No, it is not. Not even close or remotely. Honestly, I have no idea how many fields you had to harvest to get that much straw.
Several of the things on your list are outlawed, others are discouraged through several means, including high taxes, and the others are generally highly regulated.
So, your analogy is pretty terrible, in that it both doesn’t relate in the slightest to what we are talking about, as I have not called for the outlawing of anything, and it also only serves to undercut your position even if it did.
Fuel was rationed in WWII but that was actually a way to save rubber, which was in short supply. My grandfather was an official tire dealer and service center in WWII. A regular person was only allowed to own 5 tires. You could not buy new ones without a coupon which were given out to those with special needs like doctors, firemen, etc. You could buy new tires that were seconds but they were rare and distributed evenly across the country. Gramps would advertise each tire individually in ads. You could repair tires and that was his specialty. I watched him vulcanizing tires in his home shop in the 1950s.
For all of the good responses in the thread, the overarching idea seems to be a pretext to outlaw political protests we don’t like such as the Freedom Convoys.
Not exactly the same, but the city I live in has had a municipal bylaw since 1998 making it an offense to leave your vehicle idling, whether you are in it or not, for more than a certain period of time. Initially it was 3 minutes out of every 60, in 2010 this was reduced to 1 minute out of every 60. There are various exceptions, for instance if the temperature is below 5C or above 27C you are allowed to keep the engine running to heat or cool the vehicle, and things like being stuck in a traffic jam are not included. Other exceptions are granted for armored cars with a guard inside while making a pick-up or deposit, and vehicles involved in a parade authorized by the city. The fine ranges from a minimum of $135 to a maximum of $5000.
Like many municipal bylaws, the enforcement is pretty spotty. I can remember only two occasions where the city declared a blitz and directed the by-law enforcement officers and police to give priority to finding and ticketing violators.
While an effect of the by-law is a small reduction in fuel wastage, the goals were to reduce pollution and annoyance.
Many people have said this, and I just picked yours out of the stream, but why? This would have a huge disparate impact on the poor and middle class. Rich guys wouldn’t have trouble running their boats all over the lake, but the poor schlub trying to get to work and the grocery store takes a huge hit in the wallet.
ETA: And it is enormously inflationary. Every product and service will have to account for increased transportation costs which will, again, hurt the little guy while a guy making $300k might have to fly coach instead of first class on his vacation.
Rich guys get their wealth out of poor schlubs’ wallets, so it might be less of an impact, or a delayed impact, but if the lower ranks get hit hard, the upper ranks will eventually start to feel it. Once they start in on the outright undisguised theft, their position in society will be seen as less tenable.
Some proposals for raising gas taxes call for rebates to be provided to everyone who’s lower income.
I’d think it would be better to provide such a payment, probably annually, starting as soon as the law takes effect; because the poorest people can’t pay the extra while waiting for a rebate to arrive. But the general principal does certainly provide a possible way out of that difficulty.
So this is just a roundabout different version of “let’s tax the rich” then? Because it will not do anything to lower fuel usage if you give rebates to a bunch of people.
The response might be “yeah, but the rebates will be small enough so that it only covers going to work and the grocery store and the like” but how do you calculate that? What do you do in a poor state like WV, or states out west were people have to drive many miles to the store and work versus living in the inner city where one can walk to the corner store? It seems like it would be run poorly by a government bureaucrat who would overpay many people and underpay many others
Yes, it will; because they’ve got additional things to spend it on, so probably won’t spend all of it on gas; at least, not unless they’re already doing everything possible that they can do to use less gas.
And it will encourage people who have enough money not to get the rebate to use less gas, if they’ve got relatively easy ways to do so, which a lot of them do.
Will it have any impact on the fuel usage of billionaires? I doubt it; but because a technique won’t fix everything perfectly is no reason not to use it if it’ll be of some help.
It could be written poorly or written well. That’s an argument for writing it well, not one for not doing it at all.
It could probably be written so as to give a higher rebate to those who either live or work where there isn’t good public transport; but that’s so much of the USA that I’m not sure it would be worth the trouble and cost of the extra bookkeeping, not to mention the arguments about ‘of course you can get there on a bus! just because it takes you three hours and four changes in each direction doesn’t mean you need to be able to get enough money to otherwise get to your job!’
They get a free pass, as do ambulances, fire trucks and city buses. Also vehicles that need the engine running to operate equipment to perform a job, like a cement truck, are exempt.
You picked this line out of “the stream”, but didn’t include the whole post, where I specifically advocated for vouchers to address that very issue.
10 gallons a week is probably enough for most people, if it needs to be adjusted a bit then we can look into that.
Then yes, the rich guy running their boat all over the lake will be paying a higher gas tax on that fuel to more realistically account for the actual costs of that gas.
So the government determines by fiat, adjusted of course as it deems my needs to be worthy, to give me an allowance of 10 gallons of gasoline per week, so much as I have not been too successful in life such that the success denies me the government funds and I must, through taxation, pay for the next guy’s gasoline .
I decline that as it, as other posters have said, seems like something Lenin would propose.
Sounds like a bunch of mewling and whining by those who are more fortunate that they are forced to share the same air as those less so.
I have to pay, through taxation, for the next missile or bomb that is dropped on some poor country that I will never visit. Cry me a river about having to pay taxes on what you choose to consume.
And it would be less about paying for the next guy’s gasoline, and more paying for carbon reduction incentives, technologies and infrastructure, carbon sequestration, and mitigation of the damage from climate change.
Not really. Such a comparison would be pretty stupid to make.