[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>When you open the USA Today story, you see these two paragraphs:
>>
>>"But prices are below their all-time high when adjusted for inflation. =
>>The average price in March 1981 of $1.41 a gallon would be $2.87 today."
I agree that gas is not priced according to its social cost, and think a
substantial addition to the gas tax, perhaps an extra dollar per gallon for
gasoline, even more for diesel and perhaps less for alternate
fuels--balanced off by a flat and refundable tax credit (primarily to
account for the economic hardship for low and moderate income people and to
make it potentially "revenue neutral") per household--motor vehicle owning
or not, and with no allowance for additional vehicles (just by the
household, regardless of number of motor vehicles or people) would be far
preferable to a plan that blindly counts clicks on the odometer all the
same regardless of the type of driving, fuel economy, and pollution of the
vehicle. A "pay-not-to-drive" plan aimed at slowing down global warming
needs to recognise that miles (or kilometres) don't cause global warming,
burning dinofuel does, so the credit should reward people who cause less
pollution, and if they can do it with more efficient and cleaner vehicles
all the better.
All that said, in real life terms, I think that the $2.87/gallon figure
cited is an exaggeration. The arithmetic of a price and a CPI may well
yield that figure, but unless you're a CEO, salaries/wages have lagged
behind inflation, such that if you were to make a similar adjustment to the
minimum wage, it peaked many years ago at about $8(?) in 2000 dollars
(there's a table in the Statistical Abstract of the United States that
shows this; I just don't happen to have it at hand to give the reported
estimate and year).
Now go have a beer,
Bob Paolino
>From the Department of Military Intelligence and Jumbo Shrimp:
Sign seen on a recently poisoned lawn on Johnson:
TruGreen/ChemLawn
( ) ASCII ribbon campaign
X against HTML e-mail:
/ \ Friends don't send friends HTML-bloated messages!
_______________________________________________
Bikies mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
