They don't get it

[.... callchet ....]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in on the summer gas tax

holiday, arguing "the last thing we need to do is encourage people to drive." He praised

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (first time since congestion pricing died a predictable death

in Albany) and Barack Obama for opposing "one of the dumbest ideas" he says he's ever heard.

If you want gas prices to skyrocket, who are you and who do you want to help

[BeFree]

1. Well

It was damn hard to understand what you are trying to say, it was so poorly written.

However, this shows the different takes on the situation by different levels of government.

The big cities want less traffic. They want more mass transit.

The suburban governments want a steadily increasing stream of traffic.
Their survival depends on an ever increasing level.
Mass transit is not wanted because it is too costly and generates no revenue.

Rural governments need an ever increasing traffic pattern. Build more roads to open up more land to more taxpayers. More gas sold, more settlers, more taxes generated.

[valerief]

7. Expanding mass transit to more suburban areas and rural areas

will provide jobs to build them. Long-term it's healthier and cheaper for all (think auto deaths and accidents and insurance costs). The price we pay from automobiles is too much.

[anigbrowl]

9. No it won't

Outside the cities the most you can hope for is to break even or run at a small loss. Economically it's a bust because there just aren't enough people using the service that are going in the same directions. In rural areas having your own car is the sensible option. Suburbs are in-between, but it's probably still a hell of a lot faster to have your own wheels.

[.... callchet ....]

20. My question is

is a tax on consumption anything other than riding the backs of the poor. The law of supply and demand works on discretionary income. The only

people with so little discretionary income such that they would cut back on their driving because of an increase in gas prices are the poor. Nobody

that makes $100,000 a year alters his driving habits because gas went up 25 cents a gallon. Why do we so mercifully sacrifice the poor to solve our

problems.

[GliderGuider]

2. I'm a strong proponent of serious gasoline taxes

I'd like to see an immediate $1.00/gal tax, then a $0.50/gal increase each year until automobile VMT (vehicle miles traveled) is cut in half. I'd like to see this put in place world-wide, not just in the US and Canada.

My support for gasoline taxes comes from my understanding of Peak Oil, Climate Change and human behavior. We (the global we) need to do two things: reduce the amount of fossil fuels burned for transportation, and reduce the incentive to plan urban development around the assumption of universal automobile transportation. We could perhaps substitute electric transportation for some of it (and use the gas tax revenue to fund the switch), but mostly we need to stop driving so damned much.

Who am I? I'm an average guy with an ecological perspective and a web site. Who do I want to help? In the long run, all of humanity and every other species on the planet.

[RC]

3. Bring back the horse and buggy?

Diddling with taxes to save oil will only prolong the death of using oil for energy age. No matter what, the oil will eventually run out. The real answer is a totally different paradigm for our energy needs, not taxing the symptoms.
Gas taxes is just another regressive tax the poor cannot afford and the rich will find a way around.
Plus as we have just seen, high gas costs causes the prices of everything else to go up to cover the added expenses of transportation.

[GliderGuider]

5. The "totally different paradigm"

is a combination of different forms of transportation and different urban planning. Taxing the oil before the supply starts to decline sharply could move a large amount of funding into those activities (if it was properly legislated). Not taxing gasoline menas that all moneies simply flow to the suppliers, , and there is no particular incentive for consumers to change their habits. That is a recipe for catastrophe in 10 years or less.

I'm not too worried about the rich getting around the inconvenience. They always do, and this would be only a temporary situation anyway (as you point out the oil will be going away eventually). In the meantime, we chave a golden opportunity to do something good for our children and grandchildren.

[.... callchet ....]

4. When

When gas was $5 a gallon, I knew people that spent half there weekly earnings on gas. What about a gas voucher for poor that would give them a certaoin amount of gas for free and then put a $5 a gallon tax on gas that wouldn't hurt the rest of us.

[GliderGuider]

6. If gas had simply stayed over $4 per gallon

what would those people spending half their money on driving have done? Would they ahve accommodated the situation? of course they would have, one way or another.

Those days will be coming back. Lat year's price spike was driven by a combination of supply limits and speculation. The current price is an anomaly brought on by the outflow of speculative capital from the oil markets and a reduction in demand due to the global economic crash. As the world tries to recover from the depression that's starting, it will need oil to do it. Since the supply limits are still in place (they're mainly geological, after all) the price will spike again with or without the amplifier of speculation.

We need to get people off of their gas-powered automobile fixation NOW, and economics seems to be the only language they understand.

[.... callchet ....]

8. Rationing or taxing

"what would those people spending half their money on driving have done? Would they have accommodated the situation? of course they would have, one way or another"

These are $10/hr people. They accommodated by selling personal possessions, talked about selling drugs and stealing. Started basing their diets on

Ramen noodles and cutting back on fresh foods. They were approaching third world standards. What is wrong with subsidizing the working poor and

putting a $5 gallon tax. When gas was $5 and diesel $6.50 at marinas I still saw personal fishing boats using $1500 a weekend for recreational

fishing. I don't see any way to slow consumption without killing the poor other than rationing.

[BeFree]

10. Slowing consumption

Uhmm, it happened. And what do we see? Lower prices.

Thing is: People have lowered their consumption - better mpg cars, using mass transit and driving
less. We did it. We were forced to economically, nonetheless, we did decrease use.

It hurt the poor, but in the long run the poor are better off.

Now, if we raise taxes on oil, the poor -like me- will continue to decrease consumption.
The rich will increase and in so doing will pay the higher taxes in relatively higher
amounts. They will end up with a greater share of financing the alternatives that will be available
to everyone in the near future. That is if the money is spent wisely.

[GliderGuider]

11. That's indeed the way it's supposed to happen.

"The rich will increase and in so doing will pay the higher taxes in relatively higher amounts. They will end up with a greater share of financing the alternatives that will be available to everyone in the near future."

Based on what I know of human behavior, however, what will actually happen will be quite different. Both producers and consumers will resist taxation with tooth and nail. Politicians who suggest it will be shouted down and voted out. There will be no behavior altering fuel taxes, there will be no carbon taxes, there will be no electrified mass transit, there will be precious few electric cars (which will remain status symbols for the rich). There will be repeated spikes in gas prices, each one higher than the last. There will be increasing hardship as the poor are marginalized out of the transportation market as they are elsewhere in the world. There will be increasing bankruptcies of airlines and trucking companies, which will disrupt food deliveries. There will eventually be gasoline rationing, which will never end. And those who can afford to do so will continue driving gasoline powered automobiles until the last glacier has melted.

It's not a pretty picture, but reality rarely is.

[BeFree]

12. Well

That's awfully pessimistic. I understand why, but still.....

Reality it is not, however. It is a possible reality, one possibility amongst many.
And visions like yours may well be the reason other realities do happen.

I've always said we could have better, but we just don't decide that we can afford it.
Politicians are faced with that decision time after time.
And they usually fail to decide correctly.

Correctly being that we can't really afford not to do better.

Now, had Al Gore been president, (he was, it was stolen!)
many more correct decisions would have been made in the last 8 years, eh?

We now have at the head of government a person who will, imo,
make the decision that we can afford to do the right things.

I guess that's what's called being an optimist?

[.... callchet ....]

13. Riding the backs of the poor

I am tired of hearing that in the long term higher gas prices will benefit the poor. That is total crap and it is a way to ride out of the gasoline problem on the backs of the poor. Why not give the poor free gas credit cards for 75 gallons a month. Then put a $7 gallon tax on gas. In the long term the tax will benefit everybody. Tax new cars at $5 lb for every pound over 3000. Use the tax for mass transit, alternate energy research and fuel efficient cars.

[BeFree]

14. Tax policies

Are going to be one way for us to get there from here.

But the poor, -like me-, will benefit in the long term by a more realistic pricing standard.
Because the higher prices will tend to clean the air and usher in alternatives.

Some of your taxing ideas are worth considering.

[.... callchet ....]

15. If you are poor

then you can understand how $125 a week for gas is not an inconvenience, it is life threatening.

[BeFree]

16. I am poor

Frankly, i saw this coming a long time ago. The only shock was that it didn't come sooner.

So, I adjusted ahead of time. And tried to tell others what was coming.... they didn't want to hear it. Kinda like you, now.

[.... callchet ....]

17. Like me

I have been writing about this disaster on my website for years. Describing how we were shipping our jobs out, crazy banking practices and becoming a third world nation.

[.... callchet ....]

18. And if you are

poor, you can't prepare for this, because you don't have any discretionary income.

[GliderGuider]

19. I know no-one can predict the future

But the fact that someone got tombstoned here on DU a month or two ago for defending gasoline taxes a little too firmly doesn't give me much reason for hope.

St. Barack the Magnificent is quite charismatic but he's not the messiah. He's beholden to the same people and constrained by the same forces as any parochial politician. Those forces are so entrenched in our civilization that we scarcely notice their influence -- in fact most of us will defend to the death the principles that buttress their influence. We don't think life could be lived any other way, because we've been told as much every day of our lives, for hundreds of years.

Try this experiment on yourself. First, imagine an economy that totally ceases to grow -- forever. Now, imagine a politician recommending that stasis as a national strategy. Ask yourself if you would vote for such a politician, someone who held out as a promise that the life of your children would be no better than your own -- that there would be no new schools, no new roads, no new hospitals, no new factories, no new homes. Would you vote for him? Would anyone?

That's the kind of resistance gasoline taxes face. Gasoline and automobiles are the foundation stones of the modern cultural narrative -- the narrative we've all been taught, that perpetual growth and continual improvement is our birthright, as fundamental to our existence as food, water and air.

We all know intellectually that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. If we are honest with ourselves we may agree that there are incontrovertible signs that the limits to our growth on this planet have arrived. But the true triumph of the human spirit is our ability to keep on believing in the possibility of such growth, even in the very face of all the mounting evidence to the contrary.

Is that hope, or denial? Optimism or hubris? Faith or foolishness?

[BeFree]

21. That's pretty hubric

That: "...Barack the magnificent...." Especially in relationship to what I WROTE about Gore.
Your hyperbole gets you nowhere.

Anywho, if what you cry for is to be the reality, then WTF are you doing here? Or there? Why even exist? For example: Is the world a better place if Glider Guider is Glider Goner? According to your wisdom, it is. For all your existence does is contribute to YOUR reality. A reality that you say ends in shit.

No, all we can do is to do what we can to try and keep your special reality from becoming the world's reality.

It's up to you to be the change you want to see.

[GliderGuider]

22. I know, I get pretty gloomy at times.

And yes, I know Gandhi's quote that we must "Be the change you wish to see in the world". I've even written an article on my web site comparing Obama's election to the emergence of a butterfly from its chrysalis: From Despair to Hope. So I'm not a total doomer. I think being alive at this very moment in all of human history is the greatest privilege I can imagine.

There are times, though, when the potential for calamity seems to loom very large. At those times the inability of people around me to understand that they must be prepared for changes larger than they seem able to imagine, and their cheerful conviction that the future must always be sort of like the past, kind of gets me down.

We're at an inflection point in modern civilization. Like any such time, the chaos it will bring represents both a enormous opportunity for rapid change and a tremendous level of physical, cultural and spiritual risk. Seeing the opportunity for change without admitting to the risk is just as dangerous as doing the reverse.

Sorry I upset you.

[BeFree]

23. Well

Your preaching to me and others is disconcerting. I find that if we are to realize our personal better selves, then we've first have to set an example and then soft sell the idiots that don't want to see the change that's coming.

In the end, it matters naught what we say, except for this: The only goods you take with you are do goods, be goods, and feel goods.

[GliderGuider]

24. There are millions of people all over the world who are setting examples.

Environmentalist Paul Hawken wrote about them in his book "Blessed Unrest". There are two to three million small, independent local environmental and social justice groups spread through ever city in every nation on Earth. They are springing into existence in response to local circumstances, spontaneously forming to deal with the little problems the see in their corner of the planet. Collectively they are the largest social movement the world has ever seen. I call them "Gaia's antibodies". They embody all that is good in humanity, and I'm convinced they're the seed-stock for the long term hope of our species.

I'm involved with the spiritual side of the change, though you might not believe it sometimes (like tonight?). I believe that the kind of outer change we need can only come about through inner change, by transforming the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what's important and why we're here. I've always felt that the most effective change happens when you fully understand the situation you're in. Obviously in this case opening oneself too completely to the enormity of our problems is not without its own dangers.