Quote:
Originally Posted by mcrews
Of course there are other people that know better and know how to be in control of their lives, they know to demand fuel efficient vehicles and maybe even higher gas prices, but so minority are those that politicians can rather safely ignore them, give
please, show me what that idiot looks like.........
That reeks of the liberal 'I know what is best for you' attitude!
You worry about saving europe and we'll worry about the usa........and quit calling us for help.
europe has higher fuel prices because of taxes. Tell me where all those taxes go????? To create better roads? NO. To support reseach into more fuel effecient vehicles? NO. To support socialist feel good programs? YES!
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As you can see from other replies, some have understood idea bit better.
With higher gas prices there would be more demand for higher mpg vehicles, there would be more research done by manufacturers to improve mpg and also gov would have more pressure to accept higher mpg vehicles to market as it would require some changes to allow economy to work still properly.
We are lucky if 1/10th of money collected from road users will end up to road upkeep, money goes for education system, social security and costs of insane alcohol drinking culture which we have that costs a lot for tax payer, despite the fact that alcohol has much more tax than gas.
Now I pay 1.5€/l from diesel, gas would be 1.7€/l by our local prices which are among the highest in country, but there are no gas stations near so there is healthy amount of profit that they pull.
But that is not all, then I pay yearly tax from car and yearly tax from right to use diesel, which combined make 580 euros for a year, however that is somewhere around 640 euros next year.
Then we all pay from insurance, because of clean record I get 75% discount and pay 'only' 400 euros a year from that.
Then comes yearly inspections, that is around 90 euros a year here.
So just for having a car that I could use on road I pay over a 1000 a year without driving at all and some 60-70% of that is taxes, everything you pay from has 23% of tax, except few rare exceptions that can have bit lower %.
Diesel tax was recently increased by 0.1€ to encourage more eco friendly vehicles, same reasoning was used for increasing yearly taxes.
Every km costs me bit over 0.2€ with hypermiling and aeromods if I drive typical amount in a year, but with my current really low amount of driving I pay closer to 1€/km, I guess that is close to $2/mile?
Then how much is spend on roads?
There is this local road that I have to drive 30km to find first gas station, 6 years ago it got new surface, after that it has got new road markings painted once, at spring you can't drive faster than 60kph as you hit head to roof of the car and it hurts just enough with 60kph. This spring there appeared a hole to bus stop, I don't know how deep it was but man could easily been disappearing there, they put tree branch to hole to warn about it, few months from that they put some asphalt over it, but left most of the smaller holes as they were.
During winter time we get lot of snow and ice, my last tank was horrible because most of it was driven in 5 to 10cm deep snow.
It is quite clear that indeed money is not going where it is collected from.
I pay around 20% of income tax, total taxation is around 60% from my memory, might be bit higher.
Money goes to bureaucrats, 75% of taxes go to paychecks of gov officials, nurses, doctors etc, healthcare is mostly free and we have 3rd most nurses in a world per tax payer from my memory, we still are low on nurses and their workload is huge, so we are really sick people or free system encourages to abuse it, I suspect latter.
Your Obama was pushing some healthcare bill from my memory, I guess that you might be soon enjoying the same then? For me it looks horrible future for US, as it has always been land of free and good place for those that stand for themselves and understand that there is no big nanny to take care of you all the time, but it seems US is changing to similar of our country and I think it is a shame, it does make good feelings of course, but there people loose their understanding of caring from themselves quite quickly.
Now how this relates to high MPG vehicles and why those are not available is such that there is no real concrete reason to have one when you can easily afford running gas guzzler. Eco things are minority's interest, there is most that don't care a bit, some like to be trendy and buy those carbon credits and do some other silly more wasteful than really eco, for nation wide effect only high gas prices will push enough to create interest to higher mpg vehicles, but it is like shooting onself to leg to demand higher gas prices at first glanze, look into deeper, wider, bigger picture and despite drawbacks that would give, it would still be better in a long run to reduce gas consumption.
There is individual level and then bigger level, individual level is often not very important, especially if nation wide consumption should be lowered to be more eco or to survive future crisis that might or might not come.
Problem that I see in a future is that there are lot of nations in Asia that start to use gas more and more every day, there consumption increase is really fast and even if we could half our consumption (which we can't in reality), it will be soon that oil consumption overtakes production, increase in consumption has been years more than increase in production, now when that happens and buffers are not able to balance markets, we get far more than four times price of gas than it is now and it will happen very quick, to prepare for that it would be good to increase gas prices and start pushing research of alternatives lot more before the rush.
It is bit like blood sample, it stings and is not fun by any means, but sometimes it is bloody good thing to take.
What I would prefer is complete individual autonomy, free gas and big V8 for everyone, but I guess I just did born too late and have to accept that world is different, still I do hate things like streetlights that here are mostly for feel good factor without any real safety related element, they have their place, but lighting empty roads over 10 hours is not it, but that is how world has gone, safety nannying something, maybe Mexico would be better place to live
