It's really the only logical thing to do. Gradual and incremental but with a certain time line. If you just want to tax imported oil to preserve American jerbs fine. It's such a small percentage and it makes the hard choice more palatable. 1. At some point we need to ween ourselves from an oil economy, global warming, it's finite and non-renewable and can be put to better and higher uses than burning it, stop funding Saudi Arabia and Islamic fundamentalist that want to destroy us. But we are lazy and cheap and won't spend smarter money if we can go cheaper. 2. Deficit reduction is paramount to the National Security, no one wants to pay taxes but a hydrocarbon tax spreads the burden widely, phased in and gradual gives people time to adjust and plan, more conservation and efficiencies will lessen the impacts and that's all good. 3. It will spur research and investment. Like it or not, it is irrational bubbles that fuel money creation in this country. When stock prices go up it adds to the national net worth. I've been wondering what the next value creation engine could be since we've burned through Dotcoms, Natural Gas, and Cheap Real Estate credit. I believe the next spurt could be alternative energy. If you could just replace 10% of our petro energy with renewables that would be a huge value creation machine with gung-ho entrepreneurs and the new Ebays and Apples of energy. The time is now Mr. Obama, never let a good crisis go unexploited.
Go back to sleep folks, your government is in control. No need to waste your time posting this, what's planned is out of your hands.
100% agree. Think if in the 80's we would have spent all of that money wasted on Star Wars and other defense crap and invested it in alternative energy. The cost of energy is built into every product we buy like a hidden tax. It's a huge reason why inflation continues to outpace wages. Honestly this shouldn't even be a global warming true or false issue, it should be let's rebuild our manufacturing base by designing and building wind farms, solar fields, electric cars, etc., with the ultimate goal that every American and American business pays nothing for electricity and for gasoline. Eliminate these costs for everyone and free up cash. The benefit of less polution is great but for some reason half of this country doesn't seem to give a damn so don't try and sell them on it.
Why the one nearest me is 2.60 which is more than the 2.55 I paid at Conoco this morning. It won't change my habits until gas goes back up to $4 a gallon. What we need is this: http://www.teslamotors.com/models/ ZERO gasoline, oil, and pollution. Just need them cheaper which they would be if 30 years ago the government would have invested in incentive programs for the Big 3 to produce this type of vehicle.
Yeah we need to gradually phase in a $2 or $3/per gallon tax. Make up for the lost revenue with a higher income tax on those making say $500 k per year, or on estates greater than $1 million (sorry those with libertarian fantasies of big wealth) rebates for those making less than $50 k per year. When you factor in the estimated $1 per gallon on unnecessary offense, (this was the estimate I saw, but that was before some of the recent military escapades) and who knows how much for the environmental and health costs involved with excessive gasoline burning it probably will be a wash cost wise, but we will be healthier and have more national security.
My significant other had a Prius as a rental on a business trip this past week. She put five to six hundred miles on it in city and highway driving. Absolutely loved it. Roomy and comfortable inside, very nice and quiet ride. Not much road noise at all (I hate road noise!). It displays the gas mileage on the dash as you drive and she consistently got between 50-60 MPG. Sometimes higher. A true story... one of her underlings was driving and they were in Downtown Houston, maybe close to Discovery Park. The co-worker who's driving gets out and locks the car. They discovered that it was still running after having lunch for an hour and returning to the Prius, surprised to find that it was nice and air-conditioned inside. It was that quiet. So quiet that they frequently couldn't tell it was running, except that they were moving in traffic. The AC runs electrically and doesn't use belts (I think). The way it's designed allows you to leave it running after you've removed the keys. I'm thinking about getting one. Toyota should still be having stuff on sale after all the recent bad publicity and we'd be using less petrol.
My manager at work has one. Rode in it a couple times. It surely was a quiet ride. If you remove that "sissy" green movement earth guilt theme, and don't have the muscle car enthusiasts equally bully your support over, good people they are but sorry to them. Cuz up close a Prius seems a smart buy to me. Roomy, quiet and comfortable.
Wonder how many early adopters will line up for it? On paper it should be sweeping the country, but I guess most people will take a wait and see approach. There's irony in these things, that when people are making money they wont splurge on this. But people pay attention when there's desperation and need, when everyone's too poor for it.
So let's tax (even more - there are already excise taxes on fuel) the means by which people get to work and the means by which goods are moved from producer to market. The net effect will be an increase in the cost of goods and services across the board. Let's add inflation to a fragile economy and 10% unemployment. What could possibly go wrong?
We certainly could construct more wind fields, Texas rapes everyone in this field. Our capacity for 2009 was over 9,000 MW, if I remember correctly 1 MW can power about 200 homes, runner up is Cali with about 2,800. Older, heavier turbines aren't as efficient and don't produce as much power, but new, lightweight material has allowed them to produce as much as 2 MW, but normally 1 MW. What I hear is that the problem with this technology is not the wind turbines, which are expensive to build, but cheap to maintain, and pretty efficient. The problem is our power grid, which is damaged, fragile, and old. Wind Energy has grown tremendously just 9 years ago our total wind capacity was under 5,000 MW annually. We have grown to over 35,000 MW. There are still a lot of states that do not use this technology at all, although they probably don't have a sufficient and steady amount of wind.
Free gasoline and electricity? Nothing is free. Someone has to get paid to produce and operate those industries, and tax payers and consumers as a whole will pay it, one way or another. I'd wager that if our vehicles run on water, the cost of water would get a few more taxes levied on it. Regardless of what the next mainstream energy source is, and however clean, great, and abundant it may be, it's not gonna be cheap for the consumer.
The pollution comes from the means of electricity production, mainly coal. I'd like to see more nuclear power personally.
The initial growing phase will certainly reflect some price changes, but I believe if we invest more in our infrastructure, particularly our electric grid, the technology is there for wind energy, in 2005 they were testing the 5 MW turbine, so by now I am sure they are up and running. Invest more in wind, and solar, and stop feeding our money to the big oil companies. We can produce clean, cheap energy in our own country, the only victims are the few unfortunate birds who have become victims over the years.
We have an economy that is built around energy that also happens to be on the verge of collapsing like Europe and you want to increase the taxes on one the main building blocks of this energy driven economy. Some of you people amaze me. Raising taxes on oil/gas would push this country's economy over the edge. November and 2012 can not come fast enough!!!!
