Quote:
Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Once you've bought the car and paid the tax, it has done nothing to create marginal incentives for your use of fuel. It may discourage purchases of such large cars, but once people have them, they face no incentive not to drive them. Moreover, it does nothing for all the cars on the road.
We've been down this road before. It's not an inherently regressive tax. It's a tax that's inherently more expensive for people who use more gas. If the objective it to get people to use less gas, then higher taxes will help do that.
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Why is it an improper objective merely to hope for the interim measure of incentivizing the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, rather than the larger (and dubiously achievable) goal of having everybody drive less?* You seem to be jumping toward Utopia, when there is an option for a marginally better Distopia. Decisionmaking at the point of buying a replacement car isn't able to fully appreciate the TCO based on politically volatile gas taxes, but it can comprehend the idea of higher cost at the front-end.
*I think that this is a hopeless goal. Not everyone has the option to take public transportation, but if the marketplace is properly incentivized, nearly everyone has the option of picking a car that gets 25 mpg over one that gets, say, 20 mpg.
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