"Sub-$20 is the natural price level, which is why we should be cranking gas taxes upwards."

Why?

To keep prices high enough to change behavior and to replace other, less moral, taxes.

Sharon,

I can only assume you're new around here... :-)

If only trains ran on 89-octane......

"To keep prices high enough to change behavior and to replace other, less moral, taxes."

Tax my gas, then you better tax heating oil as well so we can teach Northerners to change their behavior, as well.

sharon:

Yes, that'll help get nuclear plants built.

I'm all for spreading the pain. Particularly when the anti-oil people think everyone wants public transportation (not to mention the fact that it is not feasable everywhere).

sharon:

No one wants it, but you can force them into it.

oj. This must be where our liberty is compromised by our freedom.

"No one wants it, but you can force them into it."

Sorry, dude. Talk to me about it when it is an hr drive from your house to your work but it is a 2 hr train right (laughable). You may like spending 15 hrs of your day this way, but I bet most Americans won't.

Sharon, you're not understanding what OJ means. He believes in reforming the masses through regressive, even punitive, taxation. In this case that would mean hiking gasoline taxes to make taking the train preferable to driving, regardless of how much time it wastes or social stress it causes.

Oh, I got it. But he doesn't live in Texas, obviously.

Sharon, He doesn't live in the USA.

in oj valley, witches pull the trains, and everyone rides for free

Robert:

Saves time, increases social cohesion.

Toe, but if we also raise the tax on heating oil, oj valley will have to burn the witches for warmth and the model collapses.

sharon:

That's perfectly acceptable because those who insist on driving will reduce my tax burden.

erp:

Drivers don't want freedom, they want free government services.

toe:

There's no shortage of witches.

Or village idiots.

Or 89-octane.

How's that? I pay the same taxes you do PLUS gas taxes. Last time I checked, that's not free. And then there's the damn train subsidy I gotta pay to support all those yankees.

sharon:

Gas taxes are volitional.

Channelling Jack Benny, eh?

"Gas taxes are volitional."

Subsidizing trains isn't.

Drive less, subsidize things you dislike less--it's a perfect system.

Since We, the People have chosen the car culture, there's virtually zero possibility of reversing that unless something better, like individual airborne travel, comes along, so who's going to implement draconian taxes on gasoline? Certainly not, We, the People's, elected officials.

erp:

Call it the Screw the Arabs tax and you'lkl get 90% support for it. Hysteria cuts in good ways too.

Subsidize less? I'd love to! But those damn politicians keep making me subsidize commuter service anyway, even though we don't want it.

Drive less...you'll reduce your gas taxes.

Don't wanna drive less. I don't wanna pay for the train. That's the thing I'm subsidizing.

Life is about choices...

Subsidizing trains isn't a choice. It's mandated.

It's a democratic choice.

A mandated democratic choice? Even you can't be that Orwellian.

Sharon:

Why? We choose to subsidize transportation, driving most heavily, but trains and the like as well. You could reduce your share of what we spend if you chose to drive less. You don't.

No, OJ, I would change from "subsidizing driving," as you put it, which is advantageous in my area, to more heavily subsidizing trains by paying for the ticket every day to spend even MORE time commuting than I do now. In fact, if I figure in the cost of bus fare from the train terminal to a spot somewhere in the vicinity of my job (several blocks away; a walk I don't relish in bad weather) it would come out to MORE money subsidizing a form of transportation that is far more inconvenient.

No, if you used the train you'd be reaping the benefit of the subsidy and avoiding gas taxes.

Nope, then I'm subsidizing (as you say) the far more convenient form of transportation without the benefit of it. And I'm paying more by subsidizing the far less convenient but more costly form of transportation. You can't say riding the train is better when it costs more money than driving my car AND it takes far more of my valuable time. Period.

It costs less when people ride the train in both monetary and temporal terms. Raising gas taxes will force those savings.

I've just explained to you how it does NOT cost less to ride the train in either my money or time. Why can't you concede the truth? Your argument is flawed. There may be areas of the country that this would work. It does not work in areas such as Texas where the cost for trains would be so high that they would have to charge exorbitant prices to cover it. This is not to mention the cost in time, which you seem to think is trivial. It is not.

It would save money and time for us as a society if commuters used mass transit. Obviously joriding will require cars and should cost more.

Never heard that commuting to work is "joyriding." I'll have to tell my boss that.

Ask him if he wants to carpool too.

Not feasible. Quit trying to make excuses for a system that doesn't work.

Not willing isn't not feasible. We live in a small town and companies organized carpool just because they're good corporate citizens.

It's not a matter of unwillingness. It's not feasible. Have you spent any time in Texas?

Yes, our geoseismic crew met at a gas station every morning so we could drive to the field in a few trucks.

Wonderful! You weren't in Dallas/Fort Worth, obviously.

No, we'd have taken the bus.

ROFLMAO. Yeah, that just proves you've never been here. Thanks for making my point.