To be honest, I’ve lost the underlying point of all of this. There are a number of federal programs and I’m not clear what the status of each is. Back in 2007, the biggest pot was the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). That may still be the case.
Economists like to note that money is fungible, so that if you give a state a grant, it will free up funds for other purposes. To some extent, empirically. At any rate, I’m not sure what the underlying argument is, or how backed it is by observation of actual governmental behavior as opposed to ideological supposition.
Well, we can forget the rebate, and just make the one dollar per gallon tax the law. I can see a family of 4, right now, would help raise the revenues by 48,000 per year, just by their water use alone. We could even charge the rich 10 per gallon. And corporations?? 100 per gallon. Think of the revenue that it would generate.
Also, we should start taxing street usage. At least 100 cars per day go by my house. Say 5 dollars per road. And, I know that these cars go down other streets in addition to mine. I would imagine that a 15 dollar tax for 3 turns to go down and buy some milk would really generate revenue for our cash poor states.These retirees have it too soft, and it’s unfair that the rest of America should have to pick up the load. We haven’t been taxing them enough.
And, you did know that increased taxes means more money directly out of people’s pockets, right?
You miss the whole point of my post. Once costs are increased for whatever reason they are here forever even if the original reason becomes moot. Yeah you can justify $1/gal fed tax now but we’ll still be paying it when gas hit 5 bucks a gallon.
Every time since 1993 when we’ve talked about raising the gas price, it’s always countered by wailing of “but but gas is just too expensive already!” The point you’re missing is that the worn-out excuses of the past 20 years no longer apply. Yes, it will be a permanent tax, bridges don’t start aging more slowly just because the price of gas rises.
If a person doesn’t drive but uses public transit they are likely to have an advantage. So I guess it depends on what mode of transportation someone uses as to if they would be for or against this if in the end the government got the same amount of money. But remember as the price of something increases the demand decreases, so adding a gas tax may have the result of more people flocking to public transit and avoiding driving more often and therefore not have the desired tax revenue needed to make up for the loss in payroll taxes.
I think that Krauthammer is usually horribly wrong. That said, I really do think that it a perfectly Keynesian thing to do would be to raise taxes on gas but not because we are suddenly cutting Social Security or anything like that.
We have a crumbling infrastructure and a good number of skilled workers who can be put to work repairing our bridges and tunnels and roadways and can take advantage of the cheap gas to put them to work.
Paying a bit more for gas might seem like it would hurt but drivers are paying in other ways right now:
In just two states (and not densely populated ones that deal with a lot of cold weather and the problems that cold weather has on auto travel), drivers are paying an extra $9.5 billion dollars because our roads are in such lousy shape.
Add in a higher gas tax and put these people to work (who will in turn have more money to put into the economy). It only needs to be a short-term fix and can be written in a way that they go away if gas prices reach a certain threshold, or are reduced. And we would all get safer roads which would save us money and put people to work which would help the economy.
All of this is win-win so of course it won’t happen. But it should.
I assume the $1 increase is kite-flying: it’s too big an increase for anyone in govt to accept, but given the arguments for any increase at all, they might be persuaded to accept a 20c increase each year for five years. And that’s what the proponent really wanted.
Agreed - I’m in the UK. We pay higher fuel taxes than in the US. However, we drive fewer miles to work, and our food goes fewer miles on the road. It is different.
That does seem like a good idea - anyone know why it’s not happening apart from wages?
He is a “Sir” due to his work in acting; he was not born rich. He still lives in the East End and until fairly recently still commuted by tube and DLR (Docklands Light Railway). His misunderstanding is due to UK-US standards rather than rich-poor.
Dude issues a mea culpa, others were clear on what he meant, and you think that jumping on his precise verbiage is a way to score debate points? Roffles.
I submit that your post is trivial, petulant and, glaringly, wrong. And that you are being officious and in over your head in trying to take issue with my nomenclature.
The term ‘slip of the keyboard’ is an idiom, making a play of words on the phrase ‘slip of the tongue’ [look it up], except, as we note, nobody is speaking, and, with a nod to the medium, the word ‘keyboard’ is substituted for ‘tongue’.
Please show me where I am incorrect. Otherwise, kindly leave your pompous posturings elsewhere.