From the article... "Some economists have opined that the tariffs contributed to the severity of the Great Depression." This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. Any notion of taxing the means by which goods are moved to market in this economy is a very dumb idea.
Excessive taxes is not just a tea party claim. If we can spend trillions on wars and bailouts, then we are excessively taxed. If you feel you are not taxed enough, feel free to donate to the government. Don't expect the rest of us to pay more for the government to waste.
I just said in the last post that I didn't claim to need to raise taxes do you read or do you just make assumptions if you need to be lead down the road a little more, obama is taxing us less than last admin, contrary to popular belief
I totally agree. If we aren't going to make serious moves towards weaning ourselves from oil when are we going to? The economy is bad now but even when the economy is good we will hear the same anti-tax rhetoric that we have before. I don't like the idea of exploiting crisis but this spill clearly illustrates why our dependence on oil is a bad thing. I agree that raising taxes on oil will have negative affects on our economy but we know that oil is and has been a long term loser and the sooner we can wean oursleves off of it the better we can address the economic transition rather than delaying it into the future. Just to add another thought. Possibly having a slow economy might actually help us with getting off oil. Since demand is lower an increase in price might not be as devestating as during a boom time when demand is higher.
This is simply incorrect. In this economy, every dollar is important to people, especially those who have been laid off. If you increase the cost of getting products to market, you will increase the price of products. The quickest seen of these effects is on food prices. Why would it be ok to cause an unnecessary hike on food prices during a poor economic time? This baffles me.
As a centrist I support a balance between capitalism and planning for the greater good; neither works untempered by the other. Capitalism is too cruelly efficient to apply to all the people and socialism tends to be unmotivating for those prepared to risk, work and innovate. However, it is a long established principle that we in the US use tax law in social engineering. I am proposing that this crises provides an exploitable tipping point to change the paradigm in energy policy where we tend to take a longer view and understand that if we make small, incremental sacrifices now it serves our greater good and National Security in the longer run. If not right now, then when? What better, more manageable catalyst is ahead? When would be the right time to begin to accept the inevitable? Is it better that we adjust to slowly rising energy prices now or when war breaks out in the Persian Gulf and gasoline goes to $20. And the money I am proposing is not just going away. Would it not be just effective for our economy to start paying down the deficit from the increased tax revenue than to just keep burning up cheap energy ? Would it not be more of an economic stimulus to jump start a new domestic, high tech industry over just continuing to ship money to Saudi Arabia?
Our food production though is one that has many inefficiencies right now due to the dependence on oil for transportation, and to a lesser extent for things like fertilizer. I agree that a raise in oil prices will lead to a raise in food prices, at least in the short term, but at the same time we might see a greater increase in things like buying more locally produced food which has other longterm benefits. But again though I will go back to if not now when? WOuld you support a tax on oil during a boom time to help wean us off of oil? What I recall hearing, not from you specifically, during when times were booming and such proposal was brought up was the same argument that we would hamper the boom if oil was taxed then.
Fertilizer is made from Natural Gas. It is domestic and cheap (though polluting). Besides, American eat expensive processed crap. If food prices went up we would probably end up eating healthier bulk stuff and yield lower health care costs.
natural gas isn't near as polluting as oil, its know as a clean burning fuel. think about trying to cook with oil vs natty gas or heating your home. natty gas is the immediate future, the more i think the more I agree with boone pickens. we can do cars on natural gas, more power on nuclear, that seems to be the best options RIGHT NOW.
Just to follow up on my last response on this issue. This morning I biked about 3 miles to a farmer's market. I bought 8 lbs of produce for $7. The majority of which was grown within 50 miles of my house. Granted that an increase in oil prices will lead to an increase in even the price of locally grown produce but mmy own experience shows that those transportation costs can be mitigated by reducing our dependency on long distance transportation for things like food and also for our own basic transportation.
I meant fertilizers are polluting to the water ways. Burn gas for electricity? By all means. T Boone needs to figure out a way I can get 300 miles on a tank of NG.
I started this thread back in 2006 that addresses a lot of the issues we are debating here. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=112457&page=1&pp=20&highlight=push+mower
We wouldn't be utilizing coal or nuclear, just solar and wind. Once the infrastructure is in place the maintenance and monitoring is relatively cheap and simple compared to mining for coal or running a nuclear power plant. As for it not being free ask someone who has a solar panel on their house. Several people I know receive money back since the put more back into the grid than they utilize. Now if we all did this yes someone has to pay for the maintenance on the grid itself. I guess a tax similar to what we pay for gasoline. Interesting because in this scenario we wouldn't utilize gasoline either. I wonder if the amount of money the government would save on gas and electricity would offset the need for the tax. I wouldn't mind paying a tax to pay for the infrastructure if I no longer needed to pay for gas and electricity. The former should be smaller than the latter.
Because they don't have enough technicians to maintain and construct them. We need to invest more so that we can efficiently use this renewable natural resource.
I am not affiliated with the "Tea Party" in any way. I was not even talking about income taxes. This thread is about raising taxes on oil & gas which are a very large part of our economy. Raising taxes on these is a terrible idea especially when our economy is teetering on the brink. You are correct however the Bush tax cuts that helped our economy at the beginning of this decade are set to expire at the end of this year so unless they are extended then most people will have income tax increases in 2011.
