High federal gas taxes vs. govt manadated fuel efficiency

[cubeless]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: sactoking

Originally posted by: cubeless
the hell it won't... raise the price enough (and it's a nice, regressive tax) and consumption will drop as the raise ripples through the economy and people start losing jobs...

were you asleep during the (relatively short) spike in gas prices? watch what happens to transport costs when they stay at that level for a few years...

Considering the inelastic demand for gasoline, the burden large fuel taxes places on low-income households, the "spread out" nature of all of the US minus the eastern sea board, the lack of reliable rail transport, and the fact that Americans did NOT change their habits much in 2008 (100%+ increase in fuel prices caused only 3.2% drop in usage: Link), your "tax it until it hurts" strategy would literally BLOW UP the economy before it did any damn good with changing demand. Nice economics fail.

3% might not sound like a lot...but look at this.

http://ecomodder.com/blog/gas-...les-driven-this-march/

It takes along time to turn around 25 years of ever climbing use.

looking only at gas consumption = fail right back at you, econonics wizard... the drop in $$$ for other parts of the economy that are driven by the rise in gas costs ripples through the whole economy... it just takes a bit longer... as vi points out, to drop that many % in the short time it did is huge...

and the previously high gas prices were of a very short duration... usage was dropping and would have continued to drop as more people started trading some driving for some food...

 

[Xellos2099]

Well.... US gas consumption increase because our economy is expending, shouldn't people see it as a good thing? When we use less gas, the general idea is the economy is contracting.

In addition, no matter how high the gas price go, people still need to go to work, go shop for food etc. So unless the price is unsustainable, the demand is not goign to drop much.

 

[mugs]

President Obama wants to dramatically increase the fuel economy of cars without doing much to light trucks. Seems to me that encouraging soccer moms to ditch the SUVs for more efficient cars would have a much bigger impact on fuel consumption. Gas taxes would be one way to encourage people who don't need SUVs to buy something else.

 

[LTC8K6]

Most people driving large SUVs have already taken the added fuel bills into the picture, imo.

Most didn't stop driving them at $4 a gallon.