Gasoline tax

God I wish I could hit the thank you button 1 million times.

 

1. Securing of Middle East oil has been the No. 1 planning contingency of Pentagon from 1980 on when US military spending jumped (along with US deficits and debt). This makes strategic sense because loss of Middle East was and still is the main strategic threat to US.

2. The sole strategic interest of US in Middle East is oil.

3. US has been in continuous war in Middle East since 1991, twenty years of continuous and futile war for oil which has bankrupted the US with $14T in debt.

4. US need for Middle East oil or any imported oil would be zero if US invested in technology and policies as Europe and Japan did who use 50% less energy per capita per GDP than US. While US imports 50% of its oil...unnecessary had US followed Europe, Japan's lead on energy efficiency.

Known as a red herring argument since no claims there are no other threats just that the Pentagon correctly identifies cut off of Middle East oil as the No. 1 strategic threat to the US, has spent accordingly and US has been engaged in non-stop war in the Middle East for oil for 20 years.

Facts on the ground.

More red herrings as no one does that. But it is a fact that US failed to implement policies to reduce US oil consumption to European levels and spent trillions of dollars securing oil supplies which are used by the oil companies to make record profits.

You would be the only make that presupposition.

What trade routes other than oil are threatened? By whom?

 

Doesn't seem like much waste here, and the reason that the highway trust fund does not keep up with the need.

As of 2011, this is the breakdown of the federal portion of gas tax:
Highway Trust Fund – 15.44 Cents/Gallon
Mass Transit – 2.86 Cents/Gallon
Leaking Underground Storage – 0.1 Cents/Gallon

 

There are much much more component of out national deficit than just defense spending.

SCH-I500 ? 2

 

It's pretty much defense spending, 35% of US budget discretionary spending.

Remember Social Security and Medicare pay for themselves via designated payroll taxes and, collectively have lent $4T to Pentagon out of SS/Medicare tax surpluses over the last 30 years.

Over extension on military spending has been the demise of empires from Athens to Rome to Russia to US. Ike perfectly describes the disaster that befell the US over the last 30 years and why it happened. The wars for oil, 20 years of continuous combat in the Middle East preceded by 10 years of preparation for just that combat.

The only beneficiaries are identified by Ike.

 

And the entire discretionary spending budget is what, 37% of the entire budget? As a proportion of the entire Federal budget, the DoD only gets 19% - or just a hair under 5% of GDP.

I'm all about saving money, and I would be leading the charge to reform the military and scale back the spending. I would re-emphasize the military on border security, protecting sea lanes, and low-scale anti-terrorist units (Special Forces, etc.). But I would not, as you appear to be wanting to do, gut the entire defense budget and leave us at the mercy of... anyone? I think a little reminder from our Founding Fathers is in order.

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares often wind up plowing for those who kept their swords." - Benjamin Franklin

Well, that's what you get when politicians have a bipartisan opportunity to raid the kitty and replace it with IOU's. I wouldn't have trusted the damn politicians with the money in the first place, instead making the programs pay as you go on a yearly basis. Determine by October or so what the tax rate needs to be in order to cover spending, so that by January companies can have a new yearly plan in place to deal with the new tax rates.

Seriously dude, what vendetta do you have against the United States military? We started talking about gas taxes, and it somehow veered off into how the Pentagon is spending us into oblivion chasing oil.

If you wanted to talk about government spending, then by all means ask a mod or someone to move this to the politics forum and add us both to the member list so we can continue there. Because I know of a -lot- of other places that can be slashed from government, and would yield far better real reductions in the deficit.

 

While you and most others who use that method mean no harm by it, it is a very bad internet habit, which outside of the internet is considered dishonest.

The proper way to do it is to quote the person's words accurately, and then outside of the quote, give your own version.

Taxes are not punishment. Taxes are the way a society collectively pays for the services it wants of government. The rationale behind a progressive, graduated tax system is that the richer you are, the more you have benefitted from the economic system, and the more you can afford to pay. Hard work and long hours are rewarded by more pay. But a CEO who is paid a million dollars a year has not worked harder or longer than a migrant farm worker who spends 14 hours, bent over, under a blazing sun, for minimum wage.

In America, the people who work the hardest are paid the least. The people who get the most can afford to pay more.

That quote deserves repeating.

 

Social Security and Medicare are funded by their own taxes, have run a $4T collective surplus over last 30 years. They are not really part of any "budget" discussion. They had nothing to do with current deficit and debt.

The rest of the US Federal budget is discretionary spending. In the discretionary spending the military budget is 35% and has been since the big jumps in military spending from 1980.

Those jumps were, per Pentagon risk assessment, mostly to prepare to fight Middle East oil wars. Those wars began in 1991 and have continued non-stop for 21 years. Other than Middle East oil cutoff threat, US faces very few and very small threats. Russia spends $90B a year, China $150B.

The $14T in deficit and debt can be correctly traced to the increase in military spending combined with tax cuts. Social Security and Medicare taxes increased at that time as as comparison which is why military spending, increasing and the major portion of Federal budget is the clear reason for the deficits and debt on the spending side.

Because the gas tax should be paying for the oil wars. Because the gas tax should be used to pay for fixing the US problems (energy inefficiency and oil use) which create the military threat that pushes US into oil wars as a matter of national security.

US should have European level of gasoline prices, $10 per gallon, paying first for solutions to the US energy/oil problem, second paying for the military and environmental costs of oil use.

That fixes main US problems, $500B per year in oil trade deficit tax on US economy, $500B per military costs (based on current $1.3T per year total military spending) and whatever value one chooses to assign to air and water pollution and climate change costs.

For those promoting Prius, it makes the payback on smart technology cars in 1-2 years.

 

If you are going to double the price of gas, which will no doubt stick a knife into the heart of the middle class, then you should also double the minimum wage while your at it.

 

Certainly all for doubling minimum wage and tripling gas tax. Both would be in US national interest.

Gasoline use has a huge elasticity of demand. That means people do a lot of unnecessary driving and can cut back with no impact on essentials. If that gas tax also gives them $10K tax credit to buy new Prius that doubles their mileage (triples in the case of PIP), good things happen.

On getting US per gallon price to European level of $10. Over eight years would give people time to adjust and for manufacturers to ramp up for demand on high mileage vehicles.

 

Well I'll tell you what. You try and campaign for office with that as your message, and we will see how far you get. My guess is not very.

 

That "rationale" is completely irrational. I guess I'm not a believer in Marxism. For the record, field workers here in Arizona make between $12 and $15 per hour and many, if not most, do not pay any income taxes. It is punishment to make someone pay more simply because they "can afford it." Stealing from one to give to another is evil.

 

Of course and that is why US is failing with massive deficits and debt caused by energy inefficiency rooted in oil use and associated military costs of oil wars.

I don't expect US to fix the problem. I expect US to continue its oil based decline and fall. All I can do is vote for representatives who, like Ike, put US national interest above special interest and continue my own transition to 80% of carbon footprint by 2050.

 

The figure I've seen suggests 50% of the overall federal budget. However, that counts several items that the budget does not classify as "military budget" items. Pensions for retired military personnel; medical care for veterans; the interest being paid on that portion of the debt accrued by borrowing to pay for wars; and, oddly, nuclear weapons, which fall under the Department of Energy and are part of its budget, rather than under the department of Defense and its budget.

Speaking for myself, I'm all for that. Although I'm not sure that doubling is enough.

You may have noticed, that I'm not running for office.

I call b.s. I worked for 4 years as a translator in a legal aid office serving low-income migrant farm workers in North Dakota and Minnesota. Farm workers are not covered by minimum wage laws, and they definitely do pay income taxes. The taxes are withheld from their pay, just like any other workers. A few of them are undocumented, and use fake social security numbers or taxpayer ID numbers. Taxes are withheld from their pay, but they (the undocumented) cannot file for refunds.

Most, however, are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. They are paid peanuts and taxes are withheld from their pay by their employers, the farmers.

 

If you want to see failing, look at greece italy spain ireland etc etc. They are failing or.have failed because of your rational.

 

The reason that tax threads always swerve into "Oil Warz" and DoD bashing is that they're easy targets for propoganda. Like I said before. It directs anger and blame away from you. It repeats well, and the real facts that are involved are so impossibly convoluted, that you can make fantastic claims without somebody being able to call you down on it. All very important for really gooooood B.S.
Repeat after me….
Your kid is failing Algebra?
Bush. Oil Warz. DoD spending.

Filling fell out while you were eating corn on the cob?
Bush. Oil Warz. DoD spending.

Batteries worn out on your DVD remote?
Bush. Oil Warz. DoD spending.

Daniel, you're a little wrong about the DoD/DoE interface. There is some cross-pollenization of funds between these two agencies, but the DoE budget isn't really spent on Nuclear powered, Trident Configured, Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines. We don't even buy the missiles IIRC, they're leased from Lockheed....well until you expend one on the DASO range. Then I guess we "purchase" it.
I know that SIOP weaps are one of the top turds on your pile, but "special" weapons are actually very very cheap for what they do on a TCO basis. SLBMs are the most expensive of the types we keep in the inventory, and yet SSBN's even with their dual crews and high buy-in costs are much cheaper than outfitting, training, paying, and fielding a bunch of eleven-bravos.
That's why countries that end in 'Stan would love to get their fingers on some.
True DoD spending encompasses far more than just buying a bunch of neat gear, some fancy uniforms, and looking for some little country to knock over. However (comma!) There’s an up-side to that too. I’ll get to that in a second.

The sword cuts both ways. Yes, DoD spending is a high percentage of our "discretionary" spending, but that's because bed-wetting liberals have so many line items in the "budget" that are "non-discretionary.”
Uniforms for Midnight Basketball programs....non-discretionary! Bike paths in Kitsap, Alaska....non-discretionary! Feeding kids fried chicken to replace a "non-approved" home packed lunch.....non-discretionary!

We’ve gone over this before....look at history, and tell me where high DoD spending has been such a huge "waste of money." I used to draw a DoD paycheck for doing Bathymetric Survey work. A surprisingly high percentage of what we know about the world's oceans is a result of the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office. The reason is simple. Oceanography is expensive!!!
Later on....I operated a Geomagnetic Survey Satellite. Really evil stuff! Launching satellites is a little bit too expensive even for state-funded colleges, and if the government does it….well it’s obviously MILITARY spending, now isn’t it?
Still later on, I did surf-zone METOC work for the NRL in optical oceanography, and we developed a self-mooring buoy for gathering METOC data that can be delivered by air, surface, or subsurface assets. It profiles evil things like temperature, salinity, wave action, and turbidity. Truly EVIL stuff!
GPS? Cold War budget line item. Still operated by the folks in blue IIRC. Primary use was/is to target weapons, since you gotta know where you are before you can tell the missile where to go.
What time is it? How do you know what time it is? Ask Joe Biden to look around his residence. He lives at the USNO (look it up if you don’t understand the reference.)
Internet? Cold War budget line item. Comms are pretty important for those evil military bastards.
And on....and on. In the U.S. all the way back to our beef with the Brits.
The reason that the anti-military crowd would have you to believe that we spend Zillions for the military---I mean hey! You're on a roll. Why stop at a trillion? ---is that they think that ALL spending from NASA to the FDA is tied to the "military industrial complex." YMMV, but I personally think that we've seen some pretty decent paybacks in fields from aeronautics, to medicine, to technology from military funded R/D.

People (and especially sailors!) have two inalienable rights. The right to bitch, and the right to B.S.

Many times, bitching leads to B.S. since the real truth is a little too complex to fit on a poster at a May-Day...(*oops!*) I mean OWS rally!

…and you may need a mirror to see it.
If I have to….I can get by on less than 5-gallons of gas per week….actually closer to zero if I cycle to work, which I can do.
What’s your number?

 

Sorry ETC, it is you, military can do no wrong people, that can't and won't see the problem with the military budget, $1.5 Trillion is a big chunk of the budget. And $4 trillion and growing to protect the Middle East, who can well afford to protect themselves, is a lot of money.

Now tack on the conservative $4 Trillion it is going to cost for Iraq and Afghanistan in the long run, how do you justify that? That is the problem with people who think that the military is a no brainer and there is no price to high.

 

Hi ProximalSuns--

I am going to assume you were absent the day they taught economics in school. What you are calling for will result in massive, triple-digit inflation that will annihilate the accumulated savings of millions of hard-working Americans, completely debase the US dollar upon which world trade is based, and quite possibly cause total financial collapse of the government and its entitlement programs that you hold so dear.

So I'll give you economics 101: Inflation is caused in two ways - either by "demand-pull" or "cost-push" inflation.

Under a "demand-pull" situation, you've got too much money chasing too few product. A gas station gouging on prices as the whole city evacuates from an incoming hurricane is an excellent example of demand-pull inflation.

"Cost-push" on the other hand is a product of rising expenses - in essence, the costs are being pushed down the stream of commerce. Higher fuel prices cause the farmer's tractor costs to rise, so he raises the wholesale cost of food. Higher fuel prices cause the truckers to tack on fuel surcharges, raising the prices higher still. And on and on... pushing the higher costs of inflation on the consumer - you and me.

Your scheme of multiplying Federal gas taxes by a factor of 30 or more (from the current 15 cents to over $5 a gallon) plus tripling the minimum wage would unleash the hellstorm of inflation on both ends - demand-pulling and cost-pushing.

By effectively doubling or tripling the amount of money in the working man's hands overnight, you'll see a massive upsurge of prices - perhaps within as little as a few days once the retailer's realize what's going on and stocks begin to run low. When prices rise and stay there, you've effectively eliminated any gains the working man has made by his increase in minimum wage.

And I pity the fool that tried to be responsible and save some of his money in the bank, because his holdings have just been annihilated by higher prices. His $10,000 in a savings account now buys $5,000 worth of stuff.

This inflation problem would be exacerbated by the sudden rise in fuel prices. Americans drive much farther than Europeans do, both by necessity and by design. All of continental Europe could fit within the lower 48 states, and at a much higher population density than we enjoy.

Some people have no choice but to make long commutes if city taxes make living in the city prohibitively expensive. Others have to because they're following the job and can't sell because the housing market is crap. You want to punish these people with $10/gallon gasoline?[/quote]

Gasoline does not have a huge elasticity of demand. Repeat after me.

Gasoline demand is not elastic.

I keep my driving to a minimum as it is. I live downtown, and walk places when possible. I drive to the store, to church, and to a couple other places as needed. I don't take many trips for the fun of it anymore. I'm driving a Prius to minimize my fuel costs nevertheless.

I am in a poor position to be able to afford $10 per gallon gasoline, much less anyone else. Because I literally can't reduce my fuel consumption any further.

And any lower-income individual or family who's currently puttering around in a 15 year old beater doesn't exactly have 30k to plunk down on a plug-in Prius, even after a tax credit. I don't think they take many un-necessary trips either.

So you're going to punish the 99% of Americans to benefit... the 99%? That makes absolutely zero sense. Unless you're one of the gifted few with the financial wherewithal to capitalize on buying a brand-new plug-in Prius and take advantage of that tax credit. Unless you're secretly invested in Solyndra or some other "green-fuel" company and stand to make a killing when gasoline is made uneconomical by legislative fiat.

Well, he's had one (Obama) term so far, and he's halfway there. Maybe if Obama beats Rmoney in the fall, you'll get your wish, and Steven Chu will manage to get gas prices all the way up to European levels.

 

No their economic issues are not based on poor energy efficiency, oil imports and wars to support their oil imports. That is a uniquely US problem responsible for our $14T in debt on the spending side combined with irrational exuberance of unregulated and corrupt financial markets and unwise tax cuts on the revenue side.

 

Unfortunately, no increases in Federal gasoline tax over the last four years. You've been misinformed.

It would be great if a political leader leveled with the US public, explained that our $14T debt is due to military spending to secure oil and the continuous 20 years of US oil wars in the Middle East. That we need to pay for the debt and that since energy inefficiency and oil imports caused the problem, that is where the revenue to fix the problem should come from. Additionally, we need to get as energy efficient Europe which is 50% more energy efficient than the US and we need to use some of the oil tax money to pay to make the US more energy efficient, to build an alternative energy economy, put 20,000,000 back to work rebuilding the US industrial, commercial and residential infrastructure to world standards of energy efficiency.

Public might surprise you, and respond well to the truth and vote the person into office.