I would agree with this and add I would allow cargo rigs to use offroad diesel to try to offset some of the cost that will soon be passed on to the consumer.
And it could only be applied to 2000+ models as some people with poor gas milage vehicles simply cannot afford a new car.
Electricity generation , uses more coal then anything else.
Graph
I like both of your additions.
What do you mean, the market is becoming increasingly inelastic? Demand for oil is traditionally price inelastic. The high price of oil is imposing a demonstrable drag on the economy. Wal-Mart posted its narrowest profits in four years today, visibly shaking the market. Meanwhile inflation jumped .5% in July, mostly driven by oil.
Ironically, if people could stand to part with their appetite for cheap Chinese goods, the price of oil would fall. As would the world economy.
I was waiting for a bus one morning when a Hummer pulled up to a nearby bank. The driver was probably there to get a loan so he could pay for a fill up. 
Not everyone outside the US is the same. I’m about to start a new job involving driving between a dozen different rural schools each week (although thankfully I get paid an allowance for this). And did you really just suggest that you can get anywhere in Canada by public transport?!
(BTW, Britain’s petrol prices are twice as high as Canada’s)
G’head and chuckle, I’ll still stop and pull you out of the ditch when your econo box slides off the road this coming winter. 
And it’s working out just fine, although my Excessive gets about 16 around town. Considering my daily commute is a whopping 3 miles and my sitter is on the way, I drive about 10,000 miles yearly. If it wasn’t for trip mileage, I’d have none! That puts me at about $1,500 annually I wager, and I’m a’ight with that.
Do I need an SUV? Well, there’s more than 1 person in it daily, but no, I don’t need it. I need safe and reliable transportation and I chose the one I wanted, just like you did.
Funny, my 10 year old 4wd mini-pickup averaged about 18 city, as does a Mustang, a Viper or a host of other sports cars. Don’t hear too many complaints about those though.
Well, during the 70s oil crises, there was actually some effort to economize, with the average automobile and home becoming much more efficient in terms of petroleum production. This did have an impact on demand. Oil consumption dropped 5% from 1973-75, and dropped another 10% from 1978-83. Cite. So it hasn’t been a stringently inelastic market in the past, but is approaching a high degree of inelasticity now as other parts of the world, especially East Asia, become increasingly industrialized. Your comment about cheap Chinese (and Indian, I might add) supplies and services is right on target in that respect.
I should add it wasn’t just cars and homes that become more efficient. The economy as a whole did, and still is becoming more efficient, in terms of what it gets out of a gallon of crude. But it doesn’t matter anymore; prices will continue to go up for some time until the cost of energy severly stifles economic growth.
Chuckle chuckle chuckle ----------------------------
I live in the commuter state, yep Jersey averages the longest commutes in mileage and time in the nation.
There are many people running over 20K per year in mileage and getting less than your mileage and by themselves. So I wasn’t really laughing at you. I don’t think you qualify.
BtW: Most cars in ditches on the GSP (Garden State Parkway) are SUV’s.
Apparently many drivers think 4 wheeled drive = drive in snow at speed and then off they go into the ditches or guard rails or bushes.
Also, all the vehicles you listed would be eligible for my fuel tax from above. See post 56
Too bad so many people buy SUVs that can barely handle the weight of four adults, never mind pulling anybody else out of the ditch. And that unfortunate sense of invulnerability seems to lend itself to more SUVs in the ditches around here than anything else come winter. My front-wheel drive Sundance has no problem handling winter roads, but I don’t expect it to drive like I was on bare pavement, like a lot of larger vehicle drivers seem to.
SUVs are nowhere near as safe as people driving them think they are.
Sounds good, although what about working class stiffs, i just bought a scion XB,It gets 32 mpg. To buy a car for the extra 8 would have cost $7000 to $10000 more.
Hooray!!! another tax break for the rich (ok… a mild exagaration but still…)
It should encourage car companies to increase MPG and at least you won’t get hit for extra.
BtW by car doesn’t qualify either.
But my next car would if without question if this new tax was put into effect.
My suggestions to lower the cost of oil or at least make it cheaper to get around.
Mandatory car pools. Companies encouraged to contact employee’s that live in the same area, and try to schedule them the same times if possible.
As jrfranchi said taxing the low MPG vehicle users.
An active ad campaign to combine multiple shopping trips into one, car pooling, public transportation (Think War On Drugs except useful)
Buy American to cool China’s growth, and increasing taste for oil.
Lower our dependence on oil, by encouraging hybreds and such with larger tax breaks for the buyer, take back the fucking tax breaks for the oil companies and put it to use to encourage fuel effiecient vehicles.
Make windmills and other renewable energy sources a top priority.
Find a way to stop traffic jams, invest in new roads.
Create huge parking lot’s around every large city, with a shuttle service, no private transportation allowed.
Create a “X” prize with the help of government and sponsors for the automobile company that is successful in making a car get 250 MPG commercially available. Whoever wins gets every government car contract for the next 20 years.
Or there can always be fuel rations, that will make people think about alternative modes of transportation.
You get X gallons a week, make it work.
Wouldn’t it be nice if my salary had taken that inflation into account? I don’t get a salary that’s been inflated at the same rate as everything else, so my dollars today buy less.
I live where I live because this is where I could afford to make the payment that keeps the roof over top my head. The places that are close to work are up to three times more expensive to rent than the place I’m living now, and I’m in absolutely no position to buy a house. So fuck you.
I put affordable shelter and a commute I could afford pretty high on my list. Now that gas prices are nearly double what they were four years ago, and my salary certainly isn’t double what it was four years ago, I think I have something to bitch about. Expect them to increase? Of course. Expect them to double in four years? Not exactly.
I don’t expect raises, because they don’t fucking happen where I work. I bust my ass looking for a new job. Maybe if I can double my salary I can go live closer to my job and decrease my standard of living again so that I can make you happy. Or maybe not, because you’re an asshole.
Yeah, people just love intrusions onto their freedom of movement.
Freedom of movement? I didn’t once put “You had to sit at home” If you use up your ration you walk/bike/jump on a bus/talk to neighbors to combine shopping trips whatever it takes.
You have to have a license to drive so I assume you already realize its a priviledge and not a right.
Unless fuel costs take up 100% of your outgoing costs, I suspect maths isn’t your strong point :rolleyes:
What people love or don’t love isn’t going to be a factor soon. The pessimists put our peak oil production at now; the optimists put it at about 2037. Any way you cut it, most of us participating in this thread are going to experience the demise of cheap oil. I for one hope to be ready for it, but I probably won’t be. In our North American societies, it will affect everything.
That’s part of a solution, but not all of it. Certainly, a tax to discourage use of gasoline probably should be used in the USA, but applied to all vehicles. It would be too hard to administrate the tax as you have it. Simply add the tax to all fuel and the Hummer gets hit the hardest and the Prius the least. Samll increases in mileage is rewarded, without having to hit the arbitrary 40 mpg mark.
Now, more importantly, how this tax is used is the other part of the solution. Take all of the money raised by the comsumption tax and use it to provide sensible mass transit. City and intercity bus service, light rail, bike facilites, subways, long distance rail, walking paths. These types of services seem to require some sort of subsidy since it takes a lot of money to build the infrastructure. A gas consumption tax could provide the funds, but you have to be ensure that that is what they are used for (and not used by politicians for other uses).
So what does the tax actually buy us? A couple of things. First, with mass transit a reasonable option (because the tax has built it out to be an actual alternative to driving), there will be a small drop in traffic. If traffic was reduced a small amount, say 10%, there will be less gridlock. Is a faster driving time worth and extra 25 or 50 cents per gallon? Maybe. Second, when gas prices do go up, people who are finding it hard to pay for fuel will have a mass transit system that they could actually use. A lot of people drive because they have no choice.
I know that taxes are the devil to some people, but if the money raised by the tax is used in the right way, they can be useful. There have been taxes on fuel for as long as I can remember, and as far as I know the bulk of those taxes are used to pay for more roads. That’s all good, but the only thing you can do on more roads is drive more. Using the tax to provide a reasonable alternative is something that this country needs to do now. We have enough roads. We don’t have enough alternatives to driving.
Or, what he said.
