DD

Stay on topic.


I would be fine with 2.50 if it actually did what you suggested. It's just never that easy broham. But 4 something is utterly ridiculous.

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Number Nine

Why, so you can send the profits to Muhammad and Allah and Buddha or whatever you terrorists worship? I don't think so.

Felix

I agree if you raise taxes on consumables and at the same time reduce income tax, as you said it makes perfect sense. Additional tax revenue could allow us to spend some money in our own company finding other resources (or oil) to power our vehicles in stead of buying it from overseas.

Here is what I find ironic.. all this time we have been stuck buying cars that on average get 24mpg... and even on the high side 35+ (low side) 10-12mpg for suvs...

Now, here in Maryland, a grant was given to those working on a way to make vehicles more efficient, and now the Ford dealer down the road is selling 100mpg Ford Focuses that they installed a battery pack in from one of these companies that received a grant. I think I heard they had 30+ down there for sale. And unlike the other hybrid cars (none that I know of that get 100mpg), the generally cost so much that a typical owner couldn't afford to purchase one. I understand both the taxation, and from my own perspective and like DD, I don't want to pay a increase because 1) I can't afford it, and 2) I don't have enough faith in our government to put the tax to good use (or for the system to work as you / Mr Greenspan, etc) propose.

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Felix

Double post ftw.

One other thought too... when fuel prices are high (raised) so are heating oil prices. That last house I lived in was heated by oil. I froze damn near to death, not to mention my wife and children last winter because it cost $1100 a month just for the damn fuel to heat the house. So if there is a tax imposed on gasoline, let it be gasoline only and not include K-1, Heating oil, etc... Heat in your home isn't a choice... or a privilege... driving is.

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Inogenius

Lol... yes... I realize that Greenspan has gotten quite a bit of flack for the housing market collapse. I wanted to be the first one to question his ethics and expertise!

Good point. Not every middle eastern country supports terrorism.

But by increasing taxation on oil, you increase demand for alternatives. Right now oil is easy, and oil is cheap. There's never going to be a high demand for an alternative until there is a need for one.

Nor do I, which is why I laced a bit of sarcasm into my statement there too. However, you're not trading apples & apples. With the income tax, you have no choice on the amount you're being taxed. With a gas tax, you don't have to drive, and therefore can avoid the taxation, which means you have more money to spend elsewhere.

That's something I considered, and I wonder if instead of avoiding being taxed on it, you could instead write it off?

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Felix

You have to be able to pay for it first before you can even think of writing it off on your taxes. Sorry, but I don't know many people that can afford any single utility bill that cost $1K a month+. Asides that, reducing my taxable income (say for example) 3,000 for the year with a right off still means I'm going to pay 2-3000 for the winter. Divide that by 6, you got 500 a month, plus electric, plus phone, cable, water, sewer...

Hell, the electric company doubled our energy cost this year.. went one month paying around 80-100 a month to 200-250 a month... I went the route of purchasing electric heaters... but to heat the rooms of the house that were occupied, (5 bedrooms at night) then turn those off during the day and use a few downstairs.. it wasn't AS expensive, but it was still way up beyond affordability, not to mention the breakers in the house blew because of all the draw on the current...

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Dakstang

With gas being nearly $5 not that long ago, do you really think raising gas to $2.50 will cause people not to drive as much?

I don't think it would affect it at all.

I think it is a bad idea because I think gas is going to go back up soon enough. No reason to raise the gas tax and make it even higher.

I think alternative fuels are finally going to be taken seriously after gas was $5 a gallon not too long ago.

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There'll be no sorrow there, no more burdens to bear,
No more sickness, no more pain, no more parting over there;
And forever I will be with the One who died for me,
What a day, glorious day that will be.

twhiting9275

Yeah, we all saw how wonderfully that worked when gas was close to $5/gallon. it DIDN'T

Raising taxes won't SOLVE any of those three problems, it will just throw more money into the government's hands for them to misuse. Like they don't already have ENOUGH overspending going on?

Inogenius

Except you're wrong ...

In October of 2007 demand for gasoline was approx for 9,201 million barrels of gasoline. In October of 2008, demand was online 8,767 million barrels of gasoline. Heck demand in 2006 was even higher at 9,210 barrels. 2005 it was 8,820.


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.

This is even ignoring the fact that United States has had an increase in population of approximately
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. So demand decreased, while the number of people driving likely increased by another 2.5 million.

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Assassin™

Facts may not lie, but they can definitely be misinterpreted.

Gas being at $5/g obviously wasn't a result of higher taxes. This was why John McCain's proposal to have a "gas tax holiday" was seen as a political stunt (really, his whole campaign was just one stunt after another, basically a circus act), as everyone could see that shaving a few pennies off of the price of a gallon of gas wasn't going to make a big enough impact, and transversely would put the government in an even worse position. The same logic can be applied with an idea of raising the tax, only transversed.

You would literally have to raise the tax to like 150% or something to see prices close to where they were during the summer. As was shown, if you exceed the consumer's propensity to consume, demand does go down, but it didn't automatically make demand for alternatives go up, largely because the alternatives were still more expensive than gasoline.

And to the point expressed somewhere in this thread previously about government tax revenue, if the tax is increased so much that it has a noticeable effect on demand, then consumption will obviously go down as well, which translates into not much of a change in tax revenue. A substantial increase in gas tax would kind of cancel itself out.


...an overall increase in the population does not translate into a congruent increase in the driving populace. That 2.5m increase obviously includes newborn babies, etc, who wouldn't be driving.