Dumb Idea of the Week: Repealing the Gas Tax Because Too Many People Drive Priuses

Lets take a look at Taxes. You work all year and you make One Dollar. Lets keep it simple. A buck. The Federal Government wants $.25 to $.39 cents, Social Security wants $0.08 cents, Medicare wants $0.02 cents,The State wants $0.06 to $0.09 cents if you live in California, Local (City and County) wants a Penny, schools want a Penny, DMV wants a 0.0025 cents, Property Tax wants a nickle, Mello Roos wants a penny, HOA wants a cut. Wow. Now you have to do your returns and pay the accountant since it is so complicated if you have any assets. Then you tell them what your expenses are and maybe you get 2 cents back. With that and what's left over paying these taxes you have to pay for your home to a bank, feed yourself and the kids, pay for higher education, save for retirement, pay for a Prius, buy gas with yep gas taxes, pay for medical and dental insurance, pay the phone company and there taxes, pay the cable company and there taxes pay the energy and water company and they all have taxes on the bill, and to give you a bit of sanity from this madness save for a vacation to some place with a white sand beach and pay a hotel tax. Then some Wealthy Politician on a cadillac pension plan says I have a brilliant idea. lets increase taxes. Is that insanity. How about cutting expenses. So than you kick the Bucket and in the final process post mordum guess what your heirs have to pay YOUR Inheritance tax.

Now explain to me why you're OK with paying more taxes?

 

Yes. Let's look at taxes. Let's keep it accurate. As you see US is a very low tax state and we have the poor public education (47th), poor mass transit and poor energy efficiency and poor health care system comparable to an underfunded country. Taxes in US need to be raised in order to get US to higher education level, rebuild the infrastructure particularly mass transit, fund Social Security and Medicare fully...and raising gas tax to FUND EV vehicle purchases vs. taxing them is key.

 

My guess here is that more revenue is desired. (DUH!!) Since Democrats seem to like taxes so much, Republicans thought they came up with a way to tax Democrats while leaving Republicans alone: tax "tree hugger" cars! Unfortunately, they forgot some of us who are Republicans, also drive hybrids, not because we love hugging trees; we just hate giving money to people trying to kill us. They'll wise up once they learn their "good idea" doesn't work.

 

Wish you were right but they've been doubling down on the crazy for the last 30 years. Taxing high mpg cars while promoting 30 years of oil wars being an example.

 

What oil war did you think happened in 1983?

Other than in the mind of a president who created the doctrine of war for oil for the US, more than 30 years ago, I have a hard time believing that the war we are in now in Afghanistan - hopefully over in less than two years - was about oil at all.

 

Bush gave hybrids a tax credit just like plug-ins. Hybrids are not new technology, they don't need further subsidies. Toyota does have a strong voice in its PAC and gets lots of extra tax breaks from the government, as do Ford and GM.

Virginia is just whack, I don't expect that to pass. Then again we still have blue laws on the books.

The sales and property tax are for more expensive items. That non-hybrid Escalade pays more and in gas taxes. I don't think the taxes should be "fair" because "fair" always is a code word for a politician to do something bad. It typically grows government. Both our states just need to raise the gas tax. In Texas at least it was proposed an extra guzzler tax on SUVs that got poor fuel economy, but it did not pass.

 

Sure but I can guarantee that a upper Middle Class family taking down 125-200K a year is not paying 27% in taxes. Much More. Much Much More. Those tax data is garbage because it averages and looks at Federal Taxes and NY State Taxes for a 100K income. It excludes County and Local taxes, sales tax, Gasoline tax, registration tax, property tax, mello roos, HOA, etc. If you make 100,000 and a family of 4 in NY or California is a stretch. Rais ethat Income to 150K and we are at the top of the list. The AStlantic likes to cherry pick data to make a point. Perhaps those other countries have other taxes but they have socialized healthcare and we have to pay for Insurance. The report is decieving. It shocks me that someone would actualy say, I don't pay enough taxes compared to other places. Tax me more. I want less money to invest and keep for myself. Appauling.

 

There's no real change. It's just that when you were an employee you didn't think about it. Your employer did.

The country's tax rate has reduced, the population's aging and health costs are rising rapidly. To make things worse, the USA has an oversized military (a large bureaucracy that most Repubs don't complain about) and a massive petroleum deficit. The good news is that the current administration's actually trying to fix the problems. The bad news is that that could easily be reversed.

 

I never knew it was an oil war, wasen't it about weapons WMD and terrorism and an attack on our soil at the World Trade Center where over 3,000 people died. Sure the places that some of these enemies live have oil but many other places have oil. They say the USA in 20 years will make enough oil from fracking and drilling to support our needs.

 

Yep being self employed and paying employer and employee taxes can be tough. We need Social Security and it serves a purpose as a safety net but man it is a nice chunk of change out of our pay.

 

WMD was a smoke screen. Terrorism is by definition an act of individuals not governments, so war is not a response that makes sense. 3000 people died here, roughly 1000 times that number died in the war. Do you want their response to the war to be similarly disproportionate?

We will never have enough to support our needs. 1) because using it makes it disappear, now we have to find more, 2) because our 'needs' will expand to fill any amount we do find. We had enough to fulfill our needs back in the early part of last century. What happened to it?

 

I remember that GW Bush (I'm not a fan of him but this is history) gave Sadam a choice. Let the inspectors in or we attack. He gave him a good week to think about it. If Sadam did not have weapons he should have let those Swiss Guys in with there white lab coats to inspect the Palace. Some speculate that he did not want Iran to know he had no weapons. In any case Sadam H the than Ruler of Iraq would still have his country and his oil money if he did as he was told. As a result he lost his life, his country, his wealth, and his children. How smart was he? The first Iraq war they attacked a soverign country Quait.

I don't think it is a Oil War because we did not keep the oil. Iraq sells it's oil on the open market and if the USA wants it they can buy it at market price. If we took 100% control of the oil than you may have an argument we went to war to get the oil. The cost of the war is a burden on American tax payer and we get very little in return other than some stability in the area. You may argue that we wanted to help Saudi Arabia by disarming Iraq. I say we have Iraq pay the USA back for the cost American taxpayers had to bear to give them political freedom and elections and protection. Seems fair.

 

It surprised me too, that people were calling the afghan war a war for oil. I got educated and this is gets to FHOP stuff. The Carter doctrine said the US would go to war to protect the oil. It was used in secret to trick the Soviets into a war in Afghanistan. Reagan continued funding the CIA and ISI - pakastani intelligence - to arm foreign fighters to fight the soviets. Groups of these became Al quida and other terror groups as these foreign fighters returned to other countries. Carter and Reagan seemed to not care at all what happened to the afghan's it was all part of the cold war against the soviets and a new one against Iran which had emasculated Carter. It was never about the oil in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately that was Brzinski's attitude also. He talked about no blow back in an interview with Le Monde a couple of years before 911. He saw no state sponsors of terrorism, and thought it was just a bunch of "riled up muslems". There are state sponsors of terrorism. Unfortunately the US was involved in this during the 80s, and there is a big blow back nature to it. Our longest war, Afghanistan really started in 1980 as a proxy war against the soviet union. The Taliban was definitely a state sponsor of terrorism, and if they had simply stood aside they would likely still be in power today.

I have to believe that the President did think Iraq still had WMDs, and the CIA gave him very flawed intelligence. Iraq did use WMDs in the past both on Iran and inside their own country. This was when the US was their ally. Iraq was also a state sponsor of terrorism. I did not then, nor do I now think we should have gone to war with them though.

 

Before the fall of the regime the oil was going to Russian, Chinese and French companies. He was an ally, he invaded Kuwait and then he wasn't an ally and dangerously aggressive, helping to destabilize the region. As far as the Carter Doctrine goes the USA had to remove him. But then they needed the UK's support and it's been suggested that the price was Afghanistan, which was the UK's focus.

 

After the First Iraq war there was an oil embargo of oil for food. They were selling very little oil and NATO controlled commerce not China or Russia.

 

Frankly this is way off topic, interesting but off topic.

 

And what would happened if the roles were reversed? If Saddam had insisted that we allow UN inspectors to search for and destroy any weapons of mass destruction in the US?

Sure, and we can pay them weregild. Should work out about even.

 

Likely less than the US average of 27% as the US tax code is written for the wealthy with more and more tax breaks and credits the more one makes so the tax on actual income is less as taxable income is less even though real income is more.

As the numbers showed, the US is a very low tax rate nation, near third world level which explains our 57th rated education system, our public transportation system ranks low, our public health care system ranks so low.