[JSH]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

The $100 is terrible but the title fee is where you get raped

Registration = State + County + municipality fees
Plug in Title = 2.5x your particular registration cost

Are these one time costs or yearly?

Originally Posted by redpoint5

What can I say, Investopedia is simply wrong. I'm finding other sources that define regressive taxation as

This is the commonly understood definition.

You didn't read far enough in the Wikipedia article. It clear states fuel taxes as regressive.

Non-uniform excise taxation based on everyday essentials like food (fat tax, salt tax), transport (fuel tax, fare hikes for public transport), energy (carbon tax) and housing (council tax, window tax) is frequently regressive on income. The income elasticity of demand of food, for example, is usually less than 1 (inelastic) (see Engel's law) and therefore as a household's income rises, the tax collected on the food remains almost the same. Therefore, as a proportion of available expenditure, the relative tax burden falls more heavily on households with lower incomes.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

With Investopiedia's definition, everything is regressive. The price of eggs is regressive by that definition. Assuming they are correct, what would you call a tax rate that decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases? That scenario is then left undefined, and flat tax is defined twice; once as a flat tax, and once as a regressive tax. It's an unuseful definition.

A flat tax is a flat tax as long as it is applied to all income. If we had a income tax of 10% and all types of income were subject to that tax it would be a flat tax. If there are multiple rates that go up with income it is a progressive tax. If there are multiple rates go down with income it is regressive tax.

Almost all sales taxes are regressive as the more a household makes in general the small percentage of their income they spend (at least on things that are subject to a sales tax)

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Complete agreement there. Better to tax the thing you want to reduce consumption of than to subsidize your best guess alternative(or the one lobbyists are bribing politicians to pick). We wanted to reduce cigarette smoking, so taxation on it went up. We didn't provide subsidies for bubble gum and sunflower seeds.

The problem with that analogy is that cigarettes are essential goods.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Local air quality is a separate matter from what the federal government should be concerned with; CO2 emissions. Unilaterally curbing CO2 emissions at the expense of the economy (which hurts the poorest most) is a fool's errand. If we reduce emissions while everyone else doesn't (which actually happened despite withdrawal from Paris Agreement), and the world boils away all life, what point is there? Do we get to go to climate heaven then?

Local air pollution is a federal matter because only the US government and California have the authority to regulate emissions. We did that so we don't end up with 50 or 500 different sets of regulations.

But now we get the the crux of the issue. You don't think CO2 emission are a real threat so you aren't an board with the government trying solve that problem. That is a topic that has been talked to death on Ecomodder so there isn't any reason to rehash it.