that is gonna be ripe with fraud ... ask brandon about it ... I'll bet he can tell you some great stories about how people go about their community service...

It'd be even more fucking worthless in the academic world.

You've made my point for me. If that is your idea of excessive then why don't we have a "windfall" tax on Google or any other large corporation? Why are oil companies the bad guys? Because they make a commodity and Americans were at a time paying near $4.00/gallon (which is near the natural price over time if adjusted for inflation)?

It's too much on whim and not on fact for me to agree that windfall profits should be taxed any differently.

"Oh, Americans, you're paying too much at the pump for your SUV, let's tax the crap outta the companies who are "making" you drive this much and give that money back to you so you can drive some more"

Gas is UNDER $2 here. I never thought I would see that again. It's great. Off topic, yes, but still neat. In fact, it's $1.97 around the corner.

Remember when $2.00 gas meant the end of the world?

Oh, and don't forget, this was tried in 1980 by Carter... By 1988 the NYT and most of America was calling for the repeal of it, eventually the government gave in.

This isn't about fair. Someone has to pay the tax. We can either tax the people it will hurt the most or we can tax the people it will hurt the least. If you think you should pay more tax, by all means, donate to the IRS. But for the rest of us where the majority of our income is going to survival, it is far better for those with a little excess to pick up the slack. If you feel the oil industry does not have any money to spare, who should we tax instead? That's all it comes down to. If we don't tax the oil industry, we have to tax someone else. No matter who we tax, there will be an argument on why you shouldn't tax that group. Of course, no matter who you tax, it's going to affect every other taxable group. You tax the oil industry, gas goes up in price and everyone suffers. You tax the middle class, they buy fewer goods, and everyone suffers. You tax financial sector, less money available for investment, and everyone suffers. You don't tax anyone, infrastructure, social programs, education, and science all gets cut, and everyone suffers. I hear a lot of whining, but yet I don't ever see any alternative solutions. So let's hear it. Who should we tax?

Ultimately I feel the best solution is to have a leaner more efficient government. I doubt anyone disagrees with that. But that isn't going to ever be reality as long as we want to remain a representative democracy.

You're overlooking one key point. Not all oil companies are large corporations making billions of dollars. My mom's oil company is small, struggling to get by, and with a windfall tax, would probably either have to shut down, or operate at a loss. Probably the former.

and that still doesn't answer billy's question. What is a better solution? Maybe we should instate a free for all (and I'm being serious) where there aren't any government programs. the only thing I care about is road quality and law enforcement. but it would never work of course.

Why should others "pick up" what you cannot? You again prove my point that taxing the oil companies is a whim and pulled completely out of your hat. You see some disposable profits (though a lot go to R&D) and you have to have them. And what do you mean isn't about fair? That's exactly what it's about from the tone of your post. "It's not fair we don't have extra cash, charge the oil companies, that will make it fair"

Why the oil companies? Why not Google? I know they have some extra cash...

You tax the people, that was the original idea. You don't tax them so much they go broke, but you tax them. Citizens are the ones using the services that are provided, so why should they not be the ones taxed?

Lastly, we don't have to tax someone. What does more taxation give the government? More of a pool to spend from. Maybe if they stopped spending, they could cut taxes for everyone and all would be happy.

You don't need the federal government for those things...

The federal govt. all comes back to the Constitution, ensuring national security and the state's rights. Other than that, it's up to the states.

*yawn*

Windfall profits taxes are nothing but a vote and money grab. It's the mentality of "oohhhh those people are making money and these people aren't we have to steal their money from them because we're upset!"

that's pretty much what it amounts to.

Just the citizens? I don't know of many citizens that transport extremely heavy, extremely large equipment which causes incredibly more wear and tear on our roads and bridges than any vehicle a normal citizen drives. Yet citizens pay the most for our roads and bridges through gas tax. I don't know of many citizens that dump large amounts of waste into our natural bodies of water. Yet citizens pay for clean up through water recycling and chemical filtration for our drinking water. Industry taxes our infrastructure quite a bit. And yet you expect only the citizens to pay for it all?

A good tax system is a system that burdens its citizens the least, yet providing the most amount of service to its people. It doesn't do our country or its people any good to tax the group with the least to give. I agree with taxing Google more. I think that is one solution. But you can't just tax Google more. You have to tax everyone like Google more. And now you run into the problem of "Why tax us?". Everyone is going to ask that question "why tax us?". And the simple answer is this: because you'll hurt the least.

I don't know about cutting completely any of these services, but I would support definitely shrinking the budget of Health and Human Services. But then again, I like knowing the food I eat is safe.

Say what?! When I saw that, I immediately stopped reading and hit up the Internet. "Say it ain't so," I thought.

Know what I found?

It ain't so!



Ok, so what we have here is diesel fuel, the fuel of choice for the trucks you refer to, being taxed more than regular fuel - 47 cents to 53.6 cents. Not much, but perspective will help us appreciate this more.

According to the Bureau to Transportation Statistics, passenger vehicles consumed a total of 75,204 million gallons of fuel in 2006 (http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_11.html) while trucks consumed a total of 9,843 million gallons of fuel in 2006 (http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_13.html). Man, that's a lot. $35,345,880,000 in collected taxes for passenger fuel consumption versus a mere $5,275,848,000 in collected taxes for truck fuel consumption.

But wait! There's more cars than there are trucks, of course they're going to be charged more. How much is it per truck then? Well, if we look at the same tables provided by BTS, we see that trucks average 1480 gallons of fuel per year while passenger vehicles average 554 gallons of fuel per year. So trucks pay $793.28 in fuel tax per year while cars only pay $260.38 in fuel tax per year. That doesn't seem fair.

It was said trucks use the roads a lot more though. 80,331 million miles for trucks versus 1,682,671 million miles travelled by passenger cars. Trucks account for 4.6% of total mileage on roads yet pay 13.0% of the total fuel taxes.

I just don't know Billy. Do you really know what you're talking about?

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EDIT @ 6:35: Revising my numbers since the table names were misleading. BRB

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EDIT @ 6:55

Data revisement:

Passenger Vehicle Total Fuel Consumption - 135,866,000,000 Gallons ($63,857,020,000 in taxes)
Truck Total Fuel Consumption - 37,918,000,000 Gallons ($20,324,048,000 in taxes)

Trucks pay 24.14% of total Fuel Taxes

Passenger Vehicle Total Mileage - 2,784,085,000,000
Truck Total Mileage - 223,037,000,000

Trucks drive 7.42% of total Miles.

Cuh-razy. Numbers are still in my favor.

Source: http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_t...ion_statistics/

I combined tables 4-11 and 4-12 for "Passenger Vehicles" and tables 4-13 and 4-14 for "Trucks".

Heavy trucks damage the roads far greater than light cars. Simple fatigue analysis. Any engineer can you tell you that. Not only that, but roads and bridges have to be designed for the greater weight of trucks, thus increasing the cost of building roads.

Here's some perspective: Average weight of a car: 4500 lbs
Average weight of one our manifolds that we ship via road: 145,000 lbs.

But the little passenger cars have to pay much more than they should have to so that the roads can handle in excess of 145,000 lbs.