Anti Federalist
04-15-2019, 02:18 PM
Orange Mordita
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/04/15/orange-mordita/#comment-704979
By eric - April 15, 2019
Trump rode a wave of average man outrage into the Oval Office.
But the Orange Man could be swept out of it just as easily if he pursues what he has hinted at doing – raise the federal tax on gas.
Not by a little bit, either.
Nothing could be more politically suicidal. Besides which, it is just a terrible idea. More money to Uncle means, inevitably, less freedom for us. More ways to extort the states to impose more freedom-stifling outrages – everything from (historically) dumbed-down DUI standards – and the vile East German-style checkpoints to go with – as well as “buckle up” laws and dumbed-down speed limit regimes.
Giving Uncle more money is – as the saying goes – like giving an idiot child a machine gun. Trump ought to know this. Don’t feed the Swamp Thing.
People – his supporters, at any rate – never bought into the confected “collusion” narrative. They will abandon him to the wolves if he hits them with an increase in what is already the most obnoxiously regressive (to use a favorite word of “progressives,” as wealth-snatching leftists like to style themselves) taxes in existence.
The federal tax is currently 18 cents per gallon – and states pile on an average of 34 cents in addition. Some even more. That’s 52 cents in overt taxes per gallon – and doesn’t count the hidden taxes per gallon, which includes the cost of the rent-seeking “renewable fuels” (ethanol) mandate, which forces us to subsidize the corn lobby and costs us again – in the form of reduced miles-per-gallon, since a gallon of ethanol-adulterated “gas” – it’s typically 10 percent ethanol in most parts of the country – will not take you as far as a gallon of 100 proof gasoline.
But leave that aside for the moment.
The federal/state gas tax mordita works out to about 25 percent of the cost of each gallon, despicably folded into the cost of each gallon rather than added in, after the fact – as other taxes on things we buy usually are. This is done to hide the cost of the tax – and shift the anger away from the busybodies and control freaks who constitute “the government” and direct it toward the Evil Oil Companies.
They are To Blame.
Yet – unlike busybodies and control freaks who constitute “the government” – and tax us until our hides bleed – “Big Oil” provides us with a useful product most of us appreciate and on which it makes very little profit, at least relative to the government.
The net profit margin on a gallon of gas is about 19 cents, with about 3-5 cents of that going to the retailer (i.e., the gas station) so about 15 cents goes into the pockets of “Big Oil.”
Which, let’s remember, is providing something useful, that people freely buy.
Unlike the government – which practices extortion and sometimes returns a pittance of what it takes by force in the form of benefits conferred upon some people – usually those who didn’t pay for them.
A 25 percent bite used to be considered usurious – and still is, only it’s legal now.
Well, the Orange Man has floated the idea of raising the mordita by another 25 cents – more than doubling the federal tax and bringing the total tax to a ruinous 75 cents-plus per gallon.
Which would also be ruinous to his 2020 re-election campaign, as well as to the economy his policies have helped to partially resuscitate. OM’s stated reason is to fund rebuilding of admittedly decaying infrastructure and to build more.
But bankrupting the people isn’t the way to do it – unless the object of the exercise is beautifully paved and very empty highways, on the North Korean model.
Trump – who is a billionaire – may not appreciate how much damage a doubling of gas taxation will do to the already precarious finances of people who aren’t even hundred-thousand-aires. People whose finances are precarious because of the serial tax-rape they endure on every dollar they earn before they even open the fuel door of their vehicle.
Federal and state taxes on income. Plus the Socialist Insecurity and Medicare mordita. Now Obamacare on top of that. Then the rent-in-perpetuity on their homes, even if long ago paid for. The Marxist property tax recommended by the bearded one himself. To make “owning” property an impossibility.
Together, these consume probably half or more of every dollar earned by most wage-slaves. It doesn’t leave much margin for a doubled gas tax, which will increase the tax they pay to about 40 percent of the cost of each gallon.
This would shame most loan sharks; not even the mafia is this cruel.
Besides, there is a much better way to fund admittedly needed infrastructure. A way that won’t stick it to the average wage-slave.
And Trump has already indicated he is favorably inclined.
That way is to divert the billions in electric car subsidies to fund roads and so forth. To stop lining the pockets of billionaires like Elon Musk at the expense of tens of millions of thousand-aires, in order to prop up his perpetually sickly “business” – which is nothing more than a fadish rent-seeking scam.
The federal EV subsidy alone is estimated at between $15-20 billion, plus another $400 million or so at the state level. This could buy a lot of infrastructure, without imposing any new taxes on hard-pressed Americans.
And it would get the potholes fixed without costing the Orange Man re-election.
He might want to consider it.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/04/15/orange-mordita/#comment-704979
By eric - April 15, 2019
Trump rode a wave of average man outrage into the Oval Office.
But the Orange Man could be swept out of it just as easily if he pursues what he has hinted at doing – raise the federal tax on gas.
Not by a little bit, either.
Nothing could be more politically suicidal. Besides which, it is just a terrible idea. More money to Uncle means, inevitably, less freedom for us. More ways to extort the states to impose more freedom-stifling outrages – everything from (historically) dumbed-down DUI standards – and the vile East German-style checkpoints to go with – as well as “buckle up” laws and dumbed-down speed limit regimes.
Giving Uncle more money is – as the saying goes – like giving an idiot child a machine gun. Trump ought to know this. Don’t feed the Swamp Thing.
People – his supporters, at any rate – never bought into the confected “collusion” narrative. They will abandon him to the wolves if he hits them with an increase in what is already the most obnoxiously regressive (to use a favorite word of “progressives,” as wealth-snatching leftists like to style themselves) taxes in existence.
The federal tax is currently 18 cents per gallon – and states pile on an average of 34 cents in addition. Some even more. That’s 52 cents in overt taxes per gallon – and doesn’t count the hidden taxes per gallon, which includes the cost of the rent-seeking “renewable fuels” (ethanol) mandate, which forces us to subsidize the corn lobby and costs us again – in the form of reduced miles-per-gallon, since a gallon of ethanol-adulterated “gas” – it’s typically 10 percent ethanol in most parts of the country – will not take you as far as a gallon of 100 proof gasoline.
But leave that aside for the moment.
The federal/state gas tax mordita works out to about 25 percent of the cost of each gallon, despicably folded into the cost of each gallon rather than added in, after the fact – as other taxes on things we buy usually are. This is done to hide the cost of the tax – and shift the anger away from the busybodies and control freaks who constitute “the government” and direct it toward the Evil Oil Companies.
They are To Blame.
Yet – unlike busybodies and control freaks who constitute “the government” – and tax us until our hides bleed – “Big Oil” provides us with a useful product most of us appreciate and on which it makes very little profit, at least relative to the government.
The net profit margin on a gallon of gas is about 19 cents, with about 3-5 cents of that going to the retailer (i.e., the gas station) so about 15 cents goes into the pockets of “Big Oil.”
Which, let’s remember, is providing something useful, that people freely buy.
Unlike the government – which practices extortion and sometimes returns a pittance of what it takes by force in the form of benefits conferred upon some people – usually those who didn’t pay for them.
A 25 percent bite used to be considered usurious – and still is, only it’s legal now.
Well, the Orange Man has floated the idea of raising the mordita by another 25 cents – more than doubling the federal tax and bringing the total tax to a ruinous 75 cents-plus per gallon.
Which would also be ruinous to his 2020 re-election campaign, as well as to the economy his policies have helped to partially resuscitate. OM’s stated reason is to fund rebuilding of admittedly decaying infrastructure and to build more.
But bankrupting the people isn’t the way to do it – unless the object of the exercise is beautifully paved and very empty highways, on the North Korean model.
Trump – who is a billionaire – may not appreciate how much damage a doubling of gas taxation will do to the already precarious finances of people who aren’t even hundred-thousand-aires. People whose finances are precarious because of the serial tax-rape they endure on every dollar they earn before they even open the fuel door of their vehicle.
Federal and state taxes on income. Plus the Socialist Insecurity and Medicare mordita. Now Obamacare on top of that. Then the rent-in-perpetuity on their homes, even if long ago paid for. The Marxist property tax recommended by the bearded one himself. To make “owning” property an impossibility.
Together, these consume probably half or more of every dollar earned by most wage-slaves. It doesn’t leave much margin for a doubled gas tax, which will increase the tax they pay to about 40 percent of the cost of each gallon.
This would shame most loan sharks; not even the mafia is this cruel.
Besides, there is a much better way to fund admittedly needed infrastructure. A way that won’t stick it to the average wage-slave.
And Trump has already indicated he is favorably inclined.
That way is to divert the billions in electric car subsidies to fund roads and so forth. To stop lining the pockets of billionaires like Elon Musk at the expense of tens of millions of thousand-aires, in order to prop up his perpetually sickly “business” – which is nothing more than a fadish rent-seeking scam.
The federal EV subsidy alone is estimated at between $15-20 billion, plus another $400 million or so at the state level. This could buy a lot of infrastructure, without imposing any new taxes on hard-pressed Americans.
And it would get the potholes fixed without costing the Orange Man re-election.
He might want to consider it.