer they're willing to pay from the beginning, as opposed to negotiating the best price they can get.

Additionally, the families forgiving a significant amount of money as part of the bid should factor in, since the responsibility of the estate is to get the best deal, not the most cash.

A first price sealed bid auction is a perfectly common type of auction.
It's functionally equivalent to an auction where you know the value of a thing (like we do a business being liquidated because the owner is in extremely deep unrelated legal debt), and the auctioneer starts by asking for the face value and then progressively lowers the ask until the first person accepts the price.
Instead of trying to get the lowest price possible, people are incentivised to start with their best offer for what they actually think the thing is valued. Allowing follow-up bids encourages people to low-ball and work their way up, which can reduce the price the seller gets for the item.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sealed-bid-auction.asp

So, in principle I agree. However, drawing road maintenance funding from something other than a regressive tax isn't the same as subsidization. It similarly lowers the burden on some, but it's just shifting it to those both more able to shoulder the burden, and those more responsible for it. They're also the most able to find alternative modes of transport, since freight rail actually exists in a consistent way across the country, and last mile freight delivery is a continued use case for city roads even if we massively reduce our individual reliance on automobiles.

Secondly, it's worth noting that this isn't just automobile costs, but these reports also cover transportation in general. The cost of transportation is more of a burden for low income folks regardless of mode. Before we start considering denying relief or actively disincentivising one mode of transport, we need to ensure that an alternative actually exists. Without that step you're not reducing our reliance on cars, your just punishing poor people for society not caring about light rail or walkable cities.
My city has a pretty good bus system compared to most, and there are parts of town that are practically unreachable without a car, and actually unreachable in a safe fashion in the winter. As a quick reference, I looked up the bus route for getting to my doctor's office by 7am, which isn't unreasonable for some of the businesses near it.

For reference, the walking instructions involve a fair bit of time on a pedestrian hostile bit of road with a lot of trucks and no sidewalks. It's forecast to be roughly 9°F during that time and snowing.
It does only take an hour by bus if you can show up at eight instead.

All that to say, I'm 100% in favor of getting rid of cars. We just need a society where I can get to my doctor's office without one first.
And even then, trucks should still pay for maintenance.

Sure. We should do those things and you're correct. That doesn't have much bearing on how we replace the road maintenance funding.
Additionally, if you raise taxes to incentise public transport, you should make sure public transport exists first. In the US it's entirely possible for a commute that would be a 20 minute drive to take hours via the bus, only run twice a day, have no notice of cancellations, and involve walking part of the way on a 50 mph road with no sidewalk.

We shouldn't sacrifice improvements to where we are because it doesn't get us to where we should eventually be.

They're not similar situations at all. For one, it's an absurd difference in scale. Whatever your opinions of Amazon delivery driver working conditions and pay, it's in no way comparable to "an invading army murdered their family".

Second, whether or not I should push a button to give someone $5 with no obligation on their part is a different situation from getting a bandaid for a murdered family on the whim of the responsible party.

If you could push a button and a random person somewhere in the world gets $1 million, would you push the button?

You misunderstand my intent with that sentence. We don't want to punish someone for having an EV as opposed to an ICE vehicle. If someone is buying a car, we would prefer to gently nudge them towards the more efficient vehicle, if only through the savings of efficiency.

I'm entirely aware of the alternatives to cars, and would rather we have those. However, we don't live in a world yet where cars are only needed for rural populations and we won't get to that world in the timeframe where we need to figure out road maintenance financing, which is currently based on gasoline sales. So we should figure out the current finance issue in a way that doesn't punish people for picking the best available option, even if it's not the best possible option. Or at least doesn't punish them more than the worse options.

... What? That's such a non-sequitor that I'm honestly not sure if you replied to the wrong thing or something.

I can't say that I would say the same thing in an entirely different situation with nothing to do with the other.

You went from "I like the tea is cheap" to "I bet you're in love with Elon musk and I hate liberals" in like... No steps at all.

The boss does sometimes have to be bossy. If the workers have a stake in the company that actually matters, then they also actually care about the outcome that the company faces.

You're not going to vote to drive something into the ground if you think it will provide you with more value not dismantled and in your pocket.

Workers aren't idiots any more than CEOs are. It's why worker owned co-ops that elect their management do sometimes vote to reduce their own wages. They have a fair stake and want what's best for the business because it's best for them.

https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/ida7-k95k

https://www.bts.gov/data-spotlight/household-cost-transportation-it-affordable

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/23cpr/chap3.cfm

From the last link since it's long. Vmt is vehicle miles traveled, and pmt is person miles traveled:

Tldr: road usage is higher for higher income people, but it makes up a smaller percentage of their income. Reducing transportation costs has a greater benefit for low income households than high income households.