AutoblogGreen

1. I totally disagree. I will gladly take my $28.00 this summer, rather then hand it over to the gas pumps. Tom sounds like he's wearing the same brand of loafers as Obama.

Posted at 8:55AM on May 1st 2008 by phil easler

2. Since the gas tax was last raised in 1993 and it is a set amount rather than a percentage the buying power has decreased due to inflation. Meanwhile the cost to build roads has increased faster than the general inflation rate. All this means less money for infrastructure, cost cutting and an increasing burden to the state to come up with their own funding mechanisms like toll roads.

The gas tax holiday is a pandering, extremely short-sighted gesture to the working class that will hurt the country's economic vitality even more. There are for example thousands of bridges that the DOTs and Feds label "Structurally Deficient" or "Functionally Obsolete" and this will only perpetuate this along with increase congestion, lost time, and more driver frustration.

The great thing about the gas tax is that it is a "pay to play" tax and hence is very fair. Whether you drive 3000 miles a year or 100,000 you pay a tax in proportion to your use, and for larger vehicles like truck damages you cause, the roads.

Let's also remember that if the average price at the pump is $3.60 and that includes the 18 cent fed gas tax that the tax represents only 5% of the total. What big difference is 5% gonna make.

If anything the gas tax should be increased to shore up our roads, increase safety, better engineering, ITS (intelligent transportation systems), and to pay for the massive increased in road cost. TxDOT estimates that the inflation rate for roadbuilding this decade has been 62%.

My proposal would be to index the gas tax to inflation so that there is a yearly increase to pay for needed maintenace and added capacity. Raising the gas tax will spur innovation in the free market for higher efficiency vehicles and spur consumers to less frivolous consumption.

Posted at 9:24AM on May 1st 2008 by gsolman6

3. Yes! Another narrow minded individual with an even narrower perspective. What is $28 for an individual? A cheap night out; a decent meal and a movie for one...

What is it for a country of ~300 million people? I guess that would be decent roads to drive on, bridges that won't collapse, subsidies for alternative energy sources, transportation aid, ... I suppose if congress and the idiot in the executive office would get their act together, some that money could help out the not so wealthy people cope with the bursting of the housing bubble.

Yup! $28 for those few months go long way to paying my mortgage.

Posted at 9:37AM on May 1st 2008 by matt

4. Why does anybody believe that our Federal gas tax dollars go into a special account to fund these projects the above posters speak about?

"We also need to take a bite out of the record profits that oil companies are earning" -

Alert the millions, including myself, who own shares in these companies first please. I know I'm not the only person here with a retirement fund.

I would agree however that lowering income tax would be a good idea.

Posted at 9:48AM on May 1st 2008 by justin

5. www.raisethegastax.com

Posted at 10:23AM on May 1st 2008 by mlsommer

6. Sam, I'm sorry but when are people going to fully understand that you cannot associate the use of solar and wind energy as a solution to oil consumption. Oil is used to produce gas that runs cars. Solar and wind do not power cars. That is unless we electrify our transportation network.

People need to understand this important fact. Too many politicians (McCain) and others (I just can't believe Thomas Friedman just did it in his article even though he's smarter than that) are just plain wrong to say or even infer that reducing oil tax royalties to stimulate production of wind and solar energy will solve our addiction to oil and high gas prices.

Someone (maybe you) should write your own op-ed on this crazy association. The public is being brainwashed. Several months ago, McCain was asked a direct question in the GOB debates...."What's the solution to high oil prices?" He answered with 5 things....increase CAFE, hybrids, wind, solar, and nuclear. Only the first two would result in using gas more efficiently, while the last three have no effect on gas consumption.

Please somebody get the facts straight.

The solution to higher gas prices, addicition to oil is to electrify the transporation industry.

Posted at 10:46AM on May 1st 2008 by bjd002004

7. Tom Friedman is a billionare, yes billionare with a 'b' and is far to the right so most of the things he says are idiotic.
But he does believe capatilism is the answer to every societal ill so raising the gas tax is a natural position to take.
McCain only reinforces his claim that he knows even less about the economy than Bush by proposing this.
Hilary wants to drop the consumer tax but make it up with taxes on the oil companies.
Krugman thinks this is a shell game but in this one case I think it makes sense to move the tax burden closer to the source, at least from a global warming perspective; road construction and maintenance costs are still best paid at the pump.

Posted at 10:55AM on May 1st 2008 by goehring

8. Every thing you get comes to you by truck. Millions of dollars in fuel cost. Less cost to the company trucking the product saves everyone. The total saved over the time is a lot more then 30 dollars. 100's if not more depending.
More then just a dinner out.

Posted at 11:23AM on May 1st 2008 by CC

9. You'll never see your $28. If prices come down, demand goes up. There is no way to increase supplies that quickly so prices will rise to curb demand. That money then goes right to the oil producers. Economics 101.

You want to lower prices, use less. Basic supply and demand.

Posted at 12:15PM on May 1st 2008 by Merf

10. "Every thing you get comes to you by truck."

Almost all of those trucks run on diesel, so lowering gas tax will not affect truckers.

Posted at 12:28PM on May 1st 2008 by GoodCheer

11. OH, yeah.. tax the crap out of those big bad oil companies and see how oil supplies get larger and prices come down. 1977 called and they want their windfall tax back - Jimmy Carter proved we can have double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. Just meddle with the market, too much.

The gas tax holiday is just another stupid politician trick that will probably make things worse. The stimulus package is another (but hey, I'm gonna take my $600 bucks). If you want more energy, get used to paying the marginal cost of new energy. And don't whine when somebody somewhere gets rich out of the deal - that's how the economy works. $4.00 gas means fewer hummers, more prius's, more riders on city buses, faster development of EVs, maybe more solar panels on houses and factories. Face it cheap gasoline has gotten us and the environment into a bad situation, more cheap gas ain't gonna fix it.

Posted at 12:33PM on May 1st 2008 by Mark

12. There's really no one answer. Lowering the tax will hopefully get people to go on vacation and spend some money on other services. In New York, the road are horrible. If you tripled all the taxes in this city. the roads and bridges would still be horrible. The money just "does not" go to where it's suppose to.

Posted at 12:35PM on May 1st 2008 by Mike

13. We've learned nothing since the 1970s. There is no way to beat gas prices besides, guess what, getting off of gas! Sure, you can buy a more fuel efficient car. That will buy you some time. But eventually your gas costs will creep up to where it was before. People have to drive less or switch to electric cars.

Posted at 1:32PM on May 1st 2008 by ug

14. Whether or not people here feel that the money from the gas tax goes to the right place or if we should somehow tap into the profits of the oil companies, I think most of us have an agreement that this gas tax holiday is useless in aiding the situation. Really, what is $28 over the summer going to do for anyone? After that it's back to the same thing. All this might possibly do is make people want to drive more over the summer and that's not going to solve the problem, if anything, we should get people to drive less.

Posted at 2:47PM on May 1st 2008 by jake

15. Cutting taxes doesn't save you anything, the government just borrows more to make up for it.
Tax cuts without spending cuts are just delayed taxes, they will have to be paid eventually.
The last seven years have seen HUGE increases in govern spending.
Hopefully we will get a Democrat in office next, over the last 30 years Democrats have increased the size of government much slower than Republicans, so that should help.

Posted at 2:52PM on May 1st 2008 by goehring

16. "Lowering the tax will hopefully get people to go on vacation"

$28 is the difference between you going on vacation or staying home?

Posted at 4:16PM on May 1st 2008 by Jon

17. We definitely need to raise the gas tax, both to discourage gas consumption and to repair our dangerously aging roads & bridges.

But don't use it as an excuse to raise our overall tax burden.

Shortly before the gas tax is raised, CUT THE INCOME TAX FOR ALL AMERICANS to make up for it. Not just "for lower to middle income" people. You don't lose the right to keep the fruits of your work when you start earning a certain amount.

We're trying to discourage gas consumption, not penalize hard work & success. Much higher gas tax and much lower income tax is the right combination.

Posted at 4:36PM on May 1st 2008 by J. Brendel

18. I'm w/ Sam, I generally dont agree with Friedman, but he is dead on, especially in pointing out why renewables in the US are lagging so far behind other countries.

Plug-in serial hybrids are the goal as far as I'm concerned. 100Mi on electricity, a small engine and a 5 gallon gas tank can get you on long trips.

Posted at 11:59PM on May 1st 2008 by Anth

19. Everything we consume is hauled by truck or diesel powered locomotive to be purchased by us consumers. Every truck and locomotive is fueled by gasoline or diesel oil which is subject to the tax, which gets added to the price of things we buy.

Farm equipment which is used to grow the food we live on runs on hydrocarbon-based fuels. The tax gets added to the cost of the food we eat, and again anytime it is transported.

People in the northern climes depend on fuel oil for heat. Every gallon is taxed the same whether it's for farming to feed the starving in East Africa with our bountiful harvests or to keep U.S. citizens alive through cold Alaskan winters where the highs can be -25 degF from December through February.

Poor and middle class folk who work in or near swank places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Washington DC or Manhattan can't afford to live there. They have to commute 45 minutes or more from affordable homes in safe, comfortable suburban neighborhoods with good schools for their kids that proud, rich, liberal city folk decry as 'sprawl' (while hiding out in their urban cubbyholes they imagine to be 'hip'). Even in a tiny little Toyota Yaris, with its itty bitty lawnmower motor, that's a lot of gas per year, every gallon of which is taxed - from the people least able to afford it.

In short, that gas tax touches everything and penalizes those least able to afford it. And it's not $28. It's literally thousands of dollars out of your pocket in the form of higher prices on everything you buy.

Don't kid yourselves. Congress will spend every penny it gets because many of them believe (more or less correctly in some cases) that they can buy your vote with someone else's money.

Congress feels at least some guilt every time it has to raise the national debt limit -because they can't hide from that one. If they have to do with a little less, it won't hurt 'em a bit.

It's YOUR money, folks. It belongs to you, not the government. Any time any of 'em offers to rescind a little of their government licensed highway robbery (at gunpoint), TAKE THEM UP ON IT!

If you would like to contribute more of your hard-earned cash to the government, there's any number of ways to do so. The simplest is to write a check to the U.S. Department of Treasury marked "gift" or "contribution" if you like. It's up to you. (oddly, Tom Friedman hasn't ever mentioned doing such; neither have Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. Hmm.)

But please keep your hands out of other people's pockets.

BTW: Electrification of transport sounds like a good idea but it has some challenges with it that we're a long way from solving. When it becomes cheaper than gasoline, by way of invention or engineering, it will take on a life of its own, but there are no hidden secret super-batteries out there, no magic electric solutions for reliable, flexible, inexpensive transport. But until then, it's going to take a while yet. (and in the meantime, without vast construction projects for new nuclear plants, cheaper, easily constructed natural-gas fueled powerplants are driving up the cost of natural gas, rather than using much cheaper, but dirtier and harder to license coal plants for ever growing demands for electricity)

Necessity is the mother of invention, but taxes do not make for necessity. (except the necessity to find and give the boot to the bums who created the taxes - as happened to Red Ken in London this week) They create unnecessary restrictions on economic activity that would otherwise flow from every crevice to good ideas (and many bad ones, but not for long).

And for those of you who still insist that the gas tax - or any taxes on gasoline and other forms of energy are a necessity to fight global warming... P.T. Barnum put it best: "There's a sucker born every minute." Al Gore must have learned at Barnum's knee, because he's got the act down cold.

Posted at 1:56AM on May 6th 2008 by dlm3