Gas prices being at an all-time high right now, the gov’t is claiming that there is little that can be done to curtail the prices. Bare cost of a gallon of gasoline is what, $1.33 right now?
How about we pass some legislation to lower the fucking tax on it? Make up for it by raising the cigarette tax. Or legalize marijuana, regulate it, and tax it. Or just do something to make some people in the U.S. respect the government.
With an all-time low approval rating, some push to lower the overhead would help just a bit, you’d think.
Lower the tax? When I read the OP, I thought you were one of those level-headed internationalists who wants to raise gas taxes to keep prices in line with the world market. Silly me.
Not that I want anyone to respect the government, given who’s in charge of it right now.
My petrol is $2.18 in Kansas for premium, and I think the price should go up. Add $2.50 a gallon in tax to be devoted solely towards replacing oil with renewable, greenhouse-neutral energy, thus helping to drastically reduce the huge amount of energy we import from places such as the Middle East, therefore greatly removing one incentive to perhaps get overly involved in certain countries over there. It also would make us exceed the Kyoto limits, and then we could feel morally right to openly mock the people, cultures, and value systems of other countries. :o The high petrol prices would force the issue of conservation as well, reducing the enormous amount of casual travel and encouraging savings and a move to smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Don’t discourage SUV or high-powered vehicle use with legislation, though, let the market do that. If someone wants to run their Hummer (or in my case 400hp gas-chugging Mustang Cobra) and be a “$50/tank taxpayer”, let them. They would only be helping out in the end - more than they hurt.
Make a Constitutional Amendment to ensure that the extra tax is used for renewable energy research, development, and infrastructure - and not diverted to the endless road-building circle-jerk. Add the death penalty for even trying to divert the money to another program, whether it’s military buildup or midnight basketball.
Could someone explain their reasoning to me as to why we (Americans) should be paying prices for gasoline that are more ‘in line’ with people in other countries when other countries due to their geography, size, and public transportation have vastly different needs for gasoline than Americans do?
Personally, I know that I absolutely cannot get to work without having a car, and right now the amount of money I’m paying for gasoline is putting a pretty serious dent into my paycheck although I drive a car that gets pretty good gas mileage.
I understand the need to develop alternative engeries, and from what I’ve seen in Toyota, they’re doing really amazing things with the Prius (which I’d love to have if I could afford one), but I don’t see how continuing to increase the price of gasoline or the tax on it will help to stimulate any of that.
What I do see is increasing the price of gasoline (and other petroleum products like diesel) increasing prices on just about everything, which would seem to have a stifling effect. People will limit their travels to what is necessay, like getting to work, and there won’t really be much increase in money for research.
I also don’t see this as solely the fault of the current administration or even the Congress, because although the taxes are set by our own government, the price per barrel of crude oil and therefore the refined cost of petroleum products are heavily determined by OPEC, and OPEC seems to care about nothing more than reasons to increase their purse strings. It also can’t be just a Republican issue, because it seems politicians on both sides of the fence (Bush and Harken, Cheney and Haliburton, Gore and Occidental) are making or have made quite a bit of money from oil.
Una Persson, while I agree with a lot of what you’re saying in principal, I think that the money would be better spent creating a good public transit system. Additionally, I think that such a tax wouldn’t necessarily discourage gas use in those who matters. My dad has an SUV. He can afford the higher gas prices because he makes a crapload of money–the same money that allows him to afford an SUV. I, on the other hand, feel the pinch even though I’m driving my four banger with 30+ mpg mileage on the highway (which is the only place I drive, to and from work). Another 2.50 a gallon would either put me out of work or force me to live closer to the city, where the cost of living is a lot higher and where I would be one of many contributors to suburban sprawl (rather than living in the long-established city I’m in right now). Meanwhile, Joe “I make 110 grand a year” continues to maintain his standard of living.
And, uh, with my 15 gallon tank, your 2.50 a gallon increase would make me a 67.50 per tank customer. Just for the record.
I don’t know who “Bushco” is, since it seems to be a generic allowed slur against Republicans, conservatives, and everyone else who does not burn Bush in effigy on this Board. But that aside, how, exactly, in detail, will Kerry make it so you don’t pay as much for gasoline? How will he be able to control this? I don’t suppose you have a cite that Kerry will reduce gasoline prices?
Well, my post had all that stuff about sending the money to research on alternate fuels. That $2.50 a gallon, which would result in a few billion or so per year…if that’s not a stimulus, I don’t know what would be.
Suburban sprawl is mainly a negative from the communting standpoint (as well as land use). If you lived closer to work in the sprawl you would ironically be helping out matters from a “sprawl” standpoint. But all that aside, how far do you actually drive, anyhow? Even a 60-mile round trip would only add $5 a day onto your trip.
The money for the research has to come from somewhere, whether you gore one ox or another. And consumption-based taxes are often a very fair way to make people pay for the convenience of polluting and using a non-renewable resource. Maybe the issue is the high cost (maybe start with a $0.25/gallon tax), but I was trying to put the overall net price somewhat on par with the UK.
This was the Pit and I was just sort of making a rant back, along the lines of “If elected, I’ll kill the whole lot o’ ya, and burn your homes to cinders! YES, I know the microphone’s on!”
My “$50 a tank taxpayer” assumed a 20-gallon SUV tank with an extra $2.50 per gallon tax.
Public transportation aside, this is simply not true. Trans-European road-freight traffic is a significant part of our economy, just as long distance trucking is in America.
My local main road has as almost as many Polish and Hungarian lorries on it as it does British ones.
Which compares in what way to the number of trucks, diesel powered trains, and cars on the road in the US, and the distances they travel?
Very large portions of the US population don’t have public transportation, because they don’t live in large cities.
If the price of gasoline were to go up to $4.50 a gallon (which is what it would be here if you added another $2.50), my driving would be limited to solely the trip to work and back. Trips to the movies and shopping would have to be severely curtailed, because more than doubling what I spend in a month on gasoline would be pretty damned impossible. Of course, that would also mean that all the things in the stores which are now more expensive to cover the cost of transporting them to the stores would have to stay there too.
I probably wouldn’t be the only person who’d be thinking about just how much gas that Friday trip to the movies would cost, and stay home, either, so I’d imagine consumption would go down in some measurable way.
I just don’t think that ‘more taxes’ are the answer.
And no, there is no way for me to take ‘public transit’ to work. There is no public transit where I live, and that where I work is limited to only one bus that doesn’t even come close to meeting my work hours.
I guess there’s no point arguing “what would happen” without studies and cites. I can say that in the UK, where petrol is around $4.50 a gallon, I cannot say that it has ever kept anyone I know (or myself) from doing what we want to do. You just get in the car and drive. It’s sort of like when my more wacky conservative friends start telling me that higher taxes always, without exception, without deviance, decrease revenues. By the reverse of that coin, the government should make more and more money as taxes drop until they reach an infinite value at 0%? Sometimes, if I phrase it right, I can get people to say or agree to essentially that. But it’s not true. There is a certain “maxima” of revenue in a consumption-based taxation system, and my completely unprofessional, unreferenced, unbacked-up opinion is that in the US we are a long ways away from that maxima.
But then, I don’t understand when the news droids do their hand-wringing each year at the start of Summer, claiming “gasoline goes up by $0.25 a gallon! HUGE decreases in Summer travel and vacations are expected!” Oh, really? I can imagine it now: “Sorry guys, we’re cancelling our whole vacation to the lake because it’s going to cost an extra $2 to get there and back.” How far does the average person drive on vacation anyhow? A 1200-mile round-trip with a 20mpg car is only 60 gallons - at even $0.25 per gallon, that’s $15. If you have 4 people in the car, that’s less than $4 per person. So I ask people at work “you were willing to sit in a car for 1200 miles over 4 days for your trip to Skeeter Pond, Arkansas, with the cramps and aches and pains and vacation stench - but having to pay an extra $4 per person is the deal-breaker here???”
If even $0.25 or so a gallon (my more “moderate” starting proposal) would cause one to change their style of living so much that they would cancel a vacation then I’m surprised one can even afford a car. Most people I know, even living in the surburban sprawl, barely use 8-10 gallons a week.
I think the thing is to ask people (natives) in countries where the price of petrol is high - do you change your entire standard of living over petrol prices? Did you ever cancel a vacation due to petrol prices? Did you ever not see someone you needed to or do something required because of petrol prices?
Really? When I lived in the UK, and petrol prices were about the same, I was surprised at how some of our friends and in-laws would balk at driving even (by US standards) rather short distances because of the cost. As an example, a friend of my wife fretted that she wanted to drive to see her parents in Manchester more often, but she was “concerned about petrol prices.” It’s only 125 miles from Oxford to Manchester… Now, maybe we had some cheap friends, but I do know that most people I met there were stunned that when I was an undergrad for two years I would almost weekly make the 80-mile round trip from college to home. Part of it was the culture, but the part of it also was the thought that it would be too expensive to do that in England. They weren’t changing their “standard of living” so much as just having a different one, and not thinking consciously about it.
I do know that during the UK Petrol Strike of 2001, some of my friends stopped driving to work or school, and took public transportation. Whether that was sheer cost or the general difficulty in getting petrol (many of the garages in Oxford ran out, IIRC), I’m not sure.
It’s pretty much equivalent - so there’s no reason to argue that the US economy is ultra-reliant on oil and that other economies are no.
BTW, diesel trains are a poor example to use, being one of the most efficient forms of transport in existence (IIRC only beaten by large container/tanker shipping). And most railways in Europe are electric.
Not quite - because American politics has deemed public transport outside big cities unnecessary. Even with Britain’s shameful (by European standards) public transport, I survive in a small village, outside of a small town, without a car.
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[QUOTE=Duke…Now, maybe we had some cheap friends, but I do know that most people I met there were stunned that when I was an undergrad for two years I would almost weekly make the 80-mile round trip from college to home. Part of it was the culture, but the part of it also was the thought that it would be too expensive to do that in England. …[/QUOTE]
I tend to suspect that the dislike/apprehension about driving significant distances is as much to do with traffic congestion as with petrol prices. The example you give, of Oxford-Manchester, is exactly the sort of journey that could take under two hours, or could take three times as long, just depending on the traffic. The trains may be unpredictible, but they’re still more reliable than that!
Federal gas excise tax is only 18.4 cents/gallon. (Diesel is 24.4, BTW)
Virginia adds on another 17.5 cents.
Plus you pay normal sales tax (which is another 11 cents at 4.5% on $2.50).
Since most of the tax is fixed and not percentage-based, you could argue that the tax burden is actually going down as the gas prices go up.
I guess the government could cut the taxes some, but it wouldn’t really make that much difference.
Well, I think that our taxes are plenty high enough already, considering that I don’t see a whole hell of a lot of my salary as take home, and then on top of that I get to pay more taxes on damned near everything else under the sun.
Considering that the last vacation I went on, I put nearly 2000 miles on my car and used up somewhere around 70 gallons of gas at around 1.20 per gallon, I spent 84 on gas. To do the exact same trip now, when gas prices here have gone up .83$ per gallon, I would have to spend 142.10$ on gas. The difference there is 58.10$, which isn’t the difference between going or not going, but it’s the difference between affording my hotel room for four nights or five.
So the hotel, and every other business at my destination, is losing one day’s revenue from me. All of that money came out of my pocket, because I am single and was traveling alone (and will again for this summer’s vacation).
I live in ‘rural’ and I work in the closest large town (population 13,000) to mine that there is. I use approximately 30 gallons of gas in a week.
What about their income as compared to the COL? I know that although gas prices here have gone up by 69% in the last year, my salary has gone up by about 2%.
In a lot of rural areas like where I live, public transportation is just not feasible. None of my neighbors work within 20 miles of me, and neither does anyone in my house, and there are only 7 homes on my dirt road. Who’s going to put public transportation to a place like that?
The nearest town they could even consider running a bus or train to Pittsburgh or Washington from is 7 miles from where I live, and even then there’s not enough volume of traffic to have it running more than two or three times in each direction every day.
Would it be fair to say that your situation is unusual? The evidence that I can find is that 77% of the US population is classified as ‘urban’. I don’t see that low fuel prices across the board can be justified by a minority who have no choice but to rely on cars. Maybe the argument should be for locally-set fuel taxes, local subsidies/tax breaks for rural gas stations, that kind of thing?
Yeah, of course, screw me because I’m in the minorty of people who don’t have the luxury of living in a major urban center and having public transportation around.
People always scream about how tax cuts don’t help the middle class, well, I got news for you. I am middle class. So is my neighborhood, and so are the ones surrounding it, and right now, we could use a tax cut off our gas prices. That would help. Think we’ll get it?
18.4 and 17.5 cents adds up to 35.9 cents a gallon, and if havling those taxes could result in lowering the price of gas around here to even 1.85$, with gas being a day in day out necessity, that’d help my budget.
