ajsthind’s Recent Comments

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  Data from 2003

  I tend to agree that a gasoline tax wouldn't be really all that regressive due to the factors you pointed out, but we are also relying a lot on very old data.  Five year old data might not seem that old, but in the context of gasoline, where prices have roughly doubled in the last 5 years, it is probably something that should be brought up.

  It seems then that households are spending much more that 3-5% on gas, even with wage increases and inflation.  It is probably closer to 5-7%.  If that is the case, a gas tax can be seen in two ways.  

  One it is marginally not a big increase since the price is already so high and a lot of states tend to do it on a cent per gallon basis, rather than a percent of price basis.

  Second, and alternatively, an increase might start to get into the very elastic territory where an extra couple of cents might start pushing out the lowest income consumers who must really face a tough choice.  

  I would also also wonder if poorer people have to live further away from work than higher income people do.  The theory would be that the places closest to work likely have higher real estate costs than those that are far away in the suburbs.  I could be entirely wrong, but I have heard that thrown out a lot.  On The gasoline tax is regressive, but only for upper-income groups posted 1 year, 6 months ago 4 Responses