The Europeans have established oil profit taxes, government programs and government mandates, all of which are things that my idea does not include. My idea is the opposite of what the Europeans have done.

 

Which is why the government should stop subsidizing inefficient companies, so that vehicles have to become efficient and then those vehicles will find their way over to China and India.

I suggested that we need to institute a gasoline guzzler tax. There is a distinct difference between a gasoline guzzler tax and a gasoline tax. A gasoline guzzler tax places taxes on the sale of new gas guzzlers (e.g. the Hummer) while a gasoline tax places taxes on the sale of gasoline. Europe has a gasoline tax, something that I am against, while it does not to my knowledge have gasoline guzzler taxes.

Gasoline guzzler taxes would pressure vehicle manufacturers to make more fuel efficient vehicles, as otherwise their vehicles would not sell. Gasoline guzzler taxes positively effects the economy and the standard of living by allocating money that would have been spent on gasoline to other areas of one's life.

Gasoline taxes do not accomplish that. People do not drive because they want to drive; people drive because they have to drive so that they can provide for their families. Therefore they will consume the same amount of gasoline, regardless of the price, until the price of gasoline reaches a level where they cannot sustain their lifestyle anymore, causing an economic depression similar in intensity to the Great Depression of the 1930s. During an economic depression, the standard of living drops and the economy drops. Gasoline taxes therefore have a negative effect on the economy and on the standard of living.

From another perspective, say that you perceive people to be stupid, because no matter how high gasoline prices rise, they do not care about fuel efficiency. If many previous rises did not make them learn, why would another rise through gasoline taxes make them learn? Would it not be more of the same? Would it not be better to ensure that they cannot afford inefficient vehicles in the first place through gasoline guzzler taxes so that they do not drive them? When someone cannot afford a vehicle, it does not mean that it is impossible for them to economically sustain its operation. It means they cannot pay for it at the dealer. It means they cannot afford a single payment on it. It means that they cannot afford the down payment. Therefore it means they cannot get the title to it. Gasoline taxes cannot, are unable to and never will accomplish this. People buy vehicles that they cannot economically sustain all of the time. They buy expensive luxury and sports cars, because the vehicle prices are such that, even with their horrible credit and poor fiscal responsibility, they can afford a down payment and to make monthly payments. Gasoline taxes are intrinsically unable to prevent this, as they have no figure in front of them showing them how much the actual cost of the vehicle is. Gasoline guzzler taxes, however, will raise the upfront cost of such vehicles so that they will either never be able to afford that down payment or never in their right mind think of purchasing it, and those few that do, will be subsidizing the purchases of more fuel efficient individuals (see my original suggestion), making it economically sustainable for them to buy more expensive hybrid and battery electric vehicles that have better fuel economy.

If someone else replies that what I have just written is exactly what they do in Europe and then continue to discuss how high the new taxes on gasoline should be, I will be disappointed because they will clearly not have read my post.

Edit: The queerest thing happened. After I submitted this, I discovered that there was a page three, on which I discovered that my earlier reply was the last post to this thread and someone had not in fact, replied to me restating exactly what I had demonstrated false earlier. Regardless, please do not disregard this post. In it, I meticulously explained why there should be taxes on sales of new fuel inefficient vehicles and not on gasoline. I would not like to have put so much effort into compiling it without anyone reading it.

 

wow, I don't know what to say about your claim, but in fact you are totally incorrect and there is scientific backing to support my claim and its not an opinion.

here is a link to monitoring stations.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...cycle-map2.jpg
here are measured and projected levels, again SCIENCE is used to collect and project this data.
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/glob...tration_of_co2
here is all kinds of DATA to support my unbacked claim
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm

I want oil prices to reflect the true cost, Companies should not be permitted to freely consume resources which they don't own.
do you mean today or long term? I like to look further than the end of my nose
Absolutely, but it shouldn't change because of them

Please, I implore you, educate yourself about issues. Then after you do that use logic to determine your opinion. Closing your eyes and pretending to understand the world will get you no where. We are all trapped here together and recklessly stumbling through time without reguard to a sustainable culture will ultimately be devastating not only for you but everyone else.

 

Science dictates that it is impossible to take a two way trip through time. You stated something that can only be known by taking a two way trip through time. Unless you can scientifically demonstrate that it is possible to take a two way trip through time, your statement in question has no scientific backing.

The true cost of anything is a philosophical matter, which is unquantifiable. No matter how much you want oil prices to reflect their true cost, it is impossible to adjust them to their "true cost" as their true cost will never be known.

I mean all of time.

Then you have done a remarkably poor job of it, as your ideas have the potential to do great harm to everyone.

Do you truly know that it is?

Perhaps you should read about psychological projection before you talk about someone else's education:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

 

First, I didn't say it, but I do support higher gasoline taxes and a gas-guzzler tax.

But I don't believe a gas-guzzler tax is the best approach. The big-three already put a gas-guzzler tax on a vehicle when they put huge sticker prices on SUV's, and pick-up trucks. For some reason that is completely unknowable to me, people pay out huge sums of money already for these high-sticker-priced gas-guzzlers. I don't think that bumping already-high prices up with a gas-guzzler tax would do all that much. Some people have more money than sense, and in fact part of their vehicle purchasing mindset is conspicuous consumption: they buy a Cadillac Escalade because they can afford it, (and the rest of us presumably can't.) Of course many of who can afford Escalades aren't dumb enough to waste that much money on a gas hog that retains only half its value in the space of one or two years.

Low gasoline taxes are also subsidizing surburban sprawl. It makes more sense to invest in commuter trains or subsidized urban housing, so people can live closer to where they work, or at least have an alternate means of getting to work other than driving Escalades...

Low prices for gasoline really does not help in the long run.

Harry

 

The big three is not the government and they are certainly not giving the extra money to the people who drive fuel efficient vehicles so that the fuel efficient people can spend the money on even more fuel efficient vehicles. The big three can never be as effective at killing off portions of the economy as government taxes and they will never be as capable of giving the money back as the government can be (e.g. in California under Governor Ronald Reagan, the state government gave back money through four tax rebates in an eight year period).

There has never been a gasoline guzzler tax put into place by any state government to my knowledge. If a gasoline guzzler tax was put into effect by a state and market forces were allowed to dictate things, the tax would be effective, as the entire point of a gas guzzler tax is to economically coerce automobile manufacturers into making fuel efficient vehicles, something that the Big Three by definition cannot do, but if given a choice between ceasing to exist and working on fuel economy, vehicle manufacturers will work on fuel economy and if they are not successful in their efforts, they will cease to exist and other more fuel efficient companies will take their marketshare.

As I said, taxes are very effective at killing portions of the economy. You cannot place taxes on gasoline without ruining everything because the economy runs on gasoline. You can place taxes on all gasoline/diesel vehicles but then there would be nothing for the economy to replace them. The most logical course of action then would be to place taxes on all of the inefficient vehicles.

By the way, since that the Big Three raised their prices in a free market, they signed over their marketshare to their competition, which is what we are seeing now. If the government was to raise inefficient vehicle prices through high taxes, we would see all vehicle manufacturers rushing to improve fuel economy, as in such a situation, whichever vehicle manufacturer produces the most efficient vehicles wins.

The most reasonable thing would be to make the economy do more per gallon of gasoline consumed. Exactly what are you trying to help?

 

Shining, your argument only applies to new vehicle purchases. What do we do to get the inefficient cars and SUVs off the road that were previously sold?

How do we get people out of 10 year old avalons and into newer more efficient smaller cars and keep the older less efficient cars off the market so they can't be sold to another person?

I don't mind a gas guzzler tax, but what do we use as the starting point? Do we tax all vehicle that can't do a EPA combined city/hwy of 25? Does that mean that i get slapped with a tax because I have a need for at least one vehilce that can tow my boat? Or does that mean that you want to ban me from using my boat?

There has to be some kind of equal balance between explotation of our resources and no use of our resources.

If we put too much of a vehicle tax on extremly large vehicles, there will be a desire to keep the older more inefficient ones, and not replace them with the newer ones that do get a little bit better FE and have a little bit better emmisions.

The pressure needs to be placed on the manufacturers to FORCE them to increase their CAFE without the use of phony credits such as the flex fuel credits. For CAFE purposes, a Tahoe gets like 25 MPG, but in the real world it will never get better than 18 on the HWY, and when run on E85, it will get even worse, but since the ethanol portion of E85 is considered carbon neutral, that protion of the fuel counts as no fuel burned for the purposes of CAFE standards. Why propose taxing the consumer when the government is doing screwy things to benifit the manufacturer?

 

Wait for them to be retired.

How many cars from the 1950s are still in operation? What percentage is that of all of the cars made during the 1950s?

With time, everything changes. Nothing will last forever. To transition the economy to being more efficient, people can use the most efficient method of transition that modern man has, time. Very few cars sold today will be around in 2050. If the market dictates that automobile manufacturers make efficient vehicles, in 2050, people will be driving fuel efficient vehicles. The state government has the power to ensure that, through a gasoline guzzler tax.

By the way, hypothetically speaking, a vehicle manufacturer could make a 100 mpg equivalent of a Hummer and by your definition, people should not drive it. I am not talking about getting people into smaller cars; I am talking about getting people into more fuel efficient cars, which I believe is the point of all of this.

My suggestion was to tax all vehicles that cannot do at least both 25 mpg city and highway, at a rate of either 10% of the vehicle's price or $2000 per gallon under 25 mpg so if a car does 24 mpg city and 24 mpg highway, and it costs $10,000, it will have a $4,000 tax.

As for you being slapped with a tax, no, not unless you buy a new inefficient vehicle. You could purchase a perfectly good used vehicle and use that. The point of a gasoline guzzler tax is not to stop people from buying cars, but to coerce vehicle manufacturers into making vehicles that are fuel efficient. Giving them your business would be extremely damaging to this end, as they would have no reason to improve their vehicles if they are making money off their current ones, hence the idea of placing a tax on new vehicles that do not get 25 mpg. Your using an old vehicle because you cannot afford a new one will economically coerce them to make a vehicle you can afford and that will mean making a vehicle that is fuel efficient.

That is exactly why I am not suggesting a tax on extremely large vehicles, just a tax on fuel inefficient ones. If a vehicle manufacturer makes the equivalent of a Hummer that gets 100 mpg city and highway, this tax that I am suggesting would not apply to it, as it would exceed 25 mpg in both city and highway driving.

If the government ensured that fuel inefficient vehicles were unaffordable, no one would buy them, economically coercing manufacturers to increase their vehicles' fuel economy. No one is proposing taxing the consumer, unless the consumer decides to buy a new vehicle that is less efficient than 25 mpg.

 

I'm OK with a gas guzzler tax, although we tried this before with limited success. If you make the penalty high enough *most* people will shy away from buying a gas guzzler.
However, many high dollar vehicles today are candidates for any new gas guzzler tax. I don't imagine relatively wealthy people will change their habits (and buy an Escape rather than an Escalade). Now if *enough* non-wealthy people DID change their minds and DID purchase the Escape rather than the Escalade - then maybe we could see some pressure on the auto manufacturers to do better.
Why not just increase the CAFE MPG standards, then? Other than raising gas guzzler tax money, what's the difference? Instead of the govt interfering with the "free" market forces with a guzzler tax, they're interfering instead with CAFE standards. And by the way, the CAFE MPG standards and the Safety standards should apply to ALL SUVs and LIGHT TRUCKS.
Note that a guzzler tax will NOT reduce miles-driven-per-capita, so it does not address road and donwtown overcrowding issues in big cities. A penalty for driving alone, versus car-pooling or public transpotation should be in place. Something more expensive than the current price of a gallon of gas (and the maintenance and insurance on that vehicle). A consumption tax makes sense for this. A gasoline consumption tax. This increases the cost to *DRIVE* (not just own) a gas guzzler, and will encourage people to trade in their older guzzler for a newer more efficient vehicle (just like I decided to do when gas hit $3 a gallon, after Katrina). This trade-in creates jobs (for all the components connected with creating a new vehicle, the new-and-used car salesmen's jobs, new financing, etc.).
Among many other things, a higher price for fuel spurs thinking about how to reduce one's costs by buying a more efficient fuel consumer (car, furnace, AC, adding insulation, better windows, etc.). It also convinces manufacturers to build more efficient consumption devices, because the demand is there.
It's a complex set of variables. Of course, until more efficient consumption devices are in place (and the costs somewhat amortized), manufacturers will pass along most of these extra costs. I'm OK with that, because we need to become independent of terrorist oil - and soon. We need a jolt, not a nudge. The wealth and power that terrorist oil now possesses is mind-boggling. And supporting the terrorists by buying more of their product than any other country is KILLING our country quickly. We don't have 50 years to turn this thing around more naturally, or through "free" market forces. I saw how quickly we forgot the Oil Embargo of 1973, and the $3 oil pricing just after Katrina. Over 30 years ago we were held hostage by oil and we quickly pushed it aside when OPEC lowered prices after lifting the Embargo. We buried our heads in the sand - and prayed that it would never happen again. We do not *want* to change. We now HAVE to change.

 

Wow. Just wow.

I'm not sure how you get $10-$20 barrel. Extracting it from the ground costs more than that in today's dollars.

But you're also discounting OPEC and the world economy. China and India are industrializing at a rapid pace. World demand for oil is skyrocketing while oil supply isn't really moving. And OPEC likes where the prices are and will deliberately (or in the somewhat near future, forced) to cut production to keep prices where they are.

Whenever you have increased demand for something with a steady or decreasing supply, you're going to get higher prices. It won't be long until China and India outstrip the US demand for oil.

It takes millions of years for the natural formation of oil. In other words, we're taking it out a hell of a lot faster than it is being put back.

~X~