Comments on Gas Tax Relief--It's the New Green Collar Jobs!

the difference between mccain and clinton is getting smaller and smaller.

I love you Annie!

To be fair, Annie, Erica did criticize Hillary's position (albeit EXTREMELY briefly) on her blog.

Hillary will say what it takes to win/get the nomination including play-acting at being a Republican. If this were 2004 she'd be vocally opposing gay marriage left and right and probably not be pimping out Chelsea to gay bars like she is this year.

The problem is you can't beat a republican by being so similar to them that no one sees the difference between the two.

Erica's head must be exploding. Ann Coulter and her are both supporting the same candidate.

I just don't know how I can hold my nose enough to vote for her if she gets the nomination. So troubling.

Seriously, Clinton is running as a Democrat? Really? Nader is really starting to look like an option if she steals the nomination from Obama!

Hey, I read your link and I think that "Erica C. Barnett" person wrote a really incisive analysis of the gas tax holiday. She seems to have a grasp of transportation and environmental issues, doesn't she? Why, if The Stranger had someone like that on staff, she could make a positive contribution to counteract the fiscally and environmentally damaging pandering that politicians do to get elected. I would inquire as to who this Barnett works for.

"I don’t get why progressives seem so convinced [Obama will] represent their interests; on nearly every issue, Hillary’s record is as or more progressive than Obama’s promises."

Bwahahahaha.

So much for Clinton's protecting the environment Erica! HA HA HA HA !!!!!!

Tom Kloza: Gas tax money would do little to help the people paying the tax, but would financially destroy the people collecting the tax.

How does that work?

well since i'm poor i'll speak up. sorry but id rather have affordable-ish gas right now than energy assistance. and i get energy assistance. but without gas i can't get to work. and really even worse than all of that is the insane price of food right now. they ought to tax the shit out of oil companies and give it to local organic farmers. i'm already on food stamps, but i think soon i'll have to go get the nasty shit at the food bank.

well, during the period of the gas suspension you could possibly buy 1 more tank of gas with teh amount the gas tax costs you. if you bought 500 gallons of gas you'd save 90 bucks.

gallons*.184.

six shooter, the individuals cost of the gas tax as a % of their expenditure on gas is small. The % of revenue generate to fund road maintenance by the gas tax is huge.

@12: It works like this. Gas tax relief would save the average consumer just $25 over a summer. (That is, if increased demand didn't push prices higher than they would otherwise be.) Which may be significant to you, @13, but the vast majority of gas buyers could save that amount by driving less, carpooling more, and taking advantage of transit—or cutting down on other voluntary expenditures.

But ~25 bucks from the entire driving population of the United States contributes an enormous amount of money--about $10 billion over a single summer--to infrastructure projects that keep highways in shape. You want your roads to fall apart? Vote Hillary or McCain.

How much does the average long-haul trucker pay in gas tax a year? How much of that expense factors into the costs of goods?

Clinton says she'll replace the cut in gas-tax revenue to infrastructure projects with tax revenue on oil profits.

I'm still waiting for a politician to get up and have the guts to say "We need a national rail system that works and is high speed" and "we need to build out rapid mass transit in this country on the scale of the interstate highway system.". All towns over X amount of population will be connected by this new system,etc,etc.

If someone actually says that and means it, than I will vote for them instead of this pandering crap about waiving gas taxes for 3 months. But I guess its too much to ask for someone in office to actually have a long term vision of how to cut down on per capita gas consumption without wacking people over the head with a huge stick, i,e. tolls and higher taxes on every little thing.

#17: This country's fucked. It's still too stuck on generational issues from the 1960s to think about substantive change on that level. And even if someone did run on an ambitious platform like that, they'd be tarred socialists ("he/she wants to make us like Europe!"), radical environmentalists ("they wanna take away our cars!), or pie in the sky liberals.

six shooter, the diesel tax is also at or around 6% per gallon. the discount on all goods carried by at current demand levels for diesel long haul trucks doesnt counteract the effect that there needs to be a revenue source to pay for roads.

and putting taxes on the profits of oil companies simply reintroduces the taxes into the price of gas. to compensate for higher tax costs they will simply raise the price of gas to maintain a % profit margin. there is no free lunch for a public good such as open access roads.

@17:

Obama's transportation plan includes the following:

Support Development of High-Speed Freight and Passenger Rail:
Barack Obama supports development of high-speed rail networks across the country. Providing passengers with safe high-speed rail will have significant environmental and metropolitan planning advantages and help diversify our nation’s transportation infrastructure. Our domestic rail freight capacity must also be strengthened because our demand for rail transportation has never been greater, leaving many key transportation hubs stretched to capacity. Obama is committed to renewing the federal government’s commitment to high speed rail so that our nation’s transportation infrastructure continues to support, and not hinder, our nation’s long-term economic growth.

@16: Much more than $25, obviously. But I'm not interested in structuring our tax policy to benefit a single occupation. There should be a better way to provide assistance to truckers than to waive taxes for the entire country. Yes, Hillary wants to get the windfall tax profit passed. But even if it can pass Congress, it would only pay for part of the gas tax holiday, so some would probably come out of the infrastructure budget despite her best intentions.

Thanks Annie & Bellevue.

people should boycott the gas companies until they are willing to limit their profits by charging a reasonable amount at the pump.

ha!

infrequent, stop trolling and providing "will in seattle" ideas to people.

six shooter. another thing to consider is the distributed cost to goods carried by long haul trucks. if eliminating the gas tax shaved off 1000 dollars from a haul, and the haul consisted of 300 hd lcd telivsions, the cost saved per television would be $3. if the haul savings was $500 and the quantity was 4000 tomatoes, it would $.125 off the cost of the tomato.

as you can see the savings are minuscule to the total cost of a good because long haul transportation costs are so variable and dispersed onto every good in the haul.

i don't troll; that was clearly a joke. but hey, you're the expert!

@15 gee, thanks for your condescending solutions, but a lot of us have already done all of that stuff. that's like telling someone whose house is already in foreclosure that they should refinance.

it is pretty annoying that BP and cohorts are posting huge profits, while at the same time the price of gas is prompting goofy legislation. the gas-tax break, if i understand it correctly, will be giving money from the gov to people, and to companies (in shipping expenses), and, in a round-about way, to the oil companies themselves.

aside from that, i think it's strange that as fuel prices increase, that price "can't" be passed on to the cost of the good. the npr story from a couple weeks back on the trucker "slow down" tried to explain this, but it left me with even more questions.

@1 wins.

But I loved the info in @20, annie. Very good to know.

And I don't support the position @22.

Boycotts only work in limited circumstances.

Now, grudge matches, those work.

@25 its hard to offer solutions to someone that is so hopelessly bent on others solving their problems for them.

as i said above: taxing the profits of oil companies is just going to raise the price of gasoline because there is

a. limited refining capacity in the United States
b. limited amount of refiners
c. since every company bears the brunt of this tax they will all raise their prices accordingly

profits from oil companies are used to

A. explore for new oil fields (increase supply)
B. make capital improvements to existing oil fields and refining facilities (increase and maintain current supply)
C. pay share holder dividends in some cases

So until the government opens up the ability to build new refiners and it is actually economically beneficial for old companies to build them, taxing the same 4-5 big players isnt going to do squat.

@25: I am not trying to be condescending, and there certainly exists a minority that will be adversely affected by $25 over the course of three months. Feel free to vote your own economic interest. I am, after all: I bike, walk, and bus almost exclusively, so I have the luxury (albeit earned through my own time, sweat, and choices) of not paying for gas directly.

But of course, this is all entirely hypothetical. Neither Clinton nor McCain will be president this summer, and even if Congress were able to pass Clinton or Obama's windfall tax, it would take quite a while for revenues to make it to federal coffers.

You will be paying that $25 in tax this summer. The question is, do you want a president who institutes economically and environmentally deleterious tax cuts in order to provide a tiny amount of cash to almost everyone, including millionaires who easily afford to pay the tax, or do you want a president who tries to target tax relief to the most cash-strapped citizens?

@29 - they're building refineries in India, FWIW. It's a red herring.

(caveat - I own and have owned oil companies and made a mint from your gullible consumption of this product).

will, you know that refineries in india have nothing to do with gas refining capabilities in the united states.

@19,

But if oil companies increase the price to offset their increased taxes, they'll just pay more in taxes. Oil companies are making such obscene prices right now that opposing a windfall tax, because OMG they might raise prices a little, is nonsensical. Besides, those companies have been getting tax breaks for ages, with the absurd justification that they'll use the money to search for more oil sources and open new refineries. That hasn't been happening. Tax the shit out of the bastards.

I'm not completely opposed to a windfall tax, but I'm not sure most people understand how, or why, gas fluctuates at the pump.

Here's a really good read:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/2/123923/4955

dougsf - thanks for the link. i've read similar articles before, but i'm still left wondering.... the oil companies are selling at a higher price making huge profits. it's one thing to suggest they sell below market value. it's another thing to wonder how the market value got inflated. was it artificial? it doesn't matter where the gouging it taking place, we are told prices are getting higher because the cost of oil is going up. yet the paycheck for the oil companies is going up even higher still (reflecting more than just the increase in the cost of oil).

@32 - you really need to keep up. The refineries in India are actually intended to provide product (refined) to the USA, Japan, and a few other nations.

Try doing a Yahoo or Google news search for Refinery India Oil or something like that - it was in a number of stories - at least two in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal - so it must be somewhere else.

Hey. Will is right.

40% of 1.2m barrels a day out of total consumption of 388 million gallons per day = not making a difference.

thats 1/10th of 1% in supply increase.

keshmeshi, you're ignoring that the objective isn't to punitively tax oil companies for making profits, it is to reduce gas prices at the pump. considering that objective, taxing profits only encourages the producers to seek higher total revenue, either through more units sold at a lower cost, or less units sold a higher cost. since gas is pretty inelastic it makes more sense to raise prices rather than sell more units.

and I already explained why they cant open more refineries or won't; there is no incentive to do so because of the environmental regulations and because it doesnt make sense economically to do so.

How much exactly will gas be then?