The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Possible Temporary Federal Gas Tax Abatement
Moe Fwacky
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator Mod Emeritus
Right Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModerator Mod Emeritus
So gas is at an all time high over over $3.50 a gallon (national average) here in the U.S. over 60 cents higher than this time last year. Well, it seems the federal government is looking to temporarily suspend the federal tax on gas for this summer.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/24/gas-tax-holiday-mccain-hillary-support-it-obama-changes-his-mind/
I think this is a good idea, as I can barely afford to get to and from work/school anymore. It's only temporary, but it should be enough to get people traveling and spending money over the summer, which is in turn good for the economy (which sucks everywhere right now, but always sucks in Cleveland, welcome to our level, everybody else).
Thoughts?
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/24/gas-tax-holiday-mccain-hillary-support-it-obama-changes-his-mind/
John McCain wants to give consumers a break this summer by suspending the federal gas tax. Hillary Clinton says she supports that plan. Barack Obama, despite having supported a similar tax “holiday†in Illinois, now says he’ll oppose it. Apparently, gas prices haven’t gone high enough, even though they were less than half of today’s price in 2000 when he supported it:In a new policy split in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama opposed a federal gas-tax holiday supported by John McCain, the likely Republican nominee. Hillary Clinton said she would be open to the tax break.Hey, if we put up placards at the pump that give Obama the credit, will he vote for it this time? And could he come up with a more foolish explanation of his opposition? Did he and his campaign think that no one would go back and check the 2000 price to see how it compares to 2008?
Sen. Obama, who voted for a temporary gas-tax break when he was a state senator in Illinois, rejected a federal tax holiday as bad fiscal policy. The federal gas tax raises money to repair and expand the highway system.
In Illinois in 2000, Sen. Obama voted for a six-month, five-percentage point break on the state’s 6.25% gas sales tax. The reduction of the tax, which goes into a general revenue fund, passed on a 55-1 vote and included measures designed to ensure that the benefits of the tax break reached consumers. At one point, Sen. Obama jokingly asked on the Senate floor whether it would be possible to install placards on gas-station pumps telling motorists he had helped win temporary price relief.
When some state legislators tried to make the suspension permanent before it expired, Sen. Obama spoke out against that measure but defended his vote for the holiday, according to transcripts posted on the legislature’s Web site.
“I originally voted for the suspension because I thought that it was extraordinary circumstances, given the huge hike in prices,†he said at the time. Gas prices averaged $1.52 a gallon in March 2000.
Actually, a good case could be made for opposition to the gas tax holiday, but it won’t come from Barack Obama. The removal of the tax for three months only temporarily addresses high gas prices, and in the least effective manner. It would give a short modicum of relief but would do nothing to reduce the pressures that drive gas prices higher. Instead of declaring tax “holidaysâ€, Congress took take some or all of the following actions:Congress has dithered on all of these issues for years, and had Washington taken the appropriate action — say in 2000 or so — we would already have seen the benefits from it. The tax holiday would at least give a little temporary relief, but until someone addresses the root causes of high gas prices, holidays from reality won’t solve them.
- End state fuel-mixture mandates — Our refineries have to produce upwards of 30 different formulations of gasoline for different states. It makes our supply chain brittle when it should be flexible and leaves us vulnerable to sudden price hikes when refineries have problems.
- Begin expediting the approval process for more refineries — We have not built a new refinery in the US for 30 years. We keep expanding the capacity at existing refineries instead, and that also leaves the supply chain vulnerable to disruption when a refinery has to shut down. They now have to run at full capacity constantly in order to meet demand and keep prices down. Over the last two decades, we also now have to import more and more refined gasoline instead of crude to keep up with the demand, thanks in part to a lack of refinery capacity here in the US.
- Allow more domestic drilling — Oil, like any commodity, increases in price when demand goes up and supply doesn’t meet it. With China and India vastly increasing their demand, prices have gone up accordingly. The only way to get the prices down is to either reduce demand or increase supply. That means the US has to start using its own resources rather than living off the resources of others.
I think this is a good idea, as I can barely afford to get to and from work/school anymore. It's only temporary, but it should be enough to get people traveling and spending money over the summer, which is in turn good for the economy (which sucks everywhere right now, but always sucks in Cleveland, welcome to our level, everybody else).
Thoughts?
Moe Fwacky on
0
Posts
Dumb.
So how, exactly, does reducing the price (and thus increasing demand, and thus increasing consumption) help with this again?
lowering gas taxes will lead to increased demand
increased demand leads to higher prices
This plan? This plan is well thought out
Do we really need an immediate solution, other than reducing consumption? I'm not at all convinced we do.
2) Oil companies hike prices to the same price they were before the tax break
3) (Even more) record high profits for oil companies
4) Congress can't reinstate the old tax because citizens will blame them now
We need to regulate the fuck out of oil companies in America. Exxon-Mobil made a record 40.6 billion PROFIT in 2007, more than any other company has ever made in any other year ever. Ever.
'Course, that might be totally idealistic and completely unrealistic.
So, instead, let's end the fucking war and use some of that money.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
We're not running out of oil, we're just importing too much crude, and way to much refined gasoline.
Oh, right, the prices are going to skyrocket o_O
Well until we actually have this gloriously black fluid in our tanks, we're effectively running out of oil because demand is increasing in other places that also import oil.
Again though, these things take time, and right now the cost of gas keeps going up and up, and will continue to do so for years until a solution is brokered. We need a break, now, not later. Yes, we need to do something about it for later, but we also need to think about the present situation and do something about it.
And?
Wow, holy shit, we'd have to conserve.
Crap, we can't do that because...because...um...why, again?
*and it won't, as several people already noted in the thread.
Look, the thing is that turning oil into refined gasoline is nasty.
BP and the Indiana legislature tried to put an oil refinery up that would dump into the lake, but Illinois knocked the idea down because nobody in the Chicago area wants to have a 13 toed baby.
Of course, I don't remember refinery capacity ever being an issue until around 2000. I suppose that's because we're using more oil then we were in 2000. The solution of course would be to use less.
Maybe stop them from colluding and driving the prices up artificially?
That really sucks. Unfortunately, I don't think your situation outweighs the horrible stupidity of attempting to alleviate oil issues by pretending they don't exist.
It's not just the United States using more oil, the whole world is using more oil, namely India and China. With these two countries adding to the already high demand that oil is in, prices are naturally rising. We need to import less and use more domestic sources to truly bring prices down.
The tax abatement isn't meant to be an end-all solution, just something to put a little more money in people's pockets for the summer, when gas prices are expected to hit an ever more all-time high.
Biking is out of the question? You don't have any friends nearby with a car?
I wouldn't worry about high gas prices for too long. Sooner or later the big car makers are going to start cranking out high fuel efficiency vehicles. Hell just switching from steel to carbon fiber would boost fuel efficiency by 1/3 on average. Combine that with hybrid electric tech and things are looking brighter.
Yeah, um, how do I put this delicately. Fuck You.
If you had to take the bus through the neighborhoods I have to in order to get home, at the times I would have to take them at, you would say the same thing.
Sorry, but no.
This was at 6pm, in broad daylight. During the rest of the week, I don't leave here until 10pm.
Still, if public transport is too dangerous for you, that leaves carpooling. You've got to be able to find two or three people at your job that live somewhere around you.
So when you say that you physically cannot conserve any gas, what you mean is that you physically don't want to conserve any gas.
But that's fair.
Concealed weapon permit.
Not with the same schedule I have. This semester I'm downtown from 9:30am-10pm on Tuesday/Thursday, 6-10pm on MW and 2-6pm on Friday.
Nobody else has this kind of schedule. At least, nobody I know who also lives near me.