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Automotive News & Views Are gas prices fueling your pain? 
10042 messages, Last post on Jul 12, 2008 at 4:07 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: snakeweasel (Jan 16, 2008 9:27 pm) That's very true. However that's actually an anti-toll argument. Collecting gas taxes and collecting tolls both have some overhead involved. It seems wasteful and unecessary to use both methods for highway funding. Since there's no getting around the federal gas tax we might as well use that existing mechanism for additional highway construction/maintenance. And as you pointed out. The people that feel they shouldn't have to pay for a road they don't use need to realize they are still deriving some benefit from that road. The government is the primary advocate for tolls because it represents an additional source of revenue. The more sources you have the more revenue you can generate. The public seems less outraged by small taxes so if the government needs more money it is easier for them to create an additional small tax than to add to an existing tax.
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Replying to: tpe (Jan 16, 2008 7:04 pm) People who spend based upon perceived wealth like $40K extra equity in their homes are like the guy who buys a lottery ticket and buys a boat and Mercedes before the numbers are drawn in anticipation that he's got the winning ticket.
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Replying to: tpe (Jan 16, 2008 5:59 pm) That's how it should be! If people put 40% down payments on their homes, there wouldn't be any "mortgage meltdown." I put that in quotes because we all know that this manufactured crisis hurts only 2 people: 1. the speculators who now claim to be "homeowners" only because they can't sell the last house they tried to flip. 2. the people who bought adjustable rate mortgages when fixed rates were 4%, because they thought interest rates would keep dropping. The first group gambled and lost -- get over it. The second group is too stupid to deserve a house -- get out of it. Anyway, the more realistic example is that a person bought a home for $500,000 and put $20,000 down, so he owes $480,000. But now the home is only worth $400,000. No big deal ..... unless something happens like he gets laid off, gets sick, gets divorced, etc. Then that deficit means that he has to PAY $80K just to sell his house. Most people in the U.S. have less than $5,000 in the bank, and carry $8,000 in credit card debt. So there's no 80 grand to work with. So that guy gets foreclosed, maybe goes to bankruptcy court, but, hey, that's life in the big city, right? UNLESS ..... our friends in gov't decide to "help" this struggling homeowner with OUR money (probably stolen from gas tax revenues). Then, suddenly, we're paying HIS mortgage in addition to OUR mortgages. That leaves a lot less money for us to buy $4 gas. . |
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Turns out it's not gas we're mad about, it's gas caps  Read about Endangered Species? on the Alternate Route
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Replying to: 1stpik (Jan 16, 2008 2:29 pm) Oh yeah, I was real greedy, driving around in a 1979 Newport that I paid $250 for. Sorry, but I think the last 1979 Corolla had rusted away around by that time. Not that I would have been able to fit in it, anyway.
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Replying to: pf_flyer (Jan 17, 2008 8:10 am) Keep in mind that 90% of the driving public simply are not as interested or informed about cars the way Edmunds members are.
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Replying to: ateixeira (Jan 17, 2008 9:53 am) I think whoever came up with the idea of the tethered gas cap was a genius, though. I've had a lot of GM cars where they put the fuel filler behind the license plate, and you used the cap to prop the license plate open to get to the fuel filler. In those cases, I'd always remember to put the cap back on. But on some other cars, where you just take the cap off and sit it down somewhere, I've made the mistake of forgetting to put it back on. Not often mind you, but it has happened. 
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Replying to: andre1969 (Jan 17, 2008 10:04 am)
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Replying to: lilengineerboy (Jan 16, 2008 8:04 pm) I had a 30-mile commute which I reduced to slightly < 4miles. If you don't have a house to sell, it is a no-brainer - to move significantly closer to work. A 64-mile daily drive will certainly cause your depreciation-cost to go way up (all cars are basically worth $1,000 after 10 years and 200K miles; it's just a matter of when a particular depreciates a lot). The difference in fuel between driving 64 miles and 8 miles is much greater than selecting any other vehicle than your mid-30's Accord. Your insurance premium should go down, all else being equal. And your maintenance would go down significantly. Also economically a motorcycle purchase might not be such a great idea to save when you add up the purchase cost, taxes, registration, and insurance for that. This is purely economic for most people who rent, don't have a spouse working in the other direction, and such. There's a house right down the street from my factory, For Sale. No more than 100 yards away. I could buy that and live just like people did back in the days of the mills. Maybe our urban planners you should look back 150 years and figure out how urban areas could work without subways, buses and cars. Maybe our office buildings in central cities should be layed out like this: 1 floor offices, 1 floor shopping, and 2 floors residential?
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