$1 per gallon gas tax

[LuckyTheDog]

Use 50 cents to pay for finishing and getting out of the Iraq fiasco that is bankrupting the country and 50 cents for alternative fuels research so that we don't have to fight any more wars like that.
Good idea? Bad idea? Why?

[MindPilot]

1. I go with the tax, but not to fix Iraq

For public transportation, highway improvement and alternative fuel research, sure.

But Iraq ain't my problem; I told 'em not to go...that money should come from the pockets of those who thought it was a good idea.

[Hobarticus]

2. Why should Joe Blow have to pay fort Bush's war?

Tax the snot out of the folks who started it: Haliburton, oil co's, etc.

Consumption taxes hurt the folks who can afford it least, it's an old supply-sider talking point.

[acmejack]

5. Because the oil money goes to people who don't like us

We are just further inflating our trade imbalance and deficit with our addiction to oil. We have had articially cheap oil for far too long. It is an effective way of encouraging carpooling, mass transit and conservation.

[BiggJawn]

9. " artificially cheap oil"

Kind of goes along with my artificially cheap salary, dontcha think?

Conservation I already do...

Awwwww...Why do I fucking even BOTHER?????
It's like trying to explain why I eat meat analogues to a PETA freak.

No mass transit infrastucture, not likely to EVER be anything like that again in this country, either.

[BiggJawn]

6. Thank you Hobarticus!

The little guy gets butt-raped by an extra buck-a-gallon. The people who need to pay wouldn't even notice.

$2.18 this AM, and now the stuff's over $60 a Bbl...Bet it's $2.40 by the time I go home...

I used to have to work just an hour to get enough to go back and forth to my job, now it's 2 hour's worth in the tank.

And if I made minimum wage? A whole fucking DAY'S WORK, just to be able to afford to go to my great $5.25 an hour job. And slapping another buck a gallon on those folks is gonna help them HOW?

[Hobarticus]

19. Anytime, glad to help...

Consumption tax IS federal-induced sodomy, across the board.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. A $1 per gallon gas tax was the principal feature of the

platform of John Anderson, 1980 independent candidate for president.

It would have been a great idea 30 years ago, before a lot of this exurban sprawl developed. It surely would have discouraged developers from building "office parks" and "townhome communities" in the middle of nowhere so that people are forced to drive.

(That's one thing I've never figured out, by the way. I can sort of see the appeal of living in a single-family home on a large lot in the exurbs. I am puzzled by the idea of moving twenty miles out of town to live in a 500-unit apartment complex surrounded by strip malls.)

[phantom power]

7. It's all about the cost of the homes.

Here in Phoenix, $150K will buy you a nice house (or apt) out in the exurbs. Close in to the city, it will buy you a plot of land and a cardboard box.

As you say, it would have been far more effective 30 years ago. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, etc. In retrospect, America made a fateful choice in 1980, when we elected Reagan. Consciously or unconsciously, we chose happy-talk delusion over Carter's "feel-bad" realism.

[kliljedahl]

10. Actually that was 50 cents per gallon

I actually registered as a Repuke for the Iowa caucuses to support him because of it. Switched back for the General Election.


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Coastie for Truth]

12. The same question Kunstler asks

in the and on the - Join us.

Very good discussion of this craziness in "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century" by James Howard Kunstler and his DVD "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream"

You asked:
"That's one thing I've never figured out, by the way. I can sort of see the appeal of living in a single-family home on a large lot in the exurbs. I am puzzled by the idea of moving twenty miles out of town to live in a 500-unit apartment complex surrounded by strip malls."

There is no answer - cheap gasoline, the post WWII GI Bill Housing Boom, and our societal psychological need to "get away from the cities" and everything "evil" and "dirty" and "Bohemian" that they represent.

[Name removed]

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[oneold1-4u]

14. Rapid Mass transit- -

Could have been paid for many times with only 1 cent a gallon fuel tax over the last half century! Now we don't even have bus lines to most cities and towns in OR. The highways are a disaster (5 truck per car)and will never be upgraded in quality as long as repair contractors have a politician in their pocket!

[indepat]

8. A $1.00 per gallon tax cut would only be spent to lower the tax burden on

large corporations and the most affluent.

[oneold1-4u]

11. Just where would it go!

OR has a cig tax of more than a dollar a PACK and it was to go for health care! Health care has been cut more in the years since cig tax than ever before! Government never has any accounting for taxation! OR once thought up ONE SINGLE TAX. It was never tried or perfected but it certainly would have cut millions out of taxation and only one bunch of thieves to watch!

[AndyTiedye]

13. That Would Screw the Rural Poor

It would also ensure the defeat of any politician who proposed it.

[Coastie for Truth]

18. The difference between Repugs and us old fart "New Deal FDR Dems"

is that we "old fart" "New Deal Dems" give money etc<1>. to those who are screwed by the changes in society.

More likely, any Progressive bill will have some form of subsidy, rebate, or discount built into it (just like electric rates in many states, urban transit in many communities, etc.) -- "All Politics Is Local" Issue -- and if the social workers and case workers who help the old, and the poor, and the non-English speaking navigate the bureaucracy and paperwork are our Porgressives --- they will have a Progressive influence on their "clients." That's the old "Big City Machine Politics" that built the Democratic Party --- deliver services.

<1>- Money, relocation, retraining, subsidies, dislocation and relocation subsidies, etc. Remember, the "Old Fart" "New Deal Dems" gave us Social Security, Disability, Unemployment Comp, and Workers Comp. And in Pennsylvania they gave a "A Home for A Home" eminent domain.

[TwilightZone]

15. Bad idea.

The poor already pay a higher percentage of their income for sales and other usage taxes. This would only make that worse.

Rather than taxing gas even more than it already is, I'd like to see incentives continue to increase for alt fuel research.

[Coastie for Truth]

16. I would pay $1.00/gallon additional taxes - even more - much more

"IFF" (If and only if) it went totally and completely for:
1) Alternative and renewable energy

a) Research and development
b) Initial subsidies for "early adopters" to get commercialization off the ground.

2) Mass Transit

a) Construction
b) System wide operating subsidies
c) Directed subsidies for "targeted riders."

"Worth it at twice the price" to avoid "Wars of American Blood for Foreign Oil" and to avoid the massive social and economic dislocations that are inevitable as we leave the era of cheap and abundant hydrocarbon fuels and enter the unknown era of "Peak Oil" - predicted in "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century" by James Howard Kunstler and in his DVD "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream"

I am no Malthusian pessimist, but I am very concerned that we are going to go into the Malthusian world of James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency..." by default and inaction because we lack the foresight to jump into the world of Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins' "Natural Capitalism."

Massive consumption taxes on private personal vehicles "may" get us to the alternative energy and mass transit that we need.

[Name removed]

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[Juneboarder]

20. If it's not this, then it will be some other method of raising taxes...

We are in such shambles, financially, that something needs to be done; and the sooner the better!

[SlightlyWorried]

21. Really bad idea

That would be a really regressive tax and it would hurt the competitiveness of US companies. How about simply raising the top marginal rate? Hmm? How about we keep it simple? Or bringing back the tax on dividends? Or bringing back the estate tax? Hmmm?

[TheWatcher]

22. Seems you need some education on why we are REALLY there in the first

Place.

An illegal war based on lies that has nothing to do with democracy, helping the Iraqi people, or anything even resembling something positive for anyone on the planet.

If you understood that, you wouldn't be making these silly posts and suggesting we should pay for Bush's fuck up. Such a tax would destroy the Middle and Lower Classes. Those who SHOULD pay for this wouldn't feel a damn thing.

You can pay for it if you want to, just keep the rest of us out of it.

Please, do run along now.