Monday, November 28, 2005

Madness

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce proposes taxing hybrid cars and other fuel-efficient vehicles. Meanwhile, the Bush administration refuses to use tax incentives to keep GM from transferring jobs from the United States to India. Madness!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joseph,

Please read Greg Mankiw's paper on the Politics of Outsourcing and note that the benefits outweigh the costs.

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/papers/Outsourcing%20-%20Mankiw-Swagel%20for%20C-R%20conference%20Nov%2010%202005.pdf

Anonymous said...

Here's an extract from that article on taxing Hybrid cars...."One is that owners of hybrids and other alternative fuel vehicles pay a vehicle fee, the argument being that drivers should bear their fair share to fill potholes and fix bridges, regardless of how much or what kind of fuel they use"
I agree, drivers should pay their fair share but it should be based on vehicle weight because, you see, road damage is not the same for all vehicles; actually the only published study on the subject says that it is proportional to the fourth power of weight. So lets say (and why not) that a H2 weighs 2.6 times what a Civic weighs, then one would conclude that a H2 would cause about 45 times more damage. Seems fair to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHTO_Road_Test

Oh by the way Joseph, you are doing a great job, yours is one of my most oft visited blogs. Thanks!