Would it be better to raise the gasoline tax instead of increasing CAFE Standards (MPG for cars mandated)??

Question

A CAFE standard is what Congress is considering increase. For example, the average car made by Ford must get 30 Miles per Gallon. Number was a wild guess.

Answer 1

Do both. Won't solve the problem completely but will help.

Answer 2

Well if you just raise the CAFE standard, no one understands that it will make vehicles cost more because the automakers will have to find a way to have you "choose" the small, efficient car over the truck or SUV. (It is not possible to make full-size trucks and SUVs that will get 35mpg)

If they raise taxes on gasoline it will raise the price of gasoline at the pump and people will cry. But if they implement a carbon cap-and-trade program that, in a few years, will essentially raise the price of gasoline, then they can blame it on the oil companies and everyone will complain about the record profits or the lines at the pump--since we would have to reduce gas usage to remain under the cap.

Also, electrical prices will go up under the Energy bill and the new cap-and-trade legislation that is currently under debate. But because neither bill implicitly raises the price of anything, the public of the US will support it until it is too late and the price of gasoline and electricity is similar to Europe.

In 30 years, when the US economy has been destroyed by this legislation, I hope historians can look back and say that on this one issue, though not many others, Bush was actually right.

Answer 3

Politicians should stay out of the market place and allow free consumers to make the choices that are best for them. If better MPG cars are wanted, they will appear like magic. All of the major manufacturers and most of the minor ones are perfectly capable of producing cars with high MPG and in fact do so in Europe and Japan where the cost of gasoline is much higher than here in the U.S. and thus, the market demand for high MPG cars is sufficient to make them worth producing. Government mandates are always a disaster and will result in many more problems than they solve. Thus it has always been and thus it will always be.

Answer 4

CAFE standards will affect the release of CO2 (so raising the standard will reduce CO2 output). Gasoline tax should reflect the costs of road maintenance and construction.

There will be a fine line one can tread that will raise both, but effectively keep the cost the same ($20 a week, 5 gallons at $4 or 4 gallons at $5).

Here in the US I would think higher standards would be wise to keep the industry competetive. CAFE in China/Japan are very high, so much that we can't sell cars to them - thus limiting our market.

Answer 5

The Republicans will never raise taxes and if the Democrats do they will lord it over them. So don't hold your breath for higher taxes to give incentives for fuel savings like Europe did. The Europeans also encouraged the use of diesel oil as a cleaner fuel. As a result Opel made a 3 cylinder diesel powered car that went 145 MPH and got 115 MPG while doing it ! !

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulation is one way of cutting down on petroleum consumption. Another way of doing it would be to be to regulate the fuels we can use. The obvious clean fuel is electricity. Remember that you can not make gasoline on your roof but you can make electricity on your roof with photovoltaic panels.

Hydrogen consumes more energy to make than it produces. Fuel cells fall into the same category. Bio-fuels are only a stopgap measure. They are still burning fuels to make energy.

I think there is a clean fuel that I do not know about, but electric vehicles seem to be the best bet so far.

Answer 6

There is this country where I lived for quite a few years that not only had a high gas tax but also registration fees directly related to the power of the vehicle and guess what? They had cars that were more efficient and people rode in smaller cars.

I was a kid then but I don't remember suffering anymore from long road trips over there in a small (by our standards) sedan than I did here in a huge station wagon...

The main thing is, though, that over there (my sister lives there and I visit regularly) you have a sense of where your tax money is going. Here we don't. Example: I am a smoker and get taxed to hell for my cigarettes. That tax money (plus that of the windfall from the trials a few years ago) is supposed to go to helping smokers quit and helping non-smokers not to start. In reality, it has gone to everything under the sun except those.

So we don't like paying taxes. Rightly so. Over there, they don't like the taxes either but maybe because they can see where those taxes go they don't mind them as much. Actually I have heard from several people that they "DIDN'T MIND" the taxes because they could see what it was doing for the country.

Food for thought.

Answer 7

Works in Europe. Oh I almost forgot, everyplace in Europe has the same population density as New York State and each country is the same size. We're too spread out for those kinds of solutions.

If you raise the tax on fuel then the price on all items rises and then wages rise to keep up with the public's need to get to work. It is like a dog chasing its tail.

CAFE standards are a better option because it will get the American public off their kick for oversized SUVs. If everybody has a small car or van then you don't have to worry about getting run over by a SUV.

Answer 8

Right now CAFE is 27.5. A proposed new law would raise that to 35, over several years. and include pickup trucks and SUVs which now get off easy.

A combination of both plans would be the most effective. The tax is tricky, because you don't want poor people to be unable to drive to work. You also need to do something like an income tax deduction to fix that problem.

Answer 9

It's NEVER a good idea to feed a bureaucrat! Taxes should never be raised for social engineering reasons.
But if Bush was smart, he'd drop ALL gasoline taxes to zero. The more gas costs, the sooner people will switch to biodiesel and switchgrass ethanol. And those fuels will be difficult to tax if they're refined in your back yard!

Answer 10

Good idea. Use the extra taxes the big car owners have to pay to subsidize my lttle diesel car that gets 60MPG. Soon there would be a lot more little cars, and less gas hogs.

Answer 11

Yes the millions working at McDonald's and Walmart for 5.25 an hour have way too much disposable income as it is.