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Pat Garofalo writes in an op-ed in US News & World Report that with the recent drop in oil prices, there's something policymakers can do that will offset at least some of the negative effects of the currently low prices, while also removing a constant thorn in the side of American transportation and infrastructure policy: Raise the gas tax. The current 18.4 cent per gallon [federal] gas tax has not been raised since 1993, making it about 11 cents per gallon today, in constant dollars. Plus, as fuel efficiency has gotten better and Americans have started driving less, the tax has naturally raised less revenue anyway. And that's a problem because the tax fills the Highway Trust Fund, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, broke so that in recent years Congress has had to patch it time and time again to fill the gap. According to the Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman, if Congress doesn't make a move, "it will fumble one of those rare opportunities when the economic and policy stars align almost perfectly." The increase can be phased in slowly, a few cents per month, perhaps, so that the price of gas doesn't jump overnight. When prices eventually do creep back up thanks to economic factors, hopefully the tax will hardly be noticed.
Consumers are already starting to buy the sort of gas-guzzling vehicles, including Hummers, that had been going out of style as gas prices rose; that's bad for both the environment and consumers, because gas prices are inevitably going to increase again. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taxes last year, even before the current drop in prices, made up 12 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, down from 28 percent in 2000. And compared to other developed countries, US gas taxes are pretty much a joke. While we're at it, an even better idea, as a recent report from the Urban Institute makes clear, would be indexing the gas tax to inflation (pdf), so this problem doesn't consistently arise. "The status quo simply isn't sustainable, from an infrastructure or environmental perspective," concludes Garofalo. "So raise the gas tax now; someday down the line, it will look like a brilliant move."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @03:22AM
Yet another case of pure stupidity at work - a solution that isn't perfect must be avoided, never mind a history of decades of it being good enough.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by c0lo on Friday November 14 2014, @04:03AM
May I remind you that the "history of decades" said until about 6 years ago that "house prices never go down"? Wasn't that a stupidity at work?
(my point: reliance on traditions/habits/trends as a substitute for thinking is a matter of luck. Now... question: how long you reckon until your luck runs dry?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:43AM
Oh jesus christ. How the hell do you go from the very basic algebra of road usage and maintenance costs to untested pricing of derivative risk?
It's like numbers is numbers, george! They are all the same, george.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 14 2014, @05:19AM
I didn't. Just refused an "argumentum ad antiquitatem" fallacy which, in my understanding, was: "an approximate solution that used to work fine in the past can be repaired by tweaking it" (citing it again: "never mind a history of decades of it being good enough."). It may be so, but again it may be not - take the tradition which led to GFC as a counterexample
What I'm sure is that road wear and fuel don't go hand in hand neither at any moment (depends on the load per axle) nor along "history" (better engines of the present consume less per tonne than 15years ago. More powerful engines results in higher load capacity thus higher road wear than 15 years ago). So it may well be that taxing the fuel may have already become unfair/inappropriate/harmful for covering the road maintenance today even if it was a good enough approximation 10 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford