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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.
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
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.
This is then a market failure. What we should do is tax fuel at a rate that makes it internalize the costs it normally externalizes when the results go out the tail pipe.
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.
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.
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)
Keep in mind that the US Gas tax is used to pay for highways, that it's not indexed to inflation, and it was last raised early in Clinton's first term. Which means it doesn't actually cover the cost of maintaining highways.
The result is that my, non-car-using, ass has to pay income taxes to subsidize all these people who love their cars so much, but if I dare to ask them to pay for a train or another bus I'm breezily told "nobody will use that."
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
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.
Tax breaks on new cars where MPG meets a certain requirement?
How abotu a rolling tax break on cars with increasingly higher MGP? ie, as the efficiency goes up and the MPG goes up, the amount of tax you pay is reduced?
I think that would be great.... all you need to do is tax gas. The less your car uses, the less tax you pay. Simple.
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.
It's only a market failure if you believe that a handful of politicians and bureaucrats should be making choices for millions of individuals and families rather than allowing those individuals to make choices (and bear the costs) for themselves.
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.
That's bunk. If you raise fuel costs it doesn't necessarily mean that the vehicles are going to be less safe. Safety is a separate function and is supposed to be dealt with before the vehicles are on the market.
If you raise the price of gas the easiest ways of minimizing the cost are to either drive less or to drive slower and both of those are going to result in fewer fatalities. You don't magically remove safety features just because gas gets more expensive.
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.
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.........
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?
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"
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"
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?
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?
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."
That's cute. You think the market will naturally do what's right instead of what's profitable. :)
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"
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 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...
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.
Let me preface this carefully.
I drive a lot every week. 40 minutes at 70mph one way, each work day. I do not like driving. If I could use significantly less fuel while driving, I would jump on it.
Even at "oil crisis" prices in the bush years, the costs of fuel were still significantly less than the offset costs of living closer to town, and my standard of living is far higher. I am NOT wealthy. I own a 25k house, and make about 35k a year. The house I own would cost 2 to 3 times that much in the city, due to marketing forces of supply and demand, even now with housing crash prices. A sleezy, roach infested duplex rental in a gang violence riddled slum costs significantly more than my current house payment per month, for a significantly poorer living arrangement, with considerably greater risks of buglary and physical violence.
After adding all the bills together, I came to the conclusion that it was actually cheaper (including increased fuel costs, vehicular maintenance costs, and additional tax costs) to live outside the city than it is to live inside it.
This is because of several factors, the most poigniant of which is the cost of living differences caused by everyone else in the city trying to get a slice of everyone else's pie. (Eg, every store keeper wants to turn the highest profit that the local market can bear. This is basic economics. When people in the city get paid very well, people have more money to blow, and the costs of items increase to match the disparity. This is why the cost of living in high wage areas is so significantly higher than in low wage areas. ) I ran the numbers and found that living a certain distance from the high wage center, you get the option of earning the better pay, while livng in the reduced price area.
This is exactly what created the concept of suburbia. (Note, I do not live in suburbia. I live in hickville farmer community.) Suburbia could easily be serviced by light commuter rail, if the following conditions were met. (At least for most circumstances anyway...)
1) the train center needs free all-day parking. People still need cars. We just want them to drive them significantly less. The train does not go everywhere they need to go, such as to the dentist, or on a romantic drive into the countryside. The biggest consumer of fuel miles in consumer vehicles is the work commute. Free parking with reasonable lot security allows the suburbanites to drive 5 minutes to the train station, then take the light commuter rail to the various districts of the local big civic center, go to work, come back, and drive another 5 minutes to get home. We radically reduce the number of hours they drive, the number of miles they drive, and the city jurisdictions over which they drive, by enabling the free parking lot. People won't use the rail station if they get charged to ride, and charged by the hour to park. Subsidize the costs of the parking structure into the yearly rider's pass prices. Problem solved. One off riders only pay the one off ticket price, and get the free parking.
2) don't penalize people for living outside the city. People chosing to live outside the city forces prices for city residents down, because demand for services and properties diminish. People using the light rail to get to work reduces the nightmares of intracity traffic and parking (fewer people are driving), reducing the rate of roadway deterioration, and everyone is better off for it.
3) the light rail needs to be accessible, affordable, and offer a free or at least flat rate shuttle bussing service with dedicated commuter bus routes to all major centers and districts of town, and the surrounding suburbs. If it is a major city industry or service, it needs to be easily and safely serviced by the public transit option.
4) the actual day to day operations of terminal stations in the public transit network can be franchise run, but a minimum QoS for cleanliness, access, safety, and ease of use needs to be enforced somehow. Franchises work great here, b
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.
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.
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
A market is not a living being. It has no will. It has no responsibility. There's a reason that for negative externalities like pollution, we rely on leaders with human will rather than markets with computational power.
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.
" 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.
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.
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.
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?
The proper role of government is to protect the rights of its citizens and nothing else. A representative democracy is only a mechanism to attempt to have a government act in that manner. Thus it is not the politicians who should be making those choices, usurping the decisions of individuals.
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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
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.
The oil depletion allowance is not "subsidies for the oil industry", it's a perfectly just compensation for a declining asset.
That's just silly. The crash energy is absorbed in collapsing structures located between the front of the vehicle and the passenger compartment. Those structures are designed in proportion to the vehicle's weight, among other things. As I indicated in a post above, greater distance between the front and the passenger increases safety. A bigger crumple zone reduces deceleration and allows more room for a variety of protections for the passenger.
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"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.
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
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.
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.........
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).
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?
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.
I remember playing SimCity for the first time as a child and seeing this kind of zoning and wondering what kind of insane city would implement such a system, since it would mean that people would spend a huge amount of time travelling and no one would be living near where they worked nor where they shopped. It seemed completely ludicrous and I assumed it was some unreality that they'd inserted to make the game more challenging, since there was no possible way of designing a sane city with those rules. Then, 10 years later, I visited the USA for the first time and saw that you really do lay out your cities like that. No wonder Americans consider their cars to be so important...
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It's always been cheaper to eat good food than to buy junk food.
Not where I'm at in the Great Lakes area about halfway between Detroit and Chicago. Fresh produce and the healthier alternatives typically sell for a premium price. It's fairly standard supermarket/food industry practice to charge a premium price for items that carry what they consider to be marketing buzz-words to be monetized. Anything that can be labeled with (or could be said to naturally be) "fresh", "organic", "low fat", "all natural", "diet", "sugar free", "low cholesterol", "low sodium", etc etc always costs more than the less-"healthy" alternatives.
At typical food prices in this area and with what a poor person receives in food stamps, it's a struggle to simply get enough calories of any kind to last them all month. Eating a healthy diet as recommended by the FLOTUS and others would mean that this poor person would probably run out of food somewhere around the end of the third week of the month, maybe sooner. Either that, or be undernourished to some degree all month.
That's the reality many face; do they choose to eat unhealthy or go without eating some days, or not eat enough any day.
Strat
It's always been cheaper to eat good food than to buy junk food.
Not where I'm at in the Great Lakes area about halfway between Detroit and Chicago. Fresh produce and the healthier alternatives typically sell for a premium price.
I wasn't referring to "organic" or "premium foods". That's part of the problem - people are either too picky or just can't cook.
Cheap pasta, dried beans, rice, tinned tomatoes, onions, rolled oats, sultanas, desiccated coconut, flour, drum of olive oil, a cheap loaf of french or italian "home" style bread unsliced. Those things are cheap. Everywhere, all year round. Add in whatever is cheap in season - carrots? celery? cabbage? potatoes? How about some cheap canned tuna? some eggs (to be used with the flour), maybe a bit of rump steak and some kidneys if you're a meat eater (but not every meal, or as the majority of a meal), throw in a packet of tea (not bags) or coffee (cheapest vacuum packed - *not* instant). A few spices - food doesn't have to be boring - pepper, cinnamon, chilli, cheap minced garlic. All those things can be bought once a week - no need to spend hours shopping every days.
A kilo of block of cheap cheese stretched over a couple of weeks. Notice I didn't put sugar, milk, or chocolate on the list - except for bread everything has only one ingredient. (quantities are per person)
People are dumb, and lazy - both handicaps can be overcome *if* they want. Those ingredients will supply the more vitamins than junkfood - without missing out on the required *protein* (not calories - that comes later)
Sure - people who are used to high salt, fat, and sugar foods will not find it interesting - easy fixed. Go to bed hungry. Hunger is the best sauce.
But people go from one extreme to another - they either eat junk food which is not cheap - or they buy premium "health" food. Most of which goes to waste. The bigger the fridge - the more waste.
An apple a day is nice, maybe a banana. But even if you only eat a plum or an apple a week you're better off than if you ate one of those choko/apple things from Maccas every day. Rolled oats with some sultanas and coconut - soak for ten minutes in boiling water - add some milk and it's breakfast.
People watch all those fucking gourmet cooking shows when all that's needed is simple things - doesn't mean they can't taste nice. And most everyone can find somewhere to grow a few herbs - bit of parsley, some basil. Why does it have to be either Pizza Hut and Pepsi Colonic or snowpea and mango salad? It's nice to have fresh tomatoes - but it's hard to justify the cost when it's not the local season - and they've got fuck all heath benefits when they've been trucked/flown 2000 miles. And orange ju