Government is a bungling bureaucracy that meddles and micromanages and does things that are counterproductive. Much like every corporation that I have worked in (Sperry, Motorola, General Dynamics). Just like corporations, except usually worse. However, it is absurd to say that government causes worse problems for every attempted solution, any more that such a statement would apply to any business. Why do so many refuse to acknowledge that government (and business) has a necessary role in making a better civilization? Government works better than anarchy. Democracy, where nearly half the citizens are usually pissed off at the other half, works better than other known forms of government.

-- Alan

 

Corporations are Darwinian. If they err (Kodak opting to not bother with digital photography) they disappear and are replaced by someone who made a smart move (Apple moving beyond the computer into mobile...with a digital camera, too!).
Business's mistakes are cruelly punished,
Government mistakes (giving huge raises and lucrative pensions to unions) are rewarded with re-election (and generous campaign contributions). Governments, as long as they can threaten the general population with jail to refill their coffers, (if you don't think so, just try not paying your taxes) are immune to failure. Each mistake they make allows them to confiscate more from the citizenry as they simple ratchet up their compensation (tax rates).
Businesses weed out the inefficient, refine the process and are continually improving the product as the free market rewards the competition with profits. Just look at the evolution of the automobile.
Government creates massive entities, free from competition, with no profit motive, thus no incentive, to reward efficiency.
Do you think the USPS would survive if FedEx and UPS were allowed to compete with them?
Which provides a better retail customer experience Apple, Disney or the DMV?
When Sandy hit the NY area, Home Depot got more generators to the area (and a lot quicker) than FEMA did. They also got more water here, too.
Amtrak can't even make money on hamburgers http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/us...inds.html?_r=0 McDonalds makes money on theirs!

I love government, it's vital to our freedom, but there is a limit to what they should meddle with. Without outside involvement, in the 1980s millions of consumers rewarded Toyota, at the expense of GM, because they developed attractive fuel efficient, affordable cars. We don't need an agency telling consumers which products to buy. They'll make rational decisions.

If you don't think they create more problems than the solve, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...pinion_LEADTop

 

I agree with corps being Darwinian, but government mistakes usually result in non-re-election, not in re-election. That is the whole point of democracy. Just as there are numerous examples of bad government getting rewarded, there are likewise numerous examples of bad business wildly succeeding (and of great businesses failing, and both are often with the help/obstruction of government, but here we agree).
This is Libertarian nonsense (and I am a libertarian). Government is the people and abuse of government is what causes the people to replace the government. Government cannot threaten the general population with jail, only individuals. Libertarians love to confuse micro and macro effects, and this is a perfect example. In the micro sense, government can be very abusive, but in the macro sense, it will eventually work out, as it has for hundreds of years in this Democracy. If what you say is correct, how do you explain our current tax rates, being the lowest in decades? That is not the effect of something that can only ratchet up following non-stop mistakes, as your claim is clearly saying.
Quite true. Business is about competition, and government is not. Government is about the general welfare and defense of society, not competition. Shall we compare Business achievement for providing for the general welfare and defense to government, as you have compared government's achievement for competition? Don't try to tell me government purchases of business products (e.g., tanks or grocery stores that accept food stamps, etc.) is equivalent to providing defense or general welfare, either.

I agree that some aspects of business would improve efficiencies in government, but that can work both ways too.
Nice anecdotes. I am not going to try to defend the USPS, except that it is constitutionally mandated, and there is no guarantee that private carriers would fully serve the entire country if given the chance to put the USPS out of business. Ditto DMV, FEMA, etc. Poor government services that would only get partially fulfilled if left to private profit motivated businesses. It is a lousy, but necessary balancing act that is never well balanced. So what? The original point was:My point is that the bad government is not all that bad, and should never be so totally discounted in every respect except for "freedom."

-- Alan

 

I'm pretty sure it is the heavy commercial trucks that cause most of the damage to the roads. So a hybrid using less gas really isn't going to be "cheating" the state out of much tax in relation to the damage it does to the pavement. That said, Virginia's gas tax hasn't been raised since 1986, so we're always short of highway funds. I support the gas tax, but one that adjusts annually for inflation.

As a nation, we should *not* have to worry about bridges falling down as we drive over them. How long can we afford to "save" money by not spending on infrastructure repair?

 

@Haroldo:

While you are correct that hybrid owners use less gas , so do other small(er) cars. Since they use the roads just as much, why pick on hybrid vehicles exclusively?

The bigger picture here is that on one side there is a want from the various levels of gov't to improve fuel efficiency ie reduce the amounts of fuel consumed, and on the other that the costs of maintaining the driving infrastructure is going up. To me, the solution is to raise the level of taxation on fuel. If a state starts taxing hybrids for being hybrids it is going against the federal policy of reducing dependence on foreign oil.

True EVs don't pay their share of the road maintenance, but right now with the tech being new, a push to have the tech go mainstream, and the quantity of EVs on the road so miniscule, I don't see a problem with the EV 'freeloaders' in the short term. Once the tech becomes more mainstram, and there is a higher density of EV's then maybe they'll have charging stations which will effectively collect the 'road tax'.

 

I see a few articles that suggest there is a movement toward a vehicle miles traveled or VMT method of collecting tax for road and bridge maintenance. If we put aside the issue of how you do that, it would be probably the fairest way of distributing the cost of roads to drivers. Once you track the miles the tax per mile should of course be proportional to the weight of the vehicle. Electric vehicles with their heavy batteries, and trucks, should pay more than lightweight vehicles.

Currently collecting tax based on fuel consumed is somewhat of a proxy for the same thing. Heavier vehicles generally burn more fuel. But of course EV's throw a major kink into that as they use electricity. See this article for some more detail on this approach.

Pay per Mile Driven

If this ends up as an eye in the sky approach to tracking all vehicles and how far they travel, the same system could measure speed of the vehicle and compare it to the speed limit. Monthly a bill could be generated to each vehicle to pay for speeding. After a certain number of infractions the registration could be revoked and the car immobilized from the sky!

Somehow I expect this will be a long time coming. Electric Vehicles make no sense, and they are only being driven because governments are paying people to drive them. The simplest solution is to cut off subsidies of EV's and they will go away. Next simplest is to apply a road tax to electricity bills for owners of EV's. Or even simpler still increase the road tax on gasoline/diesel and let the gas guzzlers pay.

 

Actually solution is simple: rise the taxes on fuel with 2 benefits:
1.to offset loses from all, more efficient cars
and most important
2. force people to save gas, therefore buying more efficient cars and actually achieve that goal of 40 MPG by 2020 something.
I don't have fully electric car and I don't have a problem with them not paying fare share and people who don't like it, maybe should buy one (with all it's faults like low range, high price, constant headache to remember to plug it in etc.) and hush up. Unless there is some real breakthrough in battery technology, electric cars will be marginal, otherwise I propose taxing bicycles and pedestrians for walking on sidewalks as well. Only uneducated idiot politicians could come up with the idea of extra taxing hybrids, since first question I have is what is considered a hybrid? Are the cars using regenerative breaking and shutting down engine on red light hybrid even if they don't have electric drive? TCH does not use any other source of energy besides gasoline and electric drive is used to assist gasoline engine, so it should never ever have extra tax unless that tax is applied to all technologies that increase efficiency, like turbo, fuel injection, shutting down some of cylinders during low power demand etc. Tracking miles driven, would be expensive to implement, easy to cheat and easy to go to the next step: for government to see where the car actually is driven, rather necessary for all farm equipment driven a lot but not on public roads, so I hope never see it implemented during my life time.

 

Pete4, I agree, except for the part about letting EV owners off for nothing. They get rebates from the taxpayer to buy the **** things, then pay no road tax, and to add insult to injury they likely use the vehicle to travel to protests against oil companies. I think it is time they got pushed off the welfare wagon. There is nothing green about EV's.

 

The rebates on EV are asinine. It's one thing to make a car more affordable to the masses (reducing a $25,000 car to $20,000) to spur demand. It puts the car into the range of a larger group
It's another to take a $80,000 car (Tesla S) and cut the price to $72,000 via the credit. The only consumer who can buy a $72,000 car is one that can easily buy the $80,000. So, in effect, it's a gift, courtesy of the tax payer. I seriously doubt an Tesla S buyers are doing so, only because the credit made it affordable to them. They'd be buyers of the car, either way...IMHO.

 

I like turtles.......