'miles driven' tax

[dead0man]

Wait wait wait....you want to make this a FEDERAL thing?  eeegads man no.  If your own stupid state wants, it, whatever, but no way would that work everywhere.

the gasoline tax is regressive and punishes the poor.

I do not think this has been adequately proven.

Do people that make 10 times as much as you tend to drive 10 times as much as you?  Do people that make $25k a year drive half as much as people that make $50k?  It's pretty clearly a regressive tax.  Not as bad as "sin" taxes of course (what is?), but still pretty painful to the poor (relatively speaking of course).

[dead0man]

Or a luxury tax on overly big new cars.

There is one, it's called the Gas Guzzler Tax, stupidly it doesn't include SUVs, which is why they are everywhere now-a-days and a big reason why big cars are no more.

If you really want to help the environment when it comes to cars, the absolute BEST thing you could do is get more of the ill maintained older cars off the road.  Not your uncle's 65 Mustang that he only drives 3 times a year.  The 78 LTD driven by that grandma that lives down the street is the problem.  One of those dumps more crap in the air than a 100 new cars.  Give her a few grand to trade it in on something a little more modern and we'd help a lot.

(not that car pollution is a huge issue overall anymore)

[dead0man]

Increasing efficiency means smaller cars and newer cars, it would still be helpful to get grandma out of her old Ford.  But yes, if you want less gas used, the best way to do that is raise the price of gas.  End the subsidies, increase the tax, let the market do it's thing, let OPEC do what they want without putting pressure on them over the price of oil.  (we could and should still put pressure on them over their human rights abuses)

[dead0man]

That's going to be hard (if not impossible) to get passed into law.  Maybe you'd have a chance if you put in some loopholes to the truck tax for farmers, construction workers and such.  Nobody needs an SUV unless you go off road frequently and need to carry covered cargo or people while you do it, you'd basically kill that market (something I'd like to see happen, but not this way).  And like I said earlier, there already is a gas guzzler tax on vehicles (<22.5mpg I think....confirmed).  You could probably get away with raising that number up to 25.  There is also the CAFE tax on car makers, but that has had less than stellar results as well.  From wiki

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The SUV is the main reason for the decline in avg mpg since 1987.  Americans like big cars.  Because the Gas Guzzler tax doesn't effect trucks/SUVs, the people that like big vehicles have moved on to them (mainly SUVs).  So you're correct to aim your proposed legislation at them, if only there was a way to aim it so that it didn't hit the people that actually use these vehicles for their intended purpose and only hit the trendy douchebags that need a new Yukon because their neighbor just got one.

(if you can't tell, I freaking hate SUVs and other tall vehicles, especially when a 110lb soccer mom tries to park one)

[dead0man]

We have a better tax here. It's called the gas tax.

Every state has that, you are "winning" though.  wiki

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I'd have NO problem at all if we increased the gas tax and used the money to fix the roads and bridges, especially if we need to repair our roads and bridges (which on slow news cycles the media likes to remind us will kill us all eventually).

[dead0man]

My point was that the amount people drive really isn't all that dependent on wealth.  Just like smoking and drinking.  Thus a gas tax is going to be just as regressive as sin taxes.  And I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong (unlike sin taxes, which I do think are wrong), or that we shouldn't have them or that they should vary depending on income level and/or wealth.  Like I said in my last post, I'm all for gas taxes, even more gas taxes if we have roads and bridges that need fixing.