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The Downside to Low Gas Prices
HughPickens.com writes Pat Garofalo writes in an op-ed in US News & World Report that with the recent drop in oil prices, there's something policymakers can do that will offset at least some of the negative effects of the currently low prices, while also removing a constant thorn in the side of American transportation and infrastructure policy: Raise the gas tax. The current 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax has not been raised since 1993, making it about 11 cents per gallon today, in constant dollars. Plus, as fuel efficiency has gotten better and Americans have started driving less, the tax has naturally raised less revenue anyway. And that's a problem because the tax fills the Highway Trust Fund, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, broke so that in recent years Congress has had to patch it time and time again to fill the gap. According to the Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman, if Congress doesn't make a move, "it will fumble one of those rare opportunities when the economic and policy stars align almost perfectly." The increase can be phased in slowly, a few cents per month, perhaps, so that the price of gas doesn't jump overnight. When prices eventually do creep back up thanks to economic factors, hopefully the tax will hardly be noticed.
Consumers are already starting to buy the sort of gas-guzzling vehicles, including Hummers, that had been going out of style as gas prices rose; that's bad for both the environment and consumers, because gas prices are inevitably going to increase again. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taxes last year, even before the current drop in prices, made up 12 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, down from 28 percent in 2000. And compared to other developed countries, US gas taxes are pretty much a joke. While we're at it, an even better idea, as a recent report from the Urban Institute makes clear, would be indexing the gas tax to inflation, so this problem doesn't consistently arise. "The status quo simply isn't sustainable, from an infrastructure or environmental perspective," concludes Garofalo. "So raise the gas tax now; someday down the line, it will look like a brilliant move."
Consumers are already starting to buy the sort of gas-guzzling vehicles, including Hummers, that had been going out of style as gas prices rose; that's bad for both the environment and consumers, because gas prices are inevitably going to increase again. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taxes last year, even before the current drop in prices, made up 12 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, down from 28 percent in 2000. And compared to other developed countries, US gas taxes are pretty much a joke. While we're at it, an even better idea, as a recent report from the Urban Institute makes clear, would be indexing the gas tax to inflation, so this problem doesn't consistently arise. "The status quo simply isn't sustainable, from an infrastructure or environmental perspective," concludes Garofalo. "So raise the gas tax now; someday down the line, it will look like a brilliant move."
Simply change the tax structure on commercial trucks which are the ones that do all the damage to the roads and highways. You fuel efficient Toyota Prius couldn't damage the road if it tried.
I don't own a car.
Gee, 0.001% of consumers are now buying gas guzzlers so PANIC!!!! Meanwhile the rest of us drive as little as possible and enjoy saving $10-20 a week on gas prices. I live in California. The problem with raising the gas tax is that money goes into the cesspool that is the general fund, instead of being dedicated to roads and bridges. How can giving the bozos in Sacramento more money to piss away ever be considered a Good Thing (tm) ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Prior to the 1956 Highway Revenue Act and the establishment of the Highway Trust Fund roads were financed directly from the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury. The 1956 Act directed federal fuel tax to the fund to be used exclusively for highway construction and maintenance. The Highway Revenue Act mandated a tax of three cents per gallon.
It's been a political ping pong ball, and whenever I read the word "consumer" I think "stupid". seriously think of the implications of calling people " consumers, the psychology there.
It's very much like a rancher discussing his cattle.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I don't on a car!
"The increase can be phased in slowly, a few cents per month, perhaps, so that the price of gas doesn't jump overnight."
Oh yeah, because that never happens today when Puxatawnie Camel farts in the wrong direction...give me a break.
Gas prices sometimes vary 10% on a weekly basis. So when prices are down by 25% for a single month, the do-gooders want to raise it back up and "hope" we won't notice when gas costs rise back to their "normal" levels? So I should expect $5 a gallon gas when prices restabilize? I pay surcharges on shipping, trash hauling and a number of other services because of high prices. Fuel prices are one on the reasons the economy has had trouble recovering.
Take your social engineering tax and go suck my balls. When I get 20% annual raises, you can ask too.
How about raise the top income tax brackets to fill the hole? That way it's not hurting low-income individuals and families.
Although the world seems to focus on America, we must remember that aside from subsidized countries like Venezuela, Americans enjoy an average gas price that is much less than the global averages. That said, we must understand that the recent movement in crude prices is in direct correlation to the ongoing strategy that the United States has with choking off Russian monetary supplies. It's not a conspiracy theorist and as a pure market technician, which can be defined in my book The Market is not Random., the market foretold this sell off going all the way back to the swing sell in May...
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artlu.net
I can agree the gas tax needs to go up, particularly the federal one. Will congress agree? I doubt it.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
I wonder who's actually behind this message? I mean, most folks aren't exactly going to come up with a mythical downside to "low gas prices". Who even goes, "Oh my god, gas prices are too low!" when they wake up in the morning?
No one. No one who isn't in the gas industry. Lower gas prices mean higher possible margins for those selling gas. Low gas prices mean you get more money for your buck on your long drive to work, that your bread costs less in the store, etc, etc, ad nauseum. .
So if "consumer" connotes a livestock mentality, then what's a better word for "someone who buys a thing other than to use it to make other things that he can sell"?
I think politician have just seen an example of what happens when you raise taxes, at least here in Maryland. If you must social engineer, then there are better ways than taxes.
Gee, the government isn't siphoning as much money out of Americans wallets, as the bureaucrats in Washington, DC were hoping for. That's a major problem, a crisis of unprecedented proportion, isn't it?
Don't you stupid drivers know that the only reason you're driving is to put more money into the government's pocket?
...is "broke" because we're funding a lot of things out of it that aren't highways.
If the money was used as originally intended - to fund building and maintenance of the Interstate highway system - it would be brimming with cash. Instead, it's also being used for lots of other projects, like mass transit, bicycle paths, and landscaping for roads. About a quarter of the income from the HTF goes to non-highway projects.
Oddly enough, if you moved the non-highway spending out of the Highway Trust Fund, it would be completely solvent, with a decent surplus for more highway spending on things like bridge repair.
Taxing necessities such as food, clothing, and fuel is bullshit since it punishes the poorest the most and merely enables a greedy, overbearing government to become even greedier and more overbearing. Here's a thought - legalize vices and tax them. Rather than spending billions on failed attempts to change human nature, it's far more productive to legalize vices and gain revenue from them.
- Signed, The American Empire Party
Every dollar taken away from a citizen to be spent by the lawmakers and bureaucrats, robs the citizen of his freedom to spend that money the way he would have chosen.
Illiberals, of course, love that. Statists, as somebody put it, gonna state. Their sheep are bleating, that they "love" paying taxes because with them, you see, they are "buying civilization" — the irony of using the term referring to a volitional act to describe a mandatory wealth-transfer escaping them...
Why do the rest of us even listen to these types — instead of running them out tarred and feathered?
Yeah, and so is the Postal Service — despite raising its prices several-fold — and so is, pretty much, everything the government runs. What tax-increase would Pat Garofalo propose, to compensate the USPS for people sending fewer things by mail?
To enter (or leave) New York by car, one has many options — most of them involving a toll of $10+ (in addition to the fuel-taxes). Why can't those bridges and tunnels be privately owned and compete with each other? Maybe then they'll start treating drivers as a profit opportunity, rather than a nuisance... And fight back the toll-collectors' union thugs — those aren't exactly demanding jobs, but they pay over $30/hour, because the money does not currently come from the pockets of the people approving pay-increases.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C.S. Lewis
A week back the BBC posted a chart comparing world gas prices. Might be of interest:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-21238363
You're saving money; that's bad. Check.
You don't know to do with the savings; that's bad. Check.
Gasoline contains carbon; that's bad. Check.
You drive a car;; that's bad. Check.
You're bad. Check.
Want to feel better?
Give more money to government.
They'll hire brainy MIT types because us Americans are too stupid.
Mainly because the rest of us aren't in a some kind of a hillbilly echo-chamber constantly circle-jerking while chanting "fuck you, got mine".
You're a stereotypical lying progressive. You're so ignorant that you can't ID the problem, propose a regressive tax for the solution, and so pompous that you don't realize that this is already addressed. The diesel tax is punitively higher than the gasoline tax. This has driven us to more-polluting gasoline engines instead of diesels. Further, the Prius, being very heavy for its class, causes disproportionate damage to roads.
Find another way of funding the HTF that doesn't rely upon bleeding more gas money from people.
People drive less and buy more fuel efficient vehicles because the price of gas is so fucking high. Lower the price and people will drive more because the amount they spend on gas every month won't be the same as their rent.
Basic Economics 101. Not surprising it goes right over their heads.
Damage to roads is usually considered proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. Cars are generally calculated to average 2 tons, even "big" SUVs aren't usually as heavy as their size might imply. I don't like SUVs either, but that's no excuse for bad policy. According to this GAO report, a fully-loaded tractor-trailer does as much damage to the roads as at least 9,600 cars. Fuel consumption is proportional to weight at low speeds, and at higher speeds wind resistance rises as the square of velocity; it is obvious just looking at the exponents that a simple fuel tax will not tax large vehicles in proportion to the damage that they cause. Taxing consumers as opposed to commercial vehicles is a terrible idea; it would have the effect of subsidizing heavy vehicular traffic. If we're going to subsidize freight, we should invest in rail infrastructure.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The evidence for "people are starting to buy Hummers" again (even though a new H2 hasn't come off the assembly line in 5 years, the H1 in 8 years):
"As for those Hummers? Autotrader.com said interest in Hummer H1s on its site rose 11 percent last month, making it the fastest-growing older model among all vehicles."
It doesn't take much interest to go from "0" to an 11% rise.
And this:
“We’ve sold a few just in the last few weeks,” said Blake Sharkey, an assistant sales manager at Stadium Auto in Arlington, Texas.
THEY SOLD 2 IN TEXAS THAT WERE ON A LOT, EVERYBODY FREAK THE F**K OUT!!!
The stupidity of people will always amaze me. Sure the tax will go away when needed... Just like the death tax that was put into place to pay for World War 2. That will go away once that is over too right? Right guys?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
We all complain because gas prices are so high. So what is the first thing we do when gas prices finally drop a bit? Talk about how we can raise them again.
All taxes to the Federal Government go into one pile. This includes SS, Medicare, etc. 'Trust Fund' is only on paper.
The US spends ~3.x trillion a year, but only takes in 2.x trillion, borrowing 1.x trillion per year. The US debt is ~17 Trillion, growing at 1.x Trillion per year.
Historically, the total amount of revenue the US government can remove from GDP per year is between 16 and 22%, but it has never been the same in consecutive years. When the US has changed tax rates, the US population changes its behavior. When the government increased taxes in one area, people immediately acted to reduce their involvement, or had to reduce their involvement in a different area.
Increasing taxes on gasoline will only cause people to spend less money somewhere else. And even if magic was used to force people to pay more without changing their behavior anywhere else, the Highway 'Trust Fund' would only grow on paper, and the extra revenue would end up being spent where ever the current crop of politicians decided it would best help themselves.
Taxes on gasoline are unfair because the poor end up paying a larger percentage of their income compared to the rich.
We need a yearly Federal tax on vehicles that is a function of the car's sticker price and MPG, along with a small tax on a gallon of gas.
lower consumer prices are always a good thing for the majority
There are numerous down sides to cheaper gas. And in some situations there is an upside as well. For example food prices are already out of control due to several factors including global warming. Since big agriculture nust purchase lots of fuel a lower fuel bill may enable lower prices at the grocery store after a few months go by. We also have people in remote and rural areas who are very hard hit by gas prices. When the nearest store is 75 miles from home those 150 mile round trips to the grocery store add up fast.
But the downsides include more global warming due to burning oil and gas products. Research also suffers when the trend is to buy petro driven gear. And sales of electric cars and hybrid cars also suffer.
Really we probably need to do the exact opposite of what some states have done. Some states apply a tax to electric vehicles under the guise that they don't pay fuel taxes. Perhaps we should be sending real checks to people who drive electric cars and put higher taxes on conventional engined vehicles so that people are pushed towards buying electric cars. And maybe we should pay people who install solar power or wind power for their dwellings and businesses and place a tax penalty for those who remain on the grid.
Please don't raise my damn taxes. Also, the government is the *beneficiary* of inflation, the consumers are the loser when currency inflates. It's nonsensical to even speak of a government tax fund "losing" money to inflation. How do you think inflation happens? Magical inflation fairies? Inflation happens because the government choses to inflate the currency for the benefit of government coffers by printing more money (not physical paper, but by increasing the virtual money supply). Inflation is also known as "How the government robs citizens of the future to pay for shit citizens of the present want now, so that they can buy votes without seeming to raise the tax money needed to pay for them".
Because those drivers will pass on the cost to their customers. Commercial traffic uses more gas per mile, so they end up paying more to use the road than passenger vehicles, so you're claim that passenger vehicles are subsidizing the commercial traffic is not correct.
The wonderful thing about markets is that human activity adjusts to whatever economic reality is out there, just as we adapted over time to any given set of conditions in nature. Whenever some parameter in the economy changes, a constituency somewhere feels pain. If the oil price rises or the oil price falls, someone gets hurt and has to readjust. Every squawk makes the news; people who are happier at the change that just occurred are the ones who keep quiet and enjoy it.
Here it comes, the good sounding arguments for absorbing an asset of the mass of people. The macro-parasite identifies, targets, and absorbs any asset of the mass and does it with increasing efficiency due to technology. Interest rates on savings are essentially zero, transferring well over 400 billion dollars from the mass to banks since 2008 (Stockman, The Great Deformation, pg.583) because that part of the macro-parasite is "too big to fail." Now the government part of the macro-parasite is set to absorb the asset of more money in the pockets of the mass from declining energy costs by increasing taxes. How about the government handling it's costs more effectively instead? How about cutting spending instead of going on a spending binge? No, that unexpected decrease in fuel costs to the mass (gasoline and home heating oil) has got the macro-parasite drooling like a starving dog before a steak, and that increased tax money will go into general revenues and ultimately be used to increase the reelection prospects of politicians by bribing electorates with their own money. How about letting the people have a win for a change?
E Proelio Veritas.
We stop using "tax the fucking citizens" as our go-to everytime something is broken?
My suggestion: stop pouring $billions in subsidies, tax incentives, sweetheart land-use deals etc at the petro companies, and then let them sell their gasoline at market-necessary pricing?
-Styopa
Seriously, the ideal way is to raise diesel and gas by .1/gal each year for the next 5-10 years. At that point, index it to inflation. Note, that this will then encourage Americans to buy high mileage vehicles only as initial posting says and which Europe has already done.
BUT, the question becomes, where should the money go? The diesel tax should go exclusively to DOT who then uses it only federal highways, dams, etc. It must be infrastructure use ONLY.
The gas money should likewise, go to the state in which it was collected. Keep in mind that in general cars are generally local vehicles. This must also be infrastructure only.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Semis burn 5x more fuel yet cause 80x more damage.
Cost should be passed on to those that cause it.
Well, I guess that's a matter of opinion, so calling it an "upside" or "downside" shouldn't be part of the title.
In any case, the fairest way to pay for roads is some form of general-revenue, as those who don't use them still benefit from well-maintained roads, and a use tax.
Ideally, a use tax would charge all drivers for their "fair share" of the wear-and-tear on the roads and the building of new ones. Heavier vehicles would pay more, those who drive more would pay more. Until recent decades, fuel taxes were pretty fair in this sense. Electric cars and even very-high-efficiency (40+ MPG for a full-sized car) fundamentally changed this.
Unfortunately, the only fair way I can think of to tax "by the mile" today is either to have the odometer inspected every year, which will encourage odometer fraud, self-reporting, which is even more vulnerable to fraud, or using a tamper-resistant and tamper-evident "black box" in the car, which is likely to open a pandora's box of privacy implications (sadly, that box is probably already opened).
Perhaps we need a better proxy for fuel taxes. Replacing the fuel tax with a tax on tires based on their rated life might work, but it might also have the side-effect of encouraging people to delay replacing tires, which is not safe. It would also create sticker-shock when it came time to replace tires.
About the only reason to tax fuels other than for funding roads would be to encourage the use of fuel-efficient vehicles or to just tax fuels like most other products with a sales tax and put the money into the general revenue fund.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"We have this huge problem of paying to little for gas, how can we fix that"
I'm Sorry, say what! You sir, must have gotten to many concussions from anyone you said that to in person.
Whats wrong with people like you. They raise the tax cause of some BS reason or another promising it's only temporary, But never remove it.
Followed by, Waiting just long enough they feel everyone has forgotten the last BS excuse So a new one can be used to do it again. Frankly, how many times can a Tax be increased for the same thing, but never actually go towards what it was intended, without people catching on. Infinity apparently,
What do bridges and tunnels have to do with roads? There is no profit in building a road, that is why the government does it. Nobody likes taxes but some are necessary. Why is that so hard to understand?
The USPS hasn't raised prices several-fold. The price for a stamp has gone down in inflation adjusted terms since 1975. And we all know WHY the USPS is broke. Not because it can't deliver letters, but because it's being forced by Congress to prefund its pension/healthcare/workers comp funds to an absurd extent, and not permitted to invest in anything but government bonds.
Bridges have a natural monopoly over their local environment. In fact, in NYC there are completely free options to get out of the city, but most people still use the toll bridges because time equals money, and most people aren't willing to drive five miles out of their way in traffic to save $7.50 or $10.00. With that in mind, why would a private bridge owner have any incentive to lower prices? They would be like cable companies, using their monopoly to gauge consumers to the greatest extent possible. Prices would likely go up since the owners would be completely unaccountable to their customers.
And btw it might be decent in some parts of the country but $30/hr is a shitty wage in NYC.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Does one exist for ass clowns like Pat Garofalo? I certainly hope so.
Index fuel taxes to inflation. Gas eaters pay more. Long distance drivers pay more. econoboxes pay less. grandma, going to the market once a week, pays less. No violation of privacy, no odo readings, we put off the realtime "govt car tracking service" a bit longer. Oh, and this only works if the money stays for roads and bridges....OK, I see why politicians will not let this simple system work.....
... it will never happen with a Republican Congress.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
Seriously, where we went wrong on this, is that the hummer is the ideal vehicle to convert into a series hybrid. With electric motors, it would have great torque similar to what Tesla has.
BUT, the smart thing to do, is to not have one large engine/gen, but 2 or more smaller units in the hummer. By making these smaller units, they can use them in a number of other vehicles. In addition, it simplifies maintenance. Just pull it out and replace it with another one that was fixed.
Sadly, GM is STILL ran by MBA's and not engineers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Doesn't matter much, it's the same people that drive their cars that also buy supplies that require trucking.
To enter (or leave) New York by car, one has many options â" most of them involving a toll of $10+ (in addition to the fuel-taxes). Why can't those bridges and tunnels be privately owned and compete with each other? Maybe then they'll start treating drivers as a profit opportunity, rather than a nuisance...
I'm guessing you don't know much about privately owned roads/bridges/tunnels, because they're de facto natural monopolies.
Not only because of the very high initial costs, but also because the private companies enter into contracts with the State that exclude the construction of alternatives. Without that exclusivity, no private company would ever recoup its initial and ongoing costs. And even if there were alternatives, the discussion has only moved from the ills of a monopoly to the almost exact same ills that exist in an oligopoly.
Honestly, it sounds like your problem is with the Constitution, which gives government the power to collect taxes and establish (post) roads.
This really isn't the best windmill to be tilting at.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
There is a MUCH easier way to solve taxes on electric cars that does not involve having the feds spy on everybody.
.01 per KWH tax on businesses that provide charging from the hours of 7 am until say 9 pm. This approach helps lower your electricity costs, while at the same time, paying MORE than what gas/diesel does for the hybrids.
First off, you need to realize that electric and hybrids are less than 1% of 1% of all cars. IOW, they do not amount to a hill of beans at this time.
Secondly, if an electric car charges at nighttime ONLY, this will actually lower our electric rates. The reason is that it increases demand on electricity during the nighttime and helps even out the loads. As such, it enables electric companies to move away from expensive peaking plants and increase base plants instead.
Third, hybrids and small electric cars, regularly plug-in during the daytime mostly at businesses. That increases the daytime load on electricity usage. That is the WORST time to do so.
With the above knowledge, the smart thing to do is to put a
Where it does not solve this, is the cars like Tesla which has enough nighttime charge so as to avoid this. Down the road, these cars can simply notify the owner and base of how much is owed.
Issue solved.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If only to hear rich liberals scream and whine that now only rich people can afford gas. And of that $100, $98 should be taxes.
Here's an old podcast from last year, that sums up the problem pretty well in Connecticut...sorry for the length but it's pretty interesting and still relevant: http://ctmirror.org/truth-behi...
The problem that they do NOT use the gas tax for roads. Most of it gets wasted on k-12.
Gas tax v. other countries: that's nice, but we're not a nanny state.
The gas tax is a fixed number of cents per-gallon, not a percentage of the price. It's 18.4 cents currently at the federal level. States have gas taxes; most of them use a fixed number of cents per gallon. As inflation unfolds (both in the form of economic inflation and in the form of increasing oil prices – remember that oil is required for pretty much all highway maintenance), the tax revenue in real terms shrinks and is able to accomplish less and less. The last time the federal gas tax was raised was in 1993; it rose 4.4 cents to its current value of 18.4 cents. Do you remember what a gallon of fuel cost in 1993? Hint: it was less than a dollar. Raising the gas tax at this point isn't much different than the postal service raising the price of a stamp, or a transit service raising their fare. You may not like it, you may remember a time 50 years ago when you were in high school and everything seemed cheap, but it's a reality of the economic system. Inflation happens, and prices/taxes go up in real-dollar terms to maintain their purchasing power in the face of increasing prices. For what it's worth, the federal tax on a gallon of gasoline, as a percentage of its price, was at one of the lowest points its ever been as recently as 2009.
Don't bother posting more talking points from your AM radio show, because I won't be back to read them.
They use trucks to only transport car parts now?
What are you solar fanboiz going to do when the sun burns out?
dumbfuck
So eating is a basic necessity of life, and we need to provide a social safety net that people don not starve, but meals above a bare subsistence level are a luxury good?
I have heard Conservatives argue that instead of Welfare and Foodstamps, we should just have these government stores where everyone can purchase as much whole-wheat flour, lard, and powdered milk as they want, and if a person wanted more than these subsistence food items, they should just get off the couch and work a few hours?
Actually, this plan has been tried out. I heard that "fry bread" became a Native American specialty owing to a Federal food program. Many Native Americans bear the genetic legacy of their ancestors being hunters adapted to feast-or-famine, where the modern diet leads to Type 2 Diabetes and other problems, but the Federal program was well-meaning, and I am getting off topic.
Oh, and then there is cheese, Reagan's cheese. Reagan got to cut back on the safety net and make up for it with free cheese -- solved the ag surplus and urban hunger problems in one step. I actually got to eat some -- Mom told me "you're eating it" when Grandma queued up at the Senior Center for the cheese and she put packets of it in Christmas baskets for the college-bound grandkids. Mmmm, mmm, mmm, that was good eatin'!
Oh, did I tell you that illegal drugs are one of the great social burdens that society has the duty to discourage any way it can? Yeah, yeah, most of the harm from drugs comes from the War on Drugs -- highest incarceration rate among our trading partners, dirty needles/impure drugs, racial impact, police corruption -- but if these drugs were not illegal, everyone would stay at home stoned out of their minds and no work would get done, like China under the British thumb? Besides, a drug habit is really a "luxury good" that you can get by without if you are poor, and if you are wealthy, you can afford the cost of rehab when addiction gets the better of you?
So here is what a Midwestern governor wants to do next -- drug-test food-aid recipients.
So here I am, working for my food, being very careful to eat healthy and stay within a budget, and I am in line behind a rag-proletarian buying all manners of expensive junk food who pulls out an EBT card? And you know a lot of that "stuff" gets traded for drugs? Why should a government food program support beyond the bare necessities of wheat flour, lard, and dry milk -- anything more is a luxury. Twinkies and sodas are certainly a luxury offering personal harm and social harm when he have to pay for your dialysis, whether consumed directly for a sugar-high or traded for a more industrial-strength high?
The argument against what the Governor wants to do (apart from the chance of being blown up in a court challenge on Equal Protection and Unreasonable Search and Seizure grounds) is human dignity. You have people who need government aid to buy food who probably have a drab life to begin with, and you (well, maybe not you, but the Right Wing) want to deny them the pleasure of eating Froot Loops. Deny them the personal choice between spending their EBT funds on Froot Loops or substituting Mom's Best Wheat Squares (a "generic" no added-sugar no-salt whole grain alternative)?
What the Right Wing wants to do with the poor, others want to impose on the Middle Class? So a personal auto is deemed monumentally destructive, but have you checked out the Federal stats on transit districts and that owing to off-peak service, deadhead return trips during rush hour, a Diesel bus breaks even with a two-person carpool in CO2 emissions? You want all of those excise taxes and our Governor wants to trade food for a sample of your bodily fluids? What price human dignity? What price human liberty?
Those bridges were built with public money on public land, and have been publicly maintained. Don't like it? I'm all for private sector entry and competition involving bridge/tunnel transportation, but... build a new bridge or tunnel first, rather than trying to acquire then squeeze rents out of existing property that belongs to someone else.
Some of those highway workers are paid exorbitant amounts of money.
Secondly I think we should charge a hefty per-mile fee on commercial trucks.
No you've got your own circle jerk chanting "fuck you, gimme yours"
There is no political will to raise gas taxes. Hell, liberal Massachusetts just voted to decouple their gas tax from inflation, and the Democratic-dominated state government dare not speak the word tax even though none of them will ever face a credible reelection threat. Besides, raising the gas tax means that some of the magic fairies that go out after midnight and fill potholes and repair bridges will have to be let go. Why do you hate them so?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"hillbilly echo-chamber constantly circle-jerking while chanting "fuck you, got mine"."
Oh, really?
What type of echo-chamber do you circle-jerk in, and what mindless mantra do you chant?
That's only true if you compare to gasoline consumption during the economic bubble from 2003-2008. If you look over a longer period, gas tax revenue is the highest it's been since before 2003 in nominal dollars, and is roughly the average it's been from 1990-2014 in inflation-adjusted dollars. The tax is due for an increase to counter inflation, not because of the reasons TFS cites.
Federal gas tax revenue (fig 6-2) has never been enough to cover highway construction and maintenance expenses (figure 6-3). The gap has always been made up by state fuel taxes and other revenue.
Yeah, it's everyone elses fault. You don't buy anything right? Something like 85% of all cargo moved around the US is done by truck because the rail system is shit and inefficient compared to the roadway system. So pretty much everything everyone buys, moves by truck.
When I look at fuel costs, the consumer at the pump is probably the bottom rung of ladder. Lower fuel brings construction costs down (what you think a loader, grader, excavator or a crane run on batteries?), and makes it cheaper to move bulk goods. Anyone saying this is all bad because the gas tax is not high enough already has problems. The gas tax has not changed, so right now it's generating more revenue because more fuel is being sold.
You want more cash into state and federal highway transportation taxes? Then stop wasting money with on bloated government and pork barrel spending. Any additional taxation is just going to either be mismanaged and diverted into non-essential service projects or to go into programs for people who are not putting anything back into the flow, latest one this month? Let's use blanket amnesty for illegals.
So build more Rail you say? Can't do that because even if you try to re-open an old rail spur that's already got track everyone freaks out because then there's going to be a train near them. So they'll bitch about the trains, they'll bitch about the traffic and meanwhile nothing changes.
You know how great the average person's perspective on taxes is? A town near me has a small auto mall. 3 dealerships. One of them (Nissan) went out of business 7 years ago. The building is zoned Auto-Dealer only. So for the last 7 years, no dealer has wanted to move into that space & the building has generated nothing but property taxes. There was a plan to change it to general commercial, it had to go to a general town vote. There were already new businesses lined up to use the space, (3-4 restaurants, office space etc). The town decided in the mid-term elections that they would rather leave 50k+ sq ft of Class-A office/retail space unused and hope that 'sometime' in the future a car dealer would move into it vs. actually having the space used and generating sales taxes etc. Except if that happens now there will probably be protests against it because since nothing else is in the parking lot for that space the building owner has turned the parking lot into boat and rv storage. So if anyone does try to move into it, the people in town are all going to be up in arms about how they have to find a new place to store their rv/boats whatever and how this is such a great travisty...
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It's not often I see an entire /. article written by a troll.
Well played sir.
Just no. If you need money for roads (because 40 percent of my income is somehow not yet enough to do simple things like maintain roads), take it out of the budget for the EPA, FDA, NSA, and the ED. All those agencies could be halved in size and the country would be better for it.
The others, apparently including you, are in the hipster echo-chamber constantly circle-jerking while chanting, "fuck you, I'm gonna take yours".
Part of the highway trust fund deals with expanding capacity, which is directly related to the quantity, not damage, the vehicles produce. If we didn't have cars on the road, we wouldn't need such a massive network of roads with high capacity. In that sense, there has to be a mod on the calculation based purely on the existence of more traffic on the road, not just its weight.
Overall, the damage done by the trucking is worth subsidising slightly. (5x the fuel, 80x the damage, which means fuel-to-damage ratio is 1:16, if 16 people benefit from the truck's behavior it has paid for itself.
In general, more than 16 people would benefit from a semi full of groceries. Therefore damage-to-fuel-per-head-benefit beats your car. I would say over a hundred people would benefit from a semi full of groceries. So even if you have 4 people car-pooling every day you are still doing worse off than a truck. (Almost twice as bad as a grocery truck).
People drive more, buy less-efficient vehicles, thus buying more gas and increasing gas tax revenue. What was the problem again?
Which should be folded into the cost of those supplies rather than the cost of something else.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Just a note. The word 'gauge' rhymes with 'sage', and it means to measure something, or a device that measures. The word 'gouge' sounds like 'ouch' with a j, and means to scoop or dig. You meant 'gouge'.
Civilization costs money, so why don't you guys just come out and say that you only want it for the rich and the bourgeois. The proles can all move out of their three bedroom apartments into Philippine-style shantytowns. No more public roads for them, nor education nor drinking water that can be used without boiling. Libertarianism = sociopathy + willful ignorance + greed.
Inflation. Google it.
Why don't you pull your head out of your ass and read up on the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Because you aren't going to get competition, you're going to get consolidation and monopoly rates. Standard Oil and railroad barons, Google them too.
It's also people who don't drive much. Sounds like an argument for pulling money out of the general fund.
Everyone blames republicans for killing the USPS but nobody can explain how it happened with a democratic majority in congress at the time. Who is behind this and what is the outcome supposed to be? Personally I don't care if the USPS goes under. My service from them is so awful.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I thought the Jersey Turnpike was a private company back in the 18th or 19th century. Thing is, I don't know if was in contract with the state government or what. There are only so many places you can build a road or bridge. A private road or bridge could function in the public interest (with some laws/regulations on what's allowed). On the other hand, even government-owned roads and bridges likely have private companies (contractors or sub-contractors) working on repairs and whatnot.
There's a limit to everything. There's a limit to what governments can do. There's a limit to what corporations can do. There's a limit on private citizens as well.
Without that exclusivity, no private company would ever recoup its initial and ongoing costs.
This sounds extremely dubious.
I LOVE listening to Americans gripe about gas prices. When here we are in Canada doing a dance cause gas is at 4.50 a gallon. Considering we usually pay around $6 a gallon. Its funny to see griping at $4. Yet there Americans are, griping. I think they would gripe even if it were free. Complain they still have to pump it, or no free Big Gulp.
Semis burn 5x more fuel yet cause 80x more damage.
Is that taking into account traffic volume, as a typical loaded tractor trailer is going to cause several thousand times the damage as a typical sedan.
College, in go the youths out come the Marxist control freaks. After the deaths of tens of millions in the last century no one has learned.
as the latter part of the submission makes clear this is all about "gas guzzlers" and poster's hatred of freedom of consumer choice.
Can't wait for all the fossil fuel die hards to watch their ridiculously subsidized infrastructure crumble before their eyes, while they complain to me about solar energy subsidies.
A prius is putting over 3000 lbs of force into a few square centimeters of roadway surface.
It does not cause as much damage as a fully-loaded big rig, but it does cause significant damage.
Look at the left-lanes of highways that are full of road damage. They were not caused by commercial trucks (which are banned from using them) but by cars, SUV's, and pickups.
Our current culture in the US, where unsustainable transportation (driving personal automobiles) is prioritized over sustainable transit, needs to change, and the sooner the better.
The hope would be that people would start building sustainable transit BEFORE the roadways reached their breaking point, but cities like Atlanta, LA, and Houston have proved that humans really are not that smart.
At some point, you have to stop building endless low density suburbs and start infilling with high density transit corridors. The sooner this is done, the less severe the transportation and pollution problems will be in American cities.
Also, in cities like San Francisco or New York, you can bicycle over 50 miles to work, because the metropolitan area has put in options like trains, subways, and ferries which extend the range of the bicycle.
Shale oil was merely a blip in the decreasingly available amount of fossil fuel sources.
Good thinking argStyopa!
Doesn't matter much, it's the same people that drive their cars that also buy supplies that require trucking.
So what? You're artificially buoying up industries that perhaps shouldn't be. Nearly all of our shipping is done over the road, due to cost and convenience. Make roadway shipping pay to repair its fair share of damage done to the roadway. Initially, shipping costs will rise. Costs for all products would rise across the board as those increased operating costs trickle down to consumers. Over time, those companies will find new ways to reduce costs. Money would be pumped into the rail system, expanding and modernizing it to improve speed and throughput. Manufacturing would become more regionally diverse so less has to be shipped across the country. Fewer vehicles on the road means lower traffic congestion. Less roadway maintenance further means lower traffic congestion. Locomotives are more efficient per unit of shipped material are more easily managed in terms of emissions. Fixed, limited access railways can be more easily converted to electric.
The trucking industry would suffer, unquestionably, but it's a much more complicated issue than you give it credit for, and perhaps the advantages in other areas outweigh those effects.
Those numbers already take into account the difference in traffic volume. An individual loaded tractor trailer causes several thousand times the damage as a single sedan. In other words, there would have to be 80x the volume of passenger traffic on the road to cause the same amount of damage as present truck traffic.
Getting *so fucking tired* of these windbag half-Eurosocialist opinion pieces masquerading as pleas for social justice. "News for nerds, stuff that matters!" You may have taken it off the front page, but at least *try* to stick to the format ok?
The whole premise here is "low gas prices are BAD because Americans aren't suffering enough for their evil ways. But they'll suffer more if we raise gas taxes, so let's do that! Oh and we're all fine with applying the thumbscrews the tightest to the people who can afford it the least." Look. I'm absolutely in favor of energy efficiency, in automobiles and everywhere else. I'm even in favor of social justice! But this shit is getting old.
So we just phase-in the tax slowly, because AMERICANS ARE STUPID and they will never notice.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Seriously, the ideal way is to raise diesel and gas by .1/gal each year for the next 5-10 years. At that point, index it to inflation. Note, that this will then encourage Americans to buy high mileage vehicles only as initial posting says and which Europe has already done.
Instead, we are getting mileage mandates over 50 mpg. Automakers are turning to turbocharged GDI (gasoline direct injection) engines to finally give us the efficiency we've (well, some of us) been demanding for ages. They've pretty much all got problems with fouling of intake valves, because there's no fuel spray to clean the recirculated crankcase vapors off of them. They can be cleaned poorly if you remove the intake manifold, or well if you remove the head completely. The problem is only really eliminated by dry sumping. Some manufacturers are experimenting with a little occasional extra valve overlap, but that has ramifications for valve lifespan and heat transfer. But we'd have all those same problems no matter why we were shooting for higher efficiency targets.
The best thing about simply mandating higher efficiency is that the automakers have all gone forth and done their best to solve the problem separately, and we'll get to see which approach wins. But plug-in hybrids with TGDI engines seem to be emerging as the "next generation" efficiency package. The numbers on the BMW i8, for example, are pretty fantastic... including the price tag. I fantasize about having that much cash to blow on a car. I keep hoping that battery technology will make practical* pure EVs cheap, but it hasn't happened yet.
* I live in the boonies, and I don't want to live in a city until we do away with cars in them
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You have to be kidding. The I8 is pure junk. Low MPG. A price tag that is much higher than a Model S. Unable to hold 5 passengers with cargo, let alone 7. And the price tag is much higher than the Model S.
The good news is, that within 3 years, when Model 3 hits the market, it will force all of the major car companies to make serious changes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
OK, so you want to build a competing bridge?
Where do you put it? You are going to have to buy the land, and there is no guarantee that the landowners on both sides will sell. (and you don't have eminent-domain to force them to sell)
Even if you do mange to buy the land, and build the bridge, what is to stop your competitors (assuming all bridges are private) from lowering their toll low enough to drive you bankrupt?
And once you are bankrupt, what stops them from buying your bridge (using asset-based bank loans, not with cash-on-hand) and then raising all the tolls back to the original level?
Ever since it became possible for a company to buy it's competitors using nothing more than a bank loan, there has been no such thing as a "free market"
You have to be kidding. The I8 is pure junk. Low MPG.
Uh, what? 76 MPGe is low? Not for that class of car. And it drives better than most other vehicles out there, by all accounts.
A price tag that is much higher than a Model S.
Well, I'll grant you that one — but I said it was expensive, so I'm not sure what you get there.
Unable to hold 5 passengers with cargo, let alone 7.
I don't care.
And the price tag is much higher than the Model S.
I can see that you really care about the price. But I can't afford either car, so I don't.
The good news is, that within 3 years, when Model 3 hits the market, it will force all of the major car companies to make serious changes.
I'm guessing 5 years at best, given Tesla's penchant for delays. Yes, I would prefer delays to premature releases culminating in failure, but let's not ignore them. And I hope you're right, that it's as good as it's supposed to be. Maybe it even will be; since it's Tesla, I'll grant you it's actually possible.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He built a shorter detour around construction, as soon as the construction ends, his road will be worthless.
The title of this post has absolutely nothing to do with its contents. Not a single "down side of low gas prices" is listed in the post itself. It's simply an argument for higher gas taxes, which is the same argument regardless of their current prices.
The higher gas prices the more things will cost. Also less people drive and go places.
Lower gas prices more people will get out and go places cause they will have the extra money.
Just look back over the years when gas went up the economy went into the crapper. When gas prices have been low the economy is going well.
It is really not that hard to see this.
What's your point?
same as what everyone else ought to be pointing out on this thread, once the reality changes, he'll be in line for a bailout and/or screaming for the government to prevent the reality from changing.
Personally, I'm disappointed in all the Americans who apparently either think that cheap gas will last forever, or that our government will go invade another oil producing country to prevent the prices from going back up.
First the feds give credits for buying fuel saving cars and now propose raising fuel taxes only to negate that. Evidently everyone is supposed work efficient except the feds.
Gas was about $1.50 a gallon pre-9/11, and the leap to $2.00 was a financial shock (albeit one we expected as a consequence of the uncertainty tossed into the oil markets by a middle-east-originated attack on NYC and Washington and the associated risks of war)
The Saudis and their OPEC buddies got greedy and spiked the price to almost $4.00 a gallon in the late spring of 2008, helping put many Americans who'd been in very financially tenuous positions over the edge - many people with those risky home loans suddenly could not afford to both pay their commute costs AND make their monthly mortgage payments. (this was NOT the cause of the 2008 meltdown but it WAS a contributor)
By the time Obama was sworn in, gas in So Cal was back "down" to a bit over $2.00 per gallon.
Gas rose rapidly back to about $4.00 per gallon in early 2009 (the saudis want a certain value per barrel of crude, and if the dollar loses value because of money-printing which was the fed policy of Obama's 1st term, they want more dollars per barrel) and has been there through the entire 6 years of Obama. $3.00 gas is not "low gas prices", it's 150% of the price of immediate-post-9/11 "OMG we're all gonna die!!!!" high panicking prices.
Of course, after the Fed has printed 4 TRILLION dollars under Obama without the underlying economic activity to justify that currency, the US dollar is worth far less than the Bush43, Clinton, Bush41, or Reagan dollar.... so part of this is just inflation (the way the Fed taxes the middle class by making their dollars have less buying power). My point is NOT that "it's all Obama's fault" (Bush41 and Reid and Pelosi were all involved too). My point is that GOVERNMENT screwed-up and allowed the cost of a basic commodity to more than double, but now that people have endured this for enough years and that price has fallen back a bit from its highs, the public is being manipulated by propagandists to see these new high prices as low prices. Of course, slavery is now freedom, surveillance is now privacy and it's all double-plus good...
First, you let your politicians rob you blind by slapping high taxes of the stuff you need, and then you insult Americans who were better at restraining their government robber barons when they complain about their problems????
Nobody in Europe or Canada or any other parasitic socialistic paradise has any legitimate grounds to complain about any bad government services or high prices and certainly no right to look down on smarter and more-personally-responsible Americans whov'e done a better, albeit still flawed, job of limiting their governing dirtbags. Americans have been entirely too tolerant and reckless in enabling the people of Europe and Canada to surrender control of their lives to bureaucrats; you people shift huge portions of you budgets into socialistic systems to care for you from cradle-to-grave and in doing so you lose tha ability to afford your own national defense and your ability to properly fund things like medical research. You have become parasites, sucking the blood out of the American taxpayers you routinely insult. The Americans end up having to spend more tax dollars than anybody else on the planet for a military that then has to not only defend the US but also all of its infantile and irresponsible "allies". The American people also end up paying more for things like prescription drugs because OUR purchases must cover all the R&D costs because your socialized health systems refuse to pay fair value for the drugs and have threatened to violate all our medical patents and churn-out cheap ripoff versions if our vendors do not sell you the pills at near-cost; those vendors are then forced to sell to you cheap just to protect themselves from the threatened flood of pirated med recipes and then over-charge the American customers in order to cover all the costs of research and certification.
To have the socialist paradises you are living in and do it without sapping the Americans, you probably need to tax things like gas and home heating oil up to $20 or $30 a gallon and probably double your income and estate taxes. Come back and insult the Americans AFTER you pay full price for your meds and fully-fund your national defenses so we don't have to .... and THEN tell us what level of taxes you are paying...
We've gone the privately owned toll road option in Australia. End result was prices skyrocketed, the usage rate plummeted, the companies went broke and were bailed out by the government. Brilliant.
The problem with tolls is that they exist at all. User pays and other people benefit in the form of reduced congestion never brings in enough money to cover the cost if the project to begin with.
And they will pass it on to you, their customer. Or are you one of those who never buys anything in a store or online and produces everything you use in your basement from materials you mined yourself in your own backyard with tools you carried by hand after buying them from somebody else just like you.
As the article mentions, inflation adjusted gas taxes have been dropping for 21 years. That doesn't make sense. At the very least they should be returned to their 1993 levels and indexed for inflation. Roads are crowded and a gas tax would relieve that by encouraging alternatives. It would also reduce pollution, reduce carbon emissions, reduce oil imports that kill the balance of trade and finance people who use the money to try to kill us.
Gas taxes really are good.
As to the complaints that the gas taxes are being used to fund other things, such as bicycle paths and mass transit -- I'm not sure how true that is, but you would be foolish to fight it. Alternatives to driving are crucial. Paving huge amounts of land makes walking and biking very difficult so drivers *owe* the non-drivers a bit of help. And drivers benefit *greatly* from mass transit. With no mass transit the traffic congestion would be even worse.
And, given that drivers park free almost everywhere it is truly rich to hear drivers complaining about having to subsidize transit. The implicit subsidy that cars get through free parking is orders of magnitude greater (read "The High Cost of Free Parking" for all the details).
That makes a lot of sense. I wonder which axles do the most damage, and if it could be reduced by adding more axles for distributing the load.
The important question is:
- Is it the heavy trailer that does the damage by downward force (this can be alleviated by additional weaker axles)?
- Or is it the axles driven by the engine that pulls the trailer and creates frictional force (would need something like 8-wheel drive to fix)?
Where's my shilling slashdot?
Tax the people with electric cars, instead of giving them money, they should be paying more in taxes to help pay for road repairs.
Kinda funny, only a climate change whacko would say gas prices going down is a bad thing. I know Obama hates it, as it would cause more jobs to be created, and he dose not like jobs being created.
The tax should be based on how much money is needed to keep the roads repaired, not a % of the total price.
It really is hard to think of an idea less likely to be seriously considered then this one. Why do people make suggestions like this?... You waste everyone's time with this crap.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It also has the desirable effect of pushing people towards more efficient cars. If you want to buy a high pollution car that's your choice, within reason, but you can't expect the rest of us to subsidise the cost of your lifestyle choice.
The trade-off here is that those more efficient cars are made of less sturdy materials--some of them only are doing well in crash tests because they're only matched up against other lightweights, and not the cars they're most likely to crash into in reality, and I haven't seen a set of tests that include incliment road conditions and checks for the odds of crashes & survivability of any there.
If you really don't want to underwrite the 'lifestyle choice' of 'deciding to drive a safer car (at the unfortunate cost of lower MPG)' I suggest you consider funding the necessary materials science advances to both get the materials that have the strength of steel or better without the weight--and to get them to where even the low-end models can make good use of them. Then it really will be a lifestyle choice, as opposed to being forced to choose between one's safety and one's economic situation.
Just paid AUD 166.6c/Litre today. :(
Sort of like the Neosocialism that America had to stamp out in the 1940's!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Ah, if you're going to just pull speculation out your arse, there's really nowhere to go with this.
We don't need more money in the highway trust fund. Driving has been decreasing nationwide for a long time now. Just pass a rule saying that trust fund capital dollars can only be used for shrinking roads, adding toll infrastructure, or converting them to some greater use such as transit. Allow some money to be used for maintenance, but not the current 90%, and make funding contingent on the state requesting it keeping 95% of the system in good repair.
But add a $5/gallon carbon tax along with an income tax exemption increase. The mode shift from that will greatly decrease the need for road repairs. In my municipality we spend a $1000 per car per year out of the general funds for street repair.
How about we stop using taxes for social engineering? There is plenty of evidence to the effect that most driving is not done on the highways, so why should local drivers pay tax on the gasoline they use to drop off and pick up the kids at school, and go shopping, so "Phantom 309" can go barreling up and down I-95 60 hours a week? Rewrite the IRS Form 2290 - Highway Use Tax - so that tax is paid by the mile, and include exemptions for small companies, and small vehicles. Then make the tax deductible as a business expense, so in effect business tax money is diverted from the General Tax fund to the Highway Trust Fund, rather than unnecessarily pilfered from the the teeming millions of local drivers...
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. ~ Mark Twain
Americans are buying Hummers again?! Really? Hmm, The last Hummer H3 rolled off the line at Shreveport on May 24, 2010. I guess Americans are buying more used cars nowadays...
The basis of this article is basically calling the general population a bunch of idiots, lower prices for anything is always a good thing, what we need is more competition in the transportation and energy sector instead of sticking with the status quo. Natural gas isn't going anywhere and the thing most people forget is oil isn't all about gas prices it's also about other products that use oil. Natural Gas is competing with oil now, and electric transportation has seen an upgrade in recent years.
I say the opposite I say lower the gas tax, if the oil industry is going to crash let it crash, we're less reliant on foreign oil than we've ever been, if people want to finance and buy bigger cars let them, let the market dictate oil prices no government intervention is necessary!
Tax all vehicles at the same rate, based on the miles driven each year. Battery powered and hybrid vehicle drivers should not free-load on the rest of us. How much coal is burnt to produce the electricity to charge up the battery in a Tesla that pays no fuel tax?
The fund is broke because Congress raids it to pay for other non-road related pet projects and such. Then add the crony road building industry that builds roads that need constant maintenance and replacement in 5-10 years.
Not sure where the Author's head is, but he definitely lives in an urban environment with subsidized public transit, free bicycles, free cell phones, subsidized utilities, free diapers and loves his local politician. Bad, Bad SUVs - positively immoral. Koombya!
Raising gas taxes is a great idea. It helps keep the poor in their slums so the rest of us don't have to think about them.
Let's get rid of the community colleges and trade schools while we're at it. After all, the people these schools primarily serve won't be able to afford to drive to these places to get an education, so there's no point in having the schools. We don't really want any of those folks getting ideas above their station in life, so less education for them is a good thing. We have too many people employed as it is, and the last thing we need is more people in the middle class.
We can offer this policy to the environmental nuts as a token gesture that lets us pretend to care about their whacko worldview. That would work for the bleeding heart liberals at the same time (and neither group will have the sense to track what we really do with the money, they don't understand budgets to begin with).
This idea solves lots of problems at the same time. A total win. Brilliant!
lower commodity fuel prices, which has the even worse effect of.....
not so stupidly high petrol prices at petrol stations.
Oil tycoons won't be making such gratuitous profits and governments not creaming off as much in tax. We can't have petrol prices under $2.20 a litre (perhaps $1.20 would be nice) now can we!
The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. On average, as of April 2014, state and local taxes add 31.5 cents to gasoline and 31.0 cents to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 49.9 cents per gallon for gas and 55.4 cents per gallon for diesel. Look at prices in your state: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Lower gas prices - hell, that could spur the economy, create new jobs, and reduce the number of people on welfare! Christ, we can't have THAT! People with JOBS! THEY wouldn't vote for Hillary in 2016! Of COURSE we need to raise taxes! Everyone knows how well that works to improve everyone's lives in this Great Country Of Ours!
As it does in other developed countries, the gas tax should be carrying the burden of building and maintaining all roads. (As it is, it covers much of the costs of building US highways and interstates, but it doesn't pay for other roads nor for the costs of operating roads (snow removal, routine maintenance, law enforcement, etc). To do that we need a much larger increase. My proposal is a 25 cent increase in the gas tax for EACH of the next ten years. At that point we can do another analysis to figure out how much more it has to go up, because it probably still will not have caught up with road costs. This has to be done nationally rather than state by state because otherwise the states will engage in a race to the bottom, trying to lure people who live near the borders with cheaper gas, with the end result being that the tax level will be far too low to pay the costs.
Corporations should be hit with this as they're avoiding paying taxes as it is. The roads are the lifeblood for any corporation that delivers goods or services, yet they seem to have an aversion to paying their fair share for what they use day in day out.
Until the US kills off the Grover Norquists and starts allowing tax increases as a possible policy option, we'll continue our descent into third-world status.
the top 1 percent own 40 percent of U.S. wealth,
the bottom 80 percent own just 7 percent of America's wealth
http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3
Since 1971 OPEC Oil is exclusively sold in US dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_used_to_trade_oil
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them" --Einstein
Casteism
USA can PRINT dollars to buy OPEC Oil.
Rest have to EARN dollars to buy OPEC Oil.
Since 1971 OPEC Oil is exclusively sold in US dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_used_to_trade_oil
This will destroy American middle class due to
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Work_incentives_and_disincentives
Casteism
Based on facts you don't know why the USPS is broke.
Congress want to protect the taxpayer from having to take over the duties that the USPS said they would do,back in the 70s, the postmaster general and the postal unions want to make the taxpayers pay for their poor management and keep things as they are.
The postal accountability law,2006, requires the USPS to actually do some proper financial management and dropping it would not make them competitive again; even ignore the money they owe for this they would of lost money for the last couple of years. Without the money set aside they would not be able the meet the obligations they agreed to back in the 1970s and the people who retiring now would not have the monies that they are suppose to get. Privatization would solve nothing of this since the obligations would follow the company who purchased the USPS.
BTW the 75 years is number of years that is for ACCOUNTING purposes they have to figure future liabilities. It is NOT how long they have to fund benefits. That 75 years of accounting is followed by the DoD, social security, department of Housing, etc.
I cant understand why anyone would want a hummer. Though i guess my opinion on the matter is skewd do to the fact that i spent many uncomfortable hours in military humvees and now I will forever hate them
When Bush left office gas was $1.82 a gallon. Now it's down to just under $3 and it's a problem? For who? Talk about click bait...
Murphy was an optimist
Thanks for this. And what doesn't make sense is that /. makes no CPI or CPC revenue so WTF do they care if a salacious piece of clickbait gets 800 replies?
Murphy was an optimist
wow are you stupid.
the USPS would actually be profitable right now, to the tune of roughly 600 million $$ a year, which is a rather considerable amount of deficit reduction, if the GOP congress hadnt mandated they pre-fund pensions 75 years into the future. there was no reason for that requirement, other than to create teh false impression that the USPS is in financial ruin.
the rest of your comment is ignorant too.
you are dumb.
and you should be ashamed.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
While we're at it, an even better idea... would be indexing the gas tax to inflation...
While we're at it, an even better idea... would be indexing wages to inflation...
FTFY
what's a better word for "someone who buys a thing other than to use it to make other things that he can sell"?
In the context of taxes, the word you are looking for is citizen
In the context of income tax, the difference is whether the citizen has the right to deduct the thing's purchase price from income as an expense. Someone who buys a thing other than for a business can't do this.
Regardless how you spell it, tax (or tacks) is NOT a four letter word. Right-wingers get most things wrong. History, and spelling, are areas in which right-wingers so often fail.
We need to raise the gasoline tax. The tax should be indexed to cost of living -- and because it has not been, we are way behind. We need to maintain our infrastructure or our economy will collapse.
Right-wingers seem to want our socialistic road system maintained, but they don't seem to want to pay for it. Another alternative they might endorse would be privatization of our road system. While that would probably be a failure (roads cannot make a profit), it would help us return to rail and public transit (the days before we engaged in social engineering to create the road mess we have today).
Obviously, I am not a fan of our over-dependency on roads. But the whole truth is we need ALL modes of transportation in order to meet our transportation needs. While I recognize that roads need significant subsidy to exist, we need to have public policy that encourages each mode of transportation to perform those tasks that each mode is best suited for.
If I want to ride my car to anywhere I want, then I will. Please don't presume to tell me how to affect my freedom of mobility as I see fit. The less i have to pay to be mobile the better off I'll be. Period.
All the more reasons to privatize it — thus setting it free from Congress' meddling, is not it?
The point, however, was that nobody is suggesting, the stamp price should go up because fewer people use the service (thanks to e-mail)... And that is the argument the Illiberal in TFA is making: raise the gas-tax because people buy less of it (thanks to improvements in fuel-economy).
"Natural monopoly" is a myth — perpetuated by government types with vested interest in expanding government's power. It is particularly obvious in case of bridges — building another one next to an existing one is not substantially harder, than building the first one: you don't even need to exercise "eminent domain" for most of the distance (above the river)...
For the same reason, your local pizzeria does not charge you $1000 for a pie — for fear, you'll go elsewhere. The attraction of "free" crossing is balanced against the additional time it would take to make use of it — and attracts people willing to wait instead of spending money. The number of such people is determined largely by the additional delay of the free option. For some people $1 of price-difference is enough, for others it would take $5. But the cost-consideration is there. Once bridges are independently-owned and compete, their owners will have a financial incentive to keep the traffic flowing (and expanding). Some competitors might even undertake to build a new crossing — when they figure, such an investment has a good chance of paying off...
Come on, if New York's toll bridges and tunnels were all owned by the same private corporation, you too would be screaming against their monopoly. But if that monopoly is the government's, then it is Ok with you somehow...
Yeah, that's nominal wage — add bonuses and "overtime", etc. and it becomes a very-well paying job, which is impossible to get without "connections" (note, how this "help wanted" listing does not even advertise full-time toll-collection opportunities).
Regardless, whether the booth-workers are under- or over-paid, the building and maintenance of bridges and tunnels can be made by competing corporations and thus must not be done by the government...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There is no such thing.
Huh? Why not?
Any "oligopoly" is much better than monopoly — unless, of course, the private parties conspire to not compete. We've had federal laws against such conspiracies for over a century now — if the US saw fit to block Office Depot from merging with Staples, for fear of the resulting entity becoming a monopoly in the market of freaking office supplies, why do we tolerate the Port Authority's monopoly on bridges and tunnels of NY and NJ?
My problem here is with the big-government asshole, who — suddenly hearing the jingling of some extra coin in the peasant's pocket — is quick to offer an excuse to tax that coin away. Because the king knows better, how to spend it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Rail-roads solved this problem in the 19th century. I'm quite confident, they remain solvable.
Hey, you just explained, why nobody will ever open a new pizzeria...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I like your style...
Consistent with your already-mentioned style, you don't offer any citations but I gather, you are referring to the 2006 legislation. What you would not read at DailyKos and MotherJones, however, is that the services has been losing money since e-mail took more and more business away from the First Class Mail...
The USPS employees are federal employees and the government would be on the hook to pay for them, should USPS go bankrupt in the future.
False, eh? It really is simple — if a service is useful, private companies will find profit in providing it... And they'd be better at it too — I'd take FedEx or even UPS over USPS any day of the week.
But even your own argument — that it is the Congress' meddling, rather than its own shortcomings, that keep USPS in the red — supports my opinion. Privatize the USPS (and Amtrak, and bridges, tunnels, roads) and keep the government types (from whatever party) out of their management...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You don't have to tear down skyscrapers, and build a massive piece of infrastructure costing millions of dollars, in order to open a pizzeria.
It's called "barrier to entry" and the higher the barrier is, the easier it is to establish and maintain a monopoly.
This is why there are millions of independent pizzerias, and only a small handful of cable/cell/broadband/media companies (in the US)
There is a difference between creating a sustainable business based on toll roads, and simply taking advantage of a temporary wrinkle in the supply/demand curve.
Just because you can take advantage of a temporary situation, and make some quick cash, doesn't mean it's a profitable endeavor under normal circumstances.
There are still more than one of those usually. And the reason we have so few is the earlier government regulation which established the monopoly, and the remaining local regulations, which continue to favor the incumbents even after the federal laws have been amended/abolished.
But even those sucky big-cable monsters, are still better, than what government would've provided — if USPS, Amtrak, and NYC's traffic are any indication...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No no no no.
See, you dont get to intentionally create a problem, and then use the problem as your proof that it doesnt work; It doesnt work because of your sabotage, not because of inherent qualities. Self fulfilling prophesies that you brought about are not proof of dysfunction.
Your proof is an oft repeated myth which has no actual connection to actual USPS finances.
Also, the USPS, and their employees, are not funded by taxpayer dollars.
So you're wrong about that too: we're not on the hook.
None of the taxes you pay during the year go to the USPS.
It is soley funded by the fees they take in, whether its from selling stamps or shipping packages.
Further, the USPS could be made even more profitable by bringing back Postal Banking. Most other nations have it.
And we used to too. It provided banking services for those the banks refused to provide service too. And still do. (Ah....the free market...)
When Postal Banking went it away it was replaced by the notoriously awful payday lenders, which is a lbight upon the earth.
Oh, but dont take my word for any of it.
Simple actual research from primary documents, such as the USPS financial report (I've read it, have you? Guessing not, or you wouldnt have linked to that about.com article) would find all this for you.
None of this would mean much if the prevailing myth about postal finances were true – that the Postal Service is losing billions of dollars a year delivering the mail because everyone’s on the Internet, taxpayers are on the hook for this, and so drastic cuts are needed.
Here are the facts: The Postal Service isn’t funded by taxpayers; it earns its revenue by selling stamps. And it’s operationally profitable. Last year it had a $623 million operating profit; the first quarter of fiscal year 2014 produced $1.1 billion in black ink.
[..]the overall loss was due to congressional mandates, particularly a requirement that the agency pre-fund retiree benefits to the tune of about $5.6 billion per year.
[..] the Postal Service would have recorded a net profit of $600 million without the annual payment
The USPS is the only quasi-government agency to be ordered to pay a part of its earnings into the U.S. Treasury in order to hold budget deficits down. Its leaders have been trying for the past seven years to get this unfair payment removed, but have so far been unsuccessful due to the Tea Party/Republican politics in Washington.
elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade — an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The more than $5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger
The new USPS Financial Report issued Friday further validates the claim that the Postal Service is neither broken nor in crisis. Excluding the pre-funding expense the USPS has turned a $660 million profit delivering mail in fiscal year 2013. Showing again that Senator Carper, Senator Coburn and Congressman Issa are manufacturing a postal financial crisis as an excuse to dismantle it. Standing in their shadows are vultures named FedEx and UPS.
http://www.carper.senate.gov/p...
http://watchdog.org/135210/pos...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.wausaudailyherald.c...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.