Mike I don't see how this is any different than any other form of tax though. Sure its punishing the poorest people most when its gasoline, but at the same time, I pay property taxes that pay for schools etc. Why would someone who owns a one million dollar home pay 10 times more for county taxes than a 100,000 dollar house when the taxes go towards the same services. Like oh your house is 7,000 square feet so we need more money from you to pay for police than someone who lives in a shack? You own 20 empty acres of land, but we need money to pay for schools.
Taxes are a necessary evil and my point was rising prices can curb usage. I can tell you right now, I would burn more gas if it was 80 cents a gallon again like in 1999. People would rent more RVs and go boating more etc, but the cost of gas is prohibitive. If it became excessively expensive, then people would look to other forms of transportation like plug-ins, hybrids, and mass transit options.
Well, most taxes aren't punishment per se. Property taxes, for example, are used to fund schools, infrastructure, etc., whereas the gasoline tax you propose would be for the sole purpose of forcing people to drive less ... it's to promote a negative, not a positive. More than anything, it's the government modifying or controlling behavior by imposing a financial burden on the citizens. That's not the proper role of government nor of taxation.
Property taxes are progressive in that they impose a heavier burden on the wealthy, as opposed to regressive, which impacts the low income more. I don't disagree with you about progressive taxes, since they're not necessarily fair either, but there is a correlation between the impact of a huge house on the community's resources versus a small one so a case can be made for it.
My main argument against taxes like the gasoline tax is that the government controls us too much as it is, and I'll resist anything that looks like more "social engineering" (a euphemism for behavior modification). My secondary argument is that we have plenty of oil in this country - more than in all the Middle East - so there's no need for the government to be forcing us like sheep into doing things the way they'd like. After all, most of the impetus for this whole thing is political anyway.
Things like electric cars, hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells should be no more successful than the people want them to be, period. They shouldn't be forced down our throats, either through fakey CAFE standards, or subsidies, or gasoline taxes. They'll either succeed or fail on their own merit under the free enterprise system, as they should, and the government needs to butt out.
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