Best and Worst State Taxes for Hybrids

I find that (at $4.50/gallon in O.C. Calif) even over the Prius (life time average of 55mpg), our EV saves over $2,000 year gasoline costs (not including oil, filters etc), based on our 12,500 a year average mileage. We don't count electricity costs towards the EV because our grid tied PV system is a net generator, even after accounting for our homes electric bill, and even after charging the car. Woo hoo! I guess I wouldn't mind paying road tax by giving up the yearly $200 that our utility company has to pay us for our surpluss. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just take advantage of 'em.

 

Sure, so long as your ignore the money you paid, and the money the US taxpayer paid to subsidize the PV setup.

I have never been in favor of subsidies, but you unfortunately are a poster child for why subsidies are such a bad idea. Blind consumption because it is 'free.'

 

But of course you don't mind fuel being subsidized, right? You wouldn't mind $4 gas going to $8. right. How about this. Subsidies? All or nothing. But no one wants the playing field set equal, when THEIR subsidy hits the fan.

The funny thing is, the more liquid fuel saved by hybrids, EV's, PHEV's - the more the fuel using system benefits. So one would think it'd be best to hit the largest fuel users with taxes, whether for roads, or medical costs (respitory health), military acquisition/protections costs. But that's maybe getting to real for some users. Nope. we do like to pass our costs onto other users.

 

This is EXACTLY what I advocate: NO subsidies. Period. Only taxation to cover externalities.

 

Lake Anna might be 'urbanized' now but when my wife and I were there, we had a small inflatable with motor and found the fishin' a lot of fun . . . small but successful.

Bob Wilson

 

I would say the majority of americans want a level playing field. Most lobbiest and politicians do not. A level playing field for gasoline would increase it's price much less than double

Again, why should we set up a system for fuel use to keep the military budget high? I am against the sequester cuts, because they do it in a stupid way, but the military budget needs to be cut, not kept increasing by taking fuel taxes. For example the generals say we need no more tanks, but congress says tanks are jobs in my district, as a motorist, I don't want my fuel taxed so congress can buy something the military says it does not want. I don't think the wars got us 1 extra drop of oil. Sure we can take some of medicare and Medicaid into fuel taxes though. I don't think anyone objects to fuel taxes being used for road taxes, but that is only about 12 cents federal we need right now. Some states already over tax, but Virginia is quite low.

 

That is because you cannot grasp what the reality would have been if Iraq had invaded and conquered the arabian peninsula while at the same time America continues to be a fossil fuel dependent energy pig.

 

So, hmm, you think Saddam would have stopped selling oil? That seems to lack historical perspective. Do you think Saudi Arabia is a friend, that the US needs to defend with our blood, even though they sponsor terrorism, and despise woman's rights? Do you think the second gulf war increased or decreased the price of oil? Have you attempted to read any analysis? How much oil do we get for our troops stationed in south korea or Germany.

Yes I am the ignorant one.

 

You cannot see the forest from the trees. Absent oil dependency, the US would spend as much money defending Arabian countries and oil shipping routes as it spends defending, say, Uganda.

 

Apparently Reagan could not grasp it either as he paid and supported Saddam's attempt to conquer Iran and Bush couldn't grasp it as his ambassador told his friend Saddam US had no problems with Saddam invading Kuwait.

The reality is US should have spent the $14T oil war money on making US energy efficient and not needing any imported oil but we had leaders who did not grasp reality. So here we are right where we started when we overthrew democracy in Iraq and Iran, we have hostile right wing religious extremists in control of Middle East oil supplies, hating US, financing terrorism.

 

You can continue defending this stupid war for oil policy, or open your eyes, and read some history.

When the CIA helped overthrow the government of iran, the US was an oil exporter, but those socialists, wanted to keep money in iran, and not give it to BP.

It wasn't until the shah fell that the war for oil doctrine was brought out, and Saddam was given to the greenlight to save us from muslem fundamentalism in Iran, and the us armed Iraq because Iran was dangerous and might take over our friends in the kingdom of saud. Then the CIA funded muslem fundamentalism in Afghanistan to fight the Russians, that were going to take the oil from Iran. And the US armed Iraq, and ignored the chemical weapons Saddam dropped on his own people, until.


Read the history!

No War for Oil: Books: The Independent Institute

It's really 12.9%, not ten, but keep connecting the dots and you are ignorant if you don't see the blow back and chain of events. How many barrels of oil have the blood and treasure bought? I'd say 0, and I would put the twin towers victims as casualities of these policies. Yes they were killed by terrorist, who bear responsability, but those terrorist would not have come over here, except for war for oil.

Do you think that you need to cut oil use, before stopping the stupidity. Do you think we should add an Iran war? Why do we have to live in past ignorance? American's can say no to war for oil. Its irrational at its heart, and leads to unethical and immoral decisions. Sure we should cut oil use also, but that is no reason to fight another pointless war. If you defend the oil wars, I'd like to know how those people ended up on our oil.

 

Wait -- do you think I am defending the oil wars ?

NO WAY IN HELL.

I am pointing out that American dependence on oil is the reason they are happening.

 

But that certainly sounds, wrong, when you excuse them.

If you understand that the US didn't get any more oil and didn't make the world a better place, you can surely make the next logical connection - the war for oil doctrine has been a disaster - From support of Saddam in war against Iran to protect the oil from the iranians, to ignoreing chemical weapons, because they were to be used on Iran, to war with Saddam because we thought he still had those weapons. The use of muslem fundamentalists in a proxy war against the russians to keep them from our oil, to war against them in afghanistan. It's bad policy whether we import oil from the region or not. Oil is fungable, and people will sell it to us at a price. It is a much lower price than the blood and treasure wasted in the bad policy. Just don't excuse it. You went so far to call my position naive, because I don't find these wars in hindsight to have gained us protection of the oil.

Certainly if there is a world war III we may need to control oil, but that requires a much smaller footprint. Our biggest rival has 2 carrier groups, none of our enemies have any. Why do we need more than 5, or bases in saudi arabia that simply seem to help recruit terrorists? It simply makes no sense to defend one bad regime from another. These oil wars still come with oil price spikes whether we are the instigators or not. I had no problem with helping the rebels in libya for humanitarian reasons, against a vile dictator, but that regime we support in saudi arabia does not provide human rights either.

We certainly should reduce US oil use. That won't change the strategic importance in the case of another world war. We need to change both policies, and not have one policy change wait for the other. I certainly don't want to provide the politicians with excuses for another oil war, by taxing fuels to pay for military. I hope that is your position. That unecessary wars remain unecessary even with 13% of oil imported from the gulf. Can you understand the position that wars happened because of bad policy, not because the us is an oil importing nation. That policy goes back a long way, and is rooted in british colonialism, and the cold war. I hope people realize that vietnam was a bad war and was rooted in french colonialism and the cold war. There is no reason to repeat these mistakes. There is also no reason to position these mistakes in the tax code, and every time a congress wants to increase the military to provide for a war of choice, they just add to the fuel taxes.

 

Huh ?

I understand that foreign oil dependency leads to military and political adventurism abroad.

Look around -- the US spends its political capital and funds military exploits in countries where natural resources are coveted by competing nations. This is not rocket science.

You seem to be arguing that the US can successfully exploit (aka 'buy') foreign natural resources cheaper just by forking over money directly for the resource rather than manipulating the market with military and political interventions. Your reasoning is flawed because it assumes a non-manipulated market.

As one example, your argument that Europe has showed that just buying the stuff is cheaper than robbery ignores the fact that the US has rigged the market already; Europe is just riding the coat-tails.

 

How Much Energy Does the U.S. Military Consume | The Daily Energy Report
I 'get-it' ... that our oil-acquisitions- abroad skills are lacking. Even discounting the morality of imperialisim, as well as balancing realistic national defense issues ... our bipartisan Fed's (that fund the military) suck up a lot of fuel. That's the crux of "taxable-fuel-at-the-pump" that gets me ... and I'm not convinced that such an amount of fuel tax wouldn't easily more than double our subsidized fuel costs. So yea, running the DOD budget at the pump, would be a whole lot more fiscally responsible than printing fictional dollars (to the point of worthlessness) to run the largest military in the world. It'd beat financial collaps. What are we up to now ... 12 trillion? 15 trillion 17? I've lost track.

 

IMO the main reason to tax at the pump is to encourage conservation. Conservation would destroy the asinine argument that the military cost is unrelated to oil dependency. Current policy effectively encourages waste through subsidy at the pump.

The current policy is SO nice person-backwards.

 

Hill the alternative is to realistically assess the military If it is defensive there isn't a need for more than 5 carrier groups, or huge bases in Korea and Germany. Cut down these things and fuel use drops also. Thankfully by the end of 2014 it looks like we will no longer be spending $400/gallon for fuel in Afghanistan. Talking to some friends in the military they don't think we are trying to win, just trying not to lose, which is a bad mission. Congress acts as if we need more tanks - military goes and stores them, as well as other weapon systems. Its a failure of government to control, out of control spending.

While the millitary uses about 4.6 Billion gallons of liquid fuel a year, they spent $711 B in 2011 on the budget, fuel a small percentage. They did spend 41% of the money in the world on millitary, China and Russia combined spent 12.3%, neither I consider a strong millitary threat. Our allies Britian, France, and Japan combined to spend the next 10.6%. None of our enemies make the top 15, which bottoms out at 1% of the worlds millitary budget.

If you simply increase taxes to lock in this excessive spending, and encourage adventurism, by saying we are paying to protect the oil, you get too negatives. A $5 gas tax is going to send us into a recession, and might actually reduce government revenue. If you just are adding tax for military fuel use, that might not be a bad thing, its the weapons and men and foreign bases that we can't afford. Now there is one thing that is in extreme deficit, which is medicare, and fuel taxes might offset payroll taxes. That at least would not be recessionary, and would not encourage war. It would be great if there were fixes to medicare, and reduction in military spending at the same time, but I've lost hope for that.

I do think that Virginia dropping gas tax to 11 cents and raising sales tax and charging a prius tax is rediculously going in the wrong direction. They seem to want to help out those with guzzlers, and build into the tax code disincentives to conserving oil.

 

Repubs love to say that as if it were fact. I contend that all it would do is promote conservation and clean energy production.

My home electric consumption is downward trending, but currently at 150 kwh a month. My NG consumption is downward trending, but this year will be ~ 20% of years past. All I did was was save money by investing in non-subsidized energy efficiency. The other 99% of Americans require carbon taxation to be motivated to figure out and do what I have.

 

Well the fuel taxng system is a disaster. And with hybrids being such a little niche in the overall fuel market, the tax $$ that might theoretically get raised doesn't really amount to diddly squat when it comes to building new roads or repairing the old ones. Taxing hybrids is just a red herring to make us feel like the system is really fair ... even as our decaying status quo continues rolling forward