Ah, the joys of going to Fark, finding a story about a congressman in Michigan wanting to increase gas taxes, and then watching the ensuing aftermath…

Most of the comments were along this vein:

Quel 2008-03-20 05:45:56 PM
Lets see:
-Less people on the roads, requiring less repairs and reducing pollutants.
-Lots more tax revenue.

Doesn’t sound too bad to me. Use some of that 50 cents/gal to fund projects to boost alternative fuels.

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chimp_ninja 2008-03-20 04:26:03 PM
burndtdan: the problem with this idea is that a vice tax doesn’t work on something that is a necessary part of the lives of citizens. if you tax cigarettes, they can quit smoking. if you tax gas, they can’t suddenly stop going to work or magically put an alternative fuel infrastructure in place.

Gasoline taxes are tricky for exactly this reason– regressive impact. At the same time, you do want people to use buses, trains, or even carpools. You want people to walk a few blocks to get their groceries. You want an incentive to buy locally-produced foods and goods instead of shipping them in from China. You want people to demand higher fuel economy from car companies. You even want people to frickin’ check their tire pressure once in a while.

Gas is ~$8/gallon in most of Europe, where incomes are lower. People find ways. If you phase in a significant gasoline tax, it will send a message to towns and cities– plan and zone appropriately so that people don’t need to drive everywhere, and get off your ass and put together a working mass transit system appropriate for the size of your town. For some places, that might mean a fleet of buses burning biodiesel. For bigger cities, it might mean light rail and a subway/el.

As for the botched headline– this should be a conservative/libertarian principle. Burning gasoline creates externalities (carbon dioxide, other emissions) which presently aren’t accounted for. By including the cost of cleanup (including future R&D to make petroleum-derived fuel obsolete) in the price of fuel, you’re advocating personal responsibility– use as much gas as you like, but you’d better clean up your mess.

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dallashockey 2008-03-20 05:46:31 PM
good. tax it like cigarettes. like a sin tax. we all know what emissions are doing to the world. killing it and people. tax the hell out of it and maybe people wont be so selfish and they might learn to carpool or take public transit or even better yet. QUIT BUYING CARS THAT GET shiatTY GAS MILEAGE!

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kc987654 2008-03-20 06:07:28 PM
Catsaregreen: You know, some folks actually need a vehicle that gets crap gas mileage, everything from farmers to small-bidness owners to families with more than 1 kid. (I have 1 kid, drive a Scion. If and when kid No. 2 comes, I’m getting something bigger with less gas mileage.)

But, alas, most Farkers are against soccer moms in SUVs since most of them live in the basement and the only MILF’s they’ll ever get close to doing are their own moms.

/Bring back $1/gallon
/Eventually the commodity traders are gonna lose their arses on oil and unleaded gas futures too
/Sits back, enjoys popcorn

Yes, I feel sorry you won’t be able to drive a Suburban to haul around 2 kids and yourself…

/if you can’t afford the gas don’t breed

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defects 2008-03-20 05:47:42 PM
Cagey B: If people want this tax to do what it’s supposed to do, they should probably jack up that tax to about $2.00/gallon, and use any proceeds to invest in alternative fuel R&D AND subsidizing diesel fuel for freight transportation.

IF you really want to get people to drive less.

FAIL.

There is no reason to subsidize a by-product, let alone so a shipping company can profit from it. Diesel is a by-product of gasoline production. A better idea would be to ban 18 wheelers from traveling more than 100 miles. All freight should be shipped by rail. We’ve all seen the commercials about how many tons of freight can be moved on one gallon a diesel by rail road. This would mean less wear and tear on the road infrastructure. Sure some truckers would lose their job but with the increase rail activity they could easily find work there. It’s not like driving a truck requires an 8 year degree.

That last comment is my personal favorite for so many reasons. If there was ever an off-hand comment that perfectly illustrated the sheer contempt that most so-called “liberals” have for the working man, this one was it. Did your job just disappear due to some government policy? Oh well - it’s not like your job requires any real skill anyways. I hope you don’t mind being unemployed while you learn a new trade since we just legislated your old one away.

I’m not even going to get into the fact that most of Nevada isn’t within 100 miles of a rail line, and that, in the west, that’s not that uncommon. I’m also not going to go into too much detail about how, while rail is comparatively cheap for large volumes, it’s generally not as fast as a truck (more stops, that sort of thing), which can make transportation of perishables somewhat tricky. I’m especially not going to go off on the simple fact that the entire reason our supermarkets have so much variety in them in fresh produce, regardless of season or location, is because we no longer have to pretend it’s 1803 and only eat what’s grown locally and hasn’t been consumed by locusts. It would also be highly unpolitic of me to point out that, if we make living in small, dense cities highly desirable by making it a poor investment to live in the suburbs, only poor people are going to live in suburbs… which, of course, means that gas taxes will still be highly regressive.

If you ever need to know who supports the likes of Obama, look at the above posts and remember this:

- They think they know what you should drive better than you do.
- They are willing to dictate your ability to have children based on what you drive.
- They believe that higher taxes are good for people and a way of enforcing “personal responsibility”.
- They are willing to take your livelihood away if it helps them feel better about the environment.

In short… they know better than you, and how dare you suggest otherwise.

Folks, these people are the lifeblood of left-leaning politics today. These people have hooked on to the “progressive” idea of an intellectual elite dictating rules to the plebes hook, line, and sinker. Do you want to know how people like Stalin, Mao, and Hitler came to power? The answer is simple - because each one of them convinced people like those mentioned here that he agreed with them and he could make their little petty utopian fantasies into reality. The worst part, of course, is that each man succeeded, to the detriment of every single person that didn’t share those “dreams”.

These people aren’t for the poor. These people aren’t compassionate, responsible, or even intelligent. They’re cold, heartless, selfish little imps whose sole desire in life is to tell everyone else how wrong they are and show them how it’s supposed to be done.

I say they’re welcome to their Party. I say they’re welcome to their candidates. I say they’re welcome to their philosophy. I also say they’re welcome to the product of their beliefs when every single freedom-loving American in the country (not necessarily every single American, mind you) votes for anyone but them and they lose yet again.

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