DescentBB

Or what goes around, comes around. I guess all those years the wacky leftonista eco-wads that complained about gas guzzling SUV's are finally having their day in the sun, though it may be a tad cloudy. People have heeded the clarion call to do their part on reducing Americas insatiable thurst for oil by buying econowheels. All is good. Or is it. All this saving of fuel also means the state are recieving less in the way of tax revenues. Good you say? Think again.
Seems Birdys left coast state of California is feeling the pinch of all the fine fuel conservation its citizenry is dutifully practising. So the powers that be have decided a new scheme is required. Instead of gas by the gallon being taxed, you will now have to pay gas by the mile. Now comes the liberal mindset of "govt. should control all aspects of your life for the good of society" plan. To know how many miles you have driven, some sort of GPS unit may have to be incorporated into the car so a accurate milage record can be kept that will then "talk" to the fuel pump when you go to fill up. And then all the tin foil hat types will be proven right about how the state is keeping tabs on you as the GPS unit can also tell where you have been since the last time you filled up. All those trips to the porn store or the massage parlor will be dutifully recorded. Spouses, under the freedom of information act, will be able to find out if their significant other is really working late at night.
So just to save a few barrels of oil, we wind up losing another piece of our privacy. Hello George Orwell.

Youre trying to blame this boneheaded idea on democrats? Oh please, you cant possibly mean that. One of this plans biggest supporters was Ahhnolds choice to head the CA DMV. Fortunatley the governor himself doesnt appear to support this plan at all.

This plan is a bad idea indeed and I think anyone with half a brain, conservative or liberal, will see that. Stop trying to slant public opinion against liberals and concentrate on the core of the issues.

By the way, your post was a strain to read. You may wish to edit it to include more double carriage returns, which will insert blank lines into the text, as well as other errors.

Get a clue Woodchip. We're talking about global warming, climate change, habitat destruction, drought, flooding, etc. etc. and you're comparing a new scheme of conservation to George Orwell and some kind of leftist conspiracy?

Face it man, it's happening, and we need to do something about it. What do you propose? Better yet, wtf do YOU do about it?

Get a life man.

When Mount St. Helens puts out almost as many greenhouse gasses in one minor semi-eruption as humans put out in a full year, I somehow doubt that we're the main culprit. The proverbial gnat and the bull.

this is borderline crazy.

Woodchip:

Please provide links to your sources when you post things like this. I don't trust you to faithfully reproduce the ideas you read elsewhere, so I'm stuck wondering what the heck you're talking about half the time.

If the idea is as you say it is (charging taxes per-mile instead of per-gallon) it's kind of stupid, and I have to ridicule kufyit for ridiculing you for being against it. It's a bad solution, plain and simple (no matter which party it actually came from.)

The reason it's a bad solution is that, essentially, it strongly reduces the benefits from buying extremely fuel-efficient cars. It changes the shape of the cost-benefit curve. People will buy more fuel-efficient cars if the savings are worth more to them than whatever they have to give up (safety, cargo space, etc.) If you reduce the amount of savings they'll get, you reduce the chances they'll buy a fuel-efficient car. That's ridiculously counterproductive.

It's not a good "new scheme of conservation"; it's a bad idea that will be counterproductive. Good schemes are things that encourage people to conserve more, overall. This is a bad scheme.

kufyit wrote:Get a clue Woodchip. We're talking about global warming, climate change, habitat destruction, drought, flooding, etc. etc. and you're comparing a new scheme of conservation to George Orwell and some kind of leftist conspiracy?

Face it man, it's happening, and we need to do something about it. What do you propose? Better yet, wtf do YOU do about it?

Get a life man.

Kuf -- I think reasonable people can disagree on the topic of whether we're undergoing a climate change, and if so, whether it's a man-induced climate change.

And I don't think this idea of taxation-by-mile is being sold as a new scheme of conservation. It's a new scheme of taxation to boost the tax rates to keep the roads smooth. (Although I suppose you can argue that people will drive less if they're taxed more.)

Currently, cars with high fuel efficiency and large trucks don't generate enough revenue from fuel taxes to pay for the burden they place on roads, said Randall Pozdena, managing director of ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm. A large truck, he said, can do as much damage on a city street as 10,000 cars, but it still pays the same amount of per-gallon gasoline tax, assuming the gas was purchased in California in the first place.

Nov.14, 2004 L.A. Times

Anyway, I live in California too, and I can tell you that all kinds of wild ideas get floated around here -- and shot down. This plan is one of the more ridiculous ideas I've heard -- there are problems with implementation and it probably violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

You heard it here first: it will never get out of the state legislature, if it even gets that far.

BD

Lothar wrote:Woodchip:

Please provide links to your sources when you post things like this. I don't trust you to faithfully reproduce the ideas you read elsewhere, so I'm stuck wondering what the heck you're talking about half the time.

Sigh...here ya go. This topic has been out for over a week and I assumed everyone had a working knowledge:

http://tinyurl.com/6kuzj

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6529501/

Not only is CA contemplating this, Oregon also is on board:

http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/18/pf/autos/mileage_tax/

Bold Deceiver wrote:A large truck, he said, can do as much damage on a city street as 10,000 cars...

Man.. that's gotta be one VERY big highway tractor hauling a very heavy load...

This to me, strikes me as a scheme similar to the GST we have up here. The more something costs, the more you pay on the Goods and Service Tax (GST). It didn't go over very well at the start, but barely a complaint now. The most interesting part of this is you get a GST refund every year. Maybe something like that could be implemented.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bold is correct about the tractor.

A bigger culprit is a lot of older cars, when compared to modern SUVs. The modern SUV will put out, in some cases, a thousandth as much pollution (sometimes even less) when compared to some older cars.

I had a friend who used to work at a smog shop doing smog tests. He would laugh when people (mostly hippies) would drive up to the neighboring shop. He tested some of the old VW busses and bugs, and both of those old suckers put out INSANELY large numbers of certain pollutants. I could ask him for the numbers again, but he explain it simply that 1 older VW bug = 500 modern SUVs.

I agree that pollution is a concern but SUVs are hardly the problem. To start, replacing the American coal plants with nuclear would save more pollution than all the cars in america (and then some). Of course the Eco-frauds don't want that.

And, of course, you have to trace this idea back to the source -- increasing state revenue.