A significant gas tax makes sense, except that there are people who are in the lowest paid jobs who are unable to afford such an increase and do not have public transportation available (for example in rural areas) – the burden will be unfairly placed upon them. There would have to be some system of government assistance for these folks – some kind of tax break allowing people under a certain income to pay lower fuel taxes. That sound pretty unwieldly, though, so I’m not sure how it would work. Maybe we should eliminate all consuption/sales taxes and raise income taxes instead. Gosh, when did I turn into a communist?
There’s a lot here to disagree with, starting with the OP.
Do you advocate raising the gas tax to fund maintenance? If so, raising it so high that consumers switch to more fuel efficient vehicles will inevitably result in reduced fuel purchases, lowering the revenue available to fund maintenance. A smaller increase in the gasoline tax would raise more revenue in the long run.
If you want to switch U.S. drivers to alternative forms of transportation, raising the gasoline tax isn’t the best way. It may not even be the most efficient way to pay for maintenance (compared with, say, tolls, or peak-hour surcharges.)
Have you followed the debates over ethanol right on this board? Some criticize it because it’s too expensive, others because it’s too subsidized, others because it doesn’t replace enough foreign oil, others still because it doesn’t result in enough carbon being removed from the atmosphere.
Or read the comments about hybrid vehicles: the batteries don’t last long enough, they aren’t cost-effective, etc.
When I learned to drive the cost of a barrel of oil was about $2.90. in 1997 it was still about $12.50 per barrel. Today it’s close to $100. You can judge for yourself how well both public policy and the marketplace have responded.
Experience hasn’t proven that. In fact, U.S. drivers are driving more.
Good idea. Let’s take it to it’s logical conclusion. You get rid of the federal gas tax and the highway programs funded by it, and I’ll do everything I can to close Interstate 70 in Missouri to interstate traffic. It won’t be overcrowded and crumbling when all it has to handle is Missourians driving between St. Louis and Kansas City.
You mean fertilizer?
I grew up in Los Angeles in the 70s. One study of adolescents in California found that kids that grew up in LA have lower lung capacity than kids that grew up in areas with less air pollution. And the diminished capacity is irreversible even if you move somewhere with better air quality as an adult. I’d say the shit is in my yard either way
That hits the nail on the head. People tend to think that gasoline taxes on hit rich housewives taking their spoiled kids to dance classes and karate lessons in oversized SUVs. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I would venture to say that everything tangible thing that a person has was depending on oil at some point in its existence. Hell, I was just thinking that the tomato I just ate didn’t because I grew it in my backyard. But I had to drive to Home Depot to buy the tomato plant. And the tomato plant had to be shipped by gasoline powered vehicle to Home Depot. And the farmer which grew the tomato plant from seed had to use a gasoline powered truck or vehicle to get the supplies necessary to do so.
Our society is geared toward oil consumption because the ONLY reliable transportation we have is petroleum based. When someone can invent a vehicle that reliably uses alternative fuels, he will become a rich man, and changed the whole world in a large way…
kunilou,
I advocate for substantial and lasting tax credits to help encourage the purchase of a variety of vehicles that move towards decreased use of oil over vehicles that use more gas. I do not believe in proposing a tax credit give-away without suggesting a way to pay for it. I have noted that the gas tax has, in real dollar terms, decreased by 2/3s over 14 years. I therefore further suggest that eliminating this reduction of the gas tax could help provide the funds needed for my proposal. If the result of such a raise was to facilitate the transition to an economy less dependent on foreign oil and less caustic to our climate I could live with that even if it decreased the ability to fund these tax credits.
Certainly such an action is insufficient in and of itself. Nor is it the only possible approach. My biggest concern is that such an approach places some governmental agency is the position of deciding which vehicles are most deserving of the most tax credits. I am skeptical of such an ability to pick the best technology.
One other solution would be to place a carbon and/or oil usage price on all new vehicles calculated on the basis of how much carbon and/or oil usage the vehicle would be responsible for per year of typical use. That year’s mean of all new vehicles would be used to determine if a vehicle was given a credit or if an extra tax was placed and how much according to some agreed upon formula. The most gas-guzzling/carbon emitting would pay the biggest surcharge and the most gas miserly and least carbon emitting would garner the biggest tax credit. The average car’s price would be unaffected. From there let the market innovate.
Someday the question for many people will be do you want to drive around in your own car or not? If you want to drive, you’re going to get an alternative to conventional oil, like an electric scooter or an electric car. If you don’t, you won’t. You’ll take public transportation. If there is no public transportation, it will be built. Eventually. In the meantime, you can bike 50 miles to work.
When this happens, or when things start to get rocky, will be “the right time” to begin changes other countries have been working on for several decades. In theory.
A Republican bringing this up will make the message much more effective. It will synergize with the terrorist/xenophobia/national security state planks. And since it’s a Republican bringing the message everyone will understand that it isn’t a liberal trick or tainted with environmental issues.
Gas only costs about $3.00 right now. Someday, $4.00. Someday, $5.00. At some point, demand will fall. If demand isn’t falling then the price isn’t high enough yet.
This is just plain wrong. There are many reliable alternatives to ICE cars and buses and trucks. But the cheap price of oil means they won’t be used in the U.S. on a mass scale for some time.
AFAIK, the only alternative that doesn’t exist yet is a substitute for aviation fuel. But that’s OK, since compared to personal transport it’s nothing (and extremely efficient at long distance transport to boot).
Since you put this in Great Debates you need to quantify your argument. Where did you get $.45/gal as the BE point for highway maintenance? And for the sake of argument, whatever price is used it will go need to go up with increases in fuel efficiency. Also, EV’s would pay nothing in your example.
It seems like a no-brainer to me.
It punishes the behaviour you’re trying to discourage (gasoline consumption) and provides a relative economic advantage for people to buy hybrids or ride their bike or a bus to work.
You don’t want to make it so steep that it pushes the nation into a recession, but sure, I think that $0.45 would be reasonable.
Where does this “cheap price of oil” nonsense come from? It is at an all-time high?
How is that “cheap” by any definition?
The quantification for the 45¢ point was straightforward. In 1993 the gas tax was @ 18% of the price of gas. Keeping it at that point would be about 45¢ today. The BE point did not come into it and I doubt it did then. If one wanted to keep it pegged only to overall inflation then it would indeed be less, about 27¢ (using this nifty inflation calculator). I do not have specifics available for the increased expenses in infrastructure maintenance since 1993 but my understanding is however, that construction, in particular road maintenance, costs have increased much faster than general inflation. Certainly they have risen dramatically in recent years.
jtgain Who are you quoting as having said “cheap price of oil”? Maybe I missed it but I cannot find that quote having been made by anyone in this thread. Or even implied. Most of us realize that the days of cheap oil are past. Oil is costly indeed and in more important ways than the dollars at the pump.
It is however still cheaper than most reliable alternatives. That is changing of course. They are near parity for some technologies now in fact. That is why I believe that a little nudge may be enough to motivate a more rapid transition to alternatives that are less costly in those other ways.
Here in the U.K, the price of gas is about US$9.50 per gallon. Most of that is tax.
I’m sure the high price has a huge negative effect on the economy.
Gas prices in the US have gone up about 150% since mid 2001, prices in the UK have gone up about 50% in that time frame.
When gas is highly taxed, people make purchase decisions that reflect the high cost. The UK is not a bastion of gas guzzlers like the US is, small cars are popular. The low cost of gas in the US means that we have a lot more guzzlers than sippers, and that has a real effect on the used market, where most low income folks are buying their cars. There aren’t as many small cars available as big cars.
So, the poor people you’re so worried about get stuck with used gas guzzlers and prices that jump 2.5x in a short period.
If the gas tax was handled correctly from the start, 30+ years ago after the first oil crisis, we would have higher prices overall, but the entire landscape of the auto market would be different. Small cars that get 40+ mpg would be commonplace, not just for granola eating hippies, and lower income folks would be able to find them used, and in quantity enough for everyone.
The tax also goes to the government, who (if they actually manage their budget) can use it to offset taxes taken elsewhere in the economy, such as by reducing income tax rates on the lower tiers of income, if we’re really so concerned about the poor.
It’s cheap compared to the alternatives. It might not be cheap compared to historical prices, but that doesn’t really matter, since you can’t use “gas from 10 years ago” to go somewheretoday.
Even ignoring the fact that a train ticket often costs as much or more than the gas to go somewhere, taking the train requires a significant time cost in fitting the schedule and routes of the train. Riding a bike takes a lot longer, sucks when it rains, and sometimes just can’t go far enough. Even if gas prices doubled again, it would still be (comparitively) cheap oil because the extra time to use other transportation methods has a cost.
If that’s true, then why hasn’t any other country already done that? Most of the developed countries have very high taxes on gasoline. Are they just not as smart as we Americans? Or could it be something else…?
This is what I was referring to…
Those transportation methods cost more because they also rely on oil AND they provide you added conveniences.
Your argument is circular. It would be like saying that oranges are “cheap” because they are “only” $200 per pound, but, hey orange juice is $400 a gallon, so look at the deal you are getting.
There is no context in which you can say oil is “cheap” today. Maybe it is cheap compared to what they pay in the UK, but we never paid those prices, so it is a false comparison.
In 1999, I paid 78 cents per gallon for regular unleaded. One hour ago, I paid $3.23 for the same thing. That is a four-fold increase in the last eight years. I wish my salary had quadrupled in the same period of time…
If you want to refer to current oil prices as expensive no one should disagree. But many people refer to the current cost of gas as cheap because future prices will be even higher and the current price will be seen as ridiculously cheap, just as we giggle when we look at old articles and discussions from a couple years ago where people were complaining about “expensive” $1.00 or $2.00 gas. This is the reality of a finite resource being used faster than new reserves can be found and when new reserves are expensive to develop (see the new Brazilian discovery).
There’s also the mechanical analysis. For only three bucks, you can move a one ton mass of steel and fiberglass twenty, thirty, forty miles – or more – depending on its engine efficiency.