so the guy making 15k a year, and can't afford a new car, so he drives his 1993 Buick that gets 13 MPG is taxed more than the middle class guy who just bought a 50MPG Prius?
I am not advocating the tax, simply showing a way it could be done. Under Luger's plan, the guy making 15K a year and driving the 13 MPG car would be paying more than the guy driving the Prius as well (providing they drive the same number of miles). Anyway, when I am elected, I will put much more thought into my bill and consult with my constituents to see if they want to exempt 15 year old cars from the tax.
No - you apply it to new vehicles going forward. The idea it to not punish people for past choices when people made decisions not considering a future tax. For whoever mentioned trucks - of course an 18-wheeler won't have the same fuel efficiency as a Prius. You have different fuel standards for different classes of vehicles. Over time, the car companies will make their cars more efficient and the truck companies will make their trucks more efficient. The gas tax seems like a short-term, inefficient solution to a longer term problem.
The whole thread has been about coming up with scenarios that make any tax look bad. I was just joining in the fun...
Fuel is the #1 factor but even with the idea of taxing fuel efficiency you're adding a further cost since companies will be compelled to replace their fleet. Whether you tax fuel efficiency or fuel you're raising costs either way. As Weslinder pointed out a tax on usage though is going to address environmental damage and resource usage better than fuel efficiency.
Except you're providing two huge loopholes that will greatly negate any benefit regarding energy efficience and environmental damage. In particular the truck exemption has already been tried which is why we have so many SUV's because car manufacturers got around CAFE standards by building and marketing trucks rather than cars. Unless you apply your efficiency standards equally there is little impetus for automobile manufacturers to make more fuel efficient cars if they know that it will cost them more to retool factories to make hybrids rather than continue to make less fuel efficient trucks and allow consumers to get around the tax. You are also going to cripple the new car market since why should people spend money for a new car when that might be subject to a higher fuel efficiency tax rather than just get the most out of their old car.
An increase in the price of fuel is the most efficient way to reduce mileage. Many jurisdictions already offer incentives for fuel efficient cars (which is really the same thing as an additional tax on the inefficient)-- but those incentives will never bridge the gap between a used car and a prius or volt. Plus they're just factored into the price. People tend to shy away from the inefficient car once the operating costs are no longer manageable -- not so much on the original purchase price. And if you're talking about a $1/gallon tax on a consumer who uses 1000 gallons a year, there's no way a $1,000 annual registration fee is ever going to fly! You'd be lucky (and politically suicidal) to get a $200 fee passed. And since that fee is only charged on the inefficient car -- the revenue discripancy is HUGE. I'm not saying the gas tax is necessarily a good idea. Just that the 'alternatives' suggested don't accomplish the same thing.
You are totally missing the point. It has been stated that the idea of the gas tax is not to create government revenue (snicker). The idea is to create a financial disincentive to people driving fuel inefficient vehicles. The most fair way to accomplish that is for the owners of those vehicles and not everybody else along with them. If you institute a 2% sales tax at the time of purchase, you will price some people right out of the SUV market. Taxing gas will hurt everybody and will increase the cost of all other goods. If you create an increase of the cost of goods (inflation) along with the increasing rate of unemployment, you will have created stagflation. Thanks a lot, you modern day Jimmy Carter, you.
Refman covered the net revenue side of things - but I want to point out that that goal is not to get people into Priuses. It's to get people out of the really inefficient cars. So a tax rebate for a Prius isn't viable because that's too expensive for many people. But there are dirt cheap 20mpg vehicles. The idea is to penalize the sale of 14mph vehicles and make them less attractive to buy. Over the time, companies will make those vehicles more efficient or simply stop selling them. Basically, instead of trying to get people to go from 30mpg to 40mpg, you'll get more impact by trying to get them from 14mpg to 17mpg.
I don't see a loophole here. People didn't start buying SUVs because they had lower fuel efficiency - they bought them because they served a purpose for them. You tax the least efficient cars and the least efficient SUVs and the least efficient 18 wheelers. In all cases, you're getting the worst of each class of vehicles off the road (or raising revenue). Where's the loophole? But you'll know at the time of purchase whether the new car is subject to the tax or not. So you can always choose to buy a new non-taxed vehicle - which is exactly the point. The whole idea is to cripple the inefficient vehicle market to get those types of vehicles off the road over time.
Actually, I know somebody that was in that same situation. The city or state gave her a small grant to purchase a new vehicle. It's amazing what the government will give out for grants. She found it on google.
Its not just that people started buying them its that US automaker's concentrated production and marketing on them. By switching to light trucks and SUV's that allowed them to get around CAFE standards for cars. If you are saying now that we should impose a tax on fuel efficiency for all standards of vehicles then you are back to the previous issue of placing a new burden on individuals and businesses that need to use trucks and also going against your earlier statement. But you are counting on that technology will catch up in time to make relatively inexpensive high efficiency vehicles. At the moment hybrids are still more expensive than other cars. If I have the options of paying an expensive tax on a relatively inexpensive but less fuel efficient car, paying for a relatively expensive hybrid but no tax, or just keeping my own car running I'm going to try to keep my own car running for as long as I can.
Going from 14 to 17 MPG fleetwide is a benefit but that benefit does get obscured if driving patterns don't change or increase. As another poster noted if you drive a Prius 50,000 miles per year you are going to do more damage than if you drive a hummer less than 10,000. Mileage standards help but without a change in behavior you're not getting that big of a change. Also as I noted earlier its not just gasoline usage that affects environmental degradation and resource depletion. The construction of many new cars and subsequent disposal of others also depletes resources. Even the most fuel efficient car still produces other environmental waste in terms of its operation while the ever expansion of hard surface also causes environmental damage.
Ref -- I agree with your comments on the impact of a gas tax on individuals and on the cost of goods. That's why I don't necessarily support it. But I thought the object was to reduce gas usage (and therefore dependence on foreign oil) and environmental damage. I think you and Major have assumed mileage is constant and the only variable is the car that we drive. I don't think that's true. I can reduce my mileage by 20% a lot easier then I can buy a new car. Plus, environmentally -- less mileage not only means less exhaust and fuel use, it means less need for continually expanding super-highways parking lots etc. Cheap gas won't discourage me from hopping in my car Sunday morning to pick up that low-fat decaf latte or buying a McMansion in the burbs requiring a long commute. A traffic jam of fuel efficient cars is hardly paradise. My 'revenue' comparison was meant to show that the financial 'cost' of an increase in fuel price has a greater impact then any registration fee you could ever hope to implement. I guess I didn't state it well. Anyway -- didn't the US use to have fleet mileage requirements for auto makers? Wouldn't this be a better and more efficient way of boosting efficiency of new cars? Again -- it doesn't address driving habits -- and correspondingly urban planning issues -- but probably more effective then a purchase tax if your only goal is to increase the efficiency of new cars hitting the road while leaving everything else constant.
This is the fallacy. I grew up in the burbs in Spring. I spend a lot of time at Refgal's house in the southern burbs. Very, VERY few of the houses that I see are what I would consider to be a mansion. Mansions generally don't have bedrooms that are 10 X 10. A lot of people live in the burbs because they can afford it. Are there extravagant houses in the burbs? Sure. The vast majority are not though. So we will leave a lot of people in the position where they cannot afford to live closer to work and they can no longer afford the additional fuel cost to go to work from the burbs. That sounds like a great idea. Sheesh.
I dont see how $1 extra on gas will have immediate positive benefits. Any change in way of living will largely happen with the NEXT generation, at least thats my belief. Those born in 2000 and after would be adapted quite well to this and it'd be their way of life. Others not so much. Just not gonna tell a 54 year old "Well RIDE A BIKE to work, stop polluting the world". Not gonna happen. A country of individualists isnt all of a sudden going to open up to co-exist with others. I dont REALLY want to share my car with Jimmy and Suzie at work if I dont have to. And still having to pay more for consumer goods in the process. Not saying I'd do it but I'd rather donate $200 a year to alternative fuel research than get told I HAVE to start riding a bus that takes 1.5 hours longer on a 20 minute drive, and just watch those hours of my life waste away on the road. Without seeing any benefit. I guess the threat of strengthening dangerous enemy countries would make people think twice though.
Lets see ... what can get us out of this recession??? hmmm.... Raise taxes on those people who still have a job so they will have less money to spend on other items that create more jobs? Check. Raise the price of food, clothing and anything/everything that requires trucking transportation (because you know their higher transportation costs will be passed on)? Check. And all this for so the average american can hope for a zero tax gain? Check. Well played.
That is why we need to make changes to our development and infrastructures pattern at the same time. Even without that we can already relieve a lot hardship by making even slight improvements in work patterns and transit. I'm not going to deny that raising the price of gas doesn't cause economic change but any major change does. The key is focussing on the longterm but unfortunately as a society we aren't good at that. IMO the only way major change is through some sort of crisis that prods people to change.
