Rubber Tangents

I wouldn’t say that you’re the only one, but I’d say that you’re in a minority. You may be the only one brave enough to come out and say something, and I applaud that, but you should know me well enough by now to know that my opinionated ass has something to say about it and is brazen enough to say it. 

I would like to start with my overall feeling: Are you ‘effing’ retarded?! ؟

(the ‘؟’ is an irony mark)

karmcity:

One year ago, when gas was around $2.60/gallon, I remember hearing interviews where the reporter asked, “How high will gas prices need to go before you’ll change your driving habits?” The answer was almost always $3/gallon. Here we are now, with gas prices reaching over $4/gallon, with not many signs of people making an effort to reduce their fuel consumption.

I have an idea. Let’s have a driving tax. It’ll be based on annual mileage, so the more you drive, the more you pay. If you live in the suburbs and commute an hour one way, you’ll be taxed heavily. If you live in the city and take the train to work, you pay nothing.

The tax will go into researching alternative energy and reducing overall gas prices. The lowered prices will reward those who don’t drive often by offering less of an up-front cost. Those who decide they need to drive an SUV with a huge V8 engine can pay a premium. The key is to make people with inefficient driving habits pay more.

With gas companies reporting record profits, it’s safe to say consumers are willing to pay exorbitant prices to continue driving. Why don’t we take some of that money and put it to use?

UPDATE:
To the rebloggers saying, “well what if people have no choice BUT to drive,” that’s what tax breaks are for.

If John drives a Civic 25,000 miles, and Gertrude drives a Hummer just 5,000 miles, is there justification in charging the Hummer owner a premium? You can’t make people pay more based on the vehicle they own. It has to be on how much gas they’re actually consuming per year.

If you’re pissed that you have to pay more so you can enjoy the scenery in the countryside, sorry, but that should be the price you pay so that scenery can keep existing.

 Let’s go through this from the bottom up, shall we?  

Paying more to enjoy scenery, you aren’t serious are you?

You’re asking that we pay not only for convenience in the location we choose to live (city and suburbs), but then pay to not have to see it. On top of that, you’re advocating that those who live in the countryside also now pay to continue to live there.

As for making people pay more based on what they drive - sure the hell you can. People already get taxed differently based on their income. 

Johnny drives a 1985 Pontiac Bonneville, and Jimmy drives a 1985 Trans-Am. Both Johnny and Jimmy are driving side by side and their radiator hose blows out. Now they both need that new hose. Both go to the same auto parts dealer. Both cars take the exact same home (part number and all) - Jimmy, driving the Trans-Am pays 3 times more for the hose then Johnny. Do you know why? Because Jimmy can afford a more expensive car - and yes - the 85 Bonneville and the 85 Trans-Am have the exact same engine in them with the same parts but they’re priced according to the cost of the vehicle.

Your comparison is flawed in that a Civic is an economy passenger vehicle, and a Hummer is a ‘luxury’ SUV. Someone can go buy a Mercedes E Class or an Aston Martin DB7 and carry as many people as a Civic, just like someone can go buy a GMC Safari or a Nissan Frontier and carry as many people as a Hummer. The difference in the Hummer / Safari and DB7 / Civic is class of comfort. You’ve compared one extreme to another as justification to institute a bad idea. Compare like items.

Big Oil has profits in excess of 3.2 BILLION (yes, 9 zeros) per MONTH. It’s absolutely INSANE and I’ll completely agree that their profits are obscene. However, the consumers only drive about 2/3 of that profit. The US Government drives that other 1/3. They line up at pumps before the citizens do, and the best way to the problem here is an anti-trust suit. Haven’t you noticed that all of the prices go up or down on the same day at the same time within 2 cents of each other?

If you want to bitch at consumers, bitch at them for buying vehicles that get 9 gallons to the mile (Escalade EXT). Bitch at manufacturers for withholding the technology that allows for better mileage. Bitch at advertisers for pushing ‘speed’ and ‘power’ on consumers as the more important aspect of a car. See, back to the Honda and Toyota vs. GMC and Ford - I can justify 120 horses (even 150 or 180 horses), but how do you justify 205? 240? or 280? More horses promote faster driving and last I checked a Mini Cooper S wasn’t a slow poke. Would you trade in your MCS for say, a VW Rabbit, Honda Fit, or a Toyota Prius? Why did you get the Cooper S instead of the regular Copper?

I’d assert that some may have an aversion towards Honda Fit and Pruis because of what it might make people think of them, they won’t’ be as cool or the statement would be that they are in a lower class or have substandard (or par), taste… This is stupid. I drive a Chevy Cobalt and could care less what people think of what I drive - it’s what I do (or don’t do) that defines me, not my car or clothes. This too, is a part of the problem.

I’m a ‘Blue Collar’ worker, and frankly I’m pretty intelligent as far as people go. I could have a ‘better’ (being a relative term), job but I take a certain amount of pride in understanding and demonstrating that I can work with my hands… too. The point is that I give a rat’s ass about what anyone thinks of my car or choice of attire - when it comes down to it, I’m more than able to shut up and put up - which is what matters. 

None of this however, is the root of my… (What’s a good word…?), criticism with what you’ve suggested.

I have an idea. Let’s have a driving tax. It’ll be based on annual mileage, so the more you drive, the more you pay. If you live in the suburbs and commute an hour one way, you’ll be taxed heavily. If you live in the city and take the train to work, you pay nothing.

Driving tax? Well… you’re not the first with that idea. SanFran, Dallas, Detroit, and NYC as well as several other large cities have given pause to the idea of taxing drivers during normal business hours. The idea comes from congested city streets and politicians, in an ‘effort’ to keep traffic moving figure they can not only promote mass transit, reduce ‘global warming’, and obviously pocket some of it (per normal governmental habits). The problem with that idea is that it would require more diesel burning busses, increased police presence to enforce the laws, and severely inconvenience commuters. On top of that, it would also cost commuters more money and does nothing to cap the price of mass transit, so it could get to a point where driving is actually cheaper on commuters, and with the increased police congestion wouldn’t be dampened and a greater risk to their lives would arise (stopping a 1.5 ton car is easier than stopping a 4 ton bus, should a pedestrian or officer happen to be in the way). 

Your proposal is different though, in that you simply want a driving tax. For starters, by denouncing taxation variance based on vehicle ownership you’ve got a flat tax based on mileage. That’s not bad, but it does hurt those who can’t afford to live in the city. It also overlooks the fact that some people, while they can afford to live in the city, choose not to do so because a suburban school might be better for their children or they simply wish to avoid some of the city pollution, don’t agree with certain city laws, want to live in an area with lower crime, or perhaps their spouse works in the opposite direction of equal distance (they live at the half way point). There are more reasons than monetary at play in a choice of place to live. Your tax now penalizes them for practical or well merited reasons for the sake of “that’s the price of scenery”. 

The second half of your proposal / excuse, states that those who live in the city and use mass transit pay nothing. While the tax income would be offset by transit fees and there is no argument for one being more cost efficient than the other, it can be argued that people holding a job where they travel frequently are also penalized because they cannot determine where their job transfers them. It places undue burden on someone for attaining and acquiring a job that fits their area of expertise who also gets placed according to the needs of their employer.

This brings us to an aspect I’m not going to spend a lot of time on (this post is already of epic proportions, for Tumblr anyway). When an employee is forced to deal with rising costs to work in a certain location that employee will require a pay increase to adjust for the increase in cost of living. If the employer doesn’t compensate the employee for this, they are faced with retention issues which cost the company more money (in training). It also means that the company has to downsize to accumulate money to pay for retention practices (like bonuses, pay raises, etc). Where does that money come from? Do they come from company profits? There’s not a company in the world that will give up profits to no expense through the consumer (i.e. Big Oil), therefore the cost of a product will go up to adjust for the rising cost of employees. In the end, things become more expensive and the cycle starts anew - and if you haven’t noticed the American economy isn’t exactly sitting pretty.

I would propose a tax in cyclists, since they require special laws and with a growing number would require new lanes for with to share commuter roadways. Why tax and penalize the majority for the wants (not needs) of the minority? Is this because you’re part of the minority? It’s not so fun when the argument is flipped, is it…?

A tax isn’t as simple as to just be put in place and not have it effect one or two things beneath it, especially a tax that addresses a national issue affecting all people in the country. The idea is a rough one, and did little to think about the details. In High School, I’d get an “F” for handing in a rough draft paper as a final, and while there is definitely a lot of thought in your proposal, it fails to address the specifics and details, thereby failing to be a good proposal at all. This is why I rhetorically and ironically asked “Are you effing retarded?!” (and I mean ‘you’ in a general sense, not in a specific identity sense)

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that more often than not, our society thinks that a basic idea is good or bad, implements it, and then lets the draftees work the details out. By implementing ideas prior to working out details, we screw ourselves in that we’ve already given a ‘green light’ and forfeit our ability to say ‘whoa, wait a minute’ when the intricacies involve taking it up the poop chute. Living in a Federal Republic backed by a Constitution voted on through a democratic process means we’ve got to have those details (or should have those details), prior to just going along with any plain idea. No one wants to have those details because it means there is both an opportunity to have that idea turned down (i.e. Obama’s lack of specifics in his Blueprint for Change), and it also means that someone will have to actually do some real work. When did it, in this country, become such a terrible thing to call up a bit of ‘elbow grease’ and get a little ‘dirt under the fingernails’?