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I'm generally in favor of emissions regulations, but I think the devil's advocate is that: * raising the costs across the board for transportation may be neutr

I'm generally in favor of emissions regulations, but I think the devil's advocate is that: * raising the costs across the board for transportation may be neutral for competitors in that industry, but not for people who are consumers of transportation or employees in industries that rely on it * the rural poor spend a far larger percentage of their income on transportation than anyone else, and, * the rural poor are far more likely to hold jobs that are dominated by transportation costs So emissions regs could be seen as regressive. Of course we could counter that environmental harms are pretty regressive too--the health consequences are going to be the most extreme for the poor, especially given disparities in end of life care in the US. But improved health outcomes over decades are a tough consolation to someone on the edge of losing their home. Maybe the risk of lost jobs is incredibly small, but if someone's on the bubble, they are going to be more risk averse than you or me, and might push for policymakers to set the bar back a few steps just to be sure. What's the answer? I don't know. We want both clean air and good jobs, even in distressed areas. Programs that explicitly work towards both at the same time are going to be more hardened, more resilient against politicization.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
The answer is to give rural poor free bus tickets to join civilizations
- brownbat 9y ago
  In some sense "more urbanization faster" does solve some of the problems here. But keep in mind you'd be transplanting people away from their social support networks into a higher cost of living area with a different economic composition, and there are costs (and risks) to all of that, especially if families are involved. If we paid for moving, housing, childcare, retraining, job placement, and frequent travel expenses back to keep up connections between children and extended family it'd make it trivial. Though you could probably just UBI people where they stand and it'd be cheaper.
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
How does making cars less efficient help the rural poor?
- Rescis 9y ago
  By lowering the cost to manufacture a vehicle by reducing the artificial constraints imposed by environmental regulations, more people are able to purchase vehicles at a lower cost, leading to an overall higher standard of living for the poor who couldn't otherwise afford the aforementioned vehicle.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    But then they end up spending even more in gas than they saved. Also, poor people aren’t buying new cars, they’re buying used cars. So it’ll take a while for new more efficient cars to trickle down, and by that time they’ll have depreciated well past the theoretical delta in price. It could also be that regulations lead to a superior and different, not necessarily more expensive design.
  - patentatt 9y ago
    Good theory, but you’d have to know the incremental cost of the lower emissions on a per-vehicle basis, and what effect those costs have on purchasing decisions (taking into account alternatives and so on). First, is there any basis for assuming a more fuel efficient car is in fact more expensive to produce on a per-unit basis? For example, a smaller car will be more fuel efficient than a larger car using the exact same technology. Of course there are probably some approaches that do cost more, like using more expensive materials that are lighter in weight or something. But even so, let’s talk percentage difference. Is the MSRP 1% higher? 2%? It’s pretty preposterous to suggest that someone were talking about here (lower class rural) is going to be buying a new car anyways, and that a small increase in the purchase price will swing that decsuson. If you make minimum wage and you want a new F150, whether it’s $35k or $36k ain’t gonna matter - you can’t afford it anyways. So we’re talking used market down the road, and that higher initial purchase price will be discounted at the rate used cars depreciate, so our couple of percent increase is now a fraction thereof.
larkeith 9y ago
While I agree with this as an argument against overregulation, I find it extremely doubtful that rollback of extant standards will ever accomplish a reduction in vehicle costs. I'd certainly be interested to hear arguments or evidence otherwise, however.
- brownbat 9y ago
  > I find it extremely doubtful that rollback of extant standards will ever accomplish a reduction in vehicle costs. That was honestly my initial assumption too, I thought this would probably get washed out by other factors determining vehicle prices. Then I read some of the EPA and NHTSA positions. Not even the regulators go so far as to say that continuing existing regs would be costless. They estimated that the average cost per vehicle will rise $2,000. Now they add that consumers should be able to make that $2,000 back over four years through fuel savings. They do so by assuming gasoline prices will be $3.50, which is 30% higher than they currently are. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/23/center-for-automotive-research-cafe-fuel-economy-standards-study/90902494/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/23/center-for-a... You might think (like I did) that the R&D is done, so there's no new cost. But there are mechanical costs of including certain technologies in engines, increases in complexity, production itself in terms of parts and labor would be lower without the standards. If you want the most comprehensive possible discussion of this issue, it's in the comment process for these standards: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/phase2-hd-fuel-efficiency-ghg-response-to-comments.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/phase2-hd-fu... Warning, it's thousands of pages of PDF to dig through. And a lot of it is super boring! But there are some interesting anecdotes... The International Foodservice Distributors Association comments that with earlier requirements using readily available off the shelf technology, the EPA estimated a per vehicle cost of $1,200 to $1,900, but the actual costs per commercial vehicle ended up being closer to $20,000 per vehicle. The EPA basically responds that return on investment really isn't their top priority. (Which, of course it isn't, that isn't their job, but that still kind of sidesteps the problem that they might be lowballing the estimated impact-at least on commercial vehicles-by a factor of ten.) You might not agree with the IFDA, but even if you go with the EPA, they admit throughout that document they expect this to increase vehicle costs by a few thousand dollars. Aside from that random IFDA comment (and there are hundreds... thousands? of others), here's a full study on the question, costs of keeping the existing standards, from the industry side: http://www.cargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Potential-Effects-of-the-2017_2025-EPANHTSA-GHGFuel-Economy-Mandates-on-the-US-Economy.pdf http://www.cargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Poten... They say the cost per vehicle could be as high as $6,000. I think the truth is probably somewhere between the EPA answer and the official industry answer. Helpfully, the CAR study tables all include assumptions of a 2k impact, a 6k impact, and a goldilocks 4k impact. There is a cost chart on page 20 with those assumptions, and different assumptions about gas prices. But even if you're inclined to dismiss the industry's position entirely, keep in mind that they are spending money to lobby against this. If it doesn't affect production costs at all, why bother fighting? Why waste the money on the lobbyists?

fjsolwmv 9y ago

The answer is to give rural poor free bus tickets to join civilizations

brownbat 9y ago
In some sense "more urbanization faster" does solve some of the problems here. But keep in mind you'd be transplanting people away from their social support networks into a higher cost of living area with a different economic composition, and there are costs (and risks) to all of that, especially if families are involved. If we paid for moving, housing, childcare, retraining, job placement, and frequent travel expenses back to keep up connections between children and extended family it'd make it trivial. Though you could probably just UBI people where they stand and it'd be cheaper.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

How does making cars less efficient help the rural poor?

Rescis 9y ago
By lowering the cost to manufacture a vehicle by reducing the artificial constraints imposed by environmental regulations, more people are able to purchase vehicles at a lower cost, leading to an overall higher standard of living for the poor who couldn't otherwise afford the aforementioned vehicle.
- azinman2 9y ago
  But then they end up spending even more in gas than they saved. Also, poor people aren’t buying new cars, they’re buying used cars. So it’ll take a while for new more efficient cars to trickle down, and by that time they’ll have depreciated well past the theoretical delta in price. It could also be that regulations lead to a superior and different, not necessarily more expensive design.
- patentatt 9y ago
  Good theory, but you’d have to know the incremental cost of the lower emissions on a per-vehicle basis, and what effect those costs have on purchasing decisions (taking into account alternatives and so on). First, is there any basis for assuming a more fuel efficient car is in fact more expensive to produce on a per-unit basis? For example, a smaller car will be more fuel efficient than a larger car using the exact same technology. Of course there are probably some approaches that do cost more, like using more expensive materials that are lighter in weight or something. But even so, let’s talk percentage difference. Is the MSRP 1% higher? 2%? It’s pretty preposterous to suggest that someone were talking about here (lower class rural) is going to be buying a new car anyways, and that a small increase in the purchase price will swing that decsuson. If you make minimum wage and you want a new F150, whether it’s $35k or $36k ain’t gonna matter - you can’t afford it anyways. So we’re talking used market down the road, and that higher initial purchase price will be discounted at the rate used cars depreciate, so our couple of percent increase is now a fraction thereof.

larkeith 9y ago

While I agree with this as an argument against overregulation, I find it extremely doubtful that rollback of extant standards will ever accomplish a reduction in vehicle costs. I'd certainly be interested to hear arguments or evidence otherwise, however.

brownbat 9y ago
> I find it extremely doubtful that rollback of extant standards will ever accomplish a reduction in vehicle costs. That was honestly my initial assumption too, I thought this would probably get washed out by other factors determining vehicle prices. Then I read some of the EPA and NHTSA positions. Not even the regulators go so far as to say that continuing existing regs would be costless. They estimated that the average cost per vehicle will rise $2,000. Now they add that consumers should be able to make that $2,000 back over four years through fuel savings. They do so by assuming gasoline prices will be $3.50, which is 30% higher than they currently are. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/23/center-for-automotive-research-cafe-fuel-economy-standards-study/90902494/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/23/center-for-a... You might think (like I did) that the R&D is done, so there's no new cost. But there are mechanical costs of including certain technologies in engines, increases in complexity, production itself in terms of parts and labor would be lower without the standards. If you want the most comprehensive possible discussion of this issue, it's in the comment process for these standards: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/phase2-hd-fuel-efficiency-ghg-response-to-comments.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/phase2-hd-fu... Warning, it's thousands of pages of PDF to dig through. And a lot of it is super boring! But there are some interesting anecdotes... The International Foodservice Distributors Association comments that with earlier requirements using readily available off the shelf technology, the EPA estimated a per vehicle cost of $1,200 to $1,900, but the actual costs per commercial vehicle ended up being closer to $20,000 per vehicle. The EPA basically responds that return on investment really isn't their top priority. (Which, of course it isn't, that isn't their job, but that still kind of sidesteps the problem that they might be lowballing the estimated impact-at least on commercial vehicles-by a factor of ten.) You might not agree with the IFDA, but even if you go with the EPA, they admit throughout that document they expect this to increase vehicle costs by a few thousand dollars. Aside from that random IFDA comment (and there are hundreds... thousands? of others), here's a full study on the question, costs of keeping the existing standards, from the industry side: http://www.cargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Potential-Effects-of-the-2017_2025-EPANHTSA-GHGFuel-Economy-Mandates-on-the-US-Economy.pdf http://www.cargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Poten... They say the cost per vehicle could be as high as $6,000. I think the truth is probably somewhere between the EPA answer and the official industry answer. Helpfully, the CAR study tables all include assumptions of a 2k impact, a 6k impact, and a goldilocks 4k impact. There is a cost chart on page 20 with those assumptions, and different assumptions about gas prices. But even if you're inclined to dismiss the industry's position entirely, keep in mind that they are spending money to lobby against this. If it doesn't affect production costs at all, why bother fighting? Why waste the money on the lobbyists?