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>>The average american adult consumes about 550 gallons of gas a year for driving. It doesn't matter substantially how wealthy you are - there are only so many
by asdfadsfgfdda 8y ago
>>The average american adult consumes about 550 gallons of gas a year for driving. It doesn't matter substantially how wealthy you are - there are only so many hours in the day to drive.
The wealthiest 10% of Americans by income spend ~$3,000/year on gas, while the poorest 10% spend only $870/year. So looking at only gas purchases, the wealthy do consume much more gas. This could be caused by differences in vehicles (bigger/luxury cars are more expensive and typically consume more fuel), fuel grade (premium vs regular gasoline), and distance driving (poor Americans are just not driving as much).
https://www.bls.gov/cex/2017/combined/decile.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cex/2017/combined/decile.pdf
- JetSpiegel 8y agoThe top 10% doesn't have 3 times the wealth of the bottom 10%, it's more like millions or more. If the tax is on gas, why should the group without money shoulder 30% of the cost? Just charge all the money to the top 10% and all can benefit, it's almost a rounding error for them.
- evandijk70 8y agoFrom the grandparent post: - If you are at the 10th income percentile, you make $11/hr and society now expects 9 hours of labor from each adult in your household a year to pay for energy transition - If you are at the 90th income percentile, you make $29/hr, society expects you to work 3.4hrs a year to pay for transition. The bottom 10% earns 38% of what the the top 10% earns, and pays 30% of the cost. A carbon tax is a progressive tax according to these calculations.