I’ll try.
If the tax is phased in slowly, you can buy a lower mileage car, when it comes time to replace your old vehicle. In fact, that’s where much of the gas savings will come from.
But in the end, it’s about paying your way. Your car pollutes: it damages health and the environment just as your and my electricity usage does. Now that’s not saying that we should pursue a zero emission strategy: I don’t want that. What it does mean though is just as you pay rent for the cost of your housing and just as anything you buy reflects cost of labor and machines, so you should pay for the damage that your car emissions do. In today’s world almost everyone is a moocher now.
For most people gas is maybe 1/2 of one percent of their budget. But for a few (like perhaps you) it will be substantially more. Part of the cost of doing business.
Maybe you want to vote with your pocketbook though. That’s fine. I just want to be clear about what is happening. Those with low incomes could have their tax rates tweaked to compensate them for higher fuel costs. But realtors and salesmen? That will hit them, just like another war in the middle east would. The market price of oil before taxes is about $60 a barrel now. Most of us here will see it at $200 at some point. I’d rather keep a higher chunk of that revenue in the US.
SUVs are selling pretty well in Texas, according to a recent article in the Economist.
I also skimmed “The Empirical Research on the Social Equity of Gas Taxes, Emissions Fees, and Congestion Charges”, (2009) by an analyst I had not heard of. It said: [INDENT]General gas and emissions charges are expected to cost low-income households about 0.2 percent of their annual income, without tax shifting. …
Low-income drivers pay, on average, somewhere between 0.1 to 0.5 percent of household income for most proposed taxes and fees as they are spread across a large tax base of drivers. Fairly high, comprehensive tolling schemes which affect a smaller subset of drivers are expected to take a higher percentage, as much as 2 percent of household income for those with under $25,000 a year. Yet low-income drivers are expected to be a small portion of premium transportation service users in most metropolitan regions.
Gas taxes have been found to be regressive, in general, but with an out-of-pocket cost estimate of $180 a year per household per car, the Federal gas tax is hardly a prohibitive sum. [But] It is important to remember that this is not the total operating expense associated with gasoline or with mobility, or even the total transport tax burden, which would include state and local taxes, registration fees, and tolls. [/INDENT] That wasn’t addressing a one dollar per gallon tax plan though. I think the qualitative point remains: “Regressive, but not as bad as you might think and at any rate legislators can and do soften the blow”.
Krauthammer likes the gas tax because it hits the Saudis hard. In other words, he wants Sateryn76 to pay for his foreign policy goals. I want a higher carbon tax, which will hit coal harder than oil and oil harder than natural gas. I’d phase it in slowly, but we really should have started the process in the early 1990s.
Also modern conservatives have a history of floating counter-plans when liberals try to address policy issues. Tradeable emission permits were pushed by conservatives for example, until they reached the point where they were actually proposed in Congress. So in practice expect Krauthammer to oppose gas taxes: congress will reasonably want to set aside some of the proceeds for infrastructure, the budget deficit or the military and Krauthammer will balk. That’s not my plan he will say, even if it included a tax cut.
We could take such people seriously. But that would be immoral.
