Which is why the government is remiss in not increasing the gasoline tax. If gas were $10 per gallon, then we all know what would happen, cars would become smaller and more efficient.
I'm finding it VERY hard to be civil in my reply! If the gov't jacked the gas tax up to $10...it would be tantamount to declaring open war on poor people! Automobiles would quickly become "rich men's playthings" again, poor people would be no longer to go on vacation outside their towns (or, heck, drive to work or the hospital). Every good that had to be trucked in (which is to say, every good) would immediately become much more expensive.
No longer autonomous in their travel (and like as not, holding on to their jobs for dear life), poor and working class would be more dependent than ever on The Man (who hopefully would at least attempt to “even out” this HORRIBLY regressive tax with social welfare benefits). At this point, you could say “well, it all evens out in the end!”…but you’d be overlooking all the proud working people who had their sovereignty STOLEN from them. Once proudly self-relaint, under your scheme, these people would be reduced to GROVELLING before the government to support themselves and their families. (Expect to see suicides skyrocket as men’s self-worth is taken from them.)
On the good side, this sort of governmental theft WOULD cause massive growth in the black market, which I would PROUDLY engage in. (I’d feel it my solemn duty as a freedom-loving American!) Anything I could do to undermine it, I would…and probably make some coin in the process!
@BillRussell , your post epitomizes everything that is wrong with “progressive” America, and the (putative) Party of the Workingman. If you hate poor people…at least have the honesty to state it outright, and not hide behind a baby polar bear to do it!
But that is the way Europe runs, high price of gas, cars all small with small engines. Average gas usage per mile probably less than half what we have in the US.
I realize that tax cannot be imposed in one step. But increasing it over a long time period (10 years? 20 years?) allows most people to switch to smaller cars. And for the manufacturers to switch to smaller more efficient cars. The tax increase should have started 20 years ago.
There is no real reason for a car used to drive at 50 MPH to the grocery store or in a daily commute, with one person onboard, to have a 200 HP engine. 50 is more than enough.
Hell…Gasoline prices are the least of my worries currently… What am I waiting on for the Shoe to drop? WATER… Corporations have been very busy buying up the water rights out from under your local Town…
Wait n see what happens when water goes from pennies a gallon…to Dollars…then we will see some real Fireworks… Its coming…mark my words
Back when, that’s exactly what PETA did at the University of Minnesota research lab. They broke in, released all the animals to fend on their own. They were found dead or in various states of health around the area.
Why not just enjoy our inexpensive fuel…AND make a switch to smaller cars? Its a win-win…
Wont win any supporters asking to have fuel costs rise 10 Fold…THAT would seriously make things really bad…the entire cost of living would be off the charts…fuel is behind the price of many many non automobile related things… Its not all about cars
My question would be, where do you think that extra $4-5 a gallon price would go?? Yes that’s right back to the feds in tax. Is that really what you want to do? Oh sure they would make great use of the money and a couple years later they’d be crying like babies that it wasn’t enough. A nursing home tax or an affordable care tax to help pay for that stuff just like in Europe? Or maybe we’d rather the money go to Exxon for them to decide how to use it. An extra $5 a gallon bonus. Wow. And wouldn’t Eldon love that.
@Bing Yes, those steep road taxes on gasoline go first to maintaining the road system and the rest, a whole lot, got into govt revenue which helps pay for a universal health car system and free university education.
In Japan, it also subsidizes the Bullet Train System, without which life in the Tokyo -Osaka region of that crowded country would be virtually unliveable.
The French love their fast trains, free healthcare, and nearly free education. They don’t mind paying a lot for gasoline.
Imagine if every car in Paris was an F-150 Ford truck! An important role of high gas taxes and high vehicle taxes based on weight is to keep the European and Asian cities liveable.
It costs about 85 cents to make a quart of whisky. Imagine a frontier style America where anyone can walk off the street and slap a coin or a dollar on the bar and say “whisky” and gets a whole bottle. Taxes on alcoholic beverages make sense just like taxes on cigarettes.
“Corporations have been very busy buying up the water rights out from under your local Town…”
…and that is why I began investing in “water companies” about 6 years ago.
Since we can’t really fight market forces, if we want to come out “ahead”, it behooves us to invest on the basis of trends that are influenced by market forces.
Well we’ll agree to disagree. The folks that want money for their own pet ideas and projects find unlimited ways of getting it. Taxes need to be laser focused on what it is they are to accomplish and related to the tax in my view. I have no problem with user taxes to pay for roads, parks, museums, etc. I have no problems with property taxes to pay for local services and police and fire. I have no problem with sales taxes or income taxes to pay for general government expenses. But I do have problems with sin taxes that have no purpose but to raise money that otherwise would not be tolerated under the guise of reducing social ills. Why would I drink any more or any less whiskey if it were $1 or $10 a bottle? Makes no sense and makes the assumption that one group knows what is best for another group. In reality it is simply a way to generate more money when one well has gone dry.
You want free university? Free health care? Free or nearly free trains? Fine. Send everyone in the country an itemized bill for their share of the cost but don’t hide it. They won’t do this because no one would vote for it. Hide it though in a gas tax or meat tax and it might make it through. One is honest and the other is dishonest. And just to editorialize a little more, the social spending was a outgrowth of the fear that the down trodden would rise against the populace as in WWII. Interesting that the real danger is now from unlimited immigration and not from the down trodden. The European melting pot fed with socialism threatens to destroy the individual cultures. Unintended consequences again.
@Bing We could argue endlessly about what governments should decide, and what should be left to the marketplace entirely. Bernie Sanders wants to do away with the capitalist system altogether, the way Russia, Cuba, North Korea, China and other countries tried.
In a functioning democracy the role of government is to guide the marketplace in the right direction if there is a need for that. In the 50s Eisenhower put 4 cents a gallon on gasoline to build the Interstate System. Few today would question that decision.
All successful democracies set rules & standards and let business go about its business. The Chinese quickly discovered that private incentives worked wonders in innovation and efficiencies. The Russians have yet to master that spirit. Russia has yet to produce any cars that are worthy of the name “exportable” for Western countries. We will soon be buying Chinese made cars.
Oligarchies that produce oil and gas are hardly innovative.
Taxes on alcoholic beverages make sense just like taxes on cigarettes.
So...you actually *support* a government that exploits its own citizens' addictions to squeeze extra tax $$ out of them?!? That's probably the most morally reprehensible thing I've heard today! (The "tax the poor" gas tax WAS the most reprehensible...then you went and topped yourself.) Of course, the Powers That Be will try to tell you they "do it for their own good--it's behavior modification." I believe that about as much as I'd believe a drug dealer who raised the price of dope "so those poor addicts don't do so much dope"--which is to say, I don't believe it at all.
Ever since I turned the age of 18, I’ve been a grown man. As such, I’ve no need for a “mommy” or “daddy”; no wetnurse or nanny. A government that purports to “help me” make “adult” decisions is prima facie offensive, in that it attempts to take my hard-won personal sovereignty AWAY form me! Making it through adolescence was hard enough–I’m NOT surrendering any of my hard-won sovereignty to some faceless bureaucrat!
Men are meant to stand on their own two feet. Men are NOT meant to suckle the government teat for sustinence. Any system of government where grown men remain in a state of dependency (outside of bone-fide emergencies) is tantamount to Living in Mommy’s Basement–wrong, regardless of financial benefits. To pararaphrase Billy Joel:
So, you wonder why your life is dead?/Well you’re 21 and [Uncle Sam] still makes your bed/And that’s too long
The rationalization is we are providing funds for future medical needs, unfortunately the funds don’t really go there . Some studies indicate smokers and obese die quicker and actually cost less in the big scope. Kind of like IL, lottery funds will go to schools, which it does but school funding is cut by the same amount as lottery proceeds. Shell game!
^Oh, yeah. I know one stupid thing those taxes are used for…when I watch TV, I’m forced to watch these horribly graphic anti-smoking PSAs. It’s bad enough with the graphic violence–the extra “twist of the knife” is knowing it’s my tax money “at work” to gross me the heXX out!
BillRussell
Which is why the government is remiss in not increasing the gasoline tax. If gas were $10 per gallon, then we all know what would happen, cars would become smaller and more efficient.
Tax gas to $10/gallon and the populace will react at the ballot box and political heads will roll as the mob with torches and pitchforks gathers in front of the halls of congress.
Or as I saw on some bumper sticker, “My freedom is more important than your good idea”.
There’s a reason our politicians won’t pass a tax like that, they know what’s good for them.
The majority of us want some common sense and reason used.
Why can’t we have both? Why can’t manufacturers make cleaner vehicles with higher gas mileage.
I’ve heard this argument for decades…These regulations are going to kill the industry…They are unrealistic and impossible to implement.
Yet for some reason they HAVE met them…and the auto industry does have problems…but NOTHING to do with any EPA regulations. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have done a great job and grown extremely well under these regulations.
Abolish the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A Cruz Administration will appoint heads of each of those agencies whose sole charge will be to wind them down and determine whether any programs need to be preserved.
Internal Revenue Services – end the political targeting, simplify the tax code, and abolish the IRS as we know it.
Department of Education – return education to those who know our students best: parents, teachers, local communities, and states. And block-grant education funding to the states.
Department of Energy – cut off the Washington Cartel, stop picking winners and losers, and unleash the energy renaissance.
Department of Commerce – close the “congressional cookie jar” and promote free-enterprise and free trade for every business.
Department of Housing and Urban Development – offer real solutions to lift people out of hardship, rather than trapping families in a cycle of poverty, and empower Americans by promoting the dignity of work and reforming programs such as Section 8 housing.
Empower the people by reducing the alphabet soup of Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and other programs that prop up special interests, at the taxpayer’s expense. A Cruz Administration will identify all unnecessary programs – these 25 are merely a start:
Eliminate the following Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and programs:
Appalachian Regional Commission
Climate Ready Water Utilities Initiative
Climate Research Funding for the Office of Research and Development
Climate Resilience Evaluation Awareness Tool
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Travel Promotion
Global Methane Initiative
Green Infrastructure Program
Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program
Legal Services Corporation
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Humanities
New Starts Transit Program
Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund
Presidential Election Campaign Fund
Regulation of CO2 Emissions from Power Plants and all Sources
Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Vehicles
Renewable Fuel Standard Federal Mandates
Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation
Sugar Subsidies
Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery
UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
UN Population Fund
USDA Catfish Inspection Program
@Barkydog Yes, I would agree with Cruz that many or most of these agencies have outlived their usefulness. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aims to distribute a large amount of the global wealth from rich to poor countries, and has many fat cats on its payroll. The head is an Indian railroad engineer who knows less chemistry than I do. He’s never had it so good.
One agency I would keep, however, is the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. It should be revamped (since the development is virtually complete) but is needed since it is a joint effort with Canada who is co-owner of the waterway. This team keeps traffic in goods moving from central North America to the outside world and vice versa. The team identifies needed improvements and jointly plans these actions.
I eat US Coastal wild salmon several rimes a week and the industry is very healthy indeed. It has a large budget to vilify farmed salmon by spreading false rumors that farmed salmon, especially Canadian farmed salmon, is not healthy. It does not need a “Recovery Fund”.
Honda Blackbird
“You know…What really kinda burns me up here is the fact that todays vehicle emissions are a Flower Sniff compared to the 10’s-70’s… Car emissions have cleaned up so vastly in this day and age…and yet the Govt makes MORE and more Regulations ever so tightening regulations that are putting companies out of business in the name of the “Environment””
Um, actually probably not so much as you imagine. Before I retired in 1997, someone had posted on his station at work a magazine article. An automotive high school instructor borrowed an old car, like early 20’s. he wanted to show his students how much improved auto emissions were.
To his surprise, when he fired up that 20s car, probably a Buick, it passed current requirement levels. Just tune it by ear as we used to do and it was clean.
the reason we have so many problems today, he said, is because we went to a very short stroke, for increased efficiency, etc, and things don’t have time to burn completely up during the cycle. Maybe this paragraph is messed up, but its my bad memory. That old car passed 90’s smog requirements!