Gas in the US is well off its highs; why bother with administering 30 bucks a month? just give everyone a tax credit and charge it at the pumps. Gas is still cheaper than bottled water, pay its true cost and people will adjust, just like they did when it was expensive- drive less, buy smaller cars.

Any politician that votes to raise taxes, especially gas taxes would never get reelected.

The blame needs to go to big oil, opec, and the oil friendly political side instead.  How do we  do that and still reduce oil consumption with higher prices and put that extra tax money into alternatives?

By cutting subsidies to oil companies.  Mo more tax  breaks, oil lease giveaways, free passes on monopoly gas pricing.  Cut the corporate welfare then use half the savings for direct tax credits to consumers who buy plugin vehicles, geothermal heating/cooling systems, and solar, wind, wave, and biogas/fuel cell energy systems.

Use the other half of cuts in corporate welfare to pay down this huge oil war deficit.  Make these corpoRATs pay for at least part of their oil wars.

Then big oil will fix prices upward to get that lost welfare check from consumers directly.  they will have big ad campaigns blaming the pricxe rise on green politicians, but the public won't buy that.  They'll blame the oil rats and their hired hands in the whitehouse and congress instead.

Put the blame where it belongs, then our enviro friendly representatives can vote to cut corporate welfare without fear of tax hike swiftboating come election time.

Raise gas taxes and an oil chimp will get appointed again, we sure don't want another duuh  duuuh..duuuh..bya.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

One thing I think this proposal is very good for is avoiding the severe regressive impact of a regular tax on gas.  That is, if you tax every gallon of gas, that hurts the working poor more than anyone else, even if they have relatively efficient vehicles.  This proposal would mean that a poor person who needs to drive to get to work could conceivably avoid the tax, and I think that's good.  That said, I think a sliding-scale tax would be good for that too, but it would do nothing to get wealthier people to choose more efficient cars.

One thing I wonder about:  how would this impact illegal immigrants?  I totally don't want to start a debate on immigration here, but many of the working poor in this country are now here illegally, and whatever you think about their presence, the fact is that they're here and they need to buy gas so they can get to work.  If memory serves, there are now some places (California?) where illegal immigrants can get US  driver's licenses, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case most places.

Privacy seems like a concern, too.  I know there are a lot of people (like me, for one) who don't want the government tracking every private citizen's every move.  This tax seems like it might invite the government to collect more data than it really should, and frankly, they've got enough already.  I worry more about global warming than about the government spying on me via gas purchases (and what the hell, I buy mine with a credit card, so they already know everything about me anyway, given that I hardly expect my credit card company to respect my privacy if the government requests data), but all other things being equal privacy would be a good thing.

for 'oil subsidies during clinton administration' will provide a list of articles by Ralph Nader, Democracy Now, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club (to name just a few) making the same complaints/accusations about the oil policies of the then democratic administration (which included Mr. Gore) now being made about the current republican administration.

Changing the spots on the top critter is not necessarily going to make the problem(s) go away.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!

I'll admit Bill panders to corporate power Engineer.  Look at his fund raising for global causes.  And he was no environmental reformer.

But these guys serve it absolutely.  Even daddy bush has disagreed with this war for oily empire from the start.  The war cost constitutes over a   dollar per gallon hidden subsidy for big oil now.

Gerry Ford's conversation with Woodward was released today.  Ford said he would have not invade Iraq and would have found a different way.  There is a limit to how far most US leaders would go for their big oil friends.

But with this crew it's go for broke!  And boy are we broke.  And the loans are owed to china, the looming future superpower.  A corporate kleptocracy even worse than this one ruling the world?  No thanks.

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Increasing fuel prices is one way to encourage conservation and alternatives.  Using taxes to increase fuel prices might be acceptable in the rest of the world, but it ain't gonna fly in the 'land of the free and the home of the brave'.  The entire 'health' of the US economy is predicated on the access to cheap gasoline so people go shopping at malls in their insatiable quest for instant gratification.  As well, there is the 'one man-one horse' mystique promulgated by the urban pick-up truck and it's SUV cousins.  These are symbols of an uberconsumptive lifestyle many aspire to as a measure of social 'success', and these symbols will not be put aside easily.  As long as unrestrained marketing is allowed to prey on the limited intelligence of the vast majority, one will see little meaningful change.  There is too much at stake in preserving the status quo at any cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify or defend the current regime, just that the orientation of the politician matters less than the character.

As far as this proposal...I think the system would be gamed before the ink was dry.  And that exemptions would be issued that rendered it moot for connected individuals.

I've said for years (more from an accident/insurance cost perspective than efficiency) that the US needed to raise the driving age to 18 and toughen up the test to get a drivers license.

Fewer (and better trained) drivers on the road would solve a whole raft of problems...

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!

But it's hardly going to make a dent in global warming.

We need something far more drastic: Public transportation for everybody!

I am reminded of the Kurt Vonnegut character, Diana Moon Glampers.   She was the fictional state bureaucrat who went around insuring (notice I didn't say ensuring, which seems to be some crazy kind of trend that I don't understand) that everyone was equal, by hobbling anyone who has any skill or talent.

So pretty people are made to wear bags on their head, and ballet dancers have to perform with concrete blocks on their feet.   This way no one can feel anything but homogeneous.

These insane Lib penalties for living life and wanting to have fun have got to stop.

We should be thinking only about how to produce 100 times more energy per person.   It's not about scrimping and saving, its about using our God given creativity to think our way upward and onward.

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These insane Lib penalties for living life and wanting to have fun have got to stop.

We should be thinking only about how to produce 100 times more energy per person. It's not about scrimping and saving, its about using our God given creativity to think our way upward and onward.

Most "penalties for living life and wanting to have fun" are addressed at externalities: costs that a producer or consumer is able to pass on to others.

The penalties that are not -- e.g., income tax -- also reduce the ability of people to live life and have fun, to the extent that having more disposable income would allow individuals to pursue those aims. Some of those government revenues help improve lives very concretely: by protecting people from aggression and from communicable diseases. But some is wasted, or actually lines the pockets of those who already have plenty of money to pursue their happiness. I should think that every citizen should be concerned about such waste, since it means they are paying more in taxes than they need to.

That brings me back to energy. Nobody is standing in the way of bright ideas. If somebody can find a way to collect and deliver CLEAN energy 100 times more efficiently than currently, the world will beat a path to his or her door. What many politicians want to do, however, is subsidize the transition away from oil.

And from where do those subsidies come? From taxpayers.

To use an over-used aphorism, there is no free lunch. If the country decides that high market prices for oil are not going to stimulate conservation and the search for substitutes as fast as it would like, then additional incentives will be needed. Which is more efficient and equitable: taxing what one wants to reduce the consumption of, or taxing labor and using the revenues to subsidize alternatives?

A footnote: I agree with Lloyd Alter: more efficient than a tax-rate quota would be simply to tax all fuel and give every adult a tax credit of $360 a year.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word "ensuring".

Get with the trend!

Numerous problems.

This is an arbitrary number, picked out of a hat, and therefore subject to lots of opposition for that reason alone.

This doesn't help with the whipsaw problem, as gas prices would still fluctuate wildly--even moreso now that there's a $1/gallon incentive to be sure to use up that first 30 gallons.

If this did lead to conservation, the price of oil would drop, causing the price of gas to drop, encouraging more consumption.

System easily gamed--smart cards can be reprogrammed, the system can be hacked, cards can be issued for ghost people, etc.  Lots of bother for small gain.

The better approach is to set a fixed total -- say, $4/gallon for now, to increase by 25 cents per year, first using the revenue to provide full liability coverage for all drivers (in other words, to eliminate the need for anyone other than full-electric vehicle owners to purchase liability insurance), and then to offset payroll taxes (reducing social security taxes for all, in other words).

This is a more efficient way to deal with the regressivity of gas taxes, because social security is the most viciously regressive tax we have because of it's flat rate and its $90k cutoff.  Likewise, the poor are hit hard by insurance requirements (and are heavily represented among the 1 in 7 people who are uninsured motorists) -- so using the gas surtax to provide automatic liability coverage for them is a real boon, because it provides efficient coverage for those who have been buying it from an insurance company AND it makes sure that those who have been avoiding it entirely are brought into the system (meaning the rest of us can stop paying extra for uninsured motorists' coverage).

This would provide a strong, continuing incentive to minimize gas consumption period, rather than an incentive to use 30 gallons, while dealing with two other intractable problems (the annual-insurance-premium incentive to drive MORE and the regressive nature of social security) at the same time.

As conservation takes hold, any reductions in the price of oil cause the surtax to increase, leading to more revenue to eliminate social security taxes, then to fund medicare, etc.  In other words, the cars would start to pay their way, while helping our economy by helping us eliminate taxes on the things we want (employment) by taxing the things we don't want (fossil fuel use, CO2 emissions, sprawl, etc.)

I like the concept of a tax credit.  I suppose at some point it could be expanded to require documentation of the registered vehicles and not be able to be claimed if the mileage didn't reach a certain threshold.  Kind of an end-use CAFE.

Of course, that would require people to accept some personal responsibility for their choices...what am I thinking...

Oh, and on the Insure/Ensure usage, one of my girls was an English major.  "ENSURE and INSURE are interchangeable in many contexts where they indicate the making certain or inevitable of an outcome, but ENSURE may imply a virtual guarantee <the government has ensured the safety of the refugees>, while INSURE sometimes stresses the taking of necessary measures beforehand <careful planning should insure the success of the party>.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is!

I am all for the concept of an eco-tax on fuels, and a strong believer in the necessity of government to shape the market. Government in truth enables the free market. Economic incentives are the buzzword of policy today - look at carbon trading, pollution permits, etc. And they seem to be highly effective in many cases.

I spent a year in Germany, where gasoline is about 3 times as expensive as here, if not 4 (depends on euro-dollar exchange rates). People were initially behind a gasoline tax, whose proceeds would go to benefit environmentally beneficial projects and organizations. However, the people themselves have not seen much in the way of concrete results which they can appreciate, see, or touch. It would be of utmost importance to show people that it is in their ultimate best interest to support and deal with a gas tax, because while there will always be a few eco-buffs like myself who are willing to put out extra effort to find out where things come from, how they are produced, what chemicals are in which products, etc. etc., the vast majority of people have chosen another set of interests which dominate their time.

If anything, I think the most immediate result would be a shift in car models. Germans still drive quite a bit (and quite fast), but their cars are so much more fuel efficient than ours, and an Opel doesn't small at all relative to the other cars on the road. I unfortunately have no insights as to why people buy gas-guzzling SUVs and all sorts of conveniently named "light trucks", but that is a mentality which will also have to be addressed.

And why not a tax on driving into the city as well? Some experiments in England and Norway(?) I have heard of. That would be more of a sprawl-combative initiative - feel free to live 25 miles out, but it is going to cost you. Proceeds would go primarily to mass transit, which otherwise shrivel when people flee to the suburbs.

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Tax credits can be tied to the actual CO2 savings realized by the particular vehicle or energy system.

Kind of like the energy saving labels put on appliances.  Maybe Amory Lovins' organization could figure out a scheme that congress could vote on?

Would it add more of a mess to the IRS?  That might be unavoidable.  oh well.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Ron Steenblik: "I am generally a skeptic of heavy-handed market manipulation."

If the ultimate objective is reducing gasoline consumption, which strategy has a higher chance of success:

a) eliminating all US Federal subsidies for the oil industry (which would raise the price at the pump)

b) a tariff-rate quota like the one Rick Gray proposes (which would raise the price at the pump)

Answer: neither. There aren't enough Americans willing to sacrifice what they currently have in order to build a better world. Perhaps a truckload of illegal immigrants can be hired to do the heavy lifting.

Eddie:

I'm not sure if your question is a rhetorical one. To begin with, I don't see what illegal immigrants have to do with the discussion. But let me take your points one by one:

If the ultimate objective is reducing gasoline consumption, which strategy has a higher chance of success: (a) eliminating all US Federal subsidies for the oil industry (which would raise the price at the pump)

Even President Bush has advocated eliminating many of the current subsidies and tax breaks enjoyed by the oil industry, saying at current prices they don't need them. (Too bad he's not saying the same about other energy industries as well.) It is a central policy of the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives, which has vowed to "[roll] back the multi-billion dollar subsidies for Big Oil" within the first 100 hours of the first session of Congress in 2007.

Whether removing those subsidies and tax breaks will have much of an effect on the retail price of gasoline or other petroleum-derived fuels, at least in the short term, is doubtful. Most occur upstream, providing large wealth transfers. But much of the production benefiting from these transfers would still take place were the subsidies and tax breaks to be removed. In any case, there is an international market in oil, and it global developments in supply and demand that drive the price of a barrel of crude, not U.S. tax breaks.

If you want to count the U.S. military expenditure in the Middle East as a subsidy to oil, then there probably would be more price volatility were that expenditure to be cut back.

(b) a tariff-rate quota like the one Rick Gray proposes (which would raise the price at the pump).

Yup, it would raise the price at the pump.

There aren't enough Americans willing to sacrifice what they currently have in order to build a better world.

What would Americans be sacrificing in the case of (a) -- the right to pay higher taxes to fund wealth transfers to the oil industry? In the case of a policy like (b), or more generally a higher rate of taxation on transport fuels, the acceptance of such a policy would depend in large part on how it is implemented. If its effect on the overall tax burden were neutral (e.g., through a corresponding reduction in income tax), and it included transfers to help out poorer drivers (e.g., through a fixed annual rebate), who knows?

I am old enough to recall a time when speaking favorably of universal health insurance was enough to get one branded a Communist. By the beginning of the first Clinton Administration, however, there was widespread support for the idea. Unfortunately, when it finally emerged from the Task Force on National Health Care Reform (which was headed by then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton) in September 1993, the basic notion of providing universal health care for all Americans had morphed into a complex proposal running to more than 1,000 pages. Within a year, the plan was declared dead. But that is a story for a different blog.

I think that a high gas tax is absolutely necessary to stop the blatant waste. But the ONLY way to get it passed is  to substiute it for another tax that could be reduced or eliminated. Consider it a sin tax that can be used to help kick America's oil addiction.