7 ms·

I’d much rather have society agree on a tax on the thing we don’t like then try to arbitrarily pick the one we do (ie EV rebate). The alternative to buying a IC

by koolba 8y ago

I’d much rather have society agree on a tax on the thing we don’t like then try to arbitrarily pick the one we do (ie EV rebate). The alternative to buying a ICE car isn’t necessarily buying an EV car, it could be a bike, taking trains, taking ride services, or any combo of things.

Scoundreller 8y ago
Which is why I prefer carbon/gas taxes. If you’re a very light driver (eg: a short commute to work and back. Some people make 2 trips a week: church and grocery store), your carbon footprint from buying a Tesla is probably higher than comparable ICE cars.
zdragnar 8y ago
Raising taxes on things like cars is a tax on poor and middle class people, whereas a subsidy for EV makes them more accessible to poor and middle class people (lower price = more purchases = larger second-hand market). > The alternative to buying a ICE car isn’t necessarily buying an EV car, it could be a bike, taking trains, taking ride services, or any combo of things. That's blatantly false for anyone not living in a metropolitan area. Ride-share / car rental places simply don't exist in many places out in the countryside, and a bike is only a partial substitute. Punishing people for bad behavior (buying ICE cars) only puts more people deeper into debt, and lowers the overall number of cars purchased by raising the market floor. Encouraging good behavior (making transit more available, subsidizing EV) encourages more people to consider alternatives to ICE such as EV who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it or wouldn't otherwise have access.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  > Punishing people for bad behavior (buying ICE cars) only puts more people deeper into debt Or they might just buy fewer, smaller cars, use more public transport, and get jobs close to where they live, and not move to a place without public transport in the first place.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    > not move to a place without public transport in the first place. I'm sorry, but that is absurdly bigoted and naive. Pretty much everything you use and own- from cotton, wood, glass, metal ore, food- comes from someplace that isn't a high-density urban city. Most of those things are produced by people with middle or working class jobs, and public transit isn't an option to get there, nor are they buying extraneous cars to just have lying around. Not only that, but those people have needs too, and so many jobs are located near where they live- everything from grocery stores to car mechanics to regional hospitals. If they go EV, they're going to get a smaller car, and it's going to cost substantially more than the equivalent ICE. Double the cost of ICE cars, and you're really doing is punishing them for not being wealthy.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      If the expenses of the people producing these products goes up then they will all raise their prices to match what it costs to make. The price of wood and glass isn't set in stone.
  - xte 8y ago
    So they became more vulnerable, dependent on big (mostly private, despite the "public" word in the name) transport network and forced to live in a city. I suggest you a small game: we all depend on society but there are various level of dependency; for instance in a country house you may: - have fuel stocks enough for a month or two or even three so while you still depend on fuel supply you may not depend too much on constant supply like you do not suffer casual strikes, emergencies etc; - have food stocks (big freezers in garage) that let you live comfortably for a month and you may integrate them and re-supply from various sources, including a little bit from nature (hunting, fishing, vegetable garden+proper preservation); - have enough water stock (rainwater recovery / sources) to not suffer both aqueduct outages or contamination; - have enough tools and prime matter to being able to repair a bit your home in case of need for long time; On contrary in dense cities you haven't space to stock food, water, fuel, ... you can't even heat yourself in the winter burning wood in a stove. So you depend completely on city infrastructure, without option in case of even short outages. City infrastructure in turn depend on few countrywide networks that's are similar but LESS important than the countryside. Today's, and not from today's, people inhabited to have anything at their fingertips do not think at those vulnerabilities not much different than many today's programmers that treat web services like a thing that always run and it's always available... We have only to wait to see the results.
- koolba 8y ago
  The vast majority of EV credits go to high income / high wealth individuals. No middle or low income family is going to claim a $7500 tax credit for a Tesla. And they don’t get to claim it on a used one anyway. Taxing bad things encourages not using them. Subsidizing winners picked by lobbyists will increase that product’s usage but it’s not necessarily the “best” answer for the core problem. Nobody actually cares about EV usage besides EV makers. We just want to go from point A to point B with minimal cost and environmental impact. If that’s electric, gas, or nuclear fusion, it’s all the same.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    You can't have a second-hand market without a first owner market, and EV prices won't drop because ICE prices rise, they drop because competitors enter a market to meet expending demand for EV, and economies of scale and demand for better efficiencies for the more expensive components. Generally speaking, dont like either the subsidy or the tax approach, but if the goal is to get more EV than ICE purchases, you're going to hurt a lot of people along the way by going the tax approach, and we're not set up to mediate the regressive effects of doing so.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  There is a big difference between the US and Norway and some other parts of Europe. In the US a car is almost a requirement for getting and holding down a job. Even the working poor need one. In Norway if you don’t make decent money you wouldn’t get a car because they are very expensive (so much more a luxury item) and public transport is very good. I think subsidies and taxes are probably both needed. Sweden added a budget-neutral measure where those who buy new cars get a tax penalty if the car isn’t environmentally friendly and that money is used for tax breaks for those that do get the greener cars. Obviously the EVs are still more expensive and this measure raises the cost of the cheaper ICEs, but it’s marginal for small cars and more significant on larger luxury cars.
xxs 8y ago
Norway winters and bikes are not very compatible. Ride sharing is a hard ask even in Oslo (you may even need to get boat there)

by koolba 8y ago

Scoundreller 8y ago

Which is why I prefer carbon/gas taxes. If you’re a very light driver (eg: a short commute to work and back. Some people make 2 trips a week: church and grocery store), your carbon footprint from buying a Tesla is probably higher than comparable ICE cars.

zdragnar 8y ago

Raising taxes on things like cars is a tax on poor and middle class people, whereas a subsidy for EV makes them more accessible to poor and middle class people (lower price = more purchases = larger second-hand market). > The alternative to buying a ICE car isn’t necessarily buying an EV car, it could be a bike, taking trains, taking ride services, or any combo of things. That's blatantly false for anyone not living in a metropolitan area. Ride-share / car rental places simply don't exist in many places out in the countryside, and a bike is only a partial substitute. Punishing people for bad behavior (buying ICE cars) only puts more people deeper into debt, and lowers the overall number of cars purchased by raising the market floor. Encouraging good behavior (making transit more available, subsidizing EV) encourages more people to consider alternatives to ICE such as EV who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it or wouldn't otherwise have access.

jakobegger 8y ago
> Punishing people for bad behavior (buying ICE cars) only puts more people deeper into debt Or they might just buy fewer, smaller cars, use more public transport, and get jobs close to where they live, and not move to a place without public transport in the first place.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  > not move to a place without public transport in the first place. I'm sorry, but that is absurdly bigoted and naive. Pretty much everything you use and own- from cotton, wood, glass, metal ore, food- comes from someplace that isn't a high-density urban city. Most of those things are produced by people with middle or working class jobs, and public transit isn't an option to get there, nor are they buying extraneous cars to just have lying around. Not only that, but those people have needs too, and so many jobs are located near where they live- everything from grocery stores to car mechanics to regional hospitals. If they go EV, they're going to get a smaller car, and it's going to cost substantially more than the equivalent ICE. Double the cost of ICE cars, and you're really doing is punishing them for not being wealthy.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    If the expenses of the people producing these products goes up then they will all raise their prices to match what it costs to make. The price of wood and glass isn't set in stone.
- xte 8y ago
  So they became more vulnerable, dependent on big (mostly private, despite the "public" word in the name) transport network and forced to live in a city. I suggest you a small game: we all depend on society but there are various level of dependency; for instance in a country house you may: - have fuel stocks enough for a month or two or even three so while you still depend on fuel supply you may not depend too much on constant supply like you do not suffer casual strikes, emergencies etc; - have food stocks (big freezers in garage) that let you live comfortably for a month and you may integrate them and re-supply from various sources, including a little bit from nature (hunting, fishing, vegetable garden+proper preservation); - have enough water stock (rainwater recovery / sources) to not suffer both aqueduct outages or contamination; - have enough tools and prime matter to being able to repair a bit your home in case of need for long time; On contrary in dense cities you haven't space to stock food, water, fuel, ... you can't even heat yourself in the winter burning wood in a stove. So you depend completely on city infrastructure, without option in case of even short outages. City infrastructure in turn depend on few countrywide networks that's are similar but LESS important than the countryside. Today's, and not from today's, people inhabited to have anything at their fingertips do not think at those vulnerabilities not much different than many today's programmers that treat web services like a thing that always run and it's always available... We have only to wait to see the results.
koolba 8y ago
The vast majority of EV credits go to high income / high wealth individuals. No middle or low income family is going to claim a $7500 tax credit for a Tesla. And they don’t get to claim it on a used one anyway. Taxing bad things encourages not using them. Subsidizing winners picked by lobbyists will increase that product’s usage but it’s not necessarily the “best” answer for the core problem. Nobody actually cares about EV usage besides EV makers. We just want to go from point A to point B with minimal cost and environmental impact. If that’s electric, gas, or nuclear fusion, it’s all the same.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  You can't have a second-hand market without a first owner market, and EV prices won't drop because ICE prices rise, they drop because competitors enter a market to meet expending demand for EV, and economies of scale and demand for better efficiencies for the more expensive components. Generally speaking, dont like either the subsidy or the tax approach, but if the goal is to get more EV than ICE purchases, you're going to hurt a lot of people along the way by going the tax approach, and we're not set up to mediate the regressive effects of doing so.
alkonaut 8y ago
There is a big difference between the US and Norway and some other parts of Europe. In the US a car is almost a requirement for getting and holding down a job. Even the working poor need one. In Norway if you don’t make decent money you wouldn’t get a car because they are very expensive (so much more a luxury item) and public transport is very good. I think subsidies and taxes are probably both needed. Sweden added a budget-neutral measure where those who buy new cars get a tax penalty if the car isn’t environmentally friendly and that money is used for tax breaks for those that do get the greener cars. Obviously the EVs are still more expensive and this measure raises the cost of the cheaper ICEs, but it’s marginal for small cars and more significant on larger luxury cars.

xxs 8y ago

Norway winters and bikes are not very compatible. Ride sharing is a hard ask even in Oslo (you may even need to get boat there)