Quoth Teri Pittman:
I live in a rural area where there are no alternative forms of transportation. Like most workers these days, it’s a job that requires I work a shift that does not give me the alternative to car pool. I have a 27 mile commute each way and I make $11 an hour. Please explain to me why I should consider you a rational human being for expecting me to pay an even larger chunk of what I make, just to be able to get to work.
You have it backwards. Ask instead why your employer expects you to commute so far, on an odd shift, in such a remote place, for a lousy $11/hour.
Gas tax money doesn’t just disappear. If we follow T. Boone Pickens’ suggestion for a gas-tax increase, it should come right back to you in reduced payroll taxes… unless you drive a guzzler. The extra money could let you do any of a number of things: buy a more efficient vehicle, move closer to work, or take another job that doesn’t require so much driving. The point is that people should be encouraged to stop spending so much money on foreign oil, where it leaves the economy and takes jobs with it.
Quoth Bill W.:
you try to combine statistics from the ’70s to today to somehow draw the conclusion somehow that lowering domestic supplies actually increases domestic consumption is ludicrous.
Except I never said that. For an engineer, your reading abilities aren’t looking good.
Domestic supplies were not affected by the 70′s price shocks. Gasoline consumption was cut by 10% as proven by the EIA data and took more than 10 years to recover even in an era of cheap fuel. Had US policy kept fuel expensive to discourage consumption, that trend would almost certainly have continued downward; US vehicles are very inefficient compared to most other countries.
Which leads to the second that you and the original author totally ignore, but is a huge factor – energy consumption is pretty much inelastic.
Again, you’re wrong; the short-term elasticity is small, but the long-term elasticity is much larger. When people buy a new vehicle they lock in much of their fuel consumption for several years. The sales of hybrids have been rising very steeply, which is one way we are locking in long-term reductions in fuel demand.
So, the tax on gasoline does not have the wedge effect that most taxes have.
You’re claiming that the laws of economics were repealed for gasoline, and you call me ignorant of economics? First, remove the beam in your own eye….
Quoth Tolbert:
How’s that “not drilling” working out?
About as well as drilling would do, except we still have the oil in reserve for a real crisis. Not being able to tool around in 15-MPG dually pickups is not a crisis. When the auto companies stop building anything that gets less than 30 MPG because they can’t sell it, half their offerings are liquid/electric bi-fuel and we still can’t get enough oil… that would be a crisis.
Joe: You’re one of the few people who get it.
