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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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.........
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, 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.
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...
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.
" 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.
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
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).