<DrumBeat: December 15, 2008 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: December 16, 2008>

156 comments on The Case for Higher Gas Taxes (and Lower Income Taxes)

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Engineer-Poet on December 16, 2008 - 12:04am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

What's the point of increasing a tax and then refunding an amount equal to the tax?

What's the point of having Social Security and the EITC?  It appears you understand neither.

Is the consumer to be given a fixed amount or an amount exactly equal to their individual tax? A fixed amount looks like a transfer or welfare payment for the poor, who wouldn't be expected to buy enough fuel to amount to the refund while the more well to do would pay more tax than their refund.

Ah, so you do get it!

Yes, a fixed amount would give a net surplus to people who use little fuel (which includes those with little income).  This would be a temporary measure which would vanish naturally over time as petroleum usage (the basis of the tax) shrank.  It would also serve to compensate for the initial flow of fuel-saving technology into the upper price segment of vehicles, which would take some years to filter down to both lower-priced new vehicles and the used-vehicle market.

After 20 years or so you could taper off the rebates and just use taxes as a disincentive to use petroleum, because relatively few people would be using much of it anyway.

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Black_Dog on December 16, 2008 - 11:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Social Security is not the same as a fixed tax rebate. The amount one receives from SS is a function of how much one has earned over a career. If you are one of the lucky ones with a good job which pays more than the maximum contribution, then your return from SS won't be above the maximum, but, for many low income folks, SS payments can be less than the maximum. Worse, if one "retires" early and begins payments before the nominal age (67 for my generation), the payments will be lessened still further. That is certainly true for me as I look at my yearly SS payment statement.

Besides, it's likely that we don't have the luxury of a 20 year period to "taper off the rebates", given the Export Land problem. We had better have a large amount of alternatives to fossil fuels in place 20 years hence or you can kiss civilization goodbye as more and more people become so desperate that there will be shooting in the streets. Just today the local news tells us that there was a robbery in a nearby city in which a Brinks guard was shot dead as he carried sacks of money out of a retail store. The robber got away...

E. Swanson

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Engineer-Poet on December 16, 2008 - 11:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Now you've proven that you understand nothing I've said, because the issue isn't Social Security benefits but Social Security taxes (which are regressive, but are generally larger than the per-taxpayer fuel rebate under most proposals).

Until you show that discussion with you isn't just arguing with a wall, I'm done.

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Black_Dog on December 17, 2008 - 11:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sorry, my one track engineering mind thought that we were discussing gasoline taxes and gas rationing. Sure, the SS taxes are "regressive" in that they hit the lowest income earners the hardest. But, that has little to do with a fuel tax that is rebated as the rebates would actually be progressive, i.e., the more fuel one uses, the greater the effective tax, since the rebate would be a fixed amount.

A rationing system with tradeable allotments would also be progressive, since the lower income earners and the unemployed would sell their excess allotments for cash. Again, those who wanted to consume more fuel than their allotment would pay extra to do so, resulting in a progressive "tax" on the gas gluttons...

E. Swanson

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Engineer-Poet on December 17, 2008 - 6:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Tradeable allotments = parallel currency, problems noted above and still unaddressed by you.

Good bye, wall.

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156 comments on The Case for Higher Gas Taxes (and Lower Income Taxes)

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