from Hacker News

Raise the Gas Tax

by mashmac2 on 12/10/13, 12:22 AM with 6 comments

• by patrickg_zill on 12/10/13, 1:41 AM

  The entire idea behind fuel taxes (and why these taxes are not levied on off-road use such as farm fuel, like for a tractor or to run a threshing machine), was that fuel taxes are to pay for the roads and other infrastructure.

  Typically for these kinds of articles, nowhere is the actual cost of maintaining the road system actually mentioned.

  The reason is, that in many cases, the fuel taxes collected are far, far in excess of the money actually spent in maintaining the road and building new roads.

  And most politicians love the slush-fund aspect of all the money that flows in, and the horse-trading that goes into determining how it is spent.

  Also not mentioned and not included in the calculations: the thousands of dollars taken in on sales taxes, license fees, plate fees, etc. over the (let us say 15 year) lifetime of your average car.

• by malandrew on 12/10/13, 3:50 AM

  I'd love to see a gas tax that is progressive based on population density within 10-20 miles of the gas station. They greater the population density, the higher the tax. Rural gas stations pay the least tax per gallon and city gas stations pay extremely high tax per gallon.

• by sokoloff on 12/10/13, 12:51 AM

  I wish I could figure a way to make the following suggestion not so painful on the working poor, but if the social cost of burning a gallon of gas is $2.10, why not hike the gas tax to something north of that AND index it for inflation automatically?

  I realize that I have a certain privilege to live 15 minutes from work, and that those who drive long distances to work would be hurt by such a policy, if you take today as a frame of reference. But, perhaps they should be hurt by it, if indeed they're costing society that excess amount.

  Phasing it in linearly over an 8 year period starting 2 years from now would blunt some of the transitional sting, perhaps.