Saturday, February 23, 2013

Fight Crony Infrastructure Deals with Fuel Efficient Cars

The Federal gas tax is a primary source of highway infrastructure funding. It's currently 18.4 cents per gallon.

As modern cars travel further on a gallon of gas, drivers will, thus, contribute less tax money, based on fixed miles travel. And cars are going to get even more fuel-efficient.

6 comments:

  1. Devil's advocate:
    All taxes suck. However, there is a slope of suckiness. Of all the taxes, "use taxes" seem to me to be the least sucky. At least the beneficiaries of the gummint service (in this case, roads) pay proportionally according to the fuel they consume, which is a cheap and fairly accurate surrogate for tolls.
    A much better work-around for these fees is telecommuting.
    On another front, wouldn't it be nice if ONLY parents whose brats attended public school were taxed to support those schools? That includes the ever so wonderful Federal Dept. of Education (sic).

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  2. I was looking at a Nissan Altima that gets 39 mpg for just that reason....

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  3. The man in this short video clip explains why vehicles in the U.S. never got significantly more fuel efficient in the past and probably won't in the future either -- because the government doesn't want them to.

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    1. I need to clarify what I wrote above:

      The American in this short video clip toured Europe in a rental car (a Volkswagen), driving 2,100 miles altogether. He was amazed at the excellent gas mileage the car got. When he returned to the U.S., he decided to buy the same model; however, he quickly learned that the U.S. version gets roughly half the mileage that the European version gets. This is true in spite of the fact that the engines for both markets are manufactured here in the U.S. He made inquiries and learned that the U.S. government is responsible for this state of affairs.

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  4. "And cars are going to get even more fuel-efficient."

    That is not the impression I got from the guys at ericpetersautos.com

    I could be wrong, but from what I read, cars are getting worse gas milage because of goberment mandates. ...And will continue to do so. ...With even worse cost to own.

    Cars were fuel efficent once, like the VW Rabbit getting almost 50 miles per gallon, that doesn't seem likely these days with the new models.

    Check out ericpetersautos, it's got a Libertarian bent.

    - IndividulAudienceMember

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    1. EP Rocks. I disagree with him about the Tesla, though.

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