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> Why doesn’t the government use gas tax increases as a tool instead of up-front discounts? Given the huge corpus of two datapoints (Norway and France), it see

> Why doesn’t the government use gas tax increases as a tool instead of up-front discounts? Given the huge corpus of two datapoints (Norway and France), it seems that: - if you offer discounts on EVs, people who own gas-powered cars will progressively replace them with EVs ; - if you increases gas taxes, people who own gas-powered cars will spend their saturday afternoons demanding your head on a spike, and stop voting for you until you roll-back on the gas tax increases. (At which point, they will mostly keep not voting for you, but that's an unrelated debate.) I suspect not every government has the benefit of choosing between both options - Norway might be an outlier here. (And most government will probably choose the "wise" third path of doing nothing.) My underlying theory (that must have been tested by Cialdinni, Khaneman or Ophra) is that rebates feel good, and taxes feel bad. But I don't have a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment to cite.

flurdy 7y ago
Norway is already about $2 USD per litre of petrol. In the US it's $0.79. According to https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ (Or $7.5 per US Gallon in Norway)
Gibbon1 7y ago
> - if you increases gas taxes, people who own gas-powered cars will spend their saturday afternoons demanding your head on a spike This is exactly why gas taxes are bad. > is that rebates feel good, and taxes feel bad You can also like some California air quality districts are doing buy back low income peoples junkers and provide them down payment assistance for hybrid and electric cars. There is a lot less political blow back from those sorts of programs.
- phtrivier 7y ago
  But, again, you have to be in a position where you can afford such policies. I'm perfectly ready to hear that Norway and California can afford it, and France can not.

flurdy 7y ago

Norway is already about $2 USD per litre of petrol. In the US it's $0.79. According to https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ (Or $7.5 per US Gallon in Norway)

Gibbon1 7y ago

> - if you increases gas taxes, people who own gas-powered cars will spend their saturday afternoons demanding your head on a spike This is exactly why gas taxes are bad. > is that rebates feel good, and taxes feel bad You can also like some California air quality districts are doing buy back low income peoples junkers and provide them down payment assistance for hybrid and electric cars. There is a lot less political blow back from those sorts of programs.

phtrivier 7y ago
But, again, you have to be in a position where you can afford such policies. I'm perfectly ready to hear that Norway and California can afford it, and France can not.