An easy to miss comment on the TV news yesterday
had the affect of raising my interest, enough to do a
bit of checking on line. After a bit of a look to see if
the comment had validity I found that our nation's
net auto fuel usage, in fact has been in decline and
that comment was accurate about one of the
consequences of the declining total gallons of gas
being sold this year compared to last year.
One possibility for our political leadership not
being overly enthused about tightening the mileage
standards for new car manufacturing may actually be
because as revenues continue to decline on per gallon
sales in the United States, the federal and state
excise taxes added to each gallon are also in decline.
These are the revenues that are normally fully
spent on repairing and maintaining our nation's
highway network. (Our national highway network is
federal as a result of the lessons learned during
WWII in which the German Autobahn network made
Germany almost instantly able to move its armies to
any boarder on a moments notice. That military
secrete, instituted in the late '40's which became
the national highway system begun in earnest in the
early 50's, is still a part of our national Corps of
Engineers U.S. defense and Homeland Security
strategy, into present time.).
As the price of gas climbs, ever increasing numbers
of drivers opt out of what they consider to be non-
essential travel to a greater and greater degree. As
that reduction escalates, a subtle change has occurred
in the workforce that maintains our roads and highways.
At first, programs were begun to cut out overtime and
extend the replacement purchase timing of new equipment.
The reductions are subtle, but they domino. The
crews that used to get overtime to keep ahead of
demand, now cut back on their extra expenses. They
spend less time on clean up and maintenance, too.
The equipment builders, cut out their overtime and
stop adding new employees on the assembly lines.
They let attrition reduce their workforces, too.
Those that remain, cut out extra travel, stretch their
new purchases, and so forth. Throughout this micro-
cosim industry, reductions snowball into less fuel
energy used and less tax revenue for the fed.
Highways that should have by now received major
reconstruction, instead get pot hole patch jobs instead.
And so it goes, a gradual reduction in highway and
road repairs accumulates into larger numbers of
degraded roadways, accelerating the wearing out of
vehicles traveling over them. As cars get too beat up
to fix they put folks not getting overtime coupled
with prematurely worn out vehicles - it forces them to
buy smaller, more economical new or used cars
instead of the gas guzzlers they are used to driving;
which used to contribute lots more taxes into the
federal economy, and so forth.
That makes a full circle to less gas being bought
in the private sector and less funding for
government
excise taxes to repair and maintain our nations ever
more heavily traveled and worn system of roadways.
No wonder our legislators are not all that enthused
about fuel economy. They will be forced to think.
That is to say, they will have to learn how to
generate revenue in new, creative ways. And one thing
legislators do NOT like to do is think creatively because
creative solutions put them at risk of doing the new, the
untried and perhaps not so true, and possibly unpopular
action... VOTES are at risk, you see? Doing nothing to
dig our country out of the dwindling fuel tax revenue
spiral is safer than being proacive, in this case...
I suggest at least one out of the box solution. Create
a
National Sales Tax on ALL energy purchases. Do away
with all other Federal Funding programs related to energy
and pay for all federal expenses from a single energy
sales tax fund.
With such a method of funding our national expenses
- whether one pays for more electricity and less gas to
fuel their Plug-in Hybrid vehicle or if they buy gas for their
Schwartzeneger Hummer, it all funds the fed. Those that
use the most energy, pay the same percentage as those
who use the least energy. Highway building and
maintainance will be paid out of their share of those tax
dollars, too. Home and business electricity and natural
gas will fund this tax, as well, kilowatt hour and cubic
feet adjustments may have to be a part of a deduction
form for year end
income tax adjustments.
Net energy sales taxes should be tax deductable if the
government can not do away with our current income
tax juggernaught and instead create a blanket National
SalesTax to replace our current outmoded system of
revenu collection.
Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast
with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut.
Send Email