Slashdot Mirror
Why Fuel Efficiency Advances Haven't Translated To Better Gas Mileage
greenrainbow tips an article about a research paper from an MIT economist that attempts to explain why technological advances in fuel efficiency haven't led to substantially better gas mileage for the average driver. Quoting:
"Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg. Instead, Knittel says, 'Most of that technological progress has gone into [compensating for] weight and horsepower.' ... Indeed, Knittel asserts, given consumer preferences in autos, larger changes in fleet-wide gas mileage will occur only when policies change, too. 'It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,' he says. Among environmental policy analysts, the notion of a surcharge on fuel is widely supported. 'I think 98 percent of economists would say that we need higher gas taxes,' Knittel says."
I think 98 percent of economists would say that we need higher gas taxes Knittel says.
93% of all statistics are made up. 99% of economists know that.
The increase in gas prices hasn't drastically changed what vehicles we buy. Many of those that really would rather buy more efficient vehicles can't afford them, and are stuck with older ones, so the economists would just be hurting the poor.
As consumers shouldn't we choose what vehicle economies we use? Where I live, SUVs are all over. But, it makes more sense. Adverse conditions favor SUVs. An economist, you would think, would say people buy what they want.
"'It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,' " No, it's the market's responsibility.
The article links to the peer-reviewed, pay-walled version of the paper.
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/knittel/papers/steroids_latest.pdf the following is the version author put up on his website
I live in Ontario Canada. Gas here is anywhere between $4.30-4.75 a US GALLON, in CANADIAN DOLLARS (worth less than US Dollars).
Meanwhile, when I'm in the USA, I can get gas for anywhere in the $3.xx a gallon range.
It physically hurts to see people line up here for $4.10/US GAL gasoline. It hasn't increased public transit usage - after all, this IS North America, not Europe.
Raising prices (via tax) to give to the people (politicians) who can't spend the money properly is a BAD IDEA anyway.
It's like giving drugs to a drug addict. They'll just abuse it.
Why don't you give incentives to the private sector -- Tax breaks on new cars where MPG meets a certain requirement? Gas guzzling cars would soon be off the market entirely as car makers would opt to make more efficient cars, as a profit margin on them would be greater due to lower taxes.
If you want to reduce gas consumption (reduce oil imports, reduce green house gasses, etc.,) levy a carbon tax, don't increase gas mileage. Do it directly – not indirectly.
Forcing me to pay extra to buy a fuel efficient car is going have little impact on the above issues – I don’t drive that many miles (yeah bike, mass transit).
When the first MPG requirements were put in place, a lot of people switched from big gas guzzling station wagons to big gas guzzling light trucks – the minivan.
Each year Americans drove more miles until gas hit $4.00 a gallon. Only at that point did they start switching their behavior. Smaller cars and shorter commutes.
Wouldn't drive a minivan if I didn't have to have every kid in a car seat until they were eight years old.
I remember the days when kids fought over who got to ride in the front seat.
*sigh* unfortunately... you are under-estimating my weight. But, that is not here, nor there. One of my hobbies is photography. I live in Idaho, and the mountains make for some great backdrops. Well, getting to some places can be dicey. I can also haul a LOT in my SUV. The gas mileage SUCKS... but the convenience is great. I have enough money to choose 1 car... the SUV wins out for my life.
The reason people hate taxes is because they are commonly used as punitive measures to modify behavior. This is NOT what they should be used for. Thanks to federal and state government not having the discipline to operate within a budget, we pay too much as it is, and coupled with the rise in inflation every time washington prints more money, the people at the bottom are the ones who get burned at both ends, in savings and expenditures. Raising fuel taxes hurts these people even more because they are not able to afford a new car every few years and thus are most likely the ones driving 10+ year old models, nor can they afford to pay even more at the pump than they already are. If money needs diversion to research new technologies then it should come out of the pockets of the oil companies, not consumers. They shoulder enough of the yoke as it is while large corporations are the ones who benefit the most from government economic management.
Is that code for "we let the SUV situation get out of hand, and now to pass any safety standards, cars have to bulk up and drop gas mileage in order to not kill their occupants due to cars we should have de-incentivized people from driving?"
One of the US crash safety standards required by the NHTSA that adds weight and expense to new vehicles is for "unrestrained drivers", despite the fact that under 10% of US drivers go un-belted these days. The punch line is that the IIHS found the NHTSA test not very useful, because un-bented passengers often aren't held in place in front of the intended safety devices.
Because higher fuel efficiency leads to lower oil profits? DUH. Hell, I'm not even some fancy economist with a fancy ivy league degree and even I can see that.
. . . that they should pay less taxes, and that somebody else should pay more.
Politicians this season should be touting the "Tax Foreigners Living Abroad" plan. That one never upsets any voters at home.
Applying this principle to cars, I think that the car of someone else should be taxed.
Now, if you tax gas (including diesel), you can manage to upset everyone in one fell swoop.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
While the SUV revolution is more than a little bit to blame for today's lackluster fuel numbers, the article fails to point out collision safety as a factor in the modern design of cars. It's not just the trucks and SUV's that are bringing the average down -- compact cars these days are still way heavier than they used to be, with much worse visibility, largely as a result of increasingly stringent crash standards.
Cars these days have to be able to protect you in a 60 mph (30 + 30) corner collision, with rollover, even if you aren't wearing a seatbelt. The result is bigger, heavier frames, and thick pillars that prevent you from seeing pedestrians. As a result, cars are heavier, and their engines have to be more powerful to compensate.
The 2012 Impreza gets 30% better gas mileage than the 2011.
Read the article, but CVT, lighter body, electric steering - 36MPG for an AWD vehicle is nicely impressive.
Technology, it does good things.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Seriously, your argument is photography? You have so much photographic equipment that it can't fit into a hatchback so you need an SUV?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
If we save fuel all across the board...
The oil companys might not make more money next year than they did this year. Repeated forever into the future.
And we can't have that now can we?
Sounds like a recursive function.
Of course, there's always a constant thrown in - P for Profit, they'll always make a profit.
If we all drive cars which get 100 MPG then the price per gallon will simply be adjusted, due to economy of scale - fixed costs are spread over less product, so are rolled into the unit price - say... 10$US gallon. A that point, people still stupid enough to drive 12 MPG Behemoths will feel the pain.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
People obviously value things like car power, size, etc over fuel efficiency. They can already buy more efficient cars, and they choose not to do so. When scarcity drives the price up, people may shift their priorities, but why force them to do artificially through taxes?
Because it's the government's job to strive for the betterment of the country as a whole, not just the individual. Individual actions may indeed serve the person better than actions that benefits the whole, but that's not the governments job. Indeed there are arguments to be made on where the line should be drawn for placing society above the individual or the individual above society, but when all is said and done the government (when functioning properly) should be striving the better the lives of its citizens through the betterment of the country as a whole.
Most SUVs can't go anywhere that a normal van can't. I can get my van into - and, crucially, *out of* - a lot of spots where 4x4s just can't go because they are too heavy and don't have the grip.
I can appreciate your desire to have a big car then. Sorry if I was a little stingy with my weight allowance.
I live in Los Angeles and have lost count of how many times I've nearly been run down by a tiny blonde bimbo in a gigantic SUV talking on her cell phone and barreling down a narrow residential street. It just doesn't make sense here.
Given all the electronic junk such as ABS, TCS, TPS, multiple airbags, electric seats, motorized windows, mirrors, rear-seat DVD players etc etc that they shovel into cars as standard these days, All the efficiency gained is probably mostly lost in extra weight and power consumption to drive that stuff.
I for one would welcome the opportunity to buy a simple car without all that junk, except there isn't really the option any more. Apart from the fuel savings, think of the production cost savings the car companies could pass on to the consumer.
That's like asking "why stop an addict from taking heroin because he chooses to take it." Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
Perhaps part of the problem is the current environmental variables. We've told the car companies, in so many words, that they need only care about designing an engine with a top speed slightly over 80 MPH (I believe 80 MPH is the top speed limit in the United States, perhaps 100 MPH). Then we told them to design an engine that is fuel efficient given that top speed.
A greater efficiency might be gained with a more radical redesign of the combustion engine (just speculating here), but that would require a larger investment in R&D, and with a larger investment comes a greater risk, which also requires a greater reward in compensation. Before this can happen, there must a an untapped market for investors to care about. Lifting the speed limit might do wonders here. New market -> higher performance engine, capable of higher speeds, and since the average customer (rich or otherwise) does not like the idea of their net wealth dropping a percentage point every time they fill up at the gas station, arguably something efficient.
Or we could just pop a RTG into the back of a Chevy Volt. A Mr. Fission in the back would be oddly amusing.
Though I think a greater gain may be had with better coatings for cars. Reducing friction with better coatings for cars might improve things fuel efficiency. But I am not an engineer, only a scientist, so it's best to ask them what they've tried before looking for a new solution.
I am John Hurt.
Opponents of consumption taxes (or really, Pigovian taxes in this case) will come up with a number of reasons why they aren't good to use. These include:
- Government moral hazard - if the government considers tax revenue a good in itself, then you have an incentive to take as negative a view of the externality as possible.
- An increase in the size of government - more revenue equals automatically more expenditure, by some considered a bad thing in itself.
- High uncertainty of measuring externalities - the heavy tax on smokers, for example, may not look justified if you consider that smokers die earlier.
Many of these objections would be overcome if the default whenever a 'tax on doing something bad' was implemented, the revenues had to be apportioned, in full (minus monitoring costs) to the opposite. For example, every 6 months the entire sum of petrol tax revenue should be rebated to bicycle manufacturers or purchasers. 'Who should benefit' should be as important a question as 'who should pay'. That way no unwarranted eagerness to tax undesirable activities, and a lot less objections.
Because they're so simple. They would also allow our highway fund to be self-sustaining, which would mean that we could stop subsidizing it with income taxes from people who don't drive. Things like tax credits and CAFE Standards can be gamed.
In the long-term taxes also have the advantage of getting people used to $6 Gas. Oil production isn't rising. Indian and Chinese guys are finally getting rich enough to drive home for the holidays, which means it's inevitable that gas will go up. Period.
But since everybody pays the gas tax all the time nobody wants to be responsible for raising it, therefore we get a mess.
Like say a compact pickup. I'd buy one if I could. (preferably turbo diesel, while I am dreaming) But the Ranger was discontinued, the Colorado is big enough to be a full size pickup of 10 years ago, and the Durango is big enough to be a semi truck, much less the "full sized" trucks. And it's not just the "merican" companies. The last time the Tacoma was mid sized was in 2004, now it's ginormous (same thing with the Frontier).
They keep talking about "average." Average is the result of society's self-destructive love of SUVs and Minivans. While some people have a legitimate need for such vehicles, most buy them DESPITE their bad mileage.
There are many perfectly comfortable cars that do much better. Myself, I like the Ford Focus line.
I think the Chevy Volt is a great design concept because it would suit me needs perfectly, but I can buy two Focus' for the price of one Volt in Canada, and the Focus gets MUCH better highway mileage than the Volt. I WANT to be environmentally responsible and go electric, but it's just not gonna happen until prices come WAY down.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There were many advancements in fuel efficiency, but very few of them are actually used in American cars. American engines still have the simple design they had 40 years ago. With fuel prices kept low, there is just no incentive.
I'm not necessarily against taxing gasoline. However, before we start using a gasoline tax as a tool to force people to behave a certain way, maybe we should consider eliminating the billions of dollars of subsidies given to the oil industry so that we can see the *true* price of gasoline?
(NY Times on oil subsidies: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html)
All the posters here keep crying about how "the open market" has failed, but we aren't in an open market, so that is nonsense.
What a load of tripe.
The average weight of cars has been increasing because crash survival standards have been becoming stricter, and that requires that more material be used in the car to protect the passenger compartment. This adds weight and bulk; with bulk (thicker doors, etc.) comes an overall increase in vehicle sizes, which itself adds weight AND frontal area. The frontal area increase comes with an increase in drag. Exotic materials like carbon fiber are still very expensive, so it's still aluminum and steel. And despite what legislators seem to think, you can't pass a law that increases the number of joules of energy in a gram of fuel.
It's not just American cars (so lose the anti-American screeching please). The average vehicle weight in ALL markets has been increasing. Go look up the dimensions and weights of just about any vehicle model and manufacturer regardless of market or whether the vehicle in question is sold in North America, and see how it's changed over time.
Safety costs weight and size. Weight and size cost fuel. At a given price point, you can have increased safety XOR increased fuel economy.
Choose.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
'It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,' he says.
NO, IT'S NOT! It's the stupid consumers responsibility to START BUYING UP ALL THE FUEL EFFICIENT CARS! Supply and demand, when people demand it, companies will supply it!
For alot of people a car with good city miles is needed other good hiway miles.
Indeed, Knittel asserts, given consumer preferences in autos, larger changes in fleet-wide gas mileage will occur only when policies change, too. 'It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,'
Indeed, I assert, given Mr. Knittel's preference for having his priorities enshrined in (presumably) government policies and imposed on people explicitly against their will, it is the responsibility of voters to create election results that lead politicians who agree with Mr. Knittel as far away from power as possible.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Flamebait, I know. But if they payload is you (and I'll generously give you 300 lbs for yourself and your laptop) and the vessel weighs 15 times that much. A total waste.
Earlier today, we had a story on how the Massachusetts Lt. Governor crashed his Crown Vic doing 108mph and walked away with no injuries. Say what you will about the Lt Governor, it is not really a waste when crash survival rates increase dramatically.
Fuel efficiency isn't the only design criteria for modern cars.
Still the story makes an assertion that simply isn't supported by anything but the authors opinion:
Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg.
Vehicles of that vintage couldn't achieve anything near 37mpg once the tougher pollution controls were put in place. A great deal of the weight gain over the years was due to the increase in horse power needed to overcome the pollution control regulations imposed on vehicles while maintaining similar performance.
Again, fuel economy is not the only design criteria. You can't look at an overall improvement in safety, accident survive-ability, comfort, mileage, pollution abatement, vehicle longevity, and dismiss all such improvements as "a total waste" just because all of these improvements didn't fall into one's preferred area of political rabble-rousing.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, you put 3 photographers and a passenger in... plus our equipment, and the back gets full. And my MAIN argument, was that I go back into the mountains where a hatchback CAN'T go. End of story. I had a shorter SUV, that I sunk in a river crossing. Trucks made it through just fine, mine was a little low, and too much of the engine went under water. Sorry that you don't live someplace with majestic beauty like I do.
Ducati 1098.
0-60mph in 2.9 sec.
35 - 40mpg while being ham-fisted on the throttle.
My other bike is a Triumph Thruxton and it gets 50mpg.
I ride ~ 7 months out of the year here in CO.
Seriously, your argument is photography? You have so much photographic equipment that it can't fit into a hatchback so you need an SUV?
He doesn't need the cargo space of an SUV for the photography equipment, he needs the higher ground clearance to be able to drive on unmaintained backcountry roads. Forrest service roads are often covered with eight inch potholes and nearly impossible to drive in a normal car. I would like to have an SUV to trailheads in the wilderness, but I don't have one because I can't justify the cost of a second car.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
So you advocate rolling back tobacco taxes?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ok. But should taxes be used to capture the costs of externalities not accounted for otherwise?
For instance, the increase in the cost of healthcare caused by polution isn't reflected in the price of gas at the pump. That cost is passed along to society at large. Do you think it's appropriate for that cost to be captured by a tax?
This is a must read. It's a perfect example of a "market solution".
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
So you advocate rolling back tobacco taxes?
Speaking for myself, absolutely. Taxes used for social engineering are wrong. Period.
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government. If the specific role of fuel taxes are to pay for the roads, then raising them with the idea of forcing 'economy' is wrong.
It is also amazing to me that some of the same people who will practically demand such taxes in the name of the environment will turn right around and argue that a flat tax is wrong because it hurts the poor. As if the higher fuel tax doesn't?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
How does higher gas taxes actually help us? So we use less of the stuff. And we want that because? If you bother to reply, please bother to explain why such and such is really a bad thing and just not"Oh noes, we're giving money to people who for some reason or another hate us" or "Oh noes if we don't tax it we're going to run out of the stuff". We'll find other fuels, and how much of a brick wall are we going to hit come what may? Pollution presents an interesting problem, but how big a factor is it really. Has anybody taken a honest look at the issue instead of hitting shallow paydirt and then running around screaming the sky is falling?
Individual behavior that has a societal cost should be fair game for targeted taxes. In many cases I think that allowing someone the freedom to engage in the costly behavior while asking them to compensate society for the privilege is preferable to an outright ban on the behavior.
Ok. But should taxes be used to capture the costs of externalities not accounted for otherwise?
For instance, the increase in the cost of healthcare caused by polution isn't reflected in the price of gas at the pump. That cost is passed along to society at large. Do you think it's appropriate for that cost to be captured by a tax?
No. For two reasons. The first being that once you allow government to start collecting taxes for "externalities" then you've given them practically a blank check for whatever new taxes they want to levy, as long as it is to "capture the cost of an externalty." Second, It ought not be the role of government to be deciding such things. What's more, who is to say what the increase in cost of health care is or even if it can be tied to car pollution or any other sort.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Car companies make money on big cars and inefficient features. It's hard to buy a car w/out electric windows and air conditioning. Go shop for one. The are hard to find.. Electric motors in windows are heavy. AC is heavy. Costs milage.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
You started out making a good point. One of the reasons that gas mileage has not improved more is because the government has mandated more safety features, which increase the curb weight of cars.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Is that a problem, though? Don't think of it in terms of MPG, think about $/mile. Hippies care about MPG, the rest of us care about the cost of transportation and MPG is currently our most meaningful metric to gauge that. Handily, $/mi also works across all vehicles, including public transportation and bicycles. Based on some rough estimates, my current cost is about 12.5c/mi (~$4/gal, ~32MPG), if I exclude the purchase price of the car. If I bought a Tesla tomorrow (or perhaps an EV that's a bit less expensive), how many miles could I go on 12.5c worth of electricity? More than one, I expect. Net gain, all other things being equal (they obviously aren't - this excludes purchase price, maintenance, etc).
No matter what the cost of fuel is, it's always financially advantageous to go with the vehicle that consumes less fuel. Gas could be $0.10c/gal or $100/gal. You need to take the emotion out of the equation. Are you getting dicked over by the fuel companies? Probably. It's still better to pay less by having the more efficient vehicle.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I disagree, what you call the government picking winners and losers is called by others a government trying to create a more equal society. I would even go so far as to say that the whole concept of 'winners and losers' is more akin to how individuals behave and subjectively speaking, the government trying to create a more equal society is considered the government picking sides by those who deem themselves 'winners' in society and don't want an society of equality of a society of their superiority.
Because your giant vehicle pollutes our air, tears up our roads (that we must pay to repair), kills us in our smaller cars or on our bikes, and guzzles gasoline, driving up the cost for the rest of us and sending gazillions of dollars to fascist states that breed terrorists who want to kill us.. Get your head out of your ass, man.
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Speed limits are often higher in europe (70mph in the uk, no limit in some parts of germany etc)... And yet European cars are generally more economical than american ones.
Cars have always been designed to accelerate to speeds higher than the speed limit anyway, if anything some newer cars are so underpowered as to be quite dangerous as they significantly increase the size of gap you require when pulling out.
Better safety equipment and structure is a design goal regardless of the speed limit, a car designed to be safe at 100mph is going to be pretty good at protecting occupants when driving at 30mph.
On the other hand, low speed limits make it much easier to fall asleep at the wheel, 65mph was noisy and uncomfortable 30 years ago, but in todays cars you barely feel it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
As someone who witnessed someone else try to drive a van across a creek, I call bullshit. The van got stuck 1/3 of the way across the creek. Then I saw a SUV go around it and pull the van out without getting stuck.
It's funny that you comment on grip, considering 4x4 vehicles have twice as much as a normal van.
Chevy S10. I own a six cylinder model. Its good, gets over 20mpg with care and not driving like the accelerator has two settings. Only two wheel drive with no weight in the back and I still find it easy to drive in the Michigan winters.
Why is it wrong when a behavior increases an individual's societal burden?
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Ok, take a deep breath. :) Relax. It's ok, really. Don't let your blood pressure go up like that. It's bad for your health!
As lots of other people have been saying, a gas tax is not to punish you, it's to compensate for externalities. Every time you drive your car, you put wear on the roads and produce pollution. Those are real costs that people other than you have to bear. And since they are bearing those costs, not you, you have no incentive to reduce them by driving less or buying a smaller vehicle. You, in turn, are bearing the cost of other people's driving, and they have no incentive to drive less either. So that's why a gas tax is a good idea. Every time you (or I, or anyone else) drive, you should pay as close as possible to the actual cost of the damage you are doing. Then you can make more rational (in the economic sense) decisions about how much to drive and what car to buy. Your decisions will reflect realistic tradeoffs between various harms and benefits.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
No kidding. I moved cross-country including a small photo studio's worth of gear (two monoblocs, a half-dozen or more small strobes, at least five stands, two SLR bodies, several lenses, etc., etc.) in a MINI Cooper, and had room to spare - and that was with a co-pilot and his luggage. Aside from some extremely unwieldy backdrops, fitting any piece of photo gear in my car is no problem whatsoever (and as the GP said he was driving to make landscape shots... that's irrelevant here).
Would it be more convenient to throw it all in the back of a pickup or SUV? Sure. But it takes about five seconds to fold down my back seats. That sure isn't worth more-than-doubling my fuel costs.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The way our government tries to control fuel efficiency is suboptimal. Fuel efficiency standards in the United States are based on miles per gallon and set a required average fuel efficiency rate for the fleet of vehicles produced. The standards are thus set up to encourage higher average MPG. The way we all approach fuel efficiency is to think of higher MPGs as being better. But once you get past a certain threshold, incremental increases in MPG do not save very much fuel. This post explains the reason:
"As MPG increases at a linear rate, the improvements in fuel efficiency decrease at a hyperbolic rate. This means that the greatest gains in fuel efficiency don’t come from building more cars with very high MPG, but by replacing the cars with very low MPG. . . . As you can see, the fuel savings from switching from a 10 MPG to a 15 MPG car is 33 gallons. The savings from going from a 20 MPG car to a 25 MPG car is 10 gallons. To save 10 gallons from a 50 MPG car, you’d have to switch to a 100 MPG car. There are rapidly diminishing returns for developing cars with ever-higher MPG."
If our goal is reduce national fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, and our dependence on foreign oil, then we are going about it all wrong. We shouldn't be focusing on getting more high MPG cars on the road. The big gains will come from eliminating low MPG cars. The government should be setting standards for allowable MPG minimums, and raise those minimums every year. We gain a lot more by getting Suburbans off the road than we do by putting Priuses on the road
(Of course, there are other factors to consider, the biggest one being whether the low-MPG car is carrying multiple passengers, thus creating lower per capita fuel use; but most of the time, most people drive their cars by themselves, so this isn't that big of a deal. Maybe certain classes of low-MPG cars could be allowed for families or only when there are a certain number of passengers inside).
seeing that she escaped death by inches only by flat-spotting all four tires hitting the brakes
ABS may have reduced the stopping distance. If you're flat-spotting tyres, you don't have ABS.
Aside from that, SUVs are safer than sports, compacts, and subcompacts, but not by a multiple of 5. On the flip side, compacts and subcompacts are much safer if you happen to be the other driver.
See page 8
The best all round choice seems to be luxury imports, which are least risky for everyone. But they are expensive ; minivans seem to be a good compromise - they're not as forgiving on the other driver as mid to large size cars, but they are much safer for you. SUVs seem to be nearly twice as dangerous as a large size car to the other vehicle and slightly less safe for you than a mid to large size car, which I presume is what your wife was driving if she was getting 25 mpg.
Did you have a citation for that "5 times safer" figure?
lol, i took econ 101 at uchicago and I don't understand what externalities???
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_tax
One of the original reasons given for a tax like that:
The sale of alcohol necessitates higher costs in policemen and prisons, Pigou argues, because of the crime associated with alcohol. In other words, the net private product of alcohol businesses is peculiarly large relative to the net social product of the same business. He suggests that this is why most countries tax alcohol businesses.
In the case of oil, there are many costs beyond that of simply producing the oil, refining it and transporting it. The most obvious is the cost of maintaining trade relations with many OPEC countries. Most industrial countries would have no need of Middle Eastern countries if they weren't sitting on a sea of oil, and could leave them to their own devices like countries in Africa and South America.
There's the cost of CO2 emissions, although many people are still burying their heads in the sand about this.
Then there's the cost of transitioning from oil. We could wait until we simply run out of cheap oil before doing anything, or we can preemptively start the long process of transitioning away from oil as a primary source of fuel used for transportation.
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
That is one of the problems with government funded health care. Because as far as that goes, your logic is correct and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of that kind of thing in the future. Though, perhaps we ought to kick government out of health care before it is too late.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
It's not a judgement, it's just rebalancing the invisible hand of the market.
Fuel has costs that are not reflected at the pump - environmental damage, oil subsidy, military costs.
In a true free market system, the price of a product should reflect the cost of a product, such that an informed choice about purchase can be made. If the value of your need exceeds the price of fueling an SUV, that's how you know you really need to drive one.
Why is it wrong when a behavior increases an individual's societal burden?
First, the increase in societal burden in a way that government is the proper redress is presumed and not proven. Second, at least in the US the fed.gov lacks that power. The fact that the courts and the people have thus far let them get away with it does not actually change that fact.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
I'm a smoker and someone who supports these taxes...to a degree. I'm also uninsured and seriously doubt that the money I paid in will ever be put forth in an effort to better my life later on -- perhaps stabilize me in an ER room, but actually get the help I need (e.g., chemo)? Probably not.
The amount of money taken in as taxes for anti-smoking campaigns really irks me. How about free distribution of nicotine patches and gum? Why not tax it in a manner to pay for an eventual phasing-out of cigarettes, making major pushes for entire smoke-free states? Or, if you feel that's highly unlikely to work, spend some money and develop government-approved nicotine delivery devices (e-cigarettes but with some hard facts behind them)?
Yes, it's simple enough to say "Just quit smoking". You've never been a smoker or been someone almost completely dependent on cigarettes. Nicotine stabilizes my mood -- I used to be extremely depressed growing up and cigarettes, in a sense, saved my life. I wouldn't recommend them as an alternative to expensive medicines if you have the cash, but a high possibility of lung cancer versus chronic, life-crushing depression, does lead me down the cheaper route.
Taxes do push people to quit. But not everyone, not to mention the next generation coming up simply picks up the slack. You're not going to end smoking in this country unless you treat tobacco like another marijuana, and we know how well that has worked in the USA. Keep the taxes, but keep them fair -- don't dip into the pot that should be set aside to fund "like" anti-smoking programs/treatments for other projects, for then it just becomes essentially a sin tax, punishing people for years for the single mistake they made as kids, picking up that first cigarette.
I wonder if this is related at all to the big tax break/write off/whatever that bush gave to businesses if they bought a car over, what was it, like 5000 lbs? All I know is the lady who owns the little nail salon is now driving an escalade. that had to hurt a bit, eh?
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Including the purchase of the car is very important in these calculations. For some reason people die of sticker shock at the pumps but have no problem paying at least that much per month in payments on their car. Having said all this, if we reduce it to numbers I don't think you'll find fuel economy factors into the cost as much as you say or would like it to. For example, spending $45,000 on a fuel efficient jetta vs $10,000 on a SUV gas guzzler. The SUV at 14 MPG will drive for 122,000 miles on the difference in cost alone. And actually it's far more than that as the actual cost of paying for the $45k car is going to be closer to $50 or even $60 depending on the interest rate and the length of the loan.
Let's play with some numbers. With car purchase cost in mind, at $4 a gallon (picking a number here), I drove my SUV about 30,000 miles since I bought it at say 14 MPG (a lot of highway miles) gives me a cost of about 61 cents a mile (2100 gallons or $8400 in gas). The cost of driving the same distance in the $45k car (40 MPG -- we'll be generous) is about $3000 in gas, which in total is about $1.60 a mile.
Eventually the car will obviously beat the SUV in terms of cost, but it will be quite a while. I was curious, and since my linear algebra skills are bad I chucked the numbers into LibreOffice and found that with these hypothetical numbers, the 40 MPG car will only become cheaper than the SUV in $/mile at the 200,000 mile mark. Really fascinating.
I don't know, ask all the overweight people out there what's wrong with a junk food or fast food tax?
The cost of obesity on society is 100 times the cost of smoking on society, and we're footing the bill just the same as with smokers. Ask yourself this: if a parent allows their child to eat themselves into their own grave, does that constitute child abuse? Should the state be allowed to remove the child from a home that does not make sure their children are of a healthy body weight? If a child is severely underweight, the state will absolutely take a child into custody, it happens all the time. But overweight? Never.
So how do you feel about a crappy food tax? Because honestly, I find that nine times out of ten, the person that is all about the smokers tax thinks the shitty food tax is just going too far. That's not to say that it is always true, but it usually is. Smoking is considered the dirty habit, but cramming 10 servings of powdered mini donuts in your mouth in a single sitting isn't? Eating 3 Double Cheeseburgers for lunch with an extra large fries and half gallon of coke isn't a dirty habit, too?
And then there's the excuses "Why should I be punished for eating fast food once in a while?! I am not overweight!!" That's a bullshit excuse because not everyone that smokes gets fucking lung cancer, but they all pay the tax just the same, don't they? So the fact that a person is healthy and only eats a little candy is immaterial.
Mind you, I'm not a smoker, but I used to be, and it really was the increased cost of the things that encouraged me to quit...$7 a pack when I finally managed to lock myself in the house for 3 days without cigarettes and get off of them once and for all. I just find it funny how hypocritical most people are when it comes to smokers, and how easily they ignore their own bad habits. Human nature, I guess...
Fuel taxes do make a big difference. I've been abroad and never saw a single huge SUV in the entire time I was there. The truth is when you FEEL the money you're spending and literally can't afford more, it does force you to make changes.
Another issue is health and comfort -- I know it sounds unrelated but it's not. When I was abroad, I saw very few overweight people as compared to here (in the U.S.). Yes, it's sad, (all actual conditions aside) throw away any sense of self-responsibility and call it an "epidemic" -- as if you 'caught' your fat when someone sneezed on you -- if you want, call it your "genes"...whatever...it doesn't really matter what name you ascribe to it. The bottom line is when your rear end warrants buying an extra plane ticket, you're not going to fit, let alone be very comfortable in a Chevrolet Cavalier, VW Beetle, Toyota Corolla or other fuel-efficient, compact vehicle. Yes, there are other larger and still somewhat efficient vehicles but the larger you go, the less fuel-efficient they get and seat size doesn't go up very quickly. This is a real factor these days especially when so many people are overweight.
All that aside, we are SPOILED here in the U.S. Perhaps I'm one of the few who will happily admit this but what we call a 'family-size sedan' here is what they'd call a 'luxury-size sedan' in Europe. I can't tell you how many times I see some tiny woman in designer shades speeding down the highway in a Cadillac Escalade...with NO passengers in the car. --and how many mpg is she getting? What sort of efficiency is that to be hauling so many tons of metal in a not-very-aerodynamic vehicle just to transport some tiny woman that probably weighs 125lbs or so. I understand the need for more space if you have 3+ kids (though I don't understand the notion of ever wanting that many kids...). But why do you need so many extra seats just to transport the average family of two partners and 2.5 children? That fits nicely in a sedan -- even a Corolla!
We need to go on the "put the f-ing fork down" diet, chill out a bit and not need to compensate for with a huge monster of a vehicle and just pick something sensible. Hey, if extra taxes on gas do that for us, so be it. I'd be HAPPY to pay my share if it stopped this rampant abuse of natural resources...especially when clearing the road of those huge trucks makes the roads inherently safer for smaller vehicles!
But it is wrong. There are cars from the 1980s that get great gas mileage. The difference is the mandated changes for safety, which has made cars heavier. It takes more steel to make a car crumple the right way. I am not saying this is a bad thing - I am a fan of living through car crashes, but that is where the major mileage decrease happened.
Really?! Then what is a government supposed to tax. Any economist will tell you that negative externalities are *exactly* what a government is supposed to tax and then use the money to subsidize positive externalities. The government is certainly not the most efficient body in the world, but I'd argue that compensating for externalities should be the government's first priority.
Flamebait, I know. But if they payload is you (and I'll generously give you 300 lbs for yourself and your laptop) and the vessel weighs 15 times that much. A total waste.
Earlier today, we had a story on how the Massachusetts Lt. Governor crashed his Crown Vic doing 108mph and walked away with no injuries. Say what you will about the Lt Governor, it is not really a waste when crash survival rates increase dramatically.
Fuel efficiency isn't the only design criteria for modern cars.
Of course, if safety is what you want, your argument could be used to recommend putting mandatory speed governors on every car. If the fastest speed limit in the nation is 75mph, why do we have cars that can go 108mph?
If the weekend racers want to go 100mph on the track, let them buy a special license plate with the key to unlock their speed governor. If they are caught speeding on a public street (or if anyone else has tampered with the speed governor), then give them mandatory jail time.
This is a very naive view.
Taxes have always been used to influence behavior... by all societies throughout time.
You may not like it, but taxes do influence behavior... even the taxes which are not designed to influence behavior.
It is useful to use taxes to "reprice" goods for all kinds of reasons. In the case of gas tax, the revenue is used pay for the external cost of building and maintaining roads since it is a convenient way to pay for this public good. People who buy more gas use the roads more. Gas taxes can be used to add a cost for other externalities such as CO2 emission which has negative effects on the environment.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Hate to reply to my own post, but if I put the cost of continuing to drive my gas guzzler against a Prius at $26,000 and 50 MPG (if I had one I could never get that as my driving is mostly highway), it's about 80,000 miles before the Prius becomes more economical. It's fun and eye opening to crunch these numbers. And of course I'm not taking into account loans or maintenance costs, which could make the break-even point sooner or later. And obviously I'm pitting my used vehicle against a new one, which will always have a much higher initial cost per mile. To me, though, it also says it is rarely economical to buy a brand new vehicle.
I don't think your example of a $45,000 fuel efficient car is representative. Most small fuel efficient economy cars cost less than $20,000 new (and much less used), putting them in the same price range as your gas guzzler SUV. (BTW, most gas guzzler SUVs cost more than $40,000.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
because it's not at all clear that smokers increase public health care costs. They tend to die 10 years earlier than non smokers which keeps them out of tax payer funded nursing homes.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers. We're pretty good at treating the former, not so much the latter but we're really good at running up the bill for said afflictions, along with COPD, asthma and the panoply of other illnesses worsened by smoking.
Smoking ain't cheap.
(Neither is drinking - probably costs more than tobacco if you factor in health care costs and police / courts / rehab / social services related to alcohol abuse)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If the govt would get out of the petroleum regulating business and stop putting additives into gasoline we would get better fuel mileage, it all started with MTBE, now its Ethanol. When MTB came out in the US, my 82 VW Scirocco went from 42mpg to 32mpg on the first fill up of that shit gas.
Stop fucking with the fuel!
Make one grade of gasoline that gets the best fuel economy possible for most cars.
Quite a lot of places do exactly that - have you looked up a cigarette quit line? Wandered over to a local ER? It's pretty much standards in my neck of the woods anyway.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Gas prices are too low...so let's raise taxes? That's our knee-jerk response?
How about instead of raising taxes which will fall disproportionately on the middle class (the lower classes tend to use public transit), instead let's STOP subsidizing gas and oil exploration, remove massive subsidies, rebates, and all the frosting for our oil-lobby friends?
Raising taxes on the masses while simultaneously handing $billion$ to oil means that the primary beneficiaries are the oil companies, nobody else.
-Styopa
I drive an old Jeep that on good days might get me 15 mpg around town. (Fortunately, I live close to work, so I don't put many miles on it.) New ones get about 33% better mileage, despite weighing a few hundred pounds more and having about 50% more horsepower, I'd guess.
Granted, that's mileage improving to merely Shitty from Really Really Shitty.
A major factor not mentioned (disclaimer: DNRTFA) is the change in EPA testing. My car was rated 20/16 back when it was new. Under the new, strict system, it's 18/13. 23 mpg today on the window sticker is much closer to reality than it was just a few years ago.
Ok. But should taxes be used to capture the costs of externalities not accounted for otherwise?
For instance, the increase in the cost of healthcare caused by polution isn't reflected in the price of gas at the pump. That cost is passed along to society at large. Do you think it's appropriate for that cost to be captured by a tax?
Or the added cost of supporting our international presence required to maintain the oil supply.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
Almost all taxes manipulate behavior, it is just that we are more used to some type of taxes than to others. Intrinsically it is no more manipulative to tax a scarce polutant vs taxing work, investment and real estate like we do today.
I would rather say that since we need some taxation to support certain government function, let's tax the things with the least negative (or even positive) manipulative effects. Taxing gas would come well ahead of taxing work in that argument.
We need to not tax the fuel, but the vehicles.... An algorithm that factors weight and fuel economy with a higher tax on heavier, lower efficiency vehicles and a tax break on smaller, more efficient ones. One of the problems with vehicle safety is the arms race between the cars for weight. All other factors being equal when heavier cars collide with lighter ones, the heavier cars tend to have lower fatality rates. However, the "impulse" to use the physics term is actually greater for two heavier vehicles colliding, thus harming both occupants more. Two light-weight vehicles would be the safest to collide (again, all other factors being equal.
If you set up this tax structure, the poor still can drive their old clunkers until they wear out and they have to buy a new car, and then they can buy a cheaper high efficiency vehicle. Some of that tax revenue could subsidize research in to making more fuel efficient vehicles, some of it could go to making the lighter/efficient vehicles cheaper. I drive a Honda Fit that gets high 30s on MPG with my wife and two kids. It is a great car that gets good marks for crash testing, however, I cringe to think about how it would do against a Hummer or Escalade. And yes it is very light (only 100 pounds heavier than the Fiat 500), but it seats 4-5 plus cargo.
Oh and if we are going to talk about taxing gas, why not just take away all of the subsidies for the oil industry. The conservatives never seem to bring THAT up.
" Second, It ought not be the role of government to be deciding such things. What's more, who is to say what the increase in cost of health care is or even if it can be tied to car pollution or any other sort."
So then, whose responsibility is it when our air, soil, and water are all toxic? How does that minor problem get fixed?
I don't respond to AC's.
Yeah, but a $45k jetta and a $10k SUV shouldn't be compared. Hell, a $45k jetta doesn't even exist. You want to compare brand new cars, you need to compare cars in the same class (or even better yet, the same model with two different powertrains). For instance, compare a Chevy Volt vs. a Chevy Cruze. It's a much better example and they are the same car. Or, a Fusion vs. a Fusion Hybrid. Compare the prices and mileage to actually get to useful payback number. But comparing and hypothetical $10k SUV vs. a mythical $45k jetta is absurd.
All taxes modify behaviour, intended or not. At the moment most taxes are raised in ways which result in modifications to behaviour which are bad. For example, taxes on labour, and taxes that cause corporations to prefer debt financing over equity financing when there's no underlying business reason to do so. You have to pay your taxes somehow.....much better to have them levied on things where there's an obvious economic advantage (like fuel and anything else with negative externalities) than where the opposite is true. There's a limited supply of those things, but what supply there is isn't being fully used.
Sure. And as you can see I ran the numbers against a prius too. The point of the exercise was not to compare a brand new SUV to a brand new Prius. Rather it was to compare the cost of changing from an existing gas guzzler SUV to a new car, which addresses the point the OP made about his cost per mile of his car. My point is that his cost per mile is too low. And once you do factor in the entire cost, fuel economy really doesn't enter into the economics at all, for a significant portion of the car's lifetime. In fact on the Prius numbers, the cost per mile doesn't settle on the pure fuel cost until about 300,000 miles (that is not comparing it to any other vehicle).
My SUV certainly did cost $10,000. As I said I've put 30,000 miles on it since I bought it. And right now if you were in the market for a vehicle you probably could find a used one for that price still, though there is a run on used vehicles, so prices are a bit higher. I could have bought a $5000 car and reduced my costs. But going green and buying a hybrid is not likely to make economic sense for the length of time I'd drive it.
What, pulling numbers out of thin air? Who, me?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
For myself, several recent hikes in the tax rate for tobacco were very much unwarranted. The only reason they are usually successful is because smokers are increasingly a minority, and one that can't claim such attacks as unfair because somehow the uses of tobacco are somehow "dirty" and therefore socially acceptable.
BTW, this is the same reason for the "tax the rich" suggestions, because "the rich" don't really have much in the way of votes. As long as it is "not me", most people are fine with raising taxes as long as they get the benefits from those taxes. Then again, that is the problem if you are trying to literally hold somebody for ransom at gunpoint to steal their money, and do so legally. Taxation should be viewed as a last resort for government funding precisely because of this problem.
More significantly, any attempt to "help the poor" through tax policies is inevitably going to hurt "the poor" far more through those taxes than if they had never been imposed in the first place. They should be viewed as a "necessary evil", and in some ways I'm not entirely convinced that taxes are even necessary at all. I've heard of proposed government forms that have a constitutional prohibition on any form of taxation, where the government itself is considered a public charity which does fundraising with a model similar to what PBS does right now for television programming. I don't know if such a government would be effective at getting the necessary funds for operations, but if such a government did exist I believe the society under such a government would be one of the most prosperous in human history.
I don't mind fees for services from the government. If you apply for a marriage license, want a health inspection done of a restaurant you own, or in some way employ a government worker, you should be paying for those services rendered. I don't think government would have to be eliminated if taxes didn't exist, but those in charge of government operations would be a whole lot more careful about how the money is spent if they have to literally beg for every penny they get.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
I would argue the exact opposite. Taxes are the only way to fairly manipulate behaviour. Should it be in the overall interest of everyone to reduce our rate of fuel consumption, a tax is the only way to go. What are the alternatives, make gas guzzling vehicles illegal? Or how about requiring automakers make specific types of cars.
A tax on gas will change national behaviour without placing limits on what we can do. Want to drive a Hummer? - just be ready to pay for it when you fill up. The tax acts as an incentive for people to minimize fuel consumption. This is better then the alternative as people retain the freedom to do drive and purchase whatever vehicle they want.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Yes, but when those "fashions" have a negative impact on their neighbours then it is time to apply a tax. The true cost of a product is not measured with just dollar signs. For example, the environmental repercussions of consuming a product are almost never part of the original purchase price. If the "invisible hand" is going to work correctly, monetary values for those repercussions must be artificially added in the form of a tax.
A fast food tax is already being examined and so is one on "unhealthy" snack foods. The only problem is that the over subsidized corn sweetener industry opposes it and has a lot of money. I would support a gas tax, or better yet, the closing of the loophole that allows people to buy those damned SUV's that I can't see through when trying to turn, back out of a parking space, or blind me when they come up behind my car.
Why shouldn't they get to? The problem we currently have is that the cost doesn't cover all the costs involved. It doesn't cover cleaning up the mess and it doesn't encourage people to figure out how to reduce their consumption. If a few percent of the people out there buy their way out of it, the people who can't afford to still benefit in terms of pollution and general quality of life.
If you do not allow society to lay the cost of externalities onto the perpetrators, you invariably produce a tragedy of the commons. You can, in principle, use Ron Paul's approach and simply make people pay for polluting private property - i.e. if you produce CO2 that turns up in the air over my property, you are trespassing and need to pay damages. But that is technically implausible for shared resources like air, water, and the ecosystem as a whole. Thus, using taxes to approximate the externalities is a reasonable approach. Of course we can only approximate the cost, but that is no different than with any other financial planning, wether by government or in the private sector. Very very few projects end up exactly on budget. That's not a reason not to plan, nor is it a reason not to act.
Stephan
Really?! Then what is a government supposed to tax. Any economist will tell you that negative externalities are *exactly* what a government is supposed to tax and then use the money to subsidize positive externalities. The government is certainly not the most efficient body in the world, but I'd argue that compensating for externalities should be the government's first priority.
Any economist? Keynesian economists, perhaps, would argue the POV you are espousing right now. Many who follow the Keynesian school of thought are in prominent positions in government power including the current chairman of the Federal Reserve as well as the President of the United States... and several treasury ministers in other countries too. And how they've been handing the economic situation over the past five years or so is supposed to give us confidence that they are doing the right thing and their philosophy is sound?
There are several economic philosophies which do not accept this basic premise you are claiming here, in particular those who follow the Austrian school of thought instead. Most of them feel that personal liberty is far more important than some sort of command economy controlled by some government bureaucrats, because those same bureaucrats simply can never have enough information to make proper decisions in the first place.
At issue here to is a sense of trust on the part of the government towards its citizens. A government which trusts its citizens to do the right thing is by far more likely to give you personal liberties and stay out of your life than a government which wants to monitor every detail in your life and protect you from yourself. Are you sure you want a government sticking its nose into your business, telling you how to live your life?
"higher fuel taxes to compensate for increased road damages"
Diesel fuel taxes.
You got it right.
And expect gas taxes to increase as MPG increase, since they mostly pay for roads, and cars driving the same number of miles using less gas will need to pay the same taxes. Fewer gallons=more $/gallon.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8E5dUnLmh4/
The problem is when one car is bigger than the other, this is much worse for the smaller car than the smaller car hitting a wall. This is the problem with SUVs, even the people who don't necessarily want to drive a larger vehicle may buy a larger vehicle to protect their family in the event of an SUV hitting them. A sub-compact with a 5 star front impact rating can still get munched in a head on collision with an SUV.
Why does the government get involved when an addict chooses to take heroin?
No it's absolutely not absurd do run such comparisons in general. If I was in the market for a new vehicle and found a used gas guzzler for $10k (which I did a few years ago) or a brand new jetta (just cause I wanted a cool car) for $45k (which indeed was the price just 3 or 4 years ago in Canada), then fuel economy just doesn't factor into the decision. A used, cheap, car would have been even more economical obviously.
In any event, there's a tremendous amount of pressure in society to eliminate the wasteful gas guzzlers and economics is often touted. The OP even mentioned it. He said fuel economy should always be considered. He's only right if the upfront cost is the same. And I'm simply saying the cost of a vehicle per mile has more do do with the cost of the car itself than the fuel economy. It almost never pays to buy new for this reason.
In a few years a used Prius should be a super good, cheap buy according to my numbers. I always figure let someone else depreciate the cars for me.
I doubt you could legally sell the Civic VX in the US today. Cars are heavier as a result of new safety regulations and engines are less efficient because of pollution standards.
"we need higher gas taxes"
FU why don't you tax the mother &^**%$ across the street from me that has two Hummers and a Roush Mustang. I would agree with a gas guzzler tax but for those of us who drive a lot, but drive sensible cars that would be unfair! :|~
I don't mind fees for services from the government. If you apply for a marriage license...,
Telling you who you may or may not marry is a service?
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
That's an intriguing idea...except you'd have a very hard time separating legitimate fundraising activities from outright lobbying.
Find out who made it toxic and sue then for the cost of cleanup.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
I have a hard time with that. We live in a world where "because f**k you is why" is the attitude of far too many people. Far, far too many. The libertarian ideal of "the government can piss off and get the hell out of my life" leaves open an unimaginably large chasm that ought to be occupied by societal responsibility, harmony and equality. To remove government as the modulator of behavior will see anarchy, chaos and destruction fall in to replace it. Everyone doing what's right in their own eyes cannot sustain a functional society. Some may think rape is OK because "really it's just good fun and that's what women were made for right?", others dumping toxic waste into rivers isn't a problem, I'll drive 90MPH down the highway and ignore red lights if I think the intersection is clear. etc. etc.
Nobody will ever agree with every behavior the government chooses modulate. That's obvious, but without a conductor the symphony is just going to break down into a discordant mess. As members of that society it is our responsibility to be educated, and provide intelligent, well thought out feedback to the government doing the modulating. This regrettably is often the missing component.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Blame HFCS and the government obsession with the food pyramid full of carbs, not the available food options pimped by companies.
While taxes certainly are of ancient origin, enough that they are mentioned in the Bible (both Old and New Testament), the nature of taxes has certainly grown to be substantially more complex and the tendency for tax policies to increase in complexity almost as a mathematical law. The original "Code of Hammurabi", including tax code, was written on a stone tablet that could be seen in every Babylonian city and read in a few minutes.
The Internal Revenue Code of the United States, on the other hand, is so impossibly huge that I seriously doubt any single person has ever read the whole thing. Between changes made by Congress, common law rulings in court cases, internal policy making guidelines at the Internal Revenue Service, and executive orders by the White House, I think it is safe to say that no person could even keep up with just the changes being made to that tax code as a full time job. A team of accountants, perhaps... but not a single person.
That says nothing about other kinds of taxes like trying to decypher tables for import tariffs (like a really odd rule that limits the number of wool suits you can import from Hong Kong.... but importing them from Beijing is no problem) and other very odd and some downright weird rules... like calling a network stack protocol driver to be a munition subject to physical inspection. In the past the tables were much, much simpler and didn't go into such fine details to drive you nuts. I think the Byzantium Empire, infamous for its bureaucracy, doesn't hold a candle to most 1st world governments of today.
Because junkies usually resort to criminal behavior when the habit gets the better of them. Although I would argue that the government doesn't really get involved here in the US. At least the LAPD don't seem to bother. Skidrow is covered with junkies.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to fund society, which is a bit broader in concept.
When everyone drives cars throwing out pollution that pollution goes into the air, a COMMON, which is not owned by a single person, and no single person has responsibility to clean this damage or prevent it.
Thus a tax on petrol as it pertains to the amount of pollution should have the money directed to fixing these issues, with clean energy investments, cleaner car techs, maybe even tax CUTS for cars that use less or don't use petrol.
Taxes are not just to fund government, but to shuffle money around in ways that benefit society as a whole, the government just decides where this needs to happen.
In the case of petrol where a common is damaged, this is vital.
Drugs are a different case, where the damage is typically personal, so 'vice taxes' on drugs and such should be based on societal burden alone.
How much does health treatment for smokers cost the state per year? How many sales of tobacco are there? Pick a tax rate that will cover the societal cost for the expected consumption rate.
Many of these things should be zero-sum games, taxes on tobacco to offset the costs of tobacco, taxes on petrol to offset the costs of petrol. This was all people have free choice to do as they will, and each person only pays for the vices they personally indulge in.
Funding the government is (and should only be) done through income and/or (general) sales taxes.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
Interesting assertion, but the use of bold font and spelling out "period" for emphasis is no substitute for a reasoned argument, which appears to be missing from your post. It is the equivalent of attempting to win a debate by yelling louder.
The problem is that governments must choose how to raise the taxes * needed to pay for health, education, pensions, roads etc. What mix of income, consumption, property taxes etc is the best mix? Taxes distort the market, changing behaviour, and its preferable to do that in a good way. Taxes are unavoidable, so why not put them where they do the least harm, or even good? You have to choose something.
( *though some gov'ts are doing a remarkable jpb of avoiding that - like US and Greece)
While obviously not as significant as increases in car weight(though may be somewhat related to car weight), increases in the weight of passengers is also putting a drag on fuel economy. As we get fatter and fatter, it obviously takes more energy to move us around. Not to mention that the bigger people are, the more they seem to need an SUV, further diminishing fuel efficiency. Like almost all other problems in fuel efficiency, bikes are the answer. Not only do they save fuel when riding, they reduce the size of people's asses so you save fuel in a car too.
BUt unfortunately something in American culture dictates that people must go out of their way to be assholes towards cyclists. So glad I got out of that shithole of a country, I've lost 25 kgs since I've left and am in better shape in my 30s than I was in my 20s largely because I don't have to drive everywhere.
Monstar L
Find out who made it toxic and sue then for the cost of cleanup.
Good luck with that.
I don't respond to AC's.
I don't disagree about the depreciation bit, but a jetta only is $26k USD for the fuel efficient TDI, all spec'ed out. So y'all up in the great white north are getting screwed. Also, instead of a used gas guzzler, you could've bought a used jetta for 10k, and still had better fuel economy and gotten the payback. Heck, that used Jetta might've even been newer.
Why not compare a $10K used SUV to an $10k used hatchback that gets 30 mpg?
Isn't criminal behavior already illegal?
Cars of any size have almost no impact on roads as you suggest.
Large heavy trucks almost universally do all the damage.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"Any economist? Keynesian economists, perhaps, would argue the POV you are espousing right now. Many who follow the Keynesian school of thought are in prominent positions in government power including the current chairman of the Federal Reserve as well as the President of the United States... and several treasury ministers in other countries too. And how they've been handing the economic situation over the past five years or so is supposed to give us confidence that they are doing the right thing and their philosophy is sound?"
Actually, Keynesian policies ARE NOT, I repeat ARE NOT being tried.
Paul Krugman practically SCREAMS about it - governments are mostly doing the exact opposite of Keynesian policy recommendations. ESPECIALLY in Europe.
You can see how well it works.
I SOSOSO want a 2nd Gen CRX HF or SI. Out here in the desert, these last well if you can get one that hasn't been riced on.
Of course I'll be splattered like a bug if I get rear-ended, but hey, fun while it lasts.
Aren't cars primarily entertainment?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"it's to compensate for externalities"
Everything has externalities. If you go to the bathroom, there are externalities. If you breathe in or out, there are externalities. If you watch television, there are externalities. Being on the internet has externalities.
Its basically used as an excuse to tax anything you want in any amount. Because nobody brings up externalities unless they're trying to control it, tax it, or make an argument towards a thing or behavior they don't like.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What I meant to say is that the addict usually resorts to crimes that hurt others (theft, violence etc.). But this is a red herring. Unless I know the addict, I don't care if s/he dies from the addiction. The US economy is another matter.
Starting in the 1970s emissions requirements resulted in drastic reductions in power, which got increasingly worse through the mid 1980s. A base Corvette in 1966 was 300 hp, in 1984 180 hp. By the mid 1990s advanced technology was able to provide ever-increasing horsepower without pollution penalty, reversing the 25 year trend caused by regulations. TFA using 1980 as a baseline makes it look like increasing power is a pud pulling competition rather than a recovery to a reasonable performance level.
A mid 1960s family car with automatic transmission got about 13 mph on the highway. Now the figure is close to 35 mpg. The new car is much lighter, somewhat smaller, much safer, is much better designed and better handling, and will last many more miles and years.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
By what mechanism does the market stop pollution?
The problem with everyone that bleats about the market correcting itself is that they forget that the ideal market relies on ideal people that are well informed at all times and have enough information to make a decision.
CO2 is colourless and odourless. How is the average person supposed to know the effects of CO2 if there isn't an expert to tell them that this is a problem? And once the expert has informed them, what recourse does that person have? The government is a way to make decisions on behalf of citizens to protect them and to give them power that they don't have individually. While it's not feasible for EVERYONE in a population to know about the problems CO2 cause, it IS possible for a few people to know and to give their expertise. Then it is the government, acting on behalf of the people (since the people selected the government, or the government is otherwise ostensibly acting in the best interests of the population) that can move to remove these problems that affect the whole population, whether they know it or not.
The government has done this many times, usually through regulation. For instance, there isn't lead in gasoline anymore. We don't have as big a problem with CFCs anymore (though the lingering effects of our past mistakes is still around). Etc.
However, what we're talking about here is something that is both dangerous but to an extent, indispensable. It simply isn't currently possible to maintain our way of life without fossil fuels at the moment. New technology will not be able to upset the status quo until such time as fossil fuels are unavailable because new technology is almost always less efficient and costs more while economies of scale aren't present. And, again, not everyone knows or believes the harm that is being done. This is exactly the sort of thing that the government was meant to take care of.
By levying taxes—and in this case, I believe they should be revenue neutral taxes—they can change behaviour, fix the problem that the market is itself unable to solve because of the flaws of the actors involved, and generally leave us in a better position than when we started.
Governments protect our best interests, and the market protects its OWN interest. There is a reasonable balance to be struck.
Oh wow.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Externalities?
As long as we add a tax for carting off the dead people in the streets before they corrupt MY water supply.
We all live in this world together. Pretending you are your own castle doesn't really work.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Why on earth would an economist say we needed higher gas taxes? If anything, higher taxes have a negative impact on the economy.
Of course an environmental policy analyst masquerading as an economist would say exactly that.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
So you advocate rolling back tobacco taxes?
Should our roads and schools be funded by the working poor?
Because it's the government's job to strive for the betterment of the country as a whole, not just the individual
That depends on what country you are in. The US for example, has as one of its founding documents, a description of what government is for: "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men". Clearly, the US government exists to protect the rights of individuals, not to oppress individuals "for the greater good"
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
I think a lot of posters, like you, do not seem to understand the economics of externalities. If every dog in your neighborhood came to shit in your front yard, you probably wouldn't have liked it. However, for some reason, it's ok to drive around in a land barge that gets 14mpg in a city and pollutes the air that we all breathe. Realize that the price you pay for gas right now does not represent the full cost (to the society) of that gas. Of course, no one is saying that you should _have_ to stop driving an SUV. If can continue driving whatever you want, but you need to pay the full cost of making this decision.
According to BetterPlace.com's Shai Agassi, Denmark offers each of its car-buyers an Intelligence test, when they go to buy a car:
1. The tax on a NON-Zero-Emission (eg, petro-fueled) car is (he said: 60%). A $100,000 gas-powered car will cost you $160,000.
Those, who fail the test (presumably, buying a non-electric car) have to move to Norway! :-)
(I hope that tax applies also that to the purchase of used petroleum-powered cars!)
The rest of the motivation to move to a 100% Electric Car comes from BetterPlace, itself, eg, when it costs LESS to buy one than it costs to buy a petrol'-powered counterpart... very soon now. (Sell yours today; if he's right, it value will drop to next to nil soon!)
According to the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme, "Over the first 70 years of the twentieth century the US incarceration rate was characterized by a relative stability, with approximately 100 per 100,000 citizens suffering imprisonment at a given moment. The following 35 year period has seen a steep rise in this rate, with the figure reaching 491 per 100,000 in 2005. (US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005). More recent data suggests that this has risen still further since then". See the wikipedia article on incareration in the United States. Despite the catastrophic effect of the war on drugs, particularly on minority communities such as blacks and hispanics, America still has an ever increasing drug problem.
How's that war on drugs working out then? Seems to me that not ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away either. You just get the problems associated with drugs added to the problems associated with the war on drugs.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
"At issue here to is a sense of trust on the part of the government towards its citizens. A government which trusts its citizens to do the right thing is by far more likely to give you personal liberties and stay out of your life than a government which wants to monitor every detail in your life and protect you from yourself. Are you sure you want a government sticking its nose into your business, telling you how to live your life?"
Unfortunately, from what I've seen, most people are fucking morons. And yes, I'm OK with the government charging me more to smoke, drink, and eat shitty food if they're going to provide healthcare. I'm OK with the government charging more for fuel and coal-generated power due to their externalities. Your rights end where the next person's right's begin, and that includes the water and air you pollute for someone else, as well as the costs you shove onto someone else.
It's always "personal liberties" when it's your rights, and not someone else's rights.
Actually that's a specious argument. Check out the millage specs for a 2012 Mustang. 305 horsepower, 0-60 MPH in 5.1s, 31 MPG. Pollution controls and safety features my a**. The American auto market was/is stuck on a one-note tune of more power, more power. The 1980's had cars averaging 15-20 second 0-60MPH specs the 1970's 20-25 seconds. Fast forward to 2010 and you've got the f*ing Prius getting 10.1s, SUVs with sub 10 seconds, family sedans averaging 7 - 8 seconds, and cheap sports/muscle cars down in the 5-6 range. Car manufacturers are constantly making efficiency improvements so that they can keep the MPGs similar but increase the horsepower to cut the 0-60 time.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Sure the cars are heavier, since the safety Nazis have demanded that they crash safely at something just short of relativistic speeds. Improve the tech, and then sabotage it with extra weight. Succeed and fail, all at once.
The solution is: Don't crash.
The way to not crash is: Pay attention! Most of the accidents come from not paying attention.
Want to raise the tax on gas, and save the economy at the same time? Pass the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax dissolves the IRS, repeals all the income taxes, and just uses a tax on retail goods, combined with a "prebate" sent to all Americans to cover the costs of the necessities of life. The Fair Tax is 23% inclusive / 30% exclusive. So, your $4.00 / gallon of gas goes to $5.20, but you've got ALL the salary you made in your pocket, without having to pay income tax witholding, so you can afford the gas tax... unless you're driving excessively. Then you either get a car like the Chevy Volt that gets infinite mpg for 40 miles and then 40 mpg after that, or you car pool or ride the train, etc.
BTW, the Fair Tax proponents claim 3% unemployment within 2 years because of its business friendly nature, so it doesn't just help cars to do the right thing.
Want to save automotive transportation? Get SOMEBODY to invent the magic battery so's everyone can use electricity to get where they're going. Again, the Volt uses 8 KwH to go its 40 mile electric car range. That's 20 KwH per 100 miles. How much is 20 KwH in $$$? Around here it's $1.70. Now, compare that to a 20 mpg car paying $5.20 / gallon. It takes that car $26.00 to go 100 miles. So, quit spending $26 on gas, and spend $1.70 on electricity? Yeah, I like those numbers.
All is not lost, we just need the RIGHT tech and the RIGHT tax structure.
12.5 cents at 8.5 cents per KwH like around here will propel the Chevy Volt for 7.35 miles.
...They either think they spend lots of money on gas (the don't)...
They don't spend lots of money on gas compared to what?
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Itâ(TM)s the policymakersâ(TM) responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy
What a meddling attitude. While I certainly want better gas mileage, it is not somebody else's business to "make policy" for me, my cars, and my car manufacturer. Perhaps I like the tradeoffs as they are and prefer the increases in weight and horsepower.
If somebody thinks they morally possess such responsibility, they are suffering from delusions of grandeur and really need to be denounced as the lunatics they are.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
If he asked economists, he probably would get that kind of response since taxes and their impact on things are part of ECON. Economics has a lot of problems, one of which is that it tends to have a bit of a bag over its head. Then again, many academic disciplines have this problem since interdisciplinary studies tend to be frowned upon for political reasons. Anyway, I digress...
Eliminate Euclidean zoning for the most part. In case you're not aware that name comes from Euclid, Ohio where it was pioneered. It's the kind of zoning where "all the houses are here, all the businesses are there". Get rid of it, and you eliminate a lot of trips.
Of course you'd still have to have some compartmentalization for "noxious trades" like rendering plants, sewage treatment, etc. OTOH, the reason why so many of us cannot walk to a store without passing miles and miles of bland cooki-cutter tract homes is this bad zoning. It looks neat on a map. It's polluting and making us fat in real life.
Unfortunately, it would take a long time to undo. You don't plop commercial establishments into neighborhoods without getting NIMBY reactions. This is a side effect of the way home ownership works. For any other product you're happy when the cost comes down. For homes the model is b0rked so that people are unhappy when the cost comes down.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when politcians talk about the need for affordable housing. We got that, and they called it a "housing crisis". The obvious solution is that most people should not own their homes, and non-leveraged REITs should be made available. The biggest argument for ownership, "I want to pound a nail" can be resolved with clear cut procedures in the lease for... pounding nails! Even major improvements could go in the lease--appraise the improvement, discount the rent for a contractual period, problem solved.
Anyway, stop forcing people to become leveraged real estate speculators just to get better control of their environment. BTW, I don't really hate the banks as much as some people; but yes, this would kill a huge portion of the banking industry so if you hate banks the non-leveraged REIT plan should be your cause celebre.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Your math is interesting, but it misses one important point. Your used SUV will probably need to be replaced well before the new, efficient car. If your really going to do the comparison, you would need to determine how far into the future to set your crystal ball and estimate the present values based on the lifetimes of the cars, salvage values, and replacement costs. Also, a used car would typically have little or no warranty and greater maintenance costs.
Even after all that, YMMV, so to speak.
Of course it is entirely ridiculous to think that car buyers would want to go through all of that mumbo-jumbo when their main focus is on getting the features, styling, performance, handling, comfort, etc. that they want for the price they can afford.
There are a few higher end electrics that are cool, but for some reason the lower end ones are just totally plain or awkward looking. Can't we get some nice car design going? Do all electrics have to look like expanded eastern european leftovers?
While we're at it why not fund a federal project to put light rail everywhere there is an interstate highway. A new New Deal.
-Xen
The salient element missing from TFA (and the abstract of the report, which I haven't read beyond) is that automakers find a higher profit in bigger, more powerful cars (because consumers are willing to pay more for them). Therefore, automakers have a disincentive to create smaller, less powerful, more efficient cars. Thus, under-serving and even removing that choice from the consumer.
It's not true that consumers only want larger, more powerful cars, it's that they are the only ones available to them.
The solution does not lie in what would be a regressive gas tax. The solution lies in forcing the automakers to give consumers a real choice in lighter, more efficient cars. And progressively taxing vehicles with poorer gas mileage.
Then how would you advocate solving the tragedy of the commons, which is a part of the gas consumption problem?
And who bears the cost of environmental mitigation caused by fuel consumption? Do heavy polluters get a free ride?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"In the case of oil, there are many costs beyond that of simply producing the oil, refining it and transporting it. The most obvious is the cost of maintaining trade relations with many OPEC countries."
This includes the various wars at Middle East?
The 1967 Chevy Camaro SS, with its 5.7L 295 HP engine, is bested in a 0-60 drag with the 2010+ Ford Fusion Hybrid (7.9 seconds vs 7.8 seconds). The '67 Camaro got all of 9 MPG. The Fusion Hybrid? 39 MPG Combined. Virtually identical performance, but the modern vehicle gets more than 4x the MPG.
The problem is that folks no longer want 60's era muscle car performance. They now believe they "need" 1990's era Ferrari performance... in an SUV.
The bad thing is that people who drive 30mpg cars will get hurt too. Generally people driving 12mpg cars have money to pay for the fuel. Even at 10 bucks a gallon I can afford to drive my 4x4 that gets 10mpg because I don't commute in it. It's for off roading and only gets driven maybe 2 thousand miles a year tops. Unfortunately I do have to commute to work and even though my auto for that gets better mileage it still adds up. I, however, make enough to pay that even though I would of course like to avoid it if possible. The problem is all the people on the edge. That shit will just push them over it. With resulting resentment and anger and a backlash in the polls. Yeah, jack up everyones gas tax. Go ahead, once they feel the pain they'll make sure their congress critter feels it back.
It is not very helpful to condemn the use of taxes as a regulatory tool without providing an alternative.
Do you have any ideas other then the intellectually lazy stance of standing on principal?
Should the government then set minimum fuel efficiency standard for various classes of trucks/cars/buses etc and then make it illegal to make/sell/own anything that does not comply? There is no "tax" in that plan. The purpose of leadership is to lead, we can discuss the methods of leadership but the role is still required.
Lets use sewers as a very close proxy for car emissions. Are you in very of a select few deciding that we should pay taxes to properly dispose of our shit? Or should we all be free to do what we want with it? My car throws emissions onto your sidewalk. Would you like me to do the same with my feces?
I understand that Libertarian ideals are very seductive, to bad they just lead to dictatorships of force. Arg! it gives me a headache just trying to get inside your head to understand you.
Somebody explain to me why my 1992 Honda CRX HF got 55 mpg and I can't find a car that does that now?
One answer, the gasoline is thinned with 10% ethanol for 15% less efficiency. How does ethanol save us fuel?
the poor aren't addicts; they're self medicating. The point of Nationalized Healthcare and other progressive reforms is to create a world where the poor don't do that.
As for taxes pushing people to quit; you're right. Tobacco sales in the US are half today what they were in 2005. The drop has been attributed to higher taxes and a bad economy. The only people left smoking in America are the poor, and they can't afford to anymore.
Oh, and for all the ninny's saying cigarette taxes are regressive; that's only true if you use the gains to extend tax cuts on the rich instead of investing in social programs. There's a phrase for it: Balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
OK, so let's immediately triple the gas tax, because apparently we all need roads and bridges...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
How about some subsidies for fruits and veggies. Apples are $2/lb on sale in my neck 'o the woods;
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You are going after an innocent target there. The above poster is writing about the sort of situation 4WD vehicles are specificly designed for - getting to places where a normal passenger vehicle cannot get to without a lot of mucking about with shovels and winches.
Some of those vehicles, paticularly the diesel ones, don't use a lot of fuel anyway. It's the citybound things for people that want to play out monster truck fantasies and would fall apart offroad anyway which are the things you should be complaining about. If your country had built something useful instead of those you would have a viable car industry instead of one that needed to be propped up by the taxpayer.
No one holds a gun to your head to force you to patronize or work in a bar or casino that allow smoking....free choice and all, eh?
While I agree any public building or enclosed space you HAVE to go to...should not allow smoking, private establishments should not be forced to ban smoking..you have full choice to enter there or not.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That's a new concept...remember, the federal income tax is a relatively new thing..and WAS supposed to be temporary. It was to fund the war, etc.
We let it run too long..and now, people are bastardizing it to be used for 'social' purposes. That isn't what it was set up to do in the US. It still shouldn't be. It takes away free will of the people which is supposed to be one thing the US allows people to have. Freedom to act and live..freedom to fail and die if you're an idiot.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They need to close the loopholes in CAFE that allow vehicles to be counted as "trucks" even though they clearly are NOT.
And the loopholes that allow these trucks to get away with near zero CAFE because they happen to be able to take Ethanol as a fuel (even though they quite likely will never see any Ethanol in their tank)
Close those loopholes and the automakers wont be able to keep making all those SUVs and crossovers and minivans whilst meeting their CAFE numbers.
My point is there's no reason for the government to restrict the use of drugs if the worry is the addict will break other laws. He can be prosecuted for breaking those other laws. That's not to say voluntary rehab isn't a good idea. It's just that I don't see the basis for society dictating what people can put in their bodies - there are a whole lot of drug users out there who never engage in theft and violence.
I'm not convinced raising the gas tax will be good for the economy. In fact I think it will be quite detrimental.
So what?
So you're saying in the constitution the federal govt is somewhere mandated to be 'our brothers keeper'?
Pray tell where is this stated?
The US was founded to give everyone opportunity...to succeed or fail on their own merit...nothing more.
People will help their fellow man...this is shows all the time, look how much the US private citizenry gave to disasters it OTHER countries like when the tsunamis hit...
The govt isn't here to legislate morality...it is to try as much as possible to keep the playing ground fair and open...opportunity, at least on the federal level..is about all it is mandated to do by the constitution.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Remember, federal income taxes were basically supposed to be a temporary thing...to fund a war.
When in the laws was it mandated to change behavior? I must have missed that in the US.
This is something fairly new...and I think it sucks.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Per litre of fuel that is the case but that's the wrong way to look at it. There's not a lot of emissions per hour of running time so almost nobody cares. It' not much beyond the scale of lawnmowers even for the big bikes, so it's astonishing that you have the gall to criticise the bikes when a lot of the comments here are about large SUVs.
Also some pollution controls did end up on bikes.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
Great, so you won't mind me shitting in the street, out the front of your house? - My neighbours don't understand freedom like you and I do.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I have to disagree with you on this. The reason Europe has such high fuel taxes and the U.S. doesn't is historically Europe didn't have a lot of oil like the U.S.did at one time. High fuel taxes in Europe cause people to drive more fuel efficient cars, reducing their balance of payments deficit, with the added bonus of getting funding for government programs like healthcare, etc.. Since the United States no longer produces the vast majority of its own oil, imported oil is now the largest single contributor to the balance of payment deficit. Having higher fuel taxes would encourage people to drive more efficient cars to reduce this. Or do you advocate European nations reducing their fuel taxes so they can run the same massive balance of payment deficits the the U.S. does?
This ad space for rent.
In US the faith in God will make market stop doing bad things. Only atheists can do bad things without consequences. That's why, for example, the law says that the president has to be Christian. The law should of course say that any company leader also must be, then we wouldn't have had this mess.
This started off as a joke but maybe libertians faith in other people's faith is part of the problem?
In the United States, gasoline sells for $3 to $4 per gallon. In other countries, it's 3-4x that. Some people might think it's because the United States is the third largest producer, creating about half of what it consumes. The reality, however, compares to other countries differently in two key aspects, resource policy and trade.
In other countries which export petroleum, there is a major return on export product back to the country; in the United States, the sites from which companies extract petroleum are leased on negotiated, low flat rates; so, very little of that potential income is already shut down.
The other half of the problem came with negotiations that began under the Carter Administration, but finalized under the Reagan Administration. The first half of which is an Oil Cap -- the amount of exports that are proportionally discounted to make up for the trade loss in the need to import a significant percentage of oil. This cap is maintained by manipulating production, primarily in agriculture, to support major policy and trade changes that result in subsidies or limitation on domestic marketing of such goods. The second half is using trade far more extensively by defining all types of trade as economic, implementing policies that require counties that allow, for example, education or work abroad, to invest in the United States by way of purchasing some quantity of Treasury bonds, usually negotiated, though quota openings are often done by a slow bidding process. (NB: This accounts for a good portion of the 25% of foreign owed debt, or about 3.5 trillion USD)
When politician push a gas-tax holiday, they often ignore that the United States has been on one since the 70's. The politician have chosen to ignore that the United States government has been aware of the need of significant infrastructural changes in order to adapt to the real cost of energy since the late 60's. The greatest threat to both the United States and the world is this failing to adapt to the long term energy needs of the country. If a major program took over the United States to end petroleum imports alone, it would save nearly half of one trillion dollars every year. If a major program took over the United States to end petroleum imports alone, I sense politicians, like claiming the budget repair of the 90's was surplus, would likely not end the Oil Cap as a practice, merely change its focus.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
That's actually a very reasonable question. A hundred years ago, Heroin was not banned. There was no epidemic of junkies either.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
There are several economic philosophies which do not accept this basic premise you are claiming here, in particular those who follow the Austrian school of thought instead. Most of them feel that personal liberty is far more important than some sort of command economy controlled by some government bureaucrats, because those same bureaucrats simply can never have enough information to make proper decisions in the first place.
The Austrians would say that farm pollution isn't pollution if there's no one down wind /stream to complain about it.
And the reason no one applies the Austrian school of thought is because that is bad public policy.
It might make for a great ideology, but in practice it leads to poor real world outcomes like Superfund sites and cancer clusters.
We're still dealing with the pre-EPA fallout from the days when "personal liberty" meant "corporations polluting and not cleaning up."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Like what?
Yea... they are freaking expensive up here for sure. We paid ~$30k for our 2010 Jetta TDI, and it certainly wasn't loaded (Tiptronic and winter package, otherwise base model). The good news is that we got zero interest for 5.5 years and they seem to hold their value reasonably well.
We'd certainly have considered a used one (we tend to go used), except 2008 were the first year of the new Jetta's where we get some performance as well, and used ones under higher interest payments would actually cost more than the new one.
Some are more rigorous than others.
The current mainstream are simply yes men there to justify whatever the "leaders" want to justify. That's who they fund in academia.
Deleted
I'm pretty sure that in the USA the taxes on gas and vehicle registration _don't_ totally fund the road network. Some funds for maintenance etc come from general federal funds. Sorry, you'll have to google the excat numbers yourself but I think it was in the order of a 30% shortfall that direct road and gas taxes don't cover. So increasing the tax on gas would merely restore some of this balance.
A pedant could also sugest hidden externalities, like the cost of polluting automobiles, toxic runoff from roads, healthcare for those injured in road accidents, etc.
sustainable living
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
Right. Except, taxes is what is redundant in that statement. A chosen few allowed to dictate citizen behavior is government.
Taxes are just one tool. I agree keeping money out of how they dictate citizen behavior is a good thing, but that would entail not only taxes, but fines, criminal fines, and even how government deals with traffic violations....
A collection of monies imposed by law is almost always in the picture.
I'd have to hunt to find the reference, but last I heard, roads in the USA are not fully funded by "road-related" taxes such as gas and registration fees. From memory there's something like a 30% shortfall that comes from other tax revenue. So increasing the tax on gas would merely serve to restore some of this balance.
One could also argue that there are many other negative externalities going unpaid by road user, like the extra pollution from burning gas, the extra police, fire and ambulance personel, dirty runoff from roads, etc.
sustainable living
We have a Honda Jazz (Fit is the American name for the Jazz) 1.3L Manual and our trip computer (which I reset when we bought it and not since) shows 6.7L/100km which is 35mpg.
So... hmm...
Australian BTW, so distance blah blah much of a muchness compared with US.
It's one thing to lose an individual to a ravaging addiction. It's another thing entirely to sink your whole country with one. I don't think that it's OK that the US consumes 23% of the world's Petroleum with only 4% of the world's population and that's why I used the addiction analogy which some folks have tried to stretch into an allegory. To plan your economic future on the premise of cheap petroleum always being available is a really bad idea. I think that's pretty obvious. Folks in China and India and elsewhere are finally getting cars. The price is going to go up.
I don't mind of well-behaved folks engage in a little drug use and tend to agree that the war on drugs is a failure. For serious addiction, I believe that treatment rather than prosecution is a cheaper way to handle the problem.
As for the gas tax, our opinions differ. We can leave it at that.
Annual cost:
50MPG = $990
21MPG = $2,357
Here is info about this minivan that is banned in the USA:
http://www.car-emissions.com/cars/model/volkswagen/touran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Touran
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/new/touran-gp-ii/which-model/compare/interior?p=2
http://www.green.autoblog.com/2010/04/12/volkswagen-intros-updated-touran-minivan-51-1-mpg-with-bluemoti/
Moreover, CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles are insanely expensive because thise politician-corporate chimera caused every CNG part insanely expensive! For example home refueling station (tiny box that allow to refuel CNG car at home) costs about $7000 (seven thousend). Now you understand how this bust#rds make american to be slave by poitician-corporate mafia.
Air-conditioners, heated seats, electronically adjustable seats, electric windows and sunroofs (best used with a big-arse air-conditioner), dvd players, game consoles, coffee cup heaters, car fridge, exterior strip lighting, bridge shaking sound systems, electric steering, CD radio, reversing and rear view camera, check, electric cigar lighter, check, gps, check... oh sorry, I was just thinking out loud. What was the subject again? Oh yeah increased fuel efficiency != decreased fuel consumption, was that it? Hmm - maybe it's because the alternators have gotten bigger and you use more fuel carrying those big, heavy alternators.
Bloody alternators. Now pass me the popcorn and fetch me a beer you big fat fucker - no I meant you honey. Now where's my remote? - I wanna change some channels and the see what's on When Hippos Attack, don't you beep your horn at me a-hole - you're just jealous of my 3000W roof mounted driving lights. You wait your turn or I'll back my monster truck over your pansy Prius! I was at the drive through window first.
I think we would both agree the war on drugs doesn't really work. That's a very good example of how government gets it wrong in a very expensive way. I know everyone's gonna bash me as a liberal for saying it, but I tend to think addiction treatment and social programs would work better. Maybe we should decriminalize drugs, tax them and earmark the proceeds for addiction programs, needle exchanges, education, etc. God I sound like a pinko.
government is paying for the health consequences of smoking
... in fact, smokers die young and skip the age where government is paying a lot for health care. Smokers, obese, gluttons, drug users etc. consume a lot less than a healthy living person that lives until 85.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers.
so, health-nuts don't die this way ? They get taken to heaven by an angel instead of rotting inside until no amount of medical intervention can save them, the way it happens to us, the sinners ?
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Hey! I don't smoke you insensitive clod. So I'll live longer than smokers and because I don't spend my money on tobacco I've got more money I don't want to spend on health care. Let those smokers fund my health care - it's not like their heart attacks, gangrene and cancer cost much compared to my first artificial knee, let alone my pension, my heart by pass, my glasses, hearing aid, zimmerman frame, and medication.
About a 20% of the people I grew up with have died - about half of them from smoking. I gave up smoking years ago - but I can still do basic math. In my country the annual revenue just from cigarette tax is greater than the health budget, and I'm not counting the bale tax paid at the farm. Oh - and we have "universal" health benefits (the ambulance won't drop you in a park - that's what buses are for)- over 70% goes towards the cost of caring for retired people (and fuck all of them are smokers - because smoking tends to kill most of it's victims before retirement age). Smoking - it kills you, but it funds the health costs of non-smoker many times over.
And before someone trots out the bullshit about second-hand smoke - got any coal powered power stations, how about cars and trucks? Do you understand scale? Oh good - now explain how the smoke people pull into their lungs when they smoke those death sticks - is more dangerous after they breathe out?
Don't take that as a signal to blow smoke in my face dear smokers - just pay the duty and die, but stay downwind near the incinerators and barbecues while you smoke - preferably on the same side of town the trucks and the cars are allowed.
I'm all in favour of a tax on stupid though - might slow down their reproduction rate. Can't spell - then it's no welfare for you until you graduate. Ditto math.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers. We're pretty good at treating the former,
Clearly not a doctor are you? I've got one sitting beside who just laughed bitterly at your statement. Smokers have heart attacks and die. That jump-start crap you see on television only works on young, healthy people. Unless smokers are wealthy enough to have hospital wings named after them they don't get transplants - nor do they get joint replacement or stints. Do you know how much either of those things cost?
You are absolutely right about drinking it costs society big time. Obesity is next and about to over take it.
Smokers just die. On average they get sick (sore back) and then, with radio they might live another 6 months (small cell lung cancer is fast). Total cost for respite nursing and medication when smokers get lung cancer in one state (her figures from the AMA) is less than half the cost of supporting diabetics. If you're real lucky (and have a strange idea of luck) you die from emphysema - takes years, and you'll be outnumbered by all those dying with blocks of James Hardie in there lungs. Do you have any idea what those little electric buggies cost the taxpayer - sure some of them smoke - but very rarely is that the reason they're in one. Maybe smoking should be compulsory in McDonalds (at what age do children stop being special?)
Go talk to a doctor about death certificates these days - died in a car accident? Cause of death - heart failure resulting from a car accident (no I'm not making this up) . Did he smoke? Tick the smoking box. Now he's three different types of death statistics - if the lobbyists don't get a say that'll just be "smoking as a major contributor" but likely it'll be massaged as another death by smoking statistic. The 40+Kg tub of lard on half a gram of speed a day died of smoking, *and* a car accident. And no - he'd still be dead if he'd never smoked. The autopsy (he died in hospital) showed what's apparently common - if the car accident hadn't killed him his diet (this guy had diabetes), drinking, or use of amphetamines would of anyway. I guessed "biker" and "trucker" - I got gonged - he was a barrister.
The stats in this country are a joke (don't be thinking every other country is any better). We have a higher percentage of pot smokers than Trenchtown Jamaica - from a survey of people who work in drug rehabilitation clinics - most who went there instead of jail. If you get bashed on your way home from the club the hospital will do a survey - they will ask is you've ever smoked cannabis. Love them stats.
Try this at home: - get a total of all the people who died in your country last year. Then get numbers for total deaths from smoking and other causes. Now do your maths. Looks good right? Did you count all the death by car accident? What about other accidents and murder? Still add up? Now try not getting the numbers from a breakdown of a total from a single source.
Part of the problem is addiction to tobacco, but mostly it's addiction to the money involved in that addiction. (and don't get me started on Lily Pharmaceuticals and the government picking up the tab for methadone).
Interstate roads, communications networks, power networks, and all the other services are 'relatively new' as well.
Society costs a lot more to maintain than it did when the US was founded, and the outmoded attitude that it's stealing from the people is exactly the sort of situation that leads to massive debts and entire states bordering on bankrupt (ie, California).
You take away a lot more free will when society can't pay the police, firefighters, ambulances, keep healthy air to breathe and water to drink.
Ah, a 4x4 has only got twice as much grip *if* it can get grip with all four wheels. It's also got twice as many wheels that can break traction, and once one wheel spins you're stuck.
Unless, of course, you've got proper locking diffs. SUVs tend not to have that, because they're not really designed to go off road. They also don't have the suspension compliance to make use of what little grip they have, and they often have ridiculous fat tyres on them which barely work on dry tarmac.
I agree with the vast majority of comments made on this page so far but the problem is that you can't take a single dimensional view of a multi dimensional problem, and, by and large, that's what they each do. That said, of course I'm going to do it. The real issue is one of the mindset and what's locally important, in poorer areas it's important to have a big "bling" car, it puts you above the pack and makes you feel good. It's only the wealthy that are competing on different levels that don't have anything to prove with their cars and so can afford to have cheaper and stranger solutions. In Europe and Japan where we have no (very few) native sources of oil and twistier roads, smaller cars have been the norm and these naturally go round corners well. The mantra for many decades from advertising, TV programmes etc. has been that gas guzzlers are bad and so manufacturers have been competing on fuel efficiency and handling. This has led to the introduction of a lot of technology that hits both areas and people are happy with the outcome. We do have SUVs of course, but these are smaller and they go round corners. In Europe, fuel prices are equivalent to about $8 per U.S. gallon and this is largely due to the level of tax applied. The U.S. can't simply apply the same as it will disproportionately affect poorer people and will create general a outcry. And let's face it, which government is going to try to push that one through the system, even if it were easy to do so. A relaxation on import duties may help as this would allow for more technology to enter the U.S. market but this would bring about pressure from domestic car manufacturers. I suggest that the U.S. is in it for the long haul, pressure will need to be applied to domestic manufacturers to produce more efficient cars, this needs to be coupled with a new paradigm that says hauling 2 tons of steel to the shops is not a good way to go; only then will there be a climate that allows for greater fuel efficiency. It's not true to say "I know what I like" as we so often do, it's more realistic to say "I like what I know". And if I might add one more note, you'll also get cars that are more fun to drive, start every time, work well in the snow, are easier to park, go round corners without screeching...
BTW, this is the same reason for the "tax the rich" suggestions, because "the rich" don't really have much in the way of votes.
Eh, no - would you like to call a friend?
I have a lot more vote than the two pack a day, slab at night, glued to the telly, eat at Maccas, works on the factory floor guy.
Politics 101
Rule 1. politicians *run* for office in the hope of getting in or renewing their seat.
Rule 2. Takes money to run for office - the poly with the most money wins. Fact. There's a department called the AEC - feel free to check. The donation and spending requirements are stricter in Australia - and the more votes you get, the more of the money you spend on advertising and buses from the old folks homes to the polling booths is returned for you to play with. Guess who picks up the tab - same people who don't get a say about their tax rate - same one who only voted because the believed that this time, unlike every other time, the politician would honour his promises to them (he can't - altruists don't get the funding to win elections).
Of course I 'could' be wrong about that - and Hubert Humphrey could have been an American president.
I'm not a multi-billionaire - but I even without availing myself of "tax minimalization" schemes it hurts me a lot less to pay my tax than "him". With them - I could easily pay only a fraction of his annual tax while earning more on a slow day than he earns in a month of overtime.
The reality of the "tax the rich" is that it's a sucker vote for the politician who's run has already been funded by the rich - and we own him - see Rule 1.
You have every reason to distrust me when I lament the state of public education. It's in my best interests to ensure my grandchildren have a private advantage over "his" - and (not that I own a factory) educated factory workers can with-hold their labour without starving. Just like politicians I'm after the second term - and that's seeing my offspring take advantage of my good fortune. The only way to break that cycle is the public library and the internet. Public libraries are vanishing, and the ones that remain don't have many books because their patrons are often illiterate - and the internet, well it's Facebook and Youtube right?
Just tell them you believe in free markets and watch their heads implode.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
who is to say what the increase in cost of health care is or even if it can be tied to car pollution or any other sort.
Me. Give me a Google Maps API and the health stats and I can prove it. What would you like? lung cancer in non-smokers in red, and asthma in blue?
Give me a pen and a exascetch and I'll show you a fool. You are wrong about health care too - while getting the TB you caught off the cab driver treated on your private health insurance the AIDs victims robbed your house.
The politicians will happily and literally go to war, kill hundreds of thousands of people rather than lose the bribes (directorships, consultancies etc) which the lobby groups hand out.
Deleted
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations. Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
While I disagree with this, I don't think it's an unreasonable position. On the other hand, I've yet to see a "fiscally convervative" politician actually stick to this position when deciding how our tax moneys should be spent.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Ah, there's the problem. If all health care were from the government, then ANY activity could be considered risky by whatever government was in power. Maybe even YOUR favorite activity! Like skydiving? Too risky. Like riding motorcycles? Too risky. Like bungee jumping? Too risky. See where that goes?
In the Netherlands we have two types of taxes. 'Belasting', which are taxes such as income tax and sales tax, and 'accijns', which are taxes like tobacco and alcohol taxes, as well as fuel (about 70% of the price of gas in Holland is taxes), and import duties, probably among many others.
The latter, 'accijns', are all about encouraging a certain type of behavior, in practice. They don't work as far as I can see, although smoking is very unpopular right now partly due to cost.
Back in the late 60's/early 70's I drove Renault 8 and 10 cars, which easily achieved 40+ MPG on the highway. That was with 1000cc and 1100cc engines, BTW. Back when you could get "gallons per dollar", not dollars per gallon.... Since then mileage has decreased due to: 1) Emission controls on the engines 2) Changes in gasoline formulation, particularly "winter blends" 3) Increased weight of vehicles due to crash safety requirements
Well I don't want to pay taxes to fund manned space exploration.
I think 98 percent of economists would say that we need higher gas taxes
May i be the first to say 'screw you'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In 1960 cars were getting 32 MPG. What does an average econobox, or rather a modern midsize (since they're comparable size to a 60s econobox) get these days? A new Ford Fusion is rated at 33 MPG. So 50 years later a similar size car gets 1 MPG more. Now take that 1960 econobox and up the compression, port the head, add a long tube header, jet the carb leaner and give it a bunch more timing at light highway cruise. Top it off with a 5 speed overdrive transmission and I guarantee you'll be getting over 40 MPG and have a lot more power.
Why can a 1960 Ford Falcon get such good MPG? It is not laden by draconian DOT safety mandates that add weight to the car, nor EPA mandates that destroy any chance of getting good MPG. A 1960 Falcon weighs ~2300 lbs a 2011 Fusion weighs ~3600 lbs... Nearly as much as my '68 full size with big block! These fascist and draconian mandates must be removed for fuel economy to increase significantly. Let the market decide and you will have an array of vehicles with various safety and emissions options and correspondingly decreasing MPG as those options are added. There will be a balance point most people will opt for that will be getting the safety and emissions options that aren't a significant detriment to MPG. The result will be cars and trucks that get better MPG across the board.
One more example of why these mandates are bad. Take CAFE mandates as an example. People didn't use to drive trucks (SUV) so much, they had station wagons for their family. A full size station wagon with a 300-350 cubic inch engine and overdrive transmission can easily get 25 MPG on the highway. After CAFE was forced on auto manufacturers they stopped making station wagons (real station wagons, full size) as it would mean a hefty tax for violating CAFE. At the time they had many emissions and safety mandates emerging that they had to meet, killing MPG, also overdrive transmissions were not common yet. They shifted to making SUVs into family friendly vehicles to replace station wagons.
Look at Ford for a prime example. What happened in 77-78? The Bronco was totally redesigned from a small bare bones utility truck for targeted to outdoorsy people to a huge plush vehicle targeted at families. This was the beginning of this shift from station wagon to SUV. Of course a '78 Bronco barely gets low teens for highway MPG in factory trim with the 351m smog (emissions complient, but terribly inefficient) engine and no overdrive. It's just insane!
Another example of the adverse affect of emissions mandates on MPG. I have an '86 F-250 which I lifted and run larger tires, and also swapped the front axle for a solid axle. The truck weighs 6000 lbs. I converted it from a 351 to a 460 and did a lot of performance modifications during the engine build, including using absolutley no emissions equipment on the engine. I can't find factory MPG for a big block truck, I doubt if they cared. Factory MPG for a 351 truck is 11/12 city/highway the small block was rated at an anemic 210 HP and 305 ft/lbs of torque. My truck gets similar MPG even with the lift, extra weight, larger tires, as well as a lot more power at 425 HP and 550 ft/lbs. My highway MPG is ~13 at 70-75 MPH. Put all the smog equipment back on and I'm certain it would be single digits.
On a side note... I never understood why people think it's better to put out fewer ppm of pollutants but burn a lot more fuel and thus put out more millions and more parts overall. If oil is running out, then why not get the most we can from it? A free market solution would of course result in better MPG as that's what people want. The cars would be cheaper too!
Simple observation quickly shows many people are clueless to the effect of their driving styles on their fuel economy as well. Full throttle rush towards the next red light, slam on brakes, stop....repeat. Highway driving? Absolutely positive HAVE to achieve that 10 foot gain on the guy beside you, even if it means changing lanes and mashing on the accelerator only to inevitably end up following another car and having to slow down. Again, repeat....over and over and over again.
Simple driving style changes can yield the average driver a HUGE increase in fuel mileage, but until the "I'm more important than everybody else, I need to be in front of you and get there as fast as humanly possible, screw you all" attitude of many of todays drivers change, all the technology advances in the world won't help if the idiots behind the wheel just continue to operate the vehicles in a basically inefficient fashion.
Smokers are taxed regardless of where they smoke, so that is immaterial. I've known very, very few smokers that have imposed themselves on others by smoking around those that don't smoke, especially nowadays with the whole "smokers are second class citizens" thing. Plus there are many, many laws against smoking near public entrances and exits already.
When you drive while on the phone you put everyone around you at risk, yet there is no tax assessed when you buy a phone to cover injuries related to that, is there?
Like I said, most everyone is for a smoker's tax because, honestly, not many people smoke anymore. Propose a tax for their own bad habits, though, and all of a sudden there's a million reasons why there shouldn't be one.
The point is that the only problem we have with oil consumption at the present time is that people aren't being required to pay the full cost of consumption. We're allowing for cost to be spread amongst even those that can't or won't drive and don't drive either. If people were paying the full cost of gas we wouldn't be using as much of it and we'd be moving to alternatives already. The subsidies for gas and the lack of pricing for externalities are precisely why gas is so much less expensive than the alternatives.
Anybody that claims that to be ethical or worthwhile has some splainin' to do.As for freedom only a libertarian would suggest that charging the whole cost for a commodity infringes upon ones freedom.
As for your conclusion, the problem is that it does get in the way of my pursuit of happiness. I have asthma and being constantly exposed to other people's pollution has a very definite negative impact on my health. It's rather amazing how people can suggest that exposing other people to the results of their pollution is somehow their right or ethical. Some pollution is inevitable, but there's nothing ethical about allowing the markets to misprice a commodity and imposing the externalities on innocent bystanders.
In the past 30 years many cars have gotten heavier, small economy cars have gone from weighing a ton or not much more to weighing 1.5-2 tons! That's huge. Suddenly you need more displacement, and more power to maintain just what we already had. This weight is mostly comfort items. People won't drive a noisy car anymore, so they add tons of sound deadening, all those gizmos, they add weight, lots of it. Safety equipment has also added weight but not to the extent of passenger comfort has. Look at the old CRX or the geo metro, they could get 50 MPG, but that was mostly because they weighed nothing and there for could be pushed along by tiny engines.
brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
The line between that and being allowed to shit on people and be an asshole just for the fun of it is thinner than you might imagine.
I suspect you might have already crossed it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oil is a fungible commodity. Demand always outstrips supply. The American public (or any other country for that matter) and their use of fuel are not relevant to the price of oil/gas/petroleum
It's not all the EPA, VW sells diesels here for example. A good chunk of it is americans won't buy diesels. It's sad and it sucks but it's true. Why won't they? Diesels of the 70s and 80s soured many americans against them. There were some really unreliable diesels that came out, combined with a bunch of really underpowered diesel cars means that people still won't buy them. It sucks. I wish we had good diesel options here.
brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
That used to be really true, but the american engines have really improved in the past few years. Ford for example basically just completely redesigned their engine designs. What they have put out is far far better than their line up 5 or 6 years ago.
Also our diesel issue is in part y'alls fault, those MB 240 and 300d's didn't do much to better our view of diesels. Sure they run forever but gawd they're slooooooooow. (Yes I know new diesels are better and I wish we got more of them).
brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
And it only cost more because we let it...and we're trying to get the governments to do things that people used to do on their own...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
'm going to live in the burbs, having my 4 cars, my swimming pool, my 25 acres, practice mixed martial arts, go hunting, and do dangerous stuff, drive my BMW 85 MPH down 55 MPH highways on the way to work where I"ll make 4 times as much as you.
I don't think the grandparent would have any objection to your doing these things (although, given that you're posting AC on Slashdot, the odds of you actually doing any of them are quite low) as long as you don't expect the rest of society to pay for them. If you want to piss in the swimming pool, you get to pay for cleaning the water.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As someone who works in Transportation Demand Management, I would happily welcome higher gas taxes... especially if they are used to directly pay for the Federal and State highways. About 50% of roads and highways are paid for by non-user fees (income taxes, sales tax, etc.) because gas taxes are notoriously difficult to raise without severe political ramifications.
But if gas prices stay low (they're at about $3.60 where I am in Southern California), people will not have sufficient incentive to make their next vehicle more fuel efficient nor, which would be preferable, switch to more sustainable forms of commuting and city travel (bus, train, carpool, vanpool, bike, and walk).
Federal/State monies that would otherwise go to building/expanding roads and freeways would go towards mass transit thus increasing the availability of transit. Increased convenience of transit triggers increased utilization and thus greater expense recovery by fare being transit more solvent.
People will save money in their transit travel, pollution falls, reliance on oil falls (especially with hybrid buses and electric trains), and with fewer people living building-to-building, people will have to walk a bit more and be a bit healthier. ... But it all starts with the cost of traveling by personal automobile.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Then where's my big tax break for working out 3 times per week, not smoking, and eating healthy?
Oh, wait. Maybe the tobacco tax has nothing to do with health care and is just a money grab.
How about free distribution of nicotine patches and gum?
Don't you have this? In the UK, we have a quit smoking kit available on the NHS, which includes patches and gum, among other things.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In fact, IAAMD
And yes, smokers die slowly (at least most of them). Most smokers don't get lung cancer - most lung cancer patients, however, are smokers or former smokers. The most prevalent health problem from smoking is vascular disease. That includes small artery disease which is extremely common, likely universal and creates all manner of slow problems. Massive heart attacks and strokes certainly happen with more frequency in smokers than non, but again, most smokers don't just keel over and get their Final Bill.
Further, smokers are at risk for many more cancers than just small cell adenocarcinoma of the lung. They live for variable amounts of time and tend to run up large bills.
And yes, death certificates are really really bad ways of determining how people die. I have to put "something' in and it can't be cardirespiratory arrest. So unless I really know what happened (unusual) or manage to get an autopsy (really unusual) it's just a guess. One that historically has been shown to be more often wrong than right.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Of course, if safety is what you want, your argument could be used to recommend putting mandatory speed governors on every car. If the fastest speed limit in the nation is 75mph, why do we have cars that can go 108mph?
If the weekend racers want to go 100mph on the track, let them buy a special license plate with the key to unlock their speed governor. If they are caught speeding on a public street (or if anyone else has tampered with the speed governor), then give them mandatory jail time.
Speed itself has never been the big killer its been put out to be, so I don't follow the logic here at all. Most accidents are caused by bad drivers, bad roads, and differences in speed and occur well below highway speeds. No there is no reason for EXCESSIVE speed, but the current speed limits in much of the country have little to do with safety unless the area has a proactive traffic bureau. Unfortunately most local governments did away with those years ago.
I'm actually curious if there are or were traffic bureaus in police departments in countries outside the USA. My father used to run the local one for a few years, and they set speed limits specifically on observed and tested safe and unsafe conditions. Now its all about revenue, who lives where, etc. The cities in the area just abandoned the concept, and its not been a good move. No one even knows how to work accidents any more, for example.
As far as why do we have cars that can go faster than the speed limit... because you can't really engineer a car to only do the speed limit without either making it weak, or doing something really stupid like a nanny speed governor.
I rather see this kind of effort put into driver training, not some blind nanny which might well get me killed in some circumstances.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
People should be free to choose to drive and spend in the fashion they wish.
Taxes weren't passed to allow a 'chosen' few to dictate citizen behavior....
So you advocate rolling back tobacco taxes?
Speaking for myself, absolutely. Taxes used for social engineering are wrong. Period.
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government. If the specific role of fuel taxes are to pay for the roads, then raising them with the idea of forcing 'economy' is wrong.
It is also amazing to me that some of the same people who will practically demand such taxes in the name of the environment will turn right around and argue that a flat tax is wrong because it hurts the poor. As if the higher fuel tax doesn't?
Grants & subsidies are another way the government manipulates things and allows people to buy homes, provide food through local farming, discover new science and create new technologies, provide access to education for the non-wealthy and yes, even provide energy for our country. To suggest that every part of modern society is not being manipulated in some form is naive; especially in these examples where their use is transparent and tend to be for the benefit of our collective well-being. I like keeping as much of my own money as the next guy, but if everything was left 100% to market forces we would be living in a toxic waste dump with less individual achievement and education. To some degree every society needs direction and taxes and subsidies are the current tools.
Whatever you think, you're wrong.
If your actions cause damage to my person or property, I have every right to see that damage redressed. In a civil society, the government is the way we redress that damage.
If you're dumping garbage on my property, the government has every right to pay to clean it up and charge you for the damage your actions cause. If that modifies your behavior and you stopping dumping trash on my lawn, so be it.
It's exactly analogous if you're pumping trash into my air. The government has every right to charge you for the damage your actions are causing, and use that money to better society. That's what a gas tax is, and a higher gas tax would give people a much clearer idea of the actual costs of their decisions.
They're called negative externalities. The free market system isn't even guaranteed to be an overall positive sum game if they aren't addressed. They're *exactly* where your freedom to choose ends. In this case, your freedom to choose ends at my lungs. Limiting negative externalities are one of government's legitimate purposes.
It's only presumed in your mind because you haven't gone to look. There's a ton of very telling economic research on the costs of smoking to society and it doesn't take a degree in rocket science or even economics to understand why. End of life care is expensive and end of life care for smokers is often even more expensive. Also are you asserting the federal and state govts lack the power to levy an excise tax for whatever purposes congress and the legislature deem fit? You can say that but just saying doesn't make it so. There is a *very* long history of those kind of taxes and plenty of jurisprudence on the subject.
Because it's the government's job to strive for the betterment of the country as a whole, not just the individual. Individual actions may indeed serve the person better than actions that benefits the whole, but that's not the governments job. Indeed there are arguments to be made on where the line should be drawn for placing society above the individual or the individual above society, but when all is said and done the government (when functioning properly) should be striving the better the lives of its citizens through the betterment of the country as a whole.
In the USA, that's not true. Our government's founding documents are mostly limits on its power so that most betterment (assuming that happens) is done privately. That's the whole point of the America Republic. The areas where the government is allowed to do anything to "strive for the betterment..." is very limited. We have violated a lot of those rules and its caused a lot of our problems, but nevertheless that are the rules. I keep hoping one day we'll start following them.
Good point. Why do we keep creating more criminal law when what is happen is already covered?
If our government wants to get involved, it should do so by encouraging alternatives, not trying to mandate morality or otherwise productive behavior. I've always noted that our (USA) government's positive propaganda has had a lot more positive effect than our trying to criminalize everything some lobbyist doesn't like).
The premise you're using is also flawed. Why is Government funding healthcare? Government should not fund nor is really legal for it to fund healthcare. Once you get past that part you will realize why taxing people to change their behavior is morally wrong.
True, but unlike say, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, etc. California pays for itself federal wise just like Illiniois, Massachusets, New York, Connecticut, etc.
In other words, if the south wasn't still leeching of the north over a century after reconstruction, perhaps the Feds could throw some Money California, Illinois, NY, etc way, so they aren't payng for their own infrastructure, and The South's too.
Yes, it's simple enough to say "Just quit smoking". You've never been a smoker or been someone almost completely dependent on cigarettes.
I smoked regularly and quit except for social situations involving alcohol. It wasn't a big deal- I had smoked for years and decided I didn't want to keep doing it and stopped.
You know the hardest part about quitting smoking? The psychological bullshit about addiction to nicotine: you are taught that you are mentally and physically addicted to tobacco by the anti-tobacco lobby.
When you think "normally I'd have a smoke right now, but I'm quitting", all of the bullshit you've been indoctrinated into believing about nicotine addiction makes you think that you will have a lot of trouble resisting smoking that cigarette. In other words you think that not smoking the cigarette is going to be hard- and this powerful thought exists in your mind because you've been told it your whole fucking life. If anything, it's the last great advertising scam of the tobacco industry.
To reiterate: You've been told time and time again that you will want to smoke the cigarette when you quit. You've been told this by people who CLAIM they want to help you quit. However, this message perpetuates tobacco addiction. Who does this false message benefit? The tobacco industry.
I simply didn't believe the bullshit, all of the hype about tobacco addiction, and guess what? It's as easy to break the habit of smoking a cigarette as it is to break any habitual behavior- you just don't do it. It isn't going to be any harder to break the habit- except for all of the bullshit that has been driven into your subconscious and conscious mind from the "anti" (actually pro) tobacco industry.
The "anti" tobacco lobby is the tobacco industry's magnum opus, its last great hoorah. It's hard to keep customers when your product is dangerous and isn't actually very addictive- but pose as someone helping them quit who tells them it is very hard to quit... that's a Karl Rove.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
There are many reasons that the CAFE regulations are suboptimal but yours is not one of them. CAFE calculates the harmonic mean, ie the inverse, so it effectively is calculating the mean if every car was driven the same distance, not used the same amount of fuel, so just like thinking in the European manner unlike our MPG. Real reasons that CAFE is suboptimal is that there is still a domestic and other average (for cars), the car vs truck limits, the fleet penalty is very low, the arbitrary E85 benefit, the new 'footprint' requirements that will be the new loophole to allowing manufactures continue selling large fuel efficient but very profitable vehicles, and so on (there is more).
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State,--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
Yes, the government is our keeper. It is charged with the general welfare and defense of its citizens. But further, why do you feel that what is enshrined in the constitution is the limit and scope of all that the United States and its government may be or should be. Do you honestly believe that the "founding fathers" were infallible, able to foresee all circumstance? I can tell you they didn't.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution
The constitution was written at a certain time and during that certain time were certain issues being faced at home and abroad. The document clearly reflects that. The assumption was that these circumstances would not always be the same nor that what was penned could capture and guide every situation. You state that the government's position isn't to legislate morality but to "keep the playing ground fair and open." However, you fail to recognize that that is the very act of providing for the general welfare. Morality, or proper behavior isn't just about abortion and religion. You may disagree with legislation or attempts thereof related to those specific issues and that fine. You have a right to disagree. You have a right to petition your government accordingly. But then again, that's part of the Bill of Rights and the government cannot act outside of the Constitution right?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
My 2000 TDI Jetta has more-than-adequate performance. Though it is starting to feel its age.
As I said "tighten them". If it's not a truck (separate cab and traditional separate pickup bed which can be easily unbolted and replaced with utility/flat/stake/wrecker/etc beds) then it's not a truck.
Ethanol loopholes need to end. We aren't Brazil and don't need to burn our food! The shit is wretched when used in small engines too....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So is that why the rich are taxed at higher rate..
No, that's because they are affected less by the same percentage of taxation.
As this obviously isn't obvious to everyone, I'll explain:
Say the minimum cost of living for a certain time is 100, and citizen A earns 150, then person a has 20 left.
If we then introduce citizen B, who earns 200, then that person has 100 percent left.
If we tax them equally, say 20%, citizen A pays 30 and citizen B pays 40.
As this might sound fair, it really isn't. Why?
Because citizen A:s "discretionary income", as it is called, has shrunk by 60% and citizen B:s with only 40%.
So citizen A:s life will be far more more affected by the "fair" taxation than citizen B:s.
Also, the citizen with the higher salary will significantly benefit from the system, as that person will be able to invest his income, an yield a return, far easier than the one with the lower income.
As a consequense, most people over a certain income will almost certainly become richer, and most people under a certain income will almost certainly become poorer.
Widening income gaps has a number of other detrimental effects on countries, the most obvious, of course, is discontent but also a lessened interest in education. Why educate yourself when it won't make you make enough money to pass that barrier? Whatever, your parents can't afford college for you anyway, they have enough just sustaining the family.
This is an issue everywhere but especially in the "developed" world, where it simply isn't sufficient to have only a well-educated elite. Almost the entire population has to be well-educated to be able to compete internationally as a country.
The only solution is a progressive taxation system. And setting the level of progressivity is a simple math problem, easy to adjust to the effects of other taxes and to the taste of the current administration.
This especially kills off a host of counter arguments, since they were concieved before these things could be easily calculated(before spreadsheets, computers).
Personally, I pay the highest level of taxes in my country, and I don't wine about it.
There are upsides to paying taxes, too. In a working society, you get stuff back now and then.
Especially when you really need it. For example, if I get sick. Or if I need to hire educated people.
Baboons are cute.
Smoking is not ALWAYS a net negative on health. I know several people for whom smoking AS NEEDED (not habitually) is an effective means to control headaches before they can get out of control. I am one of them. I smoke about HALF a cigarette (not half a pack, half a single cigarette) a MONTH. I never buy them, that would be stupid -- I just bum a hit or two when required. I suppose I could use the lowest strength nicotine gum to the same effect, but at this rate the smoking is not going to catch up with me -- my central nervous system will have quit long before then. If I couldn't borrow a hit from other smokers, I'd probably just use a pipe and loose tobacco.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It's only presumed in your mind because you haven't gone to look. There's a ton of very telling economic research on the costs of smoking to society and it doesn't take a degree in rocket science or even economics to understand why. End of life care is expensive and end of life care for smokers is often even more expensive.
Also are you asserting the federal and state govts lack the power to levy an excise tax for whatever purposes congress and the legislature deem fit? You can say that but just saying doesn't make it so. There is a *very* long history of those kind of taxes and plenty of jurisprudence on the subject.
Are you saying that Congress and the various States have absolutely unlimited power? Because if you're saying that they have the power to levy any tax for any reason that's exactly what you're saying, no?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
You seem to be arguing that the government's powers are in fact basically unlimited on the grounds that anything and everything could be linked somehow to Commerce or General Welfare. Is that the case?
So much for a government of limited and defined powers...
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
This was the most interesting commentary I've read all day. Keen observations on the undercurrent of society which gets infrequently talked about because people largely buy all the bull reported by the media and statistics at large.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
In fact, IAAMD
My friend from last night has gone home, and doesn't read Slashdot ("it's childish") - but I'll pass the message on. :-)
I expect I'll hear the rant about how a GP is generally not an "actual doctor" - which neatly overlooks the fact that I've held a (non-medical) doctorate for much longer than her. She does know a lot about government policy, research and grants though (and teaching) but I don't go to her for a checkup.
And yes, smokers die slowly (at least most of them).
Smokers or not - most people die slowly - smokers do it 10 years earlier (sort of). But I get your point. My point was not that smoking isn't bad - only that in my country - the smokers prop up the health system - and remember, we *have* universal health care. 2007 $A5.61 billion in point of sale tobacco tax (doesn't include farm gate tax, which is indirectly paid by smokers) The tax rate is many times that now and figures for revenue are "unavailable" (best I can get is about 3 million current smokers and roughly $A6 billion in tobacco tax pa).
It's claimed that the health cost of 15000 deaths a year is $A30 billion (which is clearly rubbish). And 15000 a year is difficult to check. Currently the average smoker (20 a day) pays more than $A2000 per annum in tax - and dies 10 years earlier (pensions are about $A18000 pa). Little of that money goes into the health budget. We have a system that is dependant on smokers - the more that stop smoking the more we have to jack up the tax rate to:- pay for the long term costs of caring for ex-smokers, support the parts of the system dependant on that revenue. It gets far more complicated when you consider how much of the infrastructure has investment in the tobacco companies.
Most smokers don't get lung cancer - most lung cancer patients, however, are smokers or former smokers.
Good point - I misquoted - heart attacks and cancer (she said a little over a quarter of of average smokers die fast before retirement age - whatever she meant by "average smokers"). One interesting comment she made was that "in most" cases - if you started smoking as a teenager, and you are tall and light boned - there's a very high chance you'll die "from" lung cancer by 55. Apparently body type plays a large part in how smoking will kill you (if something else doesn't first).
The most prevalent health problem from smoking is vascular disease. That includes small artery disease which is extremely common, likely universal and creates all manner of slow problems. Massive heart attacks and strokes certainly happen with more frequency in smokers than non, but again, most smokers don't just keel over and get their Final Bill.
Absolutely (only about a quarter). Though health problem, contributing factors, and cause of death are problematic. Lest I sound like a BAT shill - your chance of smoking all your adult life and not dying early because of smoking are like winning lotto. It happens - but not often enough to justify the risks.
Further, smokers are at risk for many more cancers than just small cell adenocarcinoma of the lung.
Yes. The original point was that smokers contribute (in Australia) through direct taxes on cigarette sales - more than they cost. (I definitely don't support tobacco sales) The Health system would collapse without out that funding. That would create two problems - no more funding that supports the proportionally, larger costs of support those that live (non-smokers) past retirement age. No more income to support the ticking time bombs called ex-smokers. A cruel irony of the campaign against smoking (it should be against tobacco companies) is that I don't know of a single health insurance company, state government, or superannuation investment fund in this country that *hasn't* invested in one of the groups that directly or indirectly owns tobacco interests.
As this obviously isn't obvious to everyone, I'll explain:
Say the minimum cost of living for a certain time is 100, and citizen A earns 150, then person a has 20 left. If we then introduce citizen B, who earns 200, then that person has 100 percent left. If we tax them equally, say 20%, citizen A pays 30 and citizen B pays 40.
As this might sound fair, it really isn't. Why? Because citizen A:s "discretionary income", as it is called, has shrunk by 60% and citizen B:s with only 40%. So citizen A:s life will be far more more affected by the "fair" taxation than citizen B:s.
This argument is fundamentally flawed. It only holds true if both citizen A and B agree that the minimum cost of living is 100. However, if Citizen B desires for themselves a minimum cost of living no less than 160, and that is what drives them to obtain an income of 200, then the progressive taxation will deprive them of their personal desires. As a society I believe we are far more 'collective' than we will ever admit.
This was the most interesting commentary I've read all day. Keen observations on the undercurrent of society which gets infrequently talked about because people largely buy all the bull reported by the media and statistics at large.
It's only part of a complex problem - read on to see Cold Wet Dogs input.
I don't have time to even begin to address (my thoughts on) "why" people smoke - tobacco companies manipulate a pre-existing self-destructive bent. But it's a bit more complicated.
The fact of the matter is taxes are used everywhere for manipulation. Your tax return is loaded with nothing but. Married? Single? Dependants? Work related expenses? etc. It's all a manipulation, unless you're paying a flat tax.
You are completely missing the point. The point isn't that regulating "unhealthy" food is a good idea, it's that regulating vices is a bad idea.
You can't protect people from themselves. When you try to do so, you end up hurting yourself and others, without actually penalizing the people you're trying to "help". I'd have thought almost 100 years of prohibition on tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and marijuana would've been clue to that (look at what "good" that's done), but apparently people aren't too observant.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Fairness != giving people their desires. Fairness is trying to avoid having the burden of paying for government be extremely high for some, and almost non-existent for others. The burden should not be EQUAL, but it should be a bit less disproportionate than it is.
Citizen B's standard of living WENT UP when he worked harder. Maybe not as far as he'd like, but it's not a tragedy. The tragedy is that the woman who makes 10 because she had to drop out of high school to work when her father died has to work two jobs just to make sure HER kids get a better chance (who she only gets to see when she's putting them to bed). SHE works a fuck of a lot harder than Citizen B, and her "desires" are no less worthy. Citizen B looks at her paying no income taxes and spits on her as a "goddamn freeloader". Interesting point: the time she works to pay for sales, gas, and other taxes could have been spent actually getting to spend some time with her kids.
I can't resist:
Citizen C earns 10000, and pays 4000 on his four houses. He pays 2000 in taxes, but he used to pay 2500. He's fuming mad others are talking about putting him back at 2500, since that'd be going backwards and by golly his whole life everything always got better with time. Backwards just seems so unnatural! Damn thieving government! (His father, who also made 10000, paid 8000 in taxes at the same point in his life)
This argument is fundamentally flawed. It only holds true if both citizen A and B agree that the minimum cost of living is 100. However, if Citizen B desires for themselves a minimum cost of living no less than 160, and that is what drives them to obtain an income of 200, then the progressive taxation will deprive them of their personal desires.
No, it is your argument that is fundamentally flawed, for several reasons:
1. The possibility to accumulate wealth isn't, luckily, the only incentive in society. If that was the case, we would have no other values or considerations, have no friends, and harvest each others corpses for organs to sell. Just the fact the emergency of social security systems has been proven incredibly important for the development of society as we know it, proves that it isn't.
2. It is VERY EASY to agree on a minimum cost of living. Usually it boils down to pretty small stuff, like if a cell phone and internet is considered basic(it usually is, since it would be a serious impediment in the current society to not have them). It has very little to do with desires.
Either, you have a society. Or you don't. A society inherently designed to accentuate income differences eventually create class structures and immobility. The United States has been very lucky in this regards, as there has been a constant availability of natural resources, influx of talent, room and war elsewhere, it has worked anyway. Now that many of these factors has been taken away, the U.S. cannot continue with the same model, as it depended on them. The current economic situation is obviously a symptom of this. The U.S. society has to modernize. And as much as that may hurt, that means more social security. It can be done right, or it can be done wrong.
Done wrong it sucks, done right, it is great. And I suppose that is the real problem.
As a society I believe we are far more 'collective' than we will ever admit.
I can't see how this matches anything else you have written? Your reasoning seems rather to be based on the everyone for themselves-attitude.
Baboons are cute.
For some reason people seem to forget about the 'all men are created equal' part and skip right to 'pursuit of happiness'. You may, to your hearts content, pursue happiness, but it is in fact part of the government's job to see that it's citizenry stay equal under it. When your 'happiness' is trampling on the 'happiness' of another, then the government has to take action as arbiter, because that's it's function. Otherwise it's just a lawless 'society' of jungle rules. A lot of people talk about the government protecting the rights of individuals, and not oppress individuals for the greater good, when in fact some might see that as an individual wanting to take on the part of the oppressor for *his* greater good.
And that is a difference between what you are suggesting and what is really happening in the EU parliament or even the U.S. Congress how?
At the moment, I have a very hard time distinguishing a "campaign donation" from a flagrant bribe. Rod Blagojevich only made a mistake in terms of appointing the successor to Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate seat representing Illinois because he didn't "mask" the fine details.
At the very least, you would know that the government is bought lock, stock, and barrel rather than having groups leverage funding that is being stolen from citizens at gunpoint.
Perhaps the government needs to get out of that business altogether. Are you advocating such a standard?
The thing is that it isn't strictly Austrian vs. Keynesian philosophies either. Economics is hardly an exact science, in spite of fancy mathematical formulas and the trappings of what appear to be scientific theories.
From my own review of the field, it seems more stuck in the rough equivalent of alchemy like Chemistry was for a great many centuries as a really sound scientific foundation to the issues involved are not really known or understood. Even stuff like the supply/demand curve thought to be foundational to economics is hardly ever nailed down with real numbers, and basic things like the slope of that curve or any other real mathematical treatment is largely a guess. Most of the time I doubt that a good economist could get a formula to get better than a single digit of accuracy on an economic prediction, where they are considered successful theories if they can even get the number to come out positive or negative accurately. Compare that to a study I saw in astronomy that asserted six digits of accuracy for the mass of a planet found in a solar system 600 light years away. Yes, unusual circumstances for being that good..... but the accuracy has not been challenged by anybody familiar with the measurement techniques.
I'm not saying there haven't been some valiant attempts at establishing that strong foundational theory, but they really aren't there yet.
BTW, the world seemed to do fine before the creation of things like Superfund sites. Still, don't make this sound like I prefer a complete abolition of government entirely. You can hold corporations and even individuals personally liable for damage they cause, and I don't have a problem with laws that require a bond to be used for clean-up depending on what activity they are doing, or even being held in a courtroom to take responsibility for their actions.
No, personal liberty does not mean "corporations polluting and not cleaning up". It implies you have the liberty to take actions without having somebody explicitly forcing you into an action. More along the lines of "thou shalt not" type requirements that tell you what is dangerous and therefore something you shouldn't do, rather than "thou shalt" commandments from a government bureaucrat. I don't even mind laws that say "you can do this, but here is the penalty for this action". Essentially liberty is that you can do whatever you want as long as you are not infringing on the liberties of others.
Contrast that with a somewhat famous saying in the bad old Soviet Union which essentially said "that which is not prohibited is required". Under the old Soviet version of Communism, you were told where to work, what to eat, and often even who to marry. You lacked liberty in almost everything unless you were in the ruling elite... arguably not much different than when serfs served the Czars and his minions.
I'd like you to point out where in my initial post I said I was talking solely about federal taxes.
Many roads are federal (or state) funded, many environmental controls are state or federal, health costs are not local either.
Society isn't free at any level, local, state, or federal.
Which goes back to what services are needed, by whom, and who needs to pay for them.
Cali is just one example of mismanaged money, and where attitudes like "we can't cut service x" or "we can't raise tax y to pay for x" end up at exactly that endpoint of spending more than you have.
The premise you're using is also flawed. Why is Government funding healthcare? Government should not fund nor is really legal for it to fund healthcare. Once you get past that part you will realize why taxing people to change their behavior is morally wrong.
Personally I would say that subjecting people's health to market forces is morally wrong, and I am certainly not alone in that opinion: a lot of countries have organized their healthcare accordingly. Calling those systems government-funded would often be misleading, though: the insurance and health care organizations that maintain the necessary funds are usually kept at arms-length from politics, to ensure that they do not become victim of party politics.
But even in a society where all heath care is privately financed, you could make a very solid argument for using taxes to change people's behavior. Even someone who smokes himself to death without any medical intervention still damages society in many ways: for example, he deprives society of his labor over the years, he causes grieve and anxiety in his social network, and he sets a bad example to others.
Therefore, since any society has to raise taxes anyway, why not use this necessity to do some additional good for the society at the same time?
Apart from that, in a society where all heath care is privately financed it is the private institutes that have the incentive to stimulate healthy living. The instruments they have to do that are not very different from what the government would have, so you'd still get the cheerful folders about the benefits of regular exercise, low weight, and quitting smoking. The organization that sends you those folders is just privately owned. Big deal. Also, you may get a discount on your premiums if you don't smoke or are not overweight, which looks pretty similar to a tax break to me.
why is it policy makers responsibility to make sure car manufactures create the most fuel efficient cars? Remember when business owners were in business because they made a quality product? Now they make cars just like inkjet printers ... the printers are there as a means to sell ink. If you really want a policy that makes sense, prevent anyone associated with the auto industry from investing in any type of fuel "futures". Once you take their money out of the product the car depends on, you will see the MPG skyrocket.
Simplistic. Surcharges on fuel would be a way to make the owners of bigger, heavier more polluting vehicles pay their fair share of the costs of roads and bridges, etc. The idea that all taxes should be to fund the government and that we should let the market allocate resources is a good one, but nothing is that simple.
But you can, and we do all the time. The amount of effort you put into protecting them from themselves, that is the cost to all of us, should be done so as to achieve the greatest "good" to society as a whole, not to try and achieve perfection. Speed limits protect you from yourself. Seat belts. Curve signs. The ban on general ownership of machine guns and artillery etc. Building codes, electrical codes. We could just let the market take care of all that stuff as well, but it doesn't really work that way.
The exhaust of automobiles is a very significant source of the terrible air quality in American cities. Americans breathe the air in those cities...... Right?
There are a few things we need the feds for....defense, and some other things on a national level, but the majority should only be the concerns of the local and state levels.
What's good for CA isn't necessarily the best for LA...different climates, needs and lifestyles
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If raising taxes on gasoline would promote better fuel economy, why hasn't the doubling of gasoline prices in the past three years done the same thing? There certainly is a correlation, but it is not as drammatic as the MIT economist would have us believe. Being a professor at MIT makes him a liberal, and all liberals want higher taxes, so his or her conclusion was foregone as they say. Raising taxes is the solution for everything, and socialism is great until you run out of other people's money. Apolgies to Ms Thatcher... And I certainly agree with the Anonymous Coward who reported on his truck's mileage and power being much superior, improved from 1969 to 2006. Who hasn't seen that same kind of change except perhaps the MIT professor? I also get double the fuel mileage I used to get with the same horsepower, and also much lower maintenance costs; e.g., tune-ups every 100,000 miles instead of every 10,000 miles.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
Because nobody brings up externalities unless they're trying to control it, tax it, or make an argument towards a thing or behavior they don't like.
Actually, people only talk about externalities when they're trying to correct a market failure. What do you think would be gained by a tax on breathing or going to the bathroom? It's not like you'd get people to breathe less. And it's not clear what externalities you'd even be trying to compensate for. You already pay for sewer and water service, and the only real harm you do by breathing is using energy, which you pay for when you buy food.
But there's a major market failure going on right now that could be corrected by a carbon tax. Excessive energy use is causing enormous real world damage right now: at least in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and trillions of dollars a year by some estimates. And that's happening because people have no direct incentive to do anything about it. This isn't some abstract, hypothetical problem. People are dying because of it.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
yes.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
For some people, the notion that 'all men are created equal' indicates that government should dictate equal outcomes, regardless of individual skill and effort. For those, government must oppress the skillful, the disciplined and the fortunate for the purpose of equalizing the lazy, the undisciplined and the inept. In doing so, they punish those who create wealth and reward those who do not.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
They've got this all bass-ackwards. If they want to see consumers buy more efficient vehicles and use less gas then stop subsidizing power, particularly fossil fuels. Let the price of gasoline, electricity, etc all raise to their natural market highs. When consumers feel the punch in their pocket book they'll conserve more and consume less. It's really quite simple.
There's a common ground we can both agree on. :)
It's all a matter of semantics, what you call the 'disciplined and the fortunate' some would call, the predatory and sociopaths, and since you seem to label anyone without wealth as 'lazy and undisciplined and inept' one can only assume that you would view yourself as the 'disciplined and the fortunate'. Unfortunately for you, history seems to be on the side of the 'lazy, undisciplined and inept' when it comes to the cycle of wealth acquisition and redistribution. Sure, you'll have your time in the sun, but starve enough people and your head will end up in a basket, by those same 'lazy, undisciplined and inept' people, historically speaking.
Who's starving?!?! We have, simultaneously, more people on the planet and less hunger than ever before. The only way this happens is by creating wealth. Also, not wealthy here. I'm lower middle class and I get by perfectly well by providing services to the wealthy Redistributing wealth from the wealthy to the indolent? that takes money that the wealthy might otherwise have spent employing my services.
When greedy thieves speak of "soaking the rich" the middle class says "but those are our employers". We don't feel oppressed by the people who we sell our labor and services to. More, the single largest potential pool of taxable income, and single least politically influential group, is the middle class. Inflation will push our incomes into the "rich" tax brackets soon enough.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Another example of "Moral Hazard" in action? i.e., when we believe we are insulated against a risk we, change our behaviour with respect to that risk. e.g., there is no question that wearing a seatbelt lowers the risk of injury if you are involved in a crash. There is however reasonable evidence that the safety advantage is wholly or partially negated because drivers compensate by taking more risks (http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/SAE%20seatbelts.pdf). Does making more fuel efficient engines a) Cause motor industry to compensate by making higher power vehicles? b) Cause drivers to drive less efficiently because they believe motor is more fuel efficient?
I guess it depends on how much is enough. If I remember correctly, you're around 11 sec 0-60 mph and our 2010 is just a tad over 8 sec. Either is fairly drivable, for sure (much more than that, and I start to get nervous on free-way entrances and such, especially where we live (they tend to be quite short). If performance isn't misused, I consider it a safety feature. It just comes down to where you draw the line at that point.
Your point is well taken though, that we certainly could have bought an older model of something to bring our cost down. I wanted a 2008 Jetta TDI or newer though, so that didn't work out with the financing. Older than that, I'd probably have just gone for another early to mid-'00s Civic (what our TDI replaced).