What do you think about this gas tax elimination proposal?

Oh, I don't feel guilty in the least. But unlike some, I don't argue that I should be exempt because I'm better than other people.

Now, a tax on fat people is an idea I could get behind.

If we imposed gas taxes to pay for the wars we fight for oil, gas would be so expensive nobody would drive gas cars and we would not have to fight wars for oil.

 

I don't understand why people are so obsessed with trying to force this square peg of a country into the round hole policies of Europe. Just because it works over there does not mean it will work over here. Just taking into account the massive difference in size of this country compared to Europe and the massive amount of goods and services that rely on road transportation punches holes in the "tax gas like Europe" argument.

There was a point in time when people in this country led the world. Now too many seem to think we need to follow, or just simply comply. Is it laziness or just hatred of anything "American". How about instead of trying to force policies that have no proven track record of success in this country on EVERYONE just to keep up with the Joneses we get back to work and lead this world into a better tomorrow by figuring out what is best for THIS country now and in the future?

I'm not saying that fuel taxes should be eliminated, but saying we should dramatically increase taxes JUST BECAUSE Europe does in order to be "more in line" with them is narrow sighted, and likely to cause more damage than good.

 

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There are reasons many of our families got out of europe. The last I checked Europe was not doing better than the US on very many things.

IMHO its worse than that. When we follow europe's example the us often loses its way. We should at least see if we want to keep up with the Guptas or Chins before chasing the Jones. Maybe we need to do what is best for america and not lead or follow.

The country should raise fuel taxes to appropriate levels, not because its what Europe does, but because its sound fiscal policy. Raising money for roads and road safety through gps tracking of cars is not only counterproductive, it seems down right unamerican.

 

Of course the reason for increasing gas taxes is not because Europe does it. The reasons for increasing gas taxes are:

-- To discourage wasteful use of energy;

-- To reduce the carbon load on the atmosphere;

-- To draw on resources presently being spent on non-renewable energy to fund the development of renewable, sustainable energy;

-- To slow the use of non-renewable energy, and thereby delay the eventual, inevitable end of cheap fossil fuel;

... Just to name a few. In a relatively short time, cheap fossil fuel will be a thing of the past. There are two approaches we can take: 1. We can burn it as fast as we possibly can, and to the devil with the future, let the economy collapse when there's no more affordable energy and we have no alternative; or 2. We can invest big time in alternative energy so that as the fossil fuel becomes unaffordable, we are bringing in affordable, sustainable alternatives.

But #2 will require a lot of money, and a high tax on fossil fuels is the ideal way to fund it because it provides money, it discourages waste and extends the life of the remaining fossil fuel, and it pushes the financial incentives towards the sustainable energies and away from the non-sustainable ones.

A high gas tax makes sense from every angle. It has nothing to do with what Europe is doing, except that the Europeans are smarter than we are, so they've seen it sooner.

 

Until there is an alternative that maintains the availability of affordable energy that has enabled this country to succeed in the past and maintain a comparatively high standard of living for its people dramatically increasing taxes on energy will do nothing more than drive this country deeper into the hole. Too many companies are already sending jobs and manufacturing over seas, should we really give them one more cost increase to help them to decide to increase this exodus?

Affordable energy and transportation are critical to this country being competitive. When you have a small dense country it makes sense to have lots of public transportation, very little private transportation, and you can get away with expensive energy and transportation. It's much easier to be efficient when moving goods and services across the country means hundreds of miles, then when it means thousands of miles.

When we have the alternatives in place that are sustainable and are clean and are realistic, THEN it makes sense to "encourage" people away from the "bad" option. Right now people and businesses get to choose between affordable and readily available or expensive and hard to use/find. If a business that has to worry about paying its employees has to choose which choice will make them more successful and more competitive? If a family has to choose which choice will leave them with more money for food, and clothes, and time with the family.


It's just not as simple as some people think. So much time is being spent on trying to figure out how to force people into cars that barely suit their needs and wants or into lifestyles they are not happy with, or behaviors they are unsure of. Why not spend less time forcing people into what YOU think is right and spend that time on provide better options, better solutions, better alternatives.

This is how we can do things that are good for this country, regardless of what the rest of the world does. With the diversity, complexity, and individuality of this country and it's people we can NOT expect success and prosperity to come from one myopic solution. After all, look where that got us today with what the oil monopolies did in the past?

Understand the problem, establish realistic reasonable goals, and find the solution from that. Finding problems for solutions has been the MO for too long, and it has failed at almost every turn.

 

And yet there are people in this country who want to blindly force this country into the European model, which on many levels is failing horribly.

VERY WELL SAID. I fear that to many of the "progressives" or "liberals" have come to the conclusion that anything "American" is bad. I find that really sad.

But what is appropriate, and who determines appropriate. Do we raise them to the point where the majority of people buy more fuel efficient cars for daily driving? Do we raise them to the point where everyone buys a fuel efficient car? Do we raise them to the point where people get rid of all their vehicular toys(street rods, RVs, dirtbikes, offroad rigs, boats, etc.)? Do we raise them to the point where everyone starts thinking about completely getting rid of all their vehicles? At what point do the taxes get to the point where the cost is unavoidable(can't afford to live near work, or near public transportation, or don't even have access to public transportation), and the cost is damaging? At what point do the taxes get so high that the price of everything we buy or need is so high our standard of living is seriously impacted(like in Europe, how many people in europe actually have a house compared to the people in the US)?

So what is appropriate? I liken the tax and legislate people out of using too much energy argument to the abortion argument. Some want all abortions to be illegal all the time no exceptions. But I would argue that if we could just reduce or eliminate the need/desire/want for an abortion there would be no need to go after people's personal opinions on the subject and there would be just one more thing the government would not have to decide for us.

 

I'm sure what I think appropriate, will not be what others do. I don't think we can really tax ourselves into an energy policy, but at the same time our energy policy seems to be the best one that unions and the oil companies can buy. In other words it does not serve the needs of the country, but the needs of some politicians.

The US has a great deal of corporate welfare to the oil companies to explore for oil and produce alternative energy, and additional corporate welfare to the car companies to build more efficient or different cars. At a minimum registration fees and fuel taxes should cover these as well as maintenance of the infrastructure for automobiles. At the present time it does not. Additionally there are health care costs associated with pollution from cars and trucks and additionally from those injured in accidents that are not covered by insurance. I would also like to see these costs included in the tax. Finally since it is a scare resource and we need to have a strategic petroleum reserve the tax should be slightly higher to adapt for this. When taxes become punitive for sins, the government oversteps its bounds, but the general funds of state and federal government are paying for some of the costs associated with fuel use. I am not really interested in the fairness argument that poor people don't have money for more fuel efficient cars so higher gas taxes hurt them most. A phased in approach with flat taxes per gallon (percentage taxes exaggerate market moves) increasing as cafe increases seems like a logical approach. I don't really expect politicians to use logic though.

 

That won't happen until declining crude supplies make oil unaffordable. By which time our enemies will have acquired ownership of our treasury.

Our insatiable appetite for oil has contributed to a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. to foreign interests, many of whom are not very friendly to us.

With all the money to be made in this business, I think we are very short sighted to have our government not adequately collecting its share of the profits, but rather diverting other tax moneys to subsidize our oil addiction.

 

I completely agree.

Bigger picture, taxes are one of those things that in this country we have gone to far. Not in the amount, in the complexity. They are not fair, they are not equitable, and they are not accounted for. We have thousands of special interest tax breaks for all kinds of crazy stuff.

I am more than willing to admit that how much I pay in taxes is NOT equitable. And no I am not going to give it back . I know people who make more than me and pay less in taxes, and I know people who make less than me and pay more.

Of course simplicity does not support the massive beuracracy that is our government and it's structured relationship with the real puppet masters, corporations and special interest.

Instead of more taxes I would support spending less on those corporate welfare subsidies, like those for oil and even Corn, and spend that on building alternative fuel infrastructure. This would create jobs and lead us to a future without foreign or unsustainable oil.

Plus the only thing stopping us from working towards a world where I can afford to drive my Prius to work AND drive my truck towing my toyhauler to the trail to play with my toys is narrow sighted ideology. We need to break with this myopic ideology that say there is only one possible solution and figure out how to have our cake and eat it too.

 

We can replace petroleum fuel with domestically produced bio-fuels. We just need to break thru some fears and chose the right raw materials.

 

This would be true if there were an unlimited supply of oil. There is not. Sticking our head in the sand and continuing to burn oil as fast as we can will only hasten the day when the cheap oil is gone, and our economy collapses. If you think gas taxes will drive our economy into a hole, wait until you see the utter chaos when the cost of producing oil skyrockets due to depletion of the supplies and we have no alternative because we've been ignoring the problem.

Alternatives exist now. The technology exists. It's just a matter of investing in the infrastructure.

 

It has been proposed (and is probably in the works) that hybrid trucks be used for long-haul cargo shipping.

However, there is already a viable alternative that uses much less fuel per cargo mile than trucks or any new technology trucks: railroads. We need to expand and enhance our railway infrastructure so that they operate more along the structure that the airlines use: a hub system. Using this method, shipping containers are loaded onto railcars for long distance shipping, then offloaded onto truck beds for local delivery. That way, fuel efficiency and flexibility is maximized.

To a certain extent this structure already exists and is being used. But a higher, more realistic fuel tax would provide the impetus to expand the railroad infrastructure to handle a greatly increased load and reduce our fossil fuel dependency.

As for those items that need to be shipped faster than railways can handle? You pay the true and full costs of getting it where and when you want it.

 

I heard a railroad ad, I don't remember the figures, but they ship some mind-boggling number of ton-miles per gallon of diesel fuel.

Okay. According to fact-check-dot-org, the average U.S. railroad moves a ton of freight 436 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel. Some are over 500 miles, which means some are well below 436; but 436 is the average.

OTOH, trucks are required to use low-sulfur fuel (15 ppm) and railroads can use high-sulfur fuel (500 ppm) for another 4 years (though the article is dated 2008).

But trains can be electric, for greater efficiency, and that electricity can come from renewables if we ever decide to invest in renewable-energy infrastructure. We probably could have installed enough solar and wind to meet our energy needs for what we've spent on oil wars over the past two decades.

 

And unfortunately our government seems more interested in bailing out banks and car companies as well as blaming each other instead of investing in technology and infrastructure that will help us move forward.

 

Actually ALL trains are electric, actually series hybrid electric. This is the technology that is being promoted for trucks. I would LOVE to have a hybrid pickup truck to tow my trailer. Truck and trailer loaded are just under 24,000 lbs. Everytime I come down a big grade here in California I think about all that wasted energy that I could be using to climb the next hill. Personally I think the regenerative braking potential is larger vehicles is MUCH more than smaller vehicles like the Prius.

I don't believe that the technology is really there for long haul rail to use grid tied power, or even from any permanently located power source. I could be wrong. On the other hand BioDiesel works just fine in diesel trains.

 

More modern long haul rail, and short haul rail, for both freight and passenger is definitely PART of the solution. As long as we remember that there will always be a need for the last mile, that is the distance between the rail depot and the final destination. This applies to both the big city and the rural farm. One of the advantages of long haul rail is that it does not have to change speed much, if we work to have enough stops to cover everything, or most things we lose that advantage.

There needs to be a combined increase in rail AND better trucks(light, medium and heavy duty). The trucks are getting better. Several of the medium and heavy duty truck makers have some really impressive hybrid and alternative fuel rigs on the road or in development. Also the new Ford Super Duty's have REALLY impressive power and mileage. Assuming it can't be done is nothing more than giving up. It can be done, we just have to believe it can and start thinking bigger than the myopic little boxes some people seem to be stuck in.

Not everyone wants or can live with a Prius. I can for my daily driving, but there is no way I am giving up my truck, toyhauler or toys. I have a big problem with the people who seem to think everyone needs to give up their right to choose and comply with a very myopic view of reality. This not only pisses people off(like huge tax increases would do) and makes it harder to get everyone on board with improving things, but it also prevents us from making real world changes that could have an effect NOW, not years into the future.

We will have much more success if we work together than if we fight and try to force people to do things they do not want to do. Just look at how effective our government is(not) with all the fighting.

 

Hybrid diesel-electric is NOT the same as electric: Pure electric trains (which you refer to as grid-tied electric, and which are used throughout Europe and for some trains in the U.S.) are able to benefit from the efficiency of really large electric generating plants, as well as the pollution control that can be employed in the big plants, AND the cogeneration that can be designed into fixed plants. (Using the waste heat for domestic and industrial uses where low-grade --that is, low temperature-- heat can be exploited.) In a thousand ways, large fixed electrical generating plants are superior to mobile combustion engines, whether internal or external combustion.

Further, if you want to be able to capture the energy of long downhills, you need LOTS of batteries. And more so for a heavier vehicle. The battery in a Prius can only hold enough energy for a couple of miles of driving on level ground. Your pickup truck towing a big trailer, would need tens of thousands of dollars worth of batteries to capture the energy of a good-size downhill. It's a great idea, but faces the same problem BEVs face today: the cost of batteries.

A pure (grid-tied) electric train needs no batteries. And in fact, a diesel-electric hybrid train does not have batteries to store downhill braking energy, though diesel-electric is more efficient than diesel alone, and even without regenerative braking would probably make for a more efficient truck, though in that case some batteries (as in the Prius) make a big improvement, because your truck does not benefit from the relative lack of stop-and-go that trains enjoy.

 

Yeah, I'm an engineer with a lot of experience designing and working on very complicated and very large systems. There is more to it in the real world than just the simple theory. For short haul pure electric trains, without onboard storage, work well. Once you go to long haul you start getting into efficiency problems with the distribution grid. Only way around it would be a massive yet decentralized power generation grid spread out over the entire haul. Would be cool, not exactly something that could be built overnight. Lets put that one on the long term wish list. Lets take care of the low hanging, high return fruits first and keep working on the plans for the long term to make sure they are as perfect as possible. But that's just the engineer in me speaking.

 

I don't know. Seems like a mixed bag to me. On one hand, it would encourage people to drive less, in more efficient vehicles. On the other hand, there is a very real possibility that road maintainence will become underfunded, and then guess what they do to make up for it - raise every other tax in the state. Oops.

If, on the other hand, the tax is raised only for the heaviest drivers, there will be massive hate. The hybrid owners will complain that their righteous efforts to save the planet aren't being fully appreciated, while those who need a giant planet murdering SUV to haul people and stuff will feel that the state is discriminating against them.

And don't even get me started on the industrious few who will figure out a way to fool the sensor or whatever other method they use. It'll be a mess.