6 ms·

Biden recently said no to raising the gas tax. So even if they vote blue, it doesn't seem to matter unfortunately.

api 5y ago
Gas taxes are extremely regressive. All consumption taxes for non-luxury goods are regressive, and lower income people typically own old cars with worse gas mileage and/or use trucks to work blue collar jobs.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Poorer people use much less fuel than wealthier people. Gas taxes are not regressive. Poisoning the atmosphere is regressive.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    > Poorer people use much less fuel than wealthier people. Gas taxes are not regressive. Poisoning the atmosphere is regressive. That isn't always true. At least in my city, poor people have to drive to work, richer people often have the luxury of riding their bike or taking the corporate bus in (because they live closer to work (or even public transit) and/or their company provides them with perks that reduce their need for driving).
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      I guess you'll need to show some data because in every American city I've studied income is positively and strongly correlated with private vehicle travel. Poor people are not obligate drivers; they disproportionately walk and bike and take the bus. A typical result that I just drew from my PDF library says "higher income, higher educational attainment, and smaller household sizes tend to be associated with a higher probability of commuting by private vehicle and a lower probability of commuting by transit or active modes."
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        It flips on the USA west coast, mainly because of housing prices, poor people can afford to live mostly in places where getting to anyplace without a car is inconvenient. In fact, it’s mostly not true in the USA, but is definitely true in many countries outside the USA. A common expat joke is that rich Chinese drive and poor Chinese ride bikes, while rich Americans ride bikes and poor Americans drive. See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/how-low-income-commuters-view-cycling https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/how-low-i....
        runarberg 5y ago
        I wonder if this is a statistical bias where we intuitively over sample one group while under sampling another and then average over the sample. The urban poor is probably a lot more numerous than the rural poor, but when thinking about the poor we tend to think about the rural communities. I don’t know how the numbers but common belief is that in the rural areas the poor make up a larger proportion of the total population then in urban areas. However the urban population is a lot larger then the rural population. So in absolute numbers there might be more urban poor (which are forced to commute by walking/biking/public transit, etc.) then there are rural poor. So—in absolute numbers—it is not unlikely—though counter-intuitive—that rich car usage outnumbers poor car usage by a lot. On top of that, one can be forgiven for under count the number of working class folks which work close to where they live. The lower classes hold the majority of service jobs, which are often located in the residential neighborhoods. And then majority of all neighborhoods are not gentrified and have affordable (or at least not ridiculously high) rent.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > The urban poor is probably a lot more numerous than the rural poor Actually, the suburban poor trump both urban and rural poor by far. That is, people who live in communities not in the urban core of a metro area, but within distance of one. They are much more attached to cars than the urban poor (who can't afford the parking fees anyways). These are the people stuck with crappy 1 hour commutes to their low paying job, whereas the urban poor...they are close enough to their jobs, but instead their housing is really expensive (or of bad quality). The suburban poor own a car, parking isn't much of a problem for them, and they make up a lot of the cars on the freeway during rush hour because their jobs provide them with much less flexibility in avoiding it. The suburban poor might even own a cheap house, they are much more numerous in the USA than who I would consider rich. So think someone who is commuting in from Concord because they can't afford to live in SF, not those people living in SF itself. SF is generally a bad example because of parking costs (you can't afford to drive there), but outside of downtown there are still lots of jobs that people commute by car to. Here in Seattle, a lot of people drive to their jobs outside of the city core, coming in from outside of Seattle to do so (whereas people like me take the Google bus, my Amazonian wife just has to walk a block to the bus stop that takes her within a block of her office, because we paid a bunch of money for a place in Ballard).
- francisofascii 5y ago
  Higher fuel costs can be offset with stimulus checks and tax credits. But regardless, first we have to agree that significantly reducing fossil fuel consumption is a goal.
  - api 5y ago
    Coal for electricity generation alone accounts for >60% of all manmade CO2 emissions. We could get very far just phasing out coal and doing nothing else, yet rhetoric usually focuses on cars and aviation. Aviation is less than 5% of all emissions. Why is the focus out of line with the reality in this way?
    - supertrope 5y ago
      You can buy a zero tailpipe emission car right now. You can even ride a bus, carpool, or bike. Or take an offer for a remote working job in preference over an in office one. An individual can’t change the fuel mix of their grid. Airline usage is a luxury. Natural gas power plants are already displacing coal fired one.
- runarberg 5y ago
  This is a really cheap refute. If gas taxes are regressive, then build the infrastructure so they won’t be. If poor people are dependent on cheap gas for driving to work, increase the bus coverage and frequency, build new rail lines (and electrify existing once) for congested routes, zone cheaper housing closer to where people work and build safe bike lanes, heck even subsidize electric cars if everything else is too radical. Do this along with raising gas prices and they won’t be regressive. EDIT: And to raise the hammer home. Biden also said no to the Green new deal. The electrification of CalTrain, and the California High Speed rail are experiencing slowdowns because of lack of funding. ST3 in Seattle is at risk of being delayed because of lack of funding. Amtrak is getting the most modest of all expansions. Bus networks in mid-sized American cities are a poor as they ever were and no change in the maps. I think that gas taxes “being regressive” is not the real reason that Biden and other politicians are not raising the gas prices.
  - supertrope 5y ago
    Voters reject public transit taxes because they can’t imagine themselves riding. There is a huge blind spot on the cost of roads. Never raising gasoline tax and continuing to mandate minimum parking just shifts the cost of driving from motorists to general taxpayers.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      Even this, for me, seems like a lousy excuse a politician would make. Even if true, a good politician should be able to convince the general public that this is a good idea. So far politicians that advocate for public transit as a remedy for our inevitable step away from fossil fuels are hard to find. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bears mentioning here a one of few who does. Among my local politicians, state senetor Joe Nguyen goes a step further and advocates for public transit as social justice issue (as well as a climate one). The badies are easier to find. California Governor Gavin Newsom stresses the importance of tackling the climate crises, yet is not funding necessary infrastructure project which would make the transformation easier. Europe is also full of the Gavin Newsom types. And this is sad because most people are in favor of radical climate policies. So convincing the public of a good climate policy should be easy (this is also [probably] true of the west coast states). In my opinion, if dealing with the climate disaster is as important as these politicians correctly claim it to be, then they should commit to it. Failing to do so reflects how bad they are at politics and honestly they should probably find a new career where they will do less damage.
- yongjik 5y ago
  Climate change will be also regressive and hit poor people the hardest. So, even though gas tax may be regressive, no gas tax is likely even more regressive. It's just postponed by a few years/decades. And there are mitigations we can take to help the poor, as sibling comments say.
walkedaway 5y ago
Biden is doing a fine job raising gas prices - and prices of everything else - without adding new taxes.
- supertrope 5y ago
  Generous federal financial assistance is like a backdoor minimum wage increase. Hopefully inflation doesn’t nullify the bigger purchasing power those bigger numbers are assumed to confer.

api 5y ago

Gas taxes are extremely regressive. All consumption taxes for non-luxury goods are regressive, and lower income people typically own old cars with worse gas mileage and/or use trucks to work blue collar jobs.

jeffbee 5y ago
Poorer people use much less fuel than wealthier people. Gas taxes are not regressive. Poisoning the atmosphere is regressive.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > Poorer people use much less fuel than wealthier people. Gas taxes are not regressive. Poisoning the atmosphere is regressive. That isn't always true. At least in my city, poor people have to drive to work, richer people often have the luxury of riding their bike or taking the corporate bus in (because they live closer to work (or even public transit) and/or their company provides them with perks that reduce their need for driving).
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    I guess you'll need to show some data because in every American city I've studied income is positively and strongly correlated with private vehicle travel. Poor people are not obligate drivers; they disproportionately walk and bike and take the bus. A typical result that I just drew from my PDF library says "higher income, higher educational attainment, and smaller household sizes tend to be associated with a higher probability of commuting by private vehicle and a lower probability of commuting by transit or active modes."
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      It flips on the USA west coast, mainly because of housing prices, poor people can afford to live mostly in places where getting to anyplace without a car is inconvenient. In fact, it’s mostly not true in the USA, but is definitely true in many countries outside the USA. A common expat joke is that rich Chinese drive and poor Chinese ride bikes, while rich Americans ride bikes and poor Americans drive. See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/how-low-income-commuters-view-cycling https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/how-low-i....
      - runarberg 5y ago
        I wonder if this is a statistical bias where we intuitively over sample one group while under sampling another and then average over the sample. The urban poor is probably a lot more numerous than the rural poor, but when thinking about the poor we tend to think about the rural communities. I don’t know how the numbers but common belief is that in the rural areas the poor make up a larger proportion of the total population then in urban areas. However the urban population is a lot larger then the rural population. So in absolute numbers there might be more urban poor (which are forced to commute by walking/biking/public transit, etc.) then there are rural poor. So—in absolute numbers—it is not unlikely—though counter-intuitive—that rich car usage outnumbers poor car usage by a lot. On top of that, one can be forgiven for under count the number of working class folks which work close to where they live. The lower classes hold the majority of service jobs, which are often located in the residential neighborhoods. And then majority of all neighborhoods are not gentrified and have affordable (or at least not ridiculously high) rent.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > The urban poor is probably a lot more numerous than the rural poor Actually, the suburban poor trump both urban and rural poor by far. That is, people who live in communities not in the urban core of a metro area, but within distance of one. They are much more attached to cars than the urban poor (who can't afford the parking fees anyways). These are the people stuck with crappy 1 hour commutes to their low paying job, whereas the urban poor...they are close enough to their jobs, but instead their housing is really expensive (or of bad quality). The suburban poor own a car, parking isn't much of a problem for them, and they make up a lot of the cars on the freeway during rush hour because their jobs provide them with much less flexibility in avoiding it. The suburban poor might even own a cheap house, they are much more numerous in the USA than who I would consider rich. So think someone who is commuting in from Concord because they can't afford to live in SF, not those people living in SF itself. SF is generally a bad example because of parking costs (you can't afford to drive there), but outside of downtown there are still lots of jobs that people commute by car to. Here in Seattle, a lot of people drive to their jobs outside of the city core, coming in from outside of Seattle to do so (whereas people like me take the Google bus, my Amazonian wife just has to walk a block to the bus stop that takes her within a block of her office, because we paid a bunch of money for a place in Ballard).
francisofascii 5y ago
Higher fuel costs can be offset with stimulus checks and tax credits. But regardless, first we have to agree that significantly reducing fossil fuel consumption is a goal.
- api 5y ago
  Coal for electricity generation alone accounts for >60% of all manmade CO2 emissions. We could get very far just phasing out coal and doing nothing else, yet rhetoric usually focuses on cars and aviation. Aviation is less than 5% of all emissions. Why is the focus out of line with the reality in this way?
  - supertrope 5y ago
    You can buy a zero tailpipe emission car right now. You can even ride a bus, carpool, or bike. Or take an offer for a remote working job in preference over an in office one. An individual can’t change the fuel mix of their grid. Airline usage is a luxury. Natural gas power plants are already displacing coal fired one.
runarberg 5y ago
This is a really cheap refute. If gas taxes are regressive, then build the infrastructure so they won’t be. If poor people are dependent on cheap gas for driving to work, increase the bus coverage and frequency, build new rail lines (and electrify existing once) for congested routes, zone cheaper housing closer to where people work and build safe bike lanes, heck even subsidize electric cars if everything else is too radical. Do this along with raising gas prices and they won’t be regressive. EDIT: And to raise the hammer home. Biden also said no to the Green new deal. The electrification of CalTrain, and the California High Speed rail are experiencing slowdowns because of lack of funding. ST3 in Seattle is at risk of being delayed because of lack of funding. Amtrak is getting the most modest of all expansions. Bus networks in mid-sized American cities are a poor as they ever were and no change in the maps. I think that gas taxes “being regressive” is not the real reason that Biden and other politicians are not raising the gas prices.
- supertrope 5y ago
  Voters reject public transit taxes because they can’t imagine themselves riding. There is a huge blind spot on the cost of roads. Never raising gasoline tax and continuing to mandate minimum parking just shifts the cost of driving from motorists to general taxpayers.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    Even this, for me, seems like a lousy excuse a politician would make. Even if true, a good politician should be able to convince the general public that this is a good idea. So far politicians that advocate for public transit as a remedy for our inevitable step away from fossil fuels are hard to find. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bears mentioning here a one of few who does. Among my local politicians, state senetor Joe Nguyen goes a step further and advocates for public transit as social justice issue (as well as a climate one). The badies are easier to find. California Governor Gavin Newsom stresses the importance of tackling the climate crises, yet is not funding necessary infrastructure project which would make the transformation easier. Europe is also full of the Gavin Newsom types. And this is sad because most people are in favor of radical climate policies. So convincing the public of a good climate policy should be easy (this is also [probably] true of the west coast states). In my opinion, if dealing with the climate disaster is as important as these politicians correctly claim it to be, then they should commit to it. Failing to do so reflects how bad they are at politics and honestly they should probably find a new career where they will do less damage.
yongjik 5y ago
Climate change will be also regressive and hit poor people the hardest. So, even though gas tax may be regressive, no gas tax is likely even more regressive. It's just postponed by a few years/decades. And there are mitigations we can take to help the poor, as sibling comments say.

walkedaway 5y ago

Biden is doing a fine job raising gas prices - and prices of everything else - without adding new taxes.

supertrope 5y ago
Generous federal financial assistance is like a backdoor minimum wage increase. Hopefully inflation doesn’t nullify the bigger purchasing power those bigger numbers are assumed to confer.