GM president wants $1.00 hike in fed. gas tax

You make just too much sense. I wish some of the folks on Tivocommunity who I was arguing with (I can point you to the threads ), but you'll need an account there) would get it.

 

Excellent idea. Figure out a way to not impact those that can afford it the least, young kids, low income, seniors on fixed income.

Most people have a limited amount of "disposable income". People did without other "things" during the time of high prices. People began "staycations". Living on the coast this really did "ruin our economy" when vacationers quit coming. Once the prices went back down, things returned to normal.

Totally agree. Once again if we can figure out how to do it without impacting those that can afford it the least. Also figure out how to limit impact to the transportation industry so that we do not pay for it many times over. People have to have food and this is one the first things that get impacted when the cost of transportation goes up.

 

An excellent idea. You guys south of us need to start paying into your national debt more.

If gas is cheaper in Canada (which it is supposed to be) we might start getting tourists again outside of the F1 Grand Prix.

That it would crash the economy is hogwash. Case in point: the UK

 

And exactly how did the UK go about planning and implementing the value added gas tax?

 

Or, the congestion tax?

Ah, you got me there. Would the extra money go to the war effort or balancing the budget?

My point was that Londoners did not go bankrupt "en masse" because their fuel cost is more than twice the US average.

In Other News :

London has a big problem, pollution-wise, for the next Olympics. Congestion tax did diddlysquat for air quality.

Unlike the Chinese gov't, how could they enforce a city-wide no-drive for a few weeks?

BBC News - London Olympics 2012: Air quality row may hit games

The UK is set to miss EU targets on air quality, government documents say - which may mean a legal row just before the London Olympic Games.

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I was planning on visiting London soon, being border-line asthmatic w/allergies, looks I'll be going elsewhere. I can't even stand downtown Montreal when it is at it's worst. Hard to imagine NY, LA or London as being far worse.

 

It's good for you though, we're paying beau coup dollars for Canadian petroleum from your oil sands. About 20% of our oil comes from you guys. About 10% from Mexico (but those fields are in decline), and 25% of our oil comes from people we're not so friendly with - Venezuela, Nigeria, middle east, Russia.

Doesn't really matter if we implement a gas tax or not, the general direction of gas prices will continue to be up, unless they find some easily accessible giant field of sweet crude. All this heavy crude that's left in quantity is not economically viable unless oil prices are upwards of $60-70/barrel (depends on how hard it is to get to the field in question, but that's probably a good average).

 

With some trepidation, I will tell you that I'm a Tivo owner, and am more than likely already signed up at Tivocommunity. I do have my limits on where and how much time I can spend yelling the same thing though!

 

So this whole worry about adding a $1 tax... consider what could have happened in the days following the big wake-up on 9/11. Gas was about $1.60 per gallon on 9/11. If at that time we slapped a $1 tax on gas in order to spur development of alternatives... folks would use less, would demand more economical cars... and gas would have likely ended up about $3 per gallon after a year or so. And gosh look at that. It DID end up at $3 per gallon - but all that money (should we call it a tax?) went to other countries. We were taxed by Venezuela. By Russia. By Saudi Arabia. (I'm sure I missed some) And in the meantime, we had no incentive to buy more efficient cars. So we end up with the same price of gas, the same stupid cars AND less money to fund alternatives. How's that sounding? Then we hit $4... and again - very little of it stays here. We're paying whatever the price of gas is. We have given up all control of what the price of gas is. When it is cheap we forget about when it was high. When it is high, we complain that it should again be cheap. And all the while, we let OTHER entities tax us. And we pay it because we have no choice.

Let's not consider this a new tax on gas. Let's consider it the correct tax on gas. The tax that helps us instead of the tax that destroys us. The other countries are taxing us. Mother nature is taxing us. Is this not something that we should try and control? Or shall we toss our hands in the air and let everybody else set the price of gas for us?

Yes, it sucks to be poor. It sucks to have to pay more for something that we used to pay less for. But going down this road with blinders on is the way to ruin. There IS a solution. It isn't quick and it won't be painless. The longer we wait the more painful it will be. We just need the political cajones to get 'er done sooner than later. 50 years ago would have been my choice.

 

Well said

 

For years, many recommended heavier taxes on gasoline to get $4 gasoline to help encourage conservation. The concept had merit, but OK now we have $4 gasoline due to world pop growth. The $4 seems to be having desired effect - more smaller car sales.

Gaso here is probably already more expensive than it would have been had the Congress not enacted certain things like ethanol mandate and so-called boutique fuel requirements. So we gotta house of cards already, need to be careful. If you tax gaso, then we need to put more ethanol in gaso to keep the corn folks whole as volume declines, and so on. Just saying there are implications.

 

It is also having an undesired effect that a real gas tax doesn't -- it is transferring a large portion of our national wealth to outside entities that wish to control us.

I'm not particularly interested in adding to this house of cards just to keep ADM profitable.

 

If I was a legislator I'd certainly add a 5 cents tax right away if I thought I could get it through. More than that needs to be part of a national plan with some discussion and phase-in.

 

Well, the problem is that spiking fuel prices ever higher IS RUINING the economy. The reason we survive such high gas pricing now is because we have reduced our discretionary spending to almost nothing. If it gets higher, we will run out of that - and have to get more drastic. Once we can't eliminate the purely optional spending, we will borrow to get us through the momentary spikes...once that's depleted, we will start cutting things that were once essential.... eating two meals a day instead of three... then down to one meal a day....then down to every other day of basic, generic foodstuffs... people will stop seeing the doctor, stop getting perscriptions filled, or only take the really vital ones... until that gets too expensive... then they will space them out, taking one every other day. Go higher, and we will see people stop paying for their cars, stop paying for their houses... go ever higher, you stop going to work - as you can't make enough to offset what it takes you to get the paycheck in the first place.

Eventually, if you can wring every ounce of pleasure out of culture, remove every bit of 'waste' out of life, and reduce life to an exercise in ultra-precision super efficiency with no room for beauty or idleness - people will be -lining up- to commit suicide to escape. If that was life, I for one would gladly choose death. It would be a blessed escape.

 

The GM President is very suspect for calling for $1 hike in fed gas tax. I think he has a hidden agenda such as calling for the government to build recharging station infrastructure which would greatly support GM's partial commitment to hybrid gas/electric drivelines. The $1 gas tax hike could certainly pay for that, plus more.

 

Oh come on. Weren't we talking about a gas tax? Cheer up, Comrade - it's not that bad.

At some point in the transition towards charging enough for a product to cover its costs, hopefully people will begin to choose cheaper options. Suicide's not one of them.

 

I am sad to say my sister bought a crossover from Ford because she felt that the Prius would not handle. 3 kids. None of which would be in car seats.

Its this mentality that we need to fight and it will be a tough road to navigate. And it looks like severe financial hardship will be the only way to get it done.

No matter what happens we will adjust. It will take a few years but twill not be the end of the world so I say bring it on and make it $2to!

 

It's a little unclear if he's bemoaning the gas prices alone, or the proposed gas tax, or the possible combination.

Okay, reality check. The average car payment is what, $400/month? The average driver goes about 12-15K miles/year, lets use 14K miles at say 22 mpg. That's 640 gallons/yr or 53 gallons/month = $212/month for gas at $4/gallon. That's half of your car payment and probably 1/8th of your mortgage.

You could do what I did - looked around for a job closer to home, bought a fuel-efficient car, and went from 48 gallons/month to 14 gallons/month. Gas would have to go $8.50/gallon (plus inflation) before I pay more a month than I did back in 2003.

Here's a longer-term perspective on real gas prices. Keep in mind that car's fuel efficiency has increased on average (unless you include "light duty" SUVs and pickup trucks, which historically speaking only 20% of the population used to buy, because only 20% actually need them), so each gallon purchased will get you farther than it used to.



And of course, the argument for a $1/gallon gas tax is to keep the price more stable and let people make purchases that will make sense in the long term. I think a negative adjustable tax would be better - $1/gallon if the price was under $2 gallon, and the tax would diminish as the price of gasoline increases...this would reduce the spikes and valleys in gas prices, and let people and producers and inventors do their thing with more confidence in what energy costs will be in the future.

 

He be moaning, alright. I hope for his sake, he's just having a bad day.

 

The guy's on a roll, his company was valued at 15 billion and the Government lent him 50 billion, so now he's shall we say "giddy"
Why not try to raise a gas tax to have more money available when he burns through the 50 billion, it's only money, honey.
I'd gladly pay a 4$ per gallon tax if I could walk into Dartmouth-Hitchcock (hospital) and not have to pay 250$ for a blood sample, another 250$ for a three minute appointment with a nurse.
42 cents of every one of those dollars goes to, unbelievably, someone not connected to the hospital medically, just economically, a private billing service.

 

Yeah, I was/am having a bad day - and was being a bit... exaggerated... with some statements, but the basic premise remains. Some people are holding onto their lives by a very tenuous thread, working a job that might disappear at any point, barely able to make ends meet - and aren't in the position to simply accept more cost to them. That money comes from somewhere, is the point I was trying to make, and when it gets to be too much - it starts taking it from things that eventually run out (ie: credit cards, second mortgage, HELOCs, parental loans, etc).

When people just passively say, 'Well, why don't you get another job?' or 'Why don't you find someplace else to live?' it is to people who cannot find another job and cannot find someplace else to live. The work market sucks (to put it plainly), and if you've got a good thing going, simply uprooting to find another is not financially prudent. Likewise, if you have tapped out keeping yourself going, you CAN'T get another job (they pull your credit as part of a job application). The same can be extended to finding another home - if you've done nearly everything to keep yourself working and in a place to sleep, you CAN'T get a house, or an apartment. Your credit is so messed up, you can't even hope to get in an apartment, let alone a mortgage.

I end up debating with people who don't see (or refuse to see) in real life that it's simply because these aforementioned people aren't 'lazy' or 'deserve' what they get. THAT is what drives statements of the extremes like what I stated. Just because it doesn't shove you over the cliff really fast doesn't mean you aren't BEING shoved over the cliff.