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California Considers Tracking Your Car
dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."
Right. Then we'll get a few smart people to develope a means of faking the mileage and paying next to nil. Not only will it not work, but it's not fair. I live in CA and am frankly sick of all the car-related restrictions that we have to abide by!
A blog like any other.
taxing walking to cover pavement depreciation? this kind of stuff scares me...
Wouldn't it be easier and less privacy-intruding if there's a blackbox in the car with GPS, which determines if the car has crossed a state line, and record mileage accordingly?
This way car owners can go to a fee-station any time to pay whatever tax whatever state wants to charge per mile travelled.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
California being in debt is a huge problem, gets lots of attention, in need of desperate measures and so on, but the federal government being MASSIVELY in debt isn't.
Is there a reason for this or is it just because republicans haven't been successful with the federal budget? (not trolling)
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
They build the roads, but get mad when we drive on them.
They subsidize the roads with tax dollars, then wonder why we don't take the bus.
They tax gas to keep us from buying it, then complain they have budget problems.
The State taxes me so I don't drive, but the Feds let me take it off my (business) taxes.
They want jobs, but they can't stand it when we make money.
What's a self-employed nerd to do?
sigs, as if you care.
this seems somewhat on topic. I found this article from 1995 (!) about a new electronically controlled valvetrain system that would increase fuel efficiency by at least 10%
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9510/cleaner_engine/
here we are 10 years later and no production cars come equipped with such a system, nor is there anything like it in the after market. The details of it seem simple enough, prototypes have been demonstrated to work well and manufacturing costs as well as tcoo are lower than the current line of mechanical valvetrains.
does this not exist because america can't afford to take the tax hit?
bite my glorious golden ass.
I didn't RTFA either, but I don't think they will eliminate or cut taxes on gas, so maybe the system will be based on how far you drive PLUS how much gas you use...
Go hug some trees.
I'm sort of a "tinfoil hat wearing" type of guy, but this seems really transparent to me. With everything that's been happening lately, perhaps tinfoil will become the latest fashion trend, but... Remember that the state of Oregon proposed this same thing perhaps a year ago, Slashdot did an article on it then...
Think of this logically, as some of the others here already have. If the state were interested in taxing you based upon milage, they would simply record your odometer readings at each emmissions inspection and bill you accordingly for your tabs. Yeah, I know about the in-state/out-state argument, why not just ignore that and set the median tax at something reasonable.
If the state were interested in reducing polution and oil consumption, they'd simply increase the already in place tax on gas and let the people in their Prius' slip through with their good milage. There are not really that many of them, and you could always give truckers a rebate at the end of the year if you feel sorry for them. Yeah, you COULD buy gas in Nevada or Oregon or Mexico, but you'd use up that gas getting back across the border, making any savings moot. Besides, the number of people living on the border is pretty fractional.
Seems clear to me, the intention is NOT about simply taxing vehicle use based upon how far you drive, but something more nefarious. Something like the car rental places have been implementing. Looks like California wants to incorporate GPS into the new "black boxes" discussed on cnet a few days ago, those boxes that the government & insurance industry wants to put into your cars in order to give you better rates and let you prove that you're law abiding. They'd have the ability to track all vehicles.
Each of the other taxation methods (checking odometer / gas tax) are simpler and already have the infrastructure necessary to implement in place. Both would accomplish the desired goal (more money for state based upon usage). Because something like this would be all new and would involve MUCH new infrastructure, it seems clear that simple revenue is NOT the intent of this proposal.
California is a big enough market, that they cause defacto standards for cars. The lawmakers know this, and I'm guessing that they are acting as the "stalking horse" in order to get all cars in America fitted with such devices. I don't think the insurance industry alone has the clout to pull this off over the objections of the car driving public, but if each of the players asks for some little addition, they might all be able to get their way. Think of it like this, insurance wants feature A, Feds wants feature B, and state wants feature C. Expect all three features in one DMCA protected box that you must not tamper with, under penalty of law. Expect lawyers to get access to ALL recorded information.
I would expect this proposal to move just about as quickly and silently as the copyright modifications moving through the Senate currently... Think fast and quiet.
The majority of vehicles in my area are trucks and SUVs anyway, so if they dropped the gas tax and went with mileage tax, the people with low gas mileage would pay effectively less tax, therefore possibly defeating the purpose. Besides, we need more insentive for people to buy CARS instead of huge trucks and SUVs that they're not using for any reason other than trying to be cool and wasting gas. I'm tired of having some jackass in an SUV driving 2 inches from my back bumper just because he can see over the top of my car.
if they don't start salting the roads, and the gps units are only going on NEW cars, The biggest effect they will have is to further depress new car sales [ie get LESS tax to the state]
dumb!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
it won't have an opposite effect, it would hit people equaly.
And yes, its nice to encourage people to by efficent cars, but they shouldn't need added encouragement, since the car using less gas is their encouragement.
Anyways. You forget road wear, no matter what your milage is, your still putting wear and tear on a road, and clogging it up and so forth. If you drive a whole lot, your using that system more then those who don't use it much. Maybe a person has a car that gets 1 mpg, but only drives to church and the grocery store on sundays in a 5 mile loop. But the person in a Prius drives 1000 miles a week, the person in the prius is using the system much much more.
When will we learn that punitive taxation levied upon groups that we happen to personally disagree with solves nothing, because it just gets the government in the habit of punitively taxing people, and sooner or later we will be the ones being taxed on something that we really want or need. Bad idea all around. That kind of sledgehammer social engineering I can live without, thank you very much.
... it has severe limitations on maximum efficiency that are simply not acceptable in the modern world. A gallon of gasoline, if consumed by, say, an eighty percent efficient engine would drive that Hummer down the road just sipping gas.
No, the problem isn't the SUV or the Hummer or the people that drive them (who I personally detest because most of them can't. Drive, that is.) The problem is the massive investment the global culture has made in the reciprocating internal combustion engine. We need to get away from this technology completely
Automobile engines are designed to accommodate the expected peak load that will be applied to them, i.e., when under heavy acceleration or when towing. Unfortunately, no-one drives their car under those conditions all the time, so most of time the engine is loafing, and is in effect oversized for the job. Efficiency suffers significantly under those conditions. On top of that, they only achieve maximum conversion efficiency within a very narrow range of RPMs.
Penalizing the consumer for poor decisions made by the government and the automobile manufacturer is just wrong. Congress was headed in the right direction when it implemented CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) some years ago, but they simply didn't go far enough. Automakers can ship toy cars like the Neon which get excellent mileage (but don't make much money) and use those higher-mileage numbers to offset the poor efficiency of the much more profitable SUVs. Remember, it's Corporate Average Fuel Economy.
And that is unadulterated, pure bullshit. Politics at work. I simply don't believe that a megacorporation such as a General Motors, or a Toyota, hasn't the resources to come up with a power plant capable of burning gasoline with substantially higher efficiency than what we have now. The fact is that there's just a lot of economic inertia in the way, and frankly they're making a ton of money doing things the old way and don't really see a reason to change. But, at some point, they're just going to have to be told: "If you want to market a car in this country, it had better be 75% efficient or better. No exceptions. Deal with it." And when that happens, I won't like the people that drive those Hummers and SUVs any more than I do now, but at least I won't be able to complain about how much gas they use.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I wish taxes on gas were used for maintaining the roads. If they were, we wouldn't have the severe congestion that gives California such a bad name in terms of traffic.
Here's what's happening in a nutshell:
A group of people decided that they wanted to get Californians to start using public transportation and not use their cars for so many things. So they decided to stop building freeways, on the hypothesis that if there was no more room on the freeways, people would stop coming to California. This goes back to Gov. Jerry Brown, and the idea failed miserably.
Next, they decided to build carpool lanes, which would encourage people to, if not taking public transportation, at least get a few more people in the same car. Wrong again. They don't even have a decent state-wide model for carpool lanes: in SoCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes 24 hours a day. In NorCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes only during normal rush-hour traffic, and are normal lanes otherwise. Hence, some freeways have had their capacity increased by anywhere from 20% to 50%, and the lanes are not usable by the vast majority of drivers.
So then they jacked up gas tax rates, promising to build more freeways and add lanes to the congested parts (except then governors, Democrat and Republican, including Schwarzeneggar, started "borrowing" the funds from the gas tax to pay for general fund stuff, and the roads further deteriorated and failed to get expanded). The increases was also allegedly to encourage people to buy smaller vehicles that would be more fuel efficient and cause less wear and tear on the roads. Despite past measures that had largely failed because the California car culture is basically impossible to buck, people actually did buy newer, fuel-efficient cars (but still drive them alone), and gas tax revenues (and hence funding for pet projects that have nothing to do with the roads) went down.
So now they're in a corner. How do they get the taxes back? Why, based on mileage, of course! And with a GPS unit, they can also see when you go over the speed limit or perhaps lane change too often and send you automatic tickets or tax your auto insurance (who may also get a report on your driving habits and thus raise the rates on their own). This isn't part of the proposal *yet*, but I can imagine someone is thinking it.
They're also talking about watching when you're using certain high-use roads, and increase the tax based on congestion, so if you go to work on the 5 through Los Angeles or Orange County at 7:45am, then you get an extra tax because you're helping to cause slow traffic. You know what the really ironic thing is? The people behind this idea are almost exactly the same people who were yelling about how toll roads were going to punish the poor people who couldn't afford them, and now they've come up with a method to not only inflict what are essentially tolls, but to inflict them potentially on every single public road and street in the state.
(Wow, that's a big nutshell. I wonder if there's a walnut in there.)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
"By Far, the Vast Majority of My Tax Cuts Go to Those at the Bottom."
GWB
Now. What were you saying about lying? Btw for the record I think Cheney saying that if you didn't specifically elect Bush that we were going to be attacked possibly by nukes, was far worse than any exaggeration Kerry might have made on Bush's stem cell research position.
Boy I hope there is a Hell because if there is those who claimed to be doing "God's work" are going be in for a real surprise.
I wonder what they will say when God asks "Why did you murder all of those innocent people instead of working for peace?"
Your backing the wrong horse my friend and this goes well beyond Right and Left.
Well, it appears that this is the attitude that they are trying to please:
"fuck the environment, I can now drive my SUV for the same yearly cost as those tree-hugging hippies in their solar power buzz boxes that take up room on my highway. Ha Ha Ha Fuck the world, we own Iraq and the oil now!!!! Drop the bomb!!!"
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
That's bullshit. A Prius is a tiny car. You can't compare it to a H2 or a Camary. You should compare it to a similar car in size and features - a $10K Toyota Echo.
The Prius is enormously expensive for what you get.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
How about not? Why are the rich paying more? Because they have more money? That's a fucked up excuse. If you paid according to your income, on everything, people wouldn't work, because 10% of $0 would be the same as 10% of $1,000,000. Hence progressive taxes are for people who have no idea wtf they are talking about (i.e. Basic Economics). Damn, if I made $80,000 a year, and paid $2 for a McDonald's cheeseburger, and a guy making $40,000 pays $1, and a guy making $0 pays $0, what would be the point of working hard?
And are you going to tell me a Porsche Boxster, 911 or BMW 7 (or hell, an X5) is going to destroy the road faster than a Ford Explorer or Expedition? Whatever you're smoking, spread it around. My dealer is out of town, and I need someone to hook me up.
Honestly, in the old days of the republic, you paid for what you wanted, and that was that. Anything else was thuggery. Nowadays, they call it welfare or morally right when they assert claims over your money. For reasons like this, the Second Amendment was thus encoded.
I am John Hurt.
All it's going to take to bury this one is a quick call to your representative, or a letter.
Ask a bunch of questions:
who will pay for the devices?
What about shared cars?
Does travel outside the state count?
How about the tourists?
Rental cars?
and on and on and on.
It will die the same death Oregons proposal did.
Blogging because I can...
The traffic engineering paper I took at university informed me that 90% (or thereabouts) of pavement wear comes from trucks, and that pavement would last a very very long time if heavy trucks did not use it.
I may well be wrong as I'm not practising as a traffic / pavement engineer, but your regular corolla / family sedan is not the culprit in wearing out roads
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
LOL, Cryofan up to his old socialist tricks...
I just calculated what the effect on me would be if we replaced the Federal income tax (FICA) with a national sales tax, as some GOP'ers have been considering. And you know what?
At a $15/hour wage, a national sales tax (a national consumption tax) would put *more* disposable income in my pocket than the current income tax. The income tax does not start looking better for me until the national sales tax reaches about 50% -- and the current claims by the left is that we would have to set it at about 30% in order to reap the tax revenues as the govn't currently takes in via the income tax.
A sales tax is far-more fair, for the simple reason that if you so choose, you don't *have* to buy anything, and thus, you pay nothing in taxes. It'd be a miserable, agrarian lifestyle (much like that of the Amish I suspect), but it could be done.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
Now, to reduce the regressive nature of the sales tax, were it me, I would eliminate *all* sales taxes on life-necessities: food, any health/medical supplies (including prescriptions), and possibly housing (but not land; the property tax should definitely stay, so as to prevent people from hoarding land).
And I would further raise the sales tax on items which have socially-negative effects: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana (if it's ever legalized), possibly firearms (I'm a gun nut, of course, but I also recognize the socially-negative aspects of them), and so on. I'd probably place a luxury tax on grossly-expensive items (items that only the top 5% of income earners typically purchase -- again, the Rolls, the Bentley, the 50' yachts, etc.).
That way, the tax is made at least somewhat progressive, but still is optional -- people are left free to decide whether or not to pay the tax (by consuming).
You know, a national sales tax ought to appeal to the leftie anti-consumerist, anti-materialist mentality which says that "Americans consume too much! Ach, it makes me sick that all people do is buy stuff! Waaahh!" Funny that they've been silent on the issue.
Anyway, whether the GOP will be so smart as to implement my version of the sales tax is another question...
I'm curious why you think low-income people shouldn't pay taxes. Don't they owe a responsibility to the state? By what right do they *deserve* a free ride? The right of being poor? Under your system, if everyone could get a free ride off the rich by being poor, I think I would remain poor too, just so I could loaf around and do nothing on the rich man's dollar.
Gosh, how nice it would be to sit around and let the rich man work for me. Boy, the world owes me a living!! LOL.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Don't bet on it. This has been suggested over in the UK too, and while not a popular suggestion, it's something that WILL happen here and where you are. If not tomorrow, then at some point in the future.
That privacy you think you have is quietly being eroded, and as the majority of your country has shown recently, you just don't care.
If the only purpose of these devices was to tax you based on how many miles you drive, wouldn't a milometer do? Sure the old mechanical ones can be fiddled, but aren't manufacturers capable of creating one that can't be? If they aren't, how are they capable of creating a GPS unit that can't be modded to make it look like the car has never moved from the driveway?
The powers that be won't be happy until they know exactly where you are all the time. To introduce it, they'll tell you how it'll benefit you tax-wise first. If that doesn't work, they'll tell you it'll help fight terrorism. ("Hey, if we had GPS units in cars we'd have been able to track the terrorists to within a square yard!"). The point that terrorists would probably use a stolen/rental car, bus or taxi will be skated over.
It won't be for a few years yet (there's no infrastructure to bill people even if the units were fitted), but it won't be long. If you get away with paying a tax based on how far you drive, your kids won't.
How about not? Why are the rich paying more? Because they have more money? That's a fucked up excuse.
There are several good reasons for progressive taxation. First, rich people receive a disproportionate amount of the benefits taxes pay for. Large portions of the government, from law enforcement to defense, are devoted to protecting property, both physical and intellectual, which is primarily owned by wealthy people. Second, people have a decreasing marginal utility for money. This means that taxing someone who has a lot of money harms them a less than taxing someone with less money. Third, taxing rich people is better for the economy. Poor people spend a much larger portion of their income than rich people. Rich people save and invest most of their income. Taking away money that would otherwise be spent has a contractionary effect on the economy. Taxing rich people has less of a contractionary effect than taxing poor people.
If you paid according to your income, on everything, people wouldn't work, because 10% of $0 would be the same as 10% of $1,000,000.
How in the world did this post get modded up? I never imagined that "$0 == $100,000" could be considered insightful or interesting.
Hence progressive taxes are for people who have no idea wtf they are talking about (i.e. Basic Economics). Damn, if I made $80,000 a year, and paid $2 for a McDonald's cheeseburger, and a guy making $40,000 pays $1, and a guy making $0 pays $0, what would be the point of working hard?
I find it pretty ironic that you're criticizing others for not having a grasp of "basic economics", considering that you clearly have no idea how progressive taxation works. Your cheeseburger example attempted to describe a situation where everyone's income is effectively the same. That is not progressive taxation. Under progressive taxation, the first M dollars you earn are taxed at a certain rate, the next N dollars are taxed at a higher rate, and so on. No matter how much you earn, the first M dollars will never be taxed higher than the base rate, which means you're always going to keep more money if you earned more money. There will be slightly less incentive to work hard, since you will keep less of the additional money you earn. But the incentive is still there. Plus, it is misleading to say you will have no incentive to work hard, since the largest amounts of wealth don't come from hard work, they come from investment. When someone's not actually doing anything to create their wealth, it hardly matters how incentivized they feel.
Of course, it's also going to be the most opposed because it hits everyone and no one can get out of it.
Or maybe it's because the citizenry knows the government is horribly inefficient and a gas tax would soon be followed by a hike to the sales tax, the annual license tax, road usage taxes, rinse, repeat.
We need to repeal the government and privatize the roads.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Of course, you'd be free to beat your kid
Absolutely not. Child abuse is a serious criminal matter that should be handled by the police (which is a proper government function).
The government of the people and by the people should have the people's interests at heart.
The problem with this is that your interests are not necessarily mine. The only moral way to deal with this is to speak in terms of negative rights (which tell us exactly how we will not interfere with each other).
If you haven't already, read John McCarthy's (best known as the creator of Lisp) Sustainability of Human Progress pages. He writes about a large number of environmental topics, and comes to what I consider very solid conclusions.
We in the UK already pay much more than $1 per gallon in fuel tax. I paid 82.9p a litre a few days ago to fill up my car. Converting that to US gallons, 3.79 liters into 1 US gallon, so that's £3.14 an US gallon and in dollars that's $5.82 USD per US gallon. IIRC, 75% of the petrol price is tax, that's around $4.40 a gallon fuel tax. And do we have alternative fuels? Do we hell.
Fair enough, we have LPG and the like but petrol stations supplying them are still rare and prices are around 38 to 40p a litre, cars needs to be converted into LPG (around £2,000 but then again in the long run it will pay itself off and there's government grants for that) and LPG isn't that much better your-run-of-the-mill petrol.
No hydrogen powered cars, electric cars are still painfully rare, etc etc.