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Congress is enormously myopic.
They are worried about the job losses caused by those companies going under. Of course no one wants to see people lose jobs if we can help it, but on the same note If those two went under Ford could step in and pick up the functioning pieces and become a better company for it.
Also if 2 of the 7-8 major car manufacturers disappears off lots there is alot more room for poeple like Aptera to succeed.
Sales tax is only kind of regressive, even on neccessary goods. If you spend more you get taxed more. Lower income families probably spend all of their income so they get taxed on it. However, its at worst 12% of their income goes into taxes. TN has a 7% sales tax and I do save some money so I don't pay sales tax on all of my income. . .but I also pay 30% in income tax. So roughly about 35% of my income goes straight to taxes, which is way more than their 12%.
I'm in favor of flats and eliminating the IRS to save money ^_^.
back on topic, If we look around the government mandates haven't really improved fuel economy. They have done it several times in the past and it really didn't get us anywhere. High prices and taxes also didn't really get us anywhere considering not one car manufacturer did the obvious, make an enormously cheap, lightweight, basic ICE from a 500cc engine that has basic protection(body paneling) and sells for less than 10K. No one did it. The windfall profits that could have been had from a car like that would have been astounding.
They didn't because people are also myopic. Selling your SUV that gets 15 mpg that you already completely paid for, for 4,000 dollars and buying a 18K+ car that gets twice its gas mileage. . .will still take 5 years to pay for at exorbitant gas prices. The MSM didn't even cover the idea of buying old metros, crxs, vxs, tercels, paseos, civics, del sols, or any other car that we manage to squeeze better FE than those hybrids. So most people didn't think it was possible and that they HAD to have a hybrid to get good gas mileage.
I hate to be a pessimist but the US populace are largely sheep. MSM says something they believe it and don't think twice. Its cheaper to buy a wrecked any of the cars above and have it rebuilt than buy a new car, and all of those cars can get better mileage. All raising prices or making mandates will do is hurt consumers. It will bump either gas prices up or bump small cars prices up because manufacturers know (with CAFE) that no one can afford to sell anything not a small gasser otherwise they will get fined for not meating the AFE(Average Fuel Economy).
Also If you look at states and countries that have domestic manufacturers and no safety regulations to speak of, they have alot of the safety equipment we do. JDM cars have enough equipment to keep fatalities down, but they don't add an extra 1000 lbs to every car to make sure that a glass vase would survive getting hit by a dump truck.
Regulations rarely if ever accomplish anything good.
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