"Raise the gas tax", USA Today Editorial Board says

Most of us herein agree with you, thus our presence here. However there is a huge segment of the US buying public that just doesn't care. They want what they want which may include the right to use all the resources available in the world if it comes to that...deal with the consequences later.

The only way to reign in these profligate spenders ( this is a free country I'll do as I please ) is to make them pay one way or another.

However there is a subtler force at work in this market too....BIG OIL. They love this free-wheeling, free-spending attitude. 'Yeah, don't let those enviro-weenies tell YOU what to drive. You stand up for your rights to drive whatever you want.' BIG OIL being the biggest taxpayers to the US Treasury has an awful lot of influence on this matter. It doesn't want increased taxes and reduced usage.

The market price is what it is. If taxes are increased that means a certain amount of money is going to the government and not into Big Oil's pockets. Reduced usage is of course something that no business wants to see.

 

I wish after 9/11 for those that weren't in the military there was a plan for the general population besides to "keep shopping and don't let the terrorists win." Perhaps a plan to take us off Middle East imports entirely. Perhaps a 5 cent/gallon tax per year going for ten years, 5 cents year 1, 10 cents year 2, etc. That money would solely be used for development of better fuel economy vehicles and alternative fuels.

If it was publicly stated that reducing imports was our intention, the Saudis might spend their money tracking down and killing all of the terrorists, because without our consumption the impact on the world price of oil would be very noticeable and that loss of revenue would mean they would have to actually develop some other industries. They can live with 20-30% unemployment with the oil revenue, but after that goes away? What exporter of oil is currently considered a democracy? Mexico and Canada? Anyone else? Not for long, as they will eventually become a big enough consumer themselves to reduce their export capability.

Even if people understand what their choice of oil consumption does, it will not change until the economic incentive is there. The price rising in 2008 showed that people will make a change in behavior, it just really needs to be part of an actual plan and not just free-market variability to achieve a stated and intended goal.

Roughly, a 1 cent tax should be over 3.1 Billion/year (using numbers from a few years ago before/during the recession).

America's 25% usage of world oil consumption X 85 million barrels a day usage X 40 gallons/barrel X 365 days/year = gallons/year X .01/gallon.

Considering the amount of money spent by the government/private industry, a 5 cent tax would be about 15.5 billion/year for fuel economy/alternative fuel development would be an incredible change in fortune. Everyone made a big deal about the 300 million to be put into algae fuel and others like OriginOil and Solyzme are making news with their products, but oil companies will always just be oil companies, they never will be energy companies or even fuel companies (with the exception of their natural gas arm).

If oil companies loved alternative fuels why have they never bought an ethanol plant? One oil company alone would have enough resources to purchase every ethanol plant in the country. As long as they get the ethanol credit (strangely going to the blender, not the producer) they will keep everything where it is and do what they know how to do. The BP oil spill is very proof of their concept of putting money into drilling techniques but ignoring all work in capture/recovery system advancements until it is much too late.

 

no prolemo, set myself up for that one. they're an easy target for me. they are all over my town and when i do walk, i almost get run over by them doing twice the speed limit, seems like.

 

The great aspect of gas taxes is that it attacks the problem at the source. Almost every other method of reducing gas consumption requires some sort of market manipulation.....and manipulations will be corrupted. The trick is to phase in the taxes gradually and make them part of the state's revenue, not a national revenue. The key to the "phase in" part is that people will shift car buying habits since they now will KNOW that cheap gas is going away.....but slow enough not to financially hammer them with a massive gas tax tomorrow. It would also be slow enough to allow car companies to commit increasing production to EVs with confidence that the market is not going to fluctuate wildly.

 

Boy you got that right. Right out of the liberal handbook.

 

^^ I think that is about right. But I prefer it to the riightard handbook, which says:
Tell the treasury to rev up the presses, baby! We got a couple wars to pick, and a lot of corporate buddies that want payback. Oh, and give a couple pennies to the taxpayer -- they are too stupid to know the difference when the bill comes due, or we use it to blame the democrats for trying to pay it. LOSERS lol

 

Never mind the gender, this is exactly why people there needs to be several prongs to this: education (our dependence on foreign oil, our lack of reserves, etc.) and hitting them HARD in the pocketbook. Then, they might reconsider.

"Light trucks" being exempt from the gas guzzler tax is bogus and needs to be removed. "Light trucks" which also happens to include SUVs made up 49% of the vehicles sold for model year 2009. The gas guzzler tax needs to be made MUCH higher and have the limits changes so that full-sized monstrosities SUV will be hit VERY hard (say $10K+).

Then, gas prices need to be raised much higher (and revenues put towards fixing roads, public transportation, investments in fuel saving technologies, and alternative energy). Unfortunately, now is a bad time so it's going to need to be done gradually.

Also, hit them hard too w/registration. Make it VERY expensive vs. a passenger car, smaller SUV or minivan.

I think unless we do this, dumb American monstrosity SUV buying habits and our dependence on oil won't change, unless gas prices go well above $4 and stay there or we have an oil crisis like the ones we had in the 70s. Even in the case of the latter, I'd bet that after the crisis is over, people will go right back to the old ways, in a few years.

 

:focus:GOODBYE!

 

Come on now... Toyota has some gas guzzlers of it's own! (Tundra, 4Runner, Land Cruiser, Sequoia, FJ Cruiser)

The American Gas Guzzler Myth

 

Yes it does, and with a gas tax, they would be penalized as well.
Which I suppose is your point

 

Spoken like a true Socialist, 2k1Toaster!

I don't where you live, but I live in an area of the country where the combined Federal, State, and Local tax burden is already almost 60%! You think that my taxes are too low? I'M TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY!!! If anything, I need a tax cut! So, according to you, I'm a "greedy bastard"? GIVE ME A BREAK! Would you and people of your ilk be satisfied if I turned over my entire paycheck to the government? I bet that you would!

 

Just because you drive a Prius doesn't mean everyone else has to. $10k +!!!!???? You only care about yourself, huh? Just because you don't own a truck or plan on owning one means that nobody has any use for one? Maybe they should start taxing our Priuses since we use batteries which eventually have to be disposed of. I propose a $15k tax on Priuses for future battery disposal costs. :cheer2:

 

Right on....!!

But you missed another great aspect...

As the gas tax rose the base price would fall somewhat in an attempt to keep consumption from declining or maybe even remain constant.

Adjusted for inflation how much does the factory get for a carton of cigarettes vs say 10 years ago...?

 

Smug Alert!
Smug Alert - Episode Guide - South Park Studios

 

amen to that. there are many oxymorons when referring to the US government but government stagnation, goverment inertia, etc are not.

human nature resists change and we have a lot of resistance. the more money or profit that is involved, the greater the challenge to the change.

we simply need to overcome

 

Anyone else find that when people refer to the "Smug Alert" that they themselves are being hypocritical?

 

Got a better idea. Do nothing and wait for the price of oil to increase when the recession period fully comes to an end and China and India increase their consumption.

Then sit back and watch economy hit the skids when people can't afford to fill their cars.

 

I never said everyone else should drive a Prius. People should drive something more commensurate w/actual needs. When I lived in Nor Cal, it was INSANE the # of monstrosity class SUVs that I saw that were driven solo and/or minimal cargo and passengers. It was extremely rare for them to be towing anything.

As someone else so eloquently put it, these people don't see the connection between driving SUVs and national security.

Besides consuming voracious amounts of a non-renewable resource, most of which we import, there's the safety aspect. 5000+ lb. SUVs have poor accident avoidance capabilities in the form of poor handling, poor braking and high rollover propensity. That coupled w/the high kinetic energy they posses, for a given speed (1/2 * mass * velocity^2) makes them a danger to others on the road.

Have you looked at http://www.epa.gov/oms/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s09001.pdf? The # of vehicles sold that are "light trucks" went from 19% in 1975, to 28% in 1987 and now to 49%. Somehow Americans decided they "need" these vehicles? Then we had crazy vehicles w/curb weights and GVWRs so high like the Hummer H2 and Ford Excretion that they didn't even count as "light trucks" anymore. Some Lincoln Navigators and extended length versions of full-sized SUVs fall into that boat too.

What's wrong w/this picture? We import ~60% of our oil. Much of the oil in the world resides in unstable regions of the world where people don't like us much. Some of the oil $ ends up in the hands of terrorists. We have only 3% of the world's oil reserves and <5% of the world's population, yet we consume ~25% of the world's daily oil production. We got royally screwed in the oil embargo when we imported only ~30% of our oil.

At $70/barrel * 11 million barrels/day of imports, that means $5.39 billion is leaving the country every week to fuel our addiction.

China's middle class is at about 300 million people (almost the size of the entire US population). China and India have >1 billion people each, more of which will be able to afford cars in the future and thus competing for this limited non-renewable resource.

We have a http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/guzzler/420f06042.htm, yet it only ends up hitting mostly high end sports cars and luxury cars that sell in TINY quantities and leaves a gaping hole for classes of vehicles that sell in large quantities and percentages.

We have the E85 scam (http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2006/ethanol/overview/index.htm) where a flux-fuel Tahoe that got 14 mpg combined on gasoline and 10 mpg on E85 in Consumer Reports testing counts as "35 mpg" towards GM's CAFE numbers. Fortunately, this is going away.

When I last went to China, Korea and Japan, most vehicles were passenger cars and there were virtually 0 monstrosity class (full-sized) SUVs on the road.

I find polls like http://priuschat.com/forums/other-c...fuel-economy-standards-50-mpg-poll-finds.html funny because nobody needs to wait for the government to raise standards. The 2010 Prius already counts as getting "70.894 mpg" for CAFE purposes.

Why a $15K tax for future battery disposal costs? Toyota already covers the recycling and pays a bounty on the battery. You a believer in the thoroughly debunked CNW junk science that refuses to die? Even per http://www.thecarconnection.com/tips-article/1010861_prius-versus-hummer-exploding-the-myth, the morons at CNW pegged the energy cost of recycling the battery at $93.

 

First its a cartoon, but when I saw it I thought they were exaggerating. Now that I own a prius and have been on PC, I find some members really are adding to global laming. The moral of the episode was hybrids are good, but people aren't ready to drive them without being smug. Since those of us that are pointing out the smugness are driving priuses, ..... What statement did you think I or anyone else that pointed to the connection comes close to those that want to impose their environmental will on everyone else.

 

The fact that you are smug enough in your own supposed moral superiority that you feel the need to point it out! If you are going to berate someone - at least try to do it in a constructive manner - otherwise you are no better than they are.

:focus:

So let's get the gas tax raised, eh?