Here's another little present from Obama
 

“...the White House plan would set up a six-year project to address the technological challenges to establishing a system to track drivers for the purpose of imposing a tax for each mile driven.”

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3469.asp

Right!
 

Right! Let's get back to the important stuff.

What does that mean?

This is not necessarily a bad idea. (I know the 'big brother' alarmists will disagree). Roads have traditionally been built and maintained with gas taxes. By taxing gasoline, you effectively taxed people for the number of miles driven.

With hybrids and electric cars this is no longer an effective or fair way to pay for roads. A per mile driven tax in one form or another is needed. This way has the person driving 50,00 miles per year paying more than the one driving 5,000 miles per year. Various states and municipalities could adjust the per mile driven fee to meet construction and maintenance needs just as they adjust gas taxes today to meet those needs.

The advantage of a per mile tax is that we would all be aware of how much we are paying for our roads rather than having it hidden within the price of gasoline.

It's an additional gas tax. That's all. Plain and simple. More taxes and more overreaching, intrusive government.

With gas tax revenues drying up, your ways of paying for roads is .....?

The gas tax had a nice side-effect of rewarding conservation, either by driving fewer miles or more efficient vehicles.

The bad side of that was, for a while, small tinfoil cars that were death traps.

As we're trying to move away from petroleum, SOMEthing has to replace the revenues that, in a perfect world, would be going away with reduced usage of gasoline and diesel. I mean, if you buy a Leaf or a Volt and always run on the battery, how are you paying for the upkeep of the roads?

But I think the per-mile thing isn't the right way to go. Combine the "Bg Brother" side of tracking your every movement and the fact that you'd be taxing a Hummer the same as a Prius and you have something that removes the conservation incentive.

...and let's not forget the fact that, in the current model, we significantly subsidize trucking. As I recall, trucks do the equivalent of several thousand cars worth of 'damage' (wear and tear) on a road, yet pay only slightly higher fuel taxes.

But they keep the grocery store shelves and your pantry and house filled with the goods we all need....the autos don't!

btk

I didn't investigate the proposal enough, so I was interested in your observation. I tend to agree with you.

Said a different way, one of the roles of government in my opinion, is to incent the behavior of the country to permit the achievement of long-term national objectives. We all recognize--even agree on I think--that reducing our dependence on foreign oil is in the long-term best interests of the U.S. This sort of tax would provide that kind of incentive.

Another incentive with that has the same result is the increased price of gasoline. I don't know whether our government has done things that result in the escalation in the price of oil and gas. But I know what they haven't done--release any of the strategic oil reserve to temporarily dampen the escalation in the price of gas..

What's the result been? Today's business headlines describe how quickly the U.S. consumer can and will react to financial incentives. An article in today's USATODAY describes how the sale of smaller, more fuel efficient cars has skyrocketed as consumers reacted to much higher gasoline prices. This article also describes how Congress is considering legislation to further incent both consumers and manufacturers towards more fuel efficient cars.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...alt-fuel_x.htm

To me, this kind of government intervention is an excellent and in my mind a proper use of taxpayer money to create incentives to move the country towards an objective with clear, long-term national importance.

Now, if we can somehow figure out how to move the country towards greater use of high-speed rail and the use of nuclear energy for electric generating, we'd begin to make a real dent in our dependence on foreign oil. While our elected representatives haven't begun to think along those lines, other countries have. China is several years into programs costing trillions of dollars (in Yuan) to construct 23,000 miles of high-speed rail and 50 of the most advanced design nuclear reactors. Their stated national objective is to become less dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

Trucks also pay "highway use taxes" that cars do not pay in order to use that states roads. Look on the driver's side of a truck and you'll see the stickers showing what state that truck has paid these taxes to.

Yes. Now, I don't know how much it might have gone up since but I remember when it was popular to put "This truck paid $xxxx in highway use taxes last year" stickers on the backs of trucks. Those numbers were in the $3500 - $5500 range. Still doesn't come close to the difference in wear and tear but it at least starts to address the disparity.