55 didn’t work. And the few that tried to maintain that speed on the highways caused frustration and turbulance in the traffici flow…they caused dangerous situations. Traffic flows like water, and doing 55 is analogous to being a large stone in the flow of a stream. Some areas in some states used it as a revenue generator, but in reality that was the only thing it was good for.
55 was a politically driven mandate, not a technically driven one. Leave it in the past where it belongs.
Don’t we already have “gas guzzler” taxes? Seems to me I paid one when I bought my '04 4Runner. As fas as mileage goes, I get pretty much the same (as I’ve measured over the last 140K miles) whether I go 55 or 65. In fact, at 55, the engine RPM is so low that it wants to downshift on a slight hill. IMO that will make for worse mileage, not better.
“What percentage of your daily driving is done on 70 mph highways?”
Most of mine is, and judging by how crowded the roads are a 6AM, there are hundreds of thousands with a highway commute like mine in the Baltimore/DC area.
Dropping the speed limit to 55 MPH would decrease fuel use by 10% if everyone did it. But many people will go whatever speed they want, just like now. The speed limit on Rte 95 around me is 65 MPH. I see people every day going between 50 MPH and 80 MPH or more (I guess). Traffic doesn’t dictate their speed. They drive at whatever speed they feel like.
Chase, you did not pay a gas guzzler tax on your 4Runner. It is registered as a truck, and the guzzler tax is only levied on cars. That’s why everyone registers their minivan as a truck.
Did we learn nothing from prohibition? Laws are respected when they reflect the norms of society. When a law is passed that tries to reform society, it turns us into a nation of lawbreakers.
There may be a lot of good reasons for a 55 mph speed limit, but there is one overwhelming good reason not to go back to a 55 mph speed limit, no one wants to drive that slow on the highway. Not even the people who think 55 is a good idea.
Our freedom is more important than anybody’s “good idea”. The cruelest tyrants in the history of the world have been reformist do-good zealots forcing their idea of utopia on a population. I’ll take robber-barons over do-good zealots any day.
I have an 04 4Runner also and make almost monthly trips to see the grandchildren, 300 plus miles on exclusively highway. Have experimented many times over. 55 to 60 mph yields 25 plus mpg ( close to 27 at 55) and 70 to 75, barely over 20 mpg. A significant difference I “credit” mostly to air resistance. Difference in time traveled, less then one half hour…other drivers “ticked off”, beyond counting. Frankly I don’t feel safe traveling at speeds substantially different then most around me and I would not comply until the majority around me do. That’s the dilemma.
55 is a bad idea, I agree. It might save a little fuel, but it did not make the roads safer.
Raising the tax on gas is a good idea for many reasons. It provides funds for highway construction, that means more jobs, that means a better economy.
As a percentage of the price per gallon, the tax has actually gone down over the years. When gas sold for $0.30/gal, the tax was about $0.10. So the tax was about 33%. When gas was running about $1.00 gal, the tax was about $0.34, again about a third of the price. It is still about $0.34, but the price per gallon is over $3.00/gal, making it only about 10% of the cost.
For most people, the tax rate is an emotional issue, not a realistic issue. Very few people understand the economics that go into setting the daily price for a gallon of gas. They think the tax is just an add on like a sales tax. That is why the oil companies put that little sticker stating the tax rate on the pump. It gets the consumer to focus on the government as the source of the high price and not on the oil company.
The fact is that the tax is a variable cost for producing a gallon of gas. There are a lot of fixed and variable costs that go into the formula. Then there is the price/sales volume curve and the comparison of this curve to the production cost/production volume curve that the peak profit is derived. That sets the daily price. An increase in the gas tax does not have a direct, one for one, effect on the daily price.
Within the current range of the daily price ($3-4.00/gal), a small increase in the tax (up to a total of $1.00/gal) would actually have little affect on the pump price. But the extra tax revenue would really benefit us all (except the oil company execs).
The car manufacturers could also use technology to continue to increase engine efficiency. I believe there is still a lot of room for improvement, but they need a little incentive to do that.
For me the gas tax question is purely economics. I commute 31 miles each way, and raising the gas tax would add substantially to the cost of commuting.
And moving closer is out of the question financially. The reason I bought where I did was simply because houses nearer to where I work were tens of thousands of dollars more. They still are. When I bought none years ago I looked at a house similar to mine close to where I work and it was more than $100,000 more expensive.
There are many, many workers in the same situation I am. Many even who are making much less than they did when they bought their houses. Higher gas taxes would be ecnomically difficult if not disasterous. Raising gas taxes in this economy is, IMHO, a very bad idea.
It sounds good on paper, but it would be an economic disaster.
Over time, the price of energy stabilizes to what the consumer is willing to pay, regardless of the tax rate. But, at this time with the economic down turn which I feel is affected by energy costs as much as anything else, we can’t afford the luxury of increasing tax. The affect would be too negative short term on our unstable economy.
“Any worthwhile plan is now under the control of unlimited campaign contributions from corporations, one of the worse anti democratic moves ever.”
Why do we allow any corporation to make direct or even indirect political contributions. If you can’t vote, you should not be allowed to contribute to an election. IMO.
Why do we allow any corporation to make direct or even indirect political contributions. If you can’t vote, you should not be allowed to contribute to an election. IMO.
According to Mitt Romney (and MANY conservatives)…corporations ARE people and should be treated with the same privileges and rights.
“Higher gas taxes would be ecnomically difficult if not disasterous. Raising gas taxes in this economy is, IMHO, a very bad idea.”
Who is going to pay for road repairs? We’re overspent now. Without a way to at least maintain the existing revenue stream, our roads will only get worse. What will we do without to keep the roads safe for your long commute?
“…corporations ARE people and should be treated with the same privileges and rights.”
Companies are run by people and employ people, so in that sense the conservatives are correct. But they have a disproportionate level of power through their contributions. A great deal of worthwhile concerns are not addressed because they do not affect the corporate world. That’s the problem I have with unlimited contributions. Maybe the Onion was right when they suggested that US citizens need a lobbyist to influence Congress. It seems that many of our elected representatives have someone else’s interests in mind.
Corporations have an element of immunity to civil liability that makes personal immunity to liability pale in comparison. With teams of lawyers on call to perpetuity, they can easily thwart an individuals attempt at recompense. That’s why we have class action suits that take decades to adjudicate.
To give corporations the additional power of civil rights that only individuals should have and as Romney alluded to…(scary) throws us back into the days of the company store, the next step to slavery.
This worship of capitalism at all cost by some, not the informed, conservatives is really hard to understand.
If you value personal freedom, it applies to protection from corporations as well as the govt. Only the government has the resources to “hold” corporate greed at bay. With unlimited contributions by corporations into our political system, that “hold” becomes tenuous at best.
Companies are run by people and employ people, so in that sense the conservatives are correct.
Absolutely 100% WRONG…
Because they employ people does NOT mean they are people…They are an entity that can take NO RESPONSIBILITY for any of it’s actions. If they want to be treated as people…then when a company commits a crime…we should have a right to arrest every single owner (i.e. share holder) of the company and convict them and send them to jail…
So now we’re automatically granting citizenship to foreign owned corporations who have a presence in the US???
The government does have the right to hold corporations responsible for breaking the law. “We should havethe right to arrest…” does exist through govt. That’s why I feel political donations can be so effective and why indirectly the Madoffs of this world have so much power to go unchecked.
Mike is right if you look at his entire statement.