Why don't we raise the gas tax?

[Hauldren Collider]

Well you've got the EZ Pass which seems like a great system.

EZ pass is excellent.

[PLATO]

Which might actually have an impact if they didn't regularly fly to other cities to do their shopping.

He would probably take his bus if the damn gas tax wasn't so high.

[Imran Siddiqui]

How about mass transit. Are the riders paying the full cost of the service?

How is that equivalent to roads being funded through gas taxes. I didn't say roads should be fully funded by tolls (which is an equivalent argument).

As Jon said, mass transit folks pay far more a percentage of their costs in direct fares than drivers pay for roads in gas taxes - so equalize that first and then we can talk.

Gas taxes are a more general tax and you can completely avoid paying anything in a state you drive if you don't fill the car there. I guess it'd be akin to an increased sales tax (which is, actually, how Atlanta funds its mass transit).

[PLATO]

Here are some interesting numbers:
Federal Excise tax on gas is 18.4 cents per gallon.
U.S. used 386,000,000 gallons of gas per day in 2006 (maybe someone could find updated numbers??)
This means that we generated revenue from gas taxes in 2006 of $25,923,760,000
The Federal Highway administration budget request for 2012 was $27,650,000,000

It seems to me that the tax rate is pretty close to funding the budget for the affected department and may, in fact, be funding it fully if my numbers were up to date.

Why would we want to raise this tax?

[Imran Siddiqui]

You miss the part about externalities? You know all the fun that stuff that air pollution does?

And of course, there is the benefit of incentivizing people away from using tons of gas, promoting smaller cars, greener energy, and better cities.

[PLATO]

You miss the part about externalities? You know all the fun that stuff that air pollution does?

And of course, there is the benefit of incentivizing people away from using tons of gas, promoting smaller cars, greener energy, and better cities.

These are social questions on the value of transportation versus the cost. Not tax questions.

Of course, this point of view speaks to my belief that the government should not use tax policy to answer social questions. I believe the constitution reserves that right to the people.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Externalities are not social questions. Air pollution causes harm.

And we disagree on whether tax policy should affect social questions. They already do in a vast area of subsidies and tax breaks. Why not here?

[giblets]

Toll booths are also great ideas.

Toll booths on every road (including city streets) in the country? Or should we reward people who use roads where tolling is inconvenient?

edit: what mikeh said.

[giblets]

I don't pay your gas tax so I don't have a dog in the fight but the argument car drivers don't pay the total cost for the roads is a poor one.

Poor because roads increase the value of nearby property so they don't only benefit people who use gas-consuming vehicles?

[ColdWizard]

Mary Peters, Secretary of Transportation, 2007

MARY PETERS: [...]You know, I think Americans would be shocked to learn that only about 60 percent of the gas tax money that they pay today actually goes into highway and bridge construction. Much of it goes in many, many other areas.[...]

GWEN IFILL: Where is the money going instead?

MARY PETERS: Well, it's going into earmarks; it's going into special programs.

GWEN IFILL: Explain what you mean when you say earmarks.

MARY PETERS: Well, an earmark is a project that's designated by a member of Congress specifically to a project generally in his or her district or state. And the level of earmarking has increased substantially over the last couple of decades in terms of the highway bill. The last highway bill that was passed, in the summer of 2005, contained over 6,000 of those marks, those specially designated projects. And the cost of those projects just in that bill alone was $24 billion, almost a tenth of the bill.

GWEN IFILL: Aren't many of those projects, even though they're special interest projects, aren't they roads and bridges, often?

MARY PETERS: Gwen, some of them are, but many of them are not. There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.

[PLATO]

Externalities are not social questions. Air pollution causes harm.

And we disagree on whether tax policy should affect social questions. They already do in a vast area of subsidies and tax breaks. Why not here?

Okay...I agree that air pollution causes harm. There are many other things that do as well that we don't tax because they are inherently not good.

As to your second point, there is no doubt that the government does many things that are designed for social engineering...my point is that I do not believe they have the right to.

I am not speaking to whether or not their attempts to social engineer things are for the common good or not, but merely that in a free society it is for the people to decide what is for their own good without government interference.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Ok, then we simply disagree on the proper role of government .

[Jon Miller]

Here are some interesting numbers:
Federal Excise tax on gas is 18.4 cents per gallon.
U.S. used 386,000,000 gallons of gas per day in 2006 (maybe someone could find updated numbers??)
This means that we generated revenue from gas taxes in 2006 of $25,923,760,000
The Federal Highway administration budget request for 2012 was $27,650,000,000

It seems to me that the tax rate is pretty close to funding the budget for the affected department and may, in fact, be funding it fully if my numbers were up to date.

Why would we want to raise this tax?

Because our roads have gone to **** in the last 20 years.

JM

[Felch]

Ok, then we simply disagree on the proper role of government .

You're absolutely right about that.

Gas taxes should cover the cost of road maintenance and construction. That's fair. Trying to include externalities like air pollution is where you go too far. How would you possibly set a price on it?

Keep in mind that gas taxes are highly regressive. A working stiff, who might not live in an area with good mass transit, would have a tough time dealing with gas at six or seven dollars a gallon. And buying a new fuel efficient car or finding a job closer to home isn't as easy as you might think.

[Provost Harrison]

I dread to think how much fuel I get through, flying almost every week to Germany. I think I fly, just for business, about 100k miles a year. I wouldn't mind more remote working, but tell that to the company I am contracting for, not me...