GM president wants $1.00 hike in fed. gas tax

Yes, that's completely fair to say. I'm sorry, I wasn't meaning to belittle your situation. It's all too true that increasing numbers of people are finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet, despite the fact that they're often working harder. Charges of laziness are totally unfair, especially when it's probably the wealthier among us who are in fact lazier.

At the same time, at the other end of the spectrum, we as a society are simply not paying what it really costs for our energy. Ideally, and ultimately, we should be. It is only by recognising the full costs of our choices that we are able to make informed decisions about sustainable alternatives.

On an individual level, yes, times are tough, and most of us can ill afford ever-escalating prices. Yet on a global level, we cannot continue to subsidise oil by risking national economies and sacrificing the health of our planet. Somehow we have to bring those two extremes into balance.

 

hyo silver,

Your last paragraph best describes the complexity of the issue that those of us on here that are not completely in favor of the straight-up $1.00 gas tax have been trying to say. I do not think you will find anyone on here that is not in favor of saving the planet and reducing our addiction to foreign oil. Most will agree that this is a noble and worthwhile cause. The problem that needs to be solved is how to do this without wrecking the budget of those that can least afford it.

It is easy to say "it sucks being poor" but a lot of people, at this point in time, do not have a lot of control of their situations. Once the overall economy and job market returns to some type of normalcy maybe this would be little easier to solve.

Dwight

 

Agreeing what the problem is and doing something about it are two different things. Despite our good thoughts, 99.9% of us still drive gas-powered cars, by ourselves, halfway across town every day. Most people wouldn't think of taking the bus, or cycling, or walking, or working from home, or going out once a week to get everything at once. We live in a car-centric culture, and until we recognise our addiction and develop the willpower to break it, it will continue to get worse.

What really sucks is that this IS normalcy. We slave away our whole lives, buying crap we don't really need, dreaming of the day we don't have to work anymore. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer whether it's boom or bust. The more we earn, the more we spend, and the system perpetuates.

 

Well, the first thing they could do is not exempt SUVs from mpg rules as "commercial" vehicles. If they haven't already.

Mainstream Americans are hooked on SUVs. Women feel safer driving them with all those big trucks on the highway these days, and they have the semblence of more room
(my Prius is about as roomy as many SUVs).

One of my younger relatives is about to sell his Honda Odyssey--too expensive on gas.
That's a good sign.

 

EXACTLY! I agree that we rely too much on fossil fuels. I agree that it isn't wise to give money to people who hate us. I also agree that it isn't generally wise to make enemies faster than we can kill them.

The problem is finding a way to provide incentive to move away from a resource that does these things, and to something that will be more effective in the long run; without crushing people unable to change as fast as others want them to be able to.

However, people usually use this debate as a platform to make individual sacrifices - namely the sick, the poor, the elderly, etc. I kind of figured that you weren't aiming to do that, hyo silver. It just needs a more complex solution than 'raise gasoline prices exponentially until we achieve change' as it will gut a large swath of America in the process. Sure, it might not cause the fall of civilization as we know it - but it can and will cause the downfall of the people who finally can't afford gasoline, afford housing, healthcare, or the like. I am pretty sure nearly all of us can agree that we don't want a future where we have to step over the sick, dying, and dead 'for the greater good' - it strips us of our humanity.

 

There's always a few standby's that have been used for decades - car-pooling, public transportation and bicycles. Yes, public transportation stinks here, but that's because cars and fuel have been cheap for so long we haven't used them much and they've languished.

If fuel was more expensive these other options would start to be exercised more. People would learn that they don't need a big SUV to go get groceries or drop off their kid before going to their white collar job.

You look at the actual poor people, and they already tend to drive fuel efficient cars (old Escorts and Corollas and such), use bicycles and carpool. The biggest effect on them will be in the form of inflation in food and goods, not in direct fuel costs.

The real pain is in the recent poor, the people who haven't learned yet how to live with little money. For instance, I have a friend facing bankruptcy, he stopped health insurance for his kids, but he still keeps his two motorcycles, worth about $8-12K each. He also has satellite TV, big plasma screens and has 4 refrigerators running in his house, but yells at his kids for leaving lights on and running up his electric bill.

If high gas prices are such an immediate problem, how come I still see so many people idling their cars? I was at a soccer game last weekend, and somebody kept their truck idling in the parking lot for at least 20 minutes. Not sure why, the weather was fine, maybe they wanted to listen to the radio? This is not uncommon, I see people idling for long periods all the time. I drive 60 in a 55 and people pass me going 70 or more, obviously they're not concerned about saving another 5 or 10% off their gas bill.

I feel bad for people who are monetarily squeezed and trying to decide what to cut, but still I really don't think fuel prices are the main cause of their current situation.

 

Unfortunately, your entire theory pretty much boils down to this: We can only really enjoy ourselves if we are unsustainable; if we are allowed to keep paying less than a product costs us as a society.

Does that seem like a good long-term plan for extended happiness of the masses?

 

I'm pretty sure it was I who said it in this thread. And that statement and "they don't have a lot of control of their situations" are not in contradiction. We can't afford to sit around digging our hole deeper and waiting for things to get better before we do something. My point a while back was that we needed to do this WAY the hell back there when gas was cheaper. The extra $ then would have made gasoline CHEAPER than it is now...

Waiting to fix this mess is what we've been doing all these years. How's it working out for you?

We have seen it time after time. When things are "good" and energy is cheap - we simply don't give a damn. ONLY when it gets expensive to people start to worry and complain. And when it gets expensive... well, we just need to wait until it is cheap again and THEN we'll do something.

And I ask one more time: How's that working out for you?

 

Should part of the solution be to keep selling gasoline for less than it costs us? We're all paying for it already! It is simply hidden from us. What if it were revenue neutral as was suggested earlier in the thread? And I'm not sure why we've diverted to "exponentially raise the price of gasoline" from a thread on a $1 gas tax. Please also note, that a $1 gas tax still doesn't create a price for gasoline that's equal to its cost to us!

My goal is to have a sustainable system that supports everybody. And the first step is to charge for gasoline what it truly costs us. Cheap gas does nothing but delay and intensify the suffering. Is artificially cheap gas GOOD for us? Is it helping the poor in the long-run? We've had cheap gas pretty much forever... and it is still cheap today relative to inflation. Why is the real price of gasoline something we should continue to hide from the people who consume it?

 

i'm against it because gm prez is for it. otherwise, i'm for it.

 

That's some logic I can understand!

 

Good point. There never seems to be a good time to do this. It is working out for me like most on here. I have gone from a Jeep GC and minivan to a 4-cylinder Honda Accord and a Prius.

My only point remains that we just need to come up with a better plan than just across-the-board price increase, by tax or whatever. We need to aim for the root of the problem and that to me is the ones that want to hold on to their big gas guzzling SUV's and trucks.

We also need to eliminate the tax from the transportation industry so we do not have the "ripple" effect and end up paying for this many times over.

 

The problem is that gas is priced lower than its cost. If our economic system took that into account, we'd develop better, cheaper alternatives. People don't understand what full energy costs are, because they don't pay them. And nobody's going to develop alternatives if they can't beat the subsidised lowball price of gas. So, we're kinda stuck in that way of thinking, and there's a fairly big impetus to keep us there.

 

This sounds interesting, but I don't understand. Would you explain why/how gas is priced lower than it's cost? Thanks.

 

Only direct costs associated with gasoline show up at the pump. Many indirect costs are supported by taxpayers. Naming a few: environmental clean up, health care costs, and using the military to stabilize petroleum sources.

Tom

 

California prices electric consumption like the US should tax oil consumption, tier pricing. Given that we have spent over a century creating a society that is VERY dependent on automobliles it will be a hardship for the poor to suddenly have very expensive gasoline.

So every one who files a tax return would get a card allowing them to buy 200 gallons per year at current market price (say $3.50) another 100 gallons at $4.00, another 100 gallons at $4.50 and after that you would pay $5.00.

So a typical 2 person household would get 400 gallons at $3.50 and could drive from 4,000 to 20,000 miles. If you chose a fuel pig you either drive less or pay more. If you chose to not own a car and to ride a bus you could trade your allotment to the bus company.

If you chose to not own a car and walked or biked you could trade your allotment on the open market.

Everyone is guaranteed a reasonable amount of affordable gas, if you make choices that require more, pay more.

Will this be totally fair? NO. If you live in a densily populated area you would naturally use less gas than someone who lives miles from anywhere. If you have 10 kids in a family with one wage earner, its another choice you made that is going to cost more.

Would food & consumer products go up? Yes unless they were produced close by. Bottomline is we need to pay the costs of our oil addition without wiping out lower income people.

Flame away...

 

Thanks I had not thought of those issues. I'm thinking these indirect costs are already calculated as part of the factory's burden rate, but maybe not. I'm just surprised that large corporations like Exxon, Shell, etc. have allowed those costs to be excluded from some of their products; i.e. gasoline.

 

Bingo. Just what I've been trying to say, though it took me way more words and way more posts. thanks, 'Yo.

I only have one correction: We DO pay the costs. We just don't pay them at the pump. And THAT is the travesty for all the reasons you mention. And it is why we need to bring the price at the pump up to the cost of the fuel... calling this a "tax" is likely the wrong way to go about it, but the need is still the same.

 

And even those "direct costs" are artificially low - for example we've been giving oil companies tax breaks for exploration for just about forever. So we tax payers are paying the oil companies to lower the price at the pump (in many ways - this is but one example, and Mr. bee gave several others.)

 

Oh, the costs most definitely are NOT part of the oil company's burden. They don't pay for our military to protect the shipping channels. They don't pay for cleaning our dirty air or water. And on and on. Please have a look at my page here where I've collected some relevant information on the subject. Don't stop at the top of the page... keep scrolling for all kinds of good stuff that'll make you think. And THANK YOU for wanting to think about it!

Gasoline and Oil