Sorry, I guess I missed the part about basing the tax on engine emission and odometer reading. That sounds good in theory, but do you think it’s practical? I can just imagine a huge industry of gadgets and chemicals that temporarily lower emissions. Not to mention fiddling with the odometer. Fuel economy and emissions also depend strongly on the way you drive. Emissions is higher when the engine is cold, so ten 2-mile trips produce a lot more emissions than one 20-mile trip. You can’t tell the difference by just looking at the odometer.
Also, in the long run the most expensive pollution may turn out to be carbon dioxide. The amount of CO2 produced is directly proportional to amount of gasoline used. No “cleanliness factor” there at all. If you take all these considerations, I think a tax on gasoline would be as close as you can practically get to “taxing the actual pollution.”
And they will also be able to afford the “pollution tax,” I don’t see how that is different.
If you increase the gas tax by $1, you have increased my cost of filling my gas tank by $17. Due to the distance of my commute to work, I’m going through 2 tanks of gas for just Mon - Fri, which means you’ve increased my expenses $34/week just to travel to work. Add the gas I use over the weekend to go places like the grocery store, doctor, and running all sorts of errands, I’m up another $17 not including the places I go for purely entertainment value. So, you’ve increased my weekly expenses by $51. That’s another $200 out of my pocket every 4 weeks, or $2,652 per year that I’m paying in taxes just so that I can go to work and take are of myself.
As for easily absorbing the sharp increase in gas prices last year, it was somewhat easier to do when I lived in the city. I had gotten rid of my car. When public transportation raised fares, I walked 3 miles to work and back.
I don’t have that option now. Living within 3 miles of my job is financially impossible (and quite a bit more expensive than driving, even if you increase gas taxes). It’s really not that easy to just tell people ‘live closer to your job and use public transportatoin.’
I don’t live in an area that has public transportation, I can’t afford to live in an area that does have it, and even when I did live near it, I had to deal with either it being more expensive than having a car, it not running at the times I needed to get to/from work.
The only way I can afford such an increase in the gas tax is if something else gives. Increase in salary, lowering of some other expense by the amount of the increase in the gas tax…
Otherwise it’s just another burden. More money that leaves my pocket to be spent by someone else on things that will likely never benefit me.