• Tip'd Home » Economy » Higher Federal Fuel Taxes For All - Yes, you too!

Comments

thekritz 1234 days ago

This article (and of course the content) is over a month old?! It's ironic that the auto bailout might be paid for with federal fuel taxes, talk about throwing good money after bad.

sunnyspeaks 1234 days ago

I agree. Ultimately, we, the taxpayers are the losers...

moneyhunny 1233 days ago

Fuel taxes are the best way for us to curb consumption. The government should be taxing it up to $3/gallon or so.

ObliviousInvestor 1233 days ago

@moneyhunny, I'm in agreement. I strongly support higher gas taxes. (And I was saying the same thing when it was at $4.89 a gallon here in Chicago.)

wangarific 1233 days ago

I support it too but it's political suicide...

MoneyNing 1233 days ago

It's easy for people like us who don't pay for that much gas (we work at home) but what about people who commute 50 - 100 miles each way? Adding taxes is basically telling them to quit their job!!

opportunities 1232 days ago

wangarific , it's political suicide with good reason. Higher fuel taxes will do little in the way of economic stimulation; quite the opposite. In the event higher fuel taxes are adopted, how would you propose they be spent? Putting them in the giant black hole that is the general fund would guarantee they'd just be fodder for whatever pol had control of the purse strings at any given time. The extra money would go straight to someone's pet project. The extra gas tax revenue would be funneled into the inefficient government spending morass, which does little to create real wealth that benefits the average citizen. When you discover the best way to tax us to prosperity I would love to hear the plan and exactly how it would work in the real world.

I could almost be talked into somewhat higher fuel taxes if I could be assured the spending would go into creating new technologies that could be the basis for our economy going forward. I doubt many of the pennies would end up there.

For those of you that feel mass transit would be a better use of funds, you should dig a little deeper. In most cases mass transit, especially rail has 3 big strikes against it. It costs much more per passenger mile traveled (take into account the average occupancy of the cars, not only the operating cost per passenger mile at full occupancy). It locks us for 30 years into whatever technology was prevalent when the system was designed, rather than allowing relatively easy upgrades as is the case with cars. Imagine what kind of cars we'll be driving in 30 years (I know, many of you hope the answer to that is "none"). In all but a very few areas of the country, the ridership is abysmal. Only New York City boasts ridership of over 10%. Finally, the cost of the mass transit system is always heavily subsidized by the taxpayers, as no one is willing to pay the true cost of riding.

In most cases the car is even far better for the environment. Read this:

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/c_d_staff/patrick_bedard/save_energy_take_the_car_column

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