@ok4450
I agree…for now. But, just like me buying a gas eating truck vs a hybrid car, we KNOW gas prices aren’t staying low indefinitely. Besides, hybrid cost makes it a poor choice if you put fewer miles on your car regardless of the gas prices. It just means now, like you said, it blows it out of the water
. It’s generally safer to hold your breath waiting for them to go up…then down. This is a supply battle IMho, between the easily accessible Middle East oil and the tar sands oil and natural gas (two of the three are not the best choices Imo) and…all the other alternatives. The pressure we have applied including the dramatic increase in drilling we have done as paid big dividends on oil price.
The ONLY way to keep the ball moving down hill, is to keep the downward pressure on through conservation and alternate energy sources including sufficient oil production HERE.
It still makes sense to conserve fuel as a way to keep prices down. You should drive the type of vehicle you need to, and even at lower prices, saving 20% because of efficiency is still a welcome bonus.
One article said low prices could lower consumption, because some folks might buy new(er) cars with the help of money they’re saving, and those cars now likely get better mpgs. Also, airlines might speed up buying new (more fuel efficient) jets with the money they’re saving. We’ll see…
I agree. But in the meantime, we have to keep our eye on the ball and continue supporting the steps that got us here. If we sit back and just continue to drink anyone’s oil that is cheap and give up on alternate sources, we are toast.
Something that relates to the drop in gas prices is the opportunity that this presents for raising the gas tax with relatively little pain for the consumer. If we don’t replenish the Transportation Trust Fund very soon, the cost of repairing or replacing all of America’s deteriorated bridges & roads will become even higher than it is currently.
^While I agree with your sentiment, I have roughly 0% faith that greedy pols can be trusted to keep the funds for the bridges and such–and about 100% faith that they’ll divert such taxes towards pork projects designed to keep incumbents in office.
In my home county (Allegheny), they raised sales taxes 1% to pay for a one-time redevelopment back in '94.
20+ years later…and the tax persists. The original cause for the tax is long since paid for…but nobody expects the sales tax to go anywhere.
You’d need someone quite a bit more idealistic than me to fly a gss tax by!
@meanjoe75fan–So…you propose that we should just allow all of our infrastructure to continue to deteriorate? Or, do you have an alternative method of financing these reconstruction projects?
How about if we have every PTA run a Bake Sale?
Would that raise enough money, and would you be satisfied with their honesty?
I object to raising fuel taxes for the purpose of infrastructure due to the following reason.
At both the state and Federal level road funds are diverted from their intended purpose of highway construction and maintenance and shifted into countless other projects; many of which are make-work and serve little or no purpose other than to pad someone’s pocket.
Example. A dozen years ago a fuel tax was put up for a vote during the Nov. general elections in OK and this tax was “to make sure our roads are safe, create jobs, and attract industry” along with the usual “protecting the children BS”. This vote went down in flames with 87% against it.
It was also discovered during this time that only about 40% of the road funds were actually going to the roads. The other 60% was being diverted to what I mentioned above. A 250,000 dollar horseman on a statue is one of the many diversions. It’s located on a highway junction though…
My suggestion is use the road funds for what they were intended for before heaping on more taxes which will likely see the bulk of that also diverted and even more calls for more fuel taxes which will be diverted and…
Infrastructure spending is a long term high expense item that should come from the general budget. We think of infrastructure as being roads and bridges but it’s that and much more. It’s power transmission lines. It’s rail, it’s comunication systems and faster and more available internet services and a bunch of things I haven’t even thought of.
Gasoline tax increases which are more in line with roads, doesn’t touch a lot of it. One bridge alone can be a billion dollars and there are hundreds if not thousands of them in need. So, include gas taxes if you wish, but don’t worry about it being misspent. It’s such a relatively small amount of what is needed, it may not be missed and is only part of the infrastructure spending. That’s why both parties cannot agree on infrastructure spending. One side wants us to consider spending money we don’t have and the other side wants to raise taxes…neither is very appealing or vote getting.
Right now the house budget bill is stalled over inclusion of a provision to do away with protection from public funded bail out of banks who garner losses through inappropriate investments. No one supports the provision yet it’s in because both sides are bought by Wall Street and both sides had agreed on it’s original inclusion. No one will take a public stance on having this provision because it’s indefensible at the middle class level. And, just like this, Few have ever taken a public stance against more funding of infrastructure… Yet some how, it never gets funded as much as it should . Why ? It hasn’t yet served the needs of those who have bought our central govt. and the people who benefit most from it, you and I, don’t matter.
Roads are one instance where the sole use of a gas tax makes perfect sense. Each vehicle’s wear and tear on the highways is directly related to its weight, power, and miles used and therefore directly related to fuel consumption. Getting government to spend the funds correctly is, as stated above, a real problem.
Most of those other infrastructure items listed such as power lines and rail are privately funded and doing quite well in most places. I’m all for taxing for roads what needs to be taxed provided it is used for roads and bridges and not trains and buses or bike trails or lanes. Way back in the early 1900’s AAA supported the establishment of a gas tax in Minnesota but they were adamant that it only be used for roads and bridges. This was the case until the last 20 years when the money started getting siphoned off to support urban planning projects that couldn’t sustain themselves otherwise.
The gas tax funded transportation fund in MD is raided periodically, but it happens when the gap between revenues and outlays is so large that large reductions in services or big increases in taxes would be needed to make up the shortfall. MD is required by law to balance the budget each year. Disrupting programs or gouging citizens seems less desirable than occasionally taking money from the transportation fund.
So...you propose that we should just allow all of our infrastructure to continue to deteriorate? Or, do you have an alternative method of financing these reconstruction projects?
Here’s a novel idea: why not have government do what every working family has to do when an unexpected expense comes due: live within their means, and make some difficult choices about what they want to give up in exchange for paying the large expense?
I’ve already said that a gas tax, in principle, is among the more logical way to pay for roads, etc, and to encourage conservation. It has fewer negative externalities than CAFE, which is currently keeping small pickups away and producing a perverse incentive to drive more in more fuel-efficient cars.
@VDCdriver, government has a long, long history of mis-allocating funds. It’s older than me…and you…combined. “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and keys to teenage boys” is how P.J. O’Rourke puts it, and for good reason. My eye-opening moment was when the Social Security surplus was raided and squandered on stupid stuff–an act so horribly unethical that any CFO of a Fortune 500 company would be imprisoned if he did so with the company pension. That’s not political spin; that’s fact.
Ever since, I’m a solid “no” on additional spending. Make do with what you have, live within your means: good advice for a person; good advice for a nation. FAR better that doing a Weimar Republic impersonation.
@meanjoe75fan–Trust me, as a result of my undergraduate major in history, coupled with a voracious appetite for reading about current events over the past 50+ years, I am very familiar with our government’s history of misuse of funds. However, that shameful history does not change the reality that our infrastructure has been ignored for decades and is in bad and constantly deteriorating condition. Allowing it to continue to deteriorate will only cause the eventual repair bill to grow geometrically, and that can’t be good for anyone when things get so bad that they can’t be ignored any longer.
Back in the days when Ed Koch was the mayor of NYC, he “dealt” with a paucity of funding by engaging in a policy of “deferred maintenance” for about 5 years for the city’s subways and buses. The result was that, after a few years–when it was no longer possible to defer repairs and replacement of old equipment any longer–the total bill was more than 4 times what it would have been if things had been dealt with in a timely manner.
Every bit of the social security surplus has been spent on other things. Excess SS income is used to buy short term SS bonds. That puts those funds in the general fund. They are spent on anything and everything. Effectively, there are no savings. This has been going on since the inception of social security. The only way to get it back is to not roll over mature bonds into new ones. When we have huge deficits, this just adds to them.
hat shameful history does not change the reality that our infrastructure has been ignored for decades and is in bad and constantly deteriorating condition. Allowing it to continue to deteriorate will only cause the eventual repair bill to grow geometrically,
Well, then I guess the question we ought to be asking is, "what services are we prepared to cut (or privatize) to come up with the funding?"
As a Tax Preparer, the very first benefits I’d eliminate are refundable tax credits. You have no idea the amount of fraud that goes on there! (“Borrowing” somebody’s child; claiming you made money that never existed…I do know this would put me out of a job, however.)
Most of these others are privately funded and doing quote well ? Sorry…not true.
Just one program example of your “private funding” for transmission limes. They have NEVER paid anywhere near the full cost and they never will. There are many other so called infrastructure programs that are not just roads and bridges over distances …private companies cannot afford infrastructure to transmit power all these distances from one state to another especially without help, any more then truckers can afford to transport goods without help with the interstate roads. http://m.tdworld.com/smart-grid/smart-spending-smart-grid
Here is a damn project…
This example was 3.4 billion back in 2009 for one series of grants. It is only I n the world of local distribution when it comes to private funding. When it comes to INTERSTATE anything, and even great distances within a larger state or a large number of people benefiting, the federal grants are absolutely necessary.
As a very general statement, if an infrastructure program can be shown to benefit a large number of people, federal funding is closer to the reality then private funding.