Think again, how backwards is this?
http://www.kpic.com/news/local/185498072.html

That's backasswards. We would like to encourage fuel-efficient cars, not punish them. The up front costs of such vehicles are already a hindrance, now the government wants to reverse any possible long term recoup of those costs, dumb.

It is indeed totally stupid.

Z

Another glaring example of what's wrong with our Gov. Someone that makes law actually thinks this is a good idea. Sounds like the Oregon ifiots could all use a healthy does of the wiffle ball bat!

Ok, I am pretty sure I agree that this is stoopid, but, let me just devils advocate this for a second. Electric cars will never see the moth infested lights of a gas station right? Gas taxes are technically for keeping up with costs of road repair, at least thats the story right? Do electric cars use the roads less than gasoline cars? Why should someone who uses the road just as much as anyone else go scott free on the taxes for upkeep? I can that as being the possible reasoning behind this measure. Perhaps in a way, its is warranted, but maybe the answer is move more towards a per mile tax, and dump the gas tax altogether. Honestly, gas consumption is probably a poor metric anyway in judging how much someone has used the infrastructure, a per mile metric makes more sense.

If your devils advocate post were a physical item, I would urinate on it.

This what you had in mind?




Seriously though, if the idea is so bad, which indeed it may well be, then what would your idea be to ensure that people who buy either zero gas, or a substantially lower amount of gas, pay taxes commensurate with the amount of use they have of the infrastructure?

In general, vehicles that are EV or get obscenely good gas mileage are very small and light and I don't think they cause enough damage to the roads via use to warrant any such additional revenue. IMHO, the State and Federal Gov takes enough of our money already to keep the infrastructure in very good repair, they just blow it on other things, like studies on how rattlesnakes will respond to mechanical squirrels.

You know me dude, I'm not ok with any sort of increased revenue until our so called Gov can operate on a budget that doesn't rely on borrowing over $1,000,000,000,000 annually. My idea is that we've already paid for the roads to be fixed.

Oh I agree, but just because some of government, or taxation, is a waste doesn't mean ALL of it is. And any vehicle is going to degrade the infrastructure, albeit EV's may have a lesser effect. Perhaps toll roads are the way to go again? But I get irritated when I drive toll roads that are very obviously NOT upkept by the tolls I pay to drive them (i.e. EVERY Florida toll road). Of all the areas that government intrudes into the private sector, infrastructure, at least IMHO is not one of them. Now I don't think we need to have government workers doing the roadwork, contract that out to private companies, but some form of taxation to pay for it is warranted. The question is, how to evenly, or fairly spread that burden of taxation such that the more you degrade the infrastructure, thus furthering the need for repair, the more in taxation you pay. I think honestly, a per mile model is inefficient to keep up with and collect on. If every state levied an ad valorem tax on cars, that would be an avenue to collect a yearly "per mile" tax for roads, but not all states do that, and then you're looking at setting up special collection procedure for those states that don't. I suppose you could levy a tax on folk's electric bills, but then you have people who DONT have an EV paying that tax plus the gas tax on top of it.

You can point out that not paying gas tax for an EV is an incentive to drive an EV, thus rewarding you for the move, but at some point when EV's get prevalent enough, how are we going to pay for roads?

Maybe we just need to invent flying cars, then there won't be any upkeep.

We should wait until EV's are prevalent like you said. Right now we're just taxing people more and for no reason.

My problem with fee's or taxes for the road is that I don't see it actually going towards the road, like you eluded to.

My point with the waste is, because there is so much of it, it's destroying our ability to have any functional spending. Like the American Jobs Act bs, sounds great...too bad we can afford it.