tax per mile

IMHO one should be a little more careful about cause and effect. Europe didn't suddenly use less per capita oil when the taxes went up, it had been doing that at much lower tax levels.

Structurally the interstate highway system and lack of good public transportation along with longer distances has for a long time made vmt much further in the US then europe. Pollution standards in the US has reduced penetration of more polluting but more energy efficient diesels.

The average vehicle age in the US is over 10 years old, and most gasoline use is tied to vehicle efficiency. What could be cut back by price in the short term has in this recession and higher gas prices. Slowly increasing gas prices, perhaps implemented by a slowly rising tax could increase efficiency and slow moves. A rapid proportional tax to oil prices will just hurt the economy, which decreases oil consumption since the unemployed don't need to drive to work, but it is in a short term painful way.

 

You have to reward some positive action in the Pollution Chain. The Prius does use some recycled plastics and it does pay to recycle the batteries. That is a start. Gov wants to clean the air it should reward low or zero CO2 Emission cars like the Prius and punish high CO2 emission cars like the VW Diesel or ICE based cars. Many utilities are using gas powered generation and not coal.

There is no secret that CO2 emmission is changing weather pattern in the globe. The USA is improving, but countries like China, and many in South America need to make improvements. If we can have a EV car for everyone and elec generation is migrating from Coal which is a high pollution source to Natural gas which is a low pollution source and have manufacturing use Natural Gas as an energy source and a EV car as the output we are making strides. So slightly tax the ICE and rebate the EV and Hybrid.

 

First let me say a carbon tax badly implemented is worse than no tax at all

But if you are imposing a good tax on carbon, then hybrids would pay at the pump, and plug-ins would pay at the wall, unless you favored that source of fuel.

Plug-ins seem to have a tax credit in front of them, so I guess someone gaming the system would simply raise that credit if they wanted plug-ins not to pay. This would still allow owners to switch to lower carbon fuels and pocket that extra credit.

The reward for many buying the plug-ins is the electric drive technology. I am with you that we don't need to create yet another tax, and loophole for them.

 

True Story. I remember going on a vacation in Dublin and we came across a Pub with no windows. I said this place has no windows and the bar tender said there is a story here. The window tax.
Window tax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He said when the building was built they had a tax on windows so the owner had it built without windows to avoid paying taxes.

So when Oregon taxes EV vehicles it will kill the progress before it started realizing the benefit.
Gov is just plain stupid.

 

Yes it took decades of good public policy like gas tax and great mass transit systems.

US should get to work in 10, 20 years we can be as energy efficient, have a great mass transit system, not import oil, meet or Kyoto obligations.

No time like the present to get started.

 

I question whether the public policy was good. Here you can read some research about why gains have stagnated and how taxation and regulation has led to high market share of diesel.
We can look to see the result of the experiment and learn they had taxes rise too quickly and now don't have space to raise taxes without doing even more damage to the economy
Fuel prices (TERM 021) - Assessment published Jan 2011 — European Environment Agency (EEA)

ridership on mass transit is also decreasing. That doesn't mean higher oil taxes and better mass transit won't reduce oil use in the US. It does mean we should not just copy their example without looking at their mistakes.

Kyoto is dead! It was pretty dead when it was proposed as it would never pass the US senate since China and India were not included. Without US, China, and India ghg can not be meaningfully reduced.

Progress can be made, but when it is thought of to satisfy a mainly european treaty - Japan and Canada are out - that will not drive progress.

Importing so much oil is bad for america. Using less can be justified on a better foundation than a bad treaty.

 

Results speak for themselves. Europe is 50% more energy efficient so the public policies to make Europe more energy efficient, gas taxes and good mass transit, have worked very well since oil is mostly used for transportation it would great benefit US as our trade deficits and military budget are driven by our energy inefficiency and our need to import oil which could be eliminated if we adopted the gas tax and mass transit policies proven successful in Europe.

As far as US obligations on greenhouse gases, that obligation is to ourselves and our children so what other nations do is not reason for US to do nothing. US is a major historical and current greenhouse gas producer. World leaders need to lead and US should be leading by getting 50% more energy efficient over next 10 years and cutting US greenhouse gases by 50%.

 

Europe is an economic catastrophe. Spain 25% unemployment. France up to 75% income taxes. Italy and Greece in dire straits. Raising energy taxes in the USA may kill our economy. There must be a better way.

 

The question really is have they done any real reduction in most of the last 20 years over simply changing oil prices? I would say they could have been much better implemented. The second part is how much have they hurt the European economies, especially the effect of amplifying volatility versus a flat rising tax.

We can raise them in a sensible way.

 

Nothing sensible about taxes. What would you prefer. Give more of your money to Gov and less for you or less to Gov and more for yourself.

 

And the answer is Europe made itself 50% more energy efficient than the US over the last 20 years.

For the US, that would mean $300B savings in oil import costs, $500B a year in reduced military costs and $500B in reduced pollution costs while putting the US well along the scientist's goal of 80% reduction in green house gases by 2050.

 

And the answer is Europe made itself 50% more energy efficient than the US over the last 20 years.

For the US, that would mean $300B savings in oil import costs, $500B a year in reduced military costs and $500B in reduced pollution costs while putting the US well along the scientist's goal of 80% reduction in green house gases by 2050.

 

I agree. Just read the comments here. People basically say they want better roads and lower taxes. It's not going to happen

What they need is a "vehicle fuel tax". We do this already with diesel fuel. It is taxed it it is used for a road vehicle but if it goes into a sail boat (I used to own a boat) or into a bulldozer or backhoe there is no road tax. I am sure some people cheat and put un-taxed fuel into their 18 wheel trucks. But for the most part they do keep it straight. We could do the same with electric power and CNG and whatever.

On the other hand even people who don't drive should help pay for roads. After all they still depend on rads for their food and everything else.

So we should have several sources if in code to the road repair people (1) vehicle registration based on weight (2) fuel tax on every kind of fuel and (3) some money from the general fund.

In the bigger scheme of things this is "pocket change" that hardly maters. The huge majority of the government's budget goes to health care for old people and the military. I'm sure, soon enough we will do what every other country does and (1) cut out the health insurance company profets and pay directly via a government fund and (2) doown size the military to less then 1/2 or 1/3rd it's current size. Both of these things will happen some day. Once these are done there will be more then enough money for roads (and schools too.)

 

The problem in a nutshell. The fantasy one can cut taxes and have good roads, first class education. Gas tax is perfect funding means as it captures 98% of the use of roads, encourages using less oil which has other costs. Increase the tax. Rebuild the roads and build mass transit. Lots of jobs and it makes US economy much more efficient

Same applies for engaging in $14T in 30 years of oil wars and not increasing taxes to pay for it. There should be a "Patriot tax" on all oil use to cover those untaxed costs.

 

You may want to look at actual consumption to see if the current very high rates are what did it.


Europe Crude Oil Consumption by Year (Thousand Barrels per Day)


United States Crude Oil Consumption by Year (Thousand Barrels per Day)


What you will not is euorpean consumption going down. From 1980-2010 Europe's consumption increased 46% while it increased 12% in the US. You can cherry pick dates where europe declined more than the US but the difference in consumption was pre 1980. On a per capita or per gdp ratio europe looks even worse as their population and gdp grew less than the US. The US does consume too much and the SUV craze in the 90s early 2000s hurt. An oil tax will help the us reduce consumption, but it doesn't need to be as draconian as the european one. It should be slowly rising and flat and pay for the roads plus perhaps some of the health care.

Look at those graphs again, if you think europes taxes magically reduced use.

 

Let's face facts in good or bad economic times Gov is challanged to budget money. There are some cities for example where I live that they repave the roads every decade & patch as needed and use the latest technology roads that are in part used with recycled tires and other cities like San Diego that just don't get around to it an pot holes everywhere. I can say that the taxes are not higher where I live but the City is managed better. The answer is not to raise taxes but manage better with what you have.

 

Why not ALL of the health care related to gasoline use? And all the other externalities associated with gasoline? Why are we subsidizing gasoline usage? Especially if we want to reduce it?

 

Now we are in the spot of pure politics, so I'll leave you with the trade offs. You could add all of the health care releated to gas use, but I don't think that is very high.

Oil use has nothing to do with how wealthy you are. That means the dropping all of health care costs (medicare, medicaid, obama care) on an oil tax would have that healthy 25 year old earning $30,000 a year paying as much as say al gore who just made a cool $100M selling his company to al jazera or Mitt Romney who kept his special tax loophole for carried interest and second home mortgage deductions in the latest tax law. AARP would also get very upset that those only on social security just had their cost of living greatly increase. Not only does that sound unfair, but it would pull out money that these lower income folks put in the economy reducing growth and adding to unemployment.

Now a reasonably sized oil tax could pay for the roads and some of medicare. It could also reduce part of the medicare payroll tax on those with lower incomes, while still pushing off when the plan goes bankrupt.

 

I haven't said anything about how that tax would be used. It could be used to reduce the tax burden of low-income folks or whatever. Pick your definition of fair, use the funds in exactly that way. You now have a gasoline tax which both discourages gasoline usage, and is MAXIMALLY fair.

I just think it makes more sense to tax things we want to reduce, not things (such as income) that we want to increase. Maybe its just me.

Of course following that line of thought even further, we don't even necessarily want to reduce gasoline usage, we want to reduce pollution generation and non-renewable energy reserve depletion.

 

Low income folks only pay payroll, interest, dividend, and capital gains. They don't pay income taxes on salary That means you can only offset it with lower payroll taxes. If the tax is high, on the order of $2/gal, and is used instead to increase government spending it will be be very bad for the economy. There is clearly room under $2/gallon of gas, and again a flat tax per barrel of oil. Say $10/bbl in 2014, $20 2015, $30 2016, $40 2017, $50 2018 with a 2% lower payroll tax below $50K, and a higher cap on medicare of $1M could give strong signals to buy more efficient vehicles and would not cause harm to the economy.

Agree here. I was arguing against a $5 tax, that doesn't mean we should not do a lower tax that doesn't unfairly burden those that are the poorest in our society, and will not shove unemployment higher.

I want to reduce oil consumption. Oil is a scarce resource.