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35 comments on Gas tax increases are not a panacea...

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LJR on October 30, 2005 - 1:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
And with the "big oil" government currently holding D.C. hostage we can fully expect all the money from any additional gas tax to go toward building more refineries and drilling in Alaska.  These aren't necessarily bad things but I'd much rather see the money go toward alternatives like pebble bed nuclear reactor development and giving auto buyers incentives to go for more efficient vehicles.  Somehow I think those kinds of projects will get short shrift.

Not that Halliburton isn't fully deserving of all those no-bid contracts.

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rtz on October 30, 2005 - 1:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A couple of good articles for anyone interested in the pebble bed reactor:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

If anyone doesn't like nuclear, the alternatives are coal and natural gas..

Don't worry about the nuke waste... that's what Yucca Mountain is for.  I saw a truck with 2 containers on it going down the highway the other day..  Maybe it was headed there?  It was headed west on I-40..

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GreyZone on October 30, 2005 - 6:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Apparently the nuclear wastes can be minimized far more than now if we were to actively recycle them just as we do other materials.
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William on October 30, 2005 - 10:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is one of the primary reasons why a gas tax has to be made in such a way that all the money is returned to the taxpayers, equally regardless of consumption.

This gains great taxpayer support and saves us from the inevitability that the government will screw up when given that much money.

They could use it to accomplish great feats, but that just won't happen.

They could be incredibly corrupt with it, or be dumb and sponsor initiatives that will fondle consumption.

Or most likely they will use it for entirely non-related items, leaving programs like social security or defense dependent on American gasoline consumption, and thus forcing the government to encourage consumption to maintain revenue.

The only solution is to simply return the money equally, using the tax as a purely redistributive measure, in effect taking money away from the big consumers and giving it to the under-consumers.

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