"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But SUV/light-truck sales have inched up from 45% of total vehicle sales to
49%, so we'll screw ourselves again soon, either way. Foreign oil producers
were getting $700 billion/year from us not long ago. They know we're too
knuckleheaded to impose a big gasoline tax, so the Russians, Iranians, and
Venezuelans are counting on us to come through for them, once again.


And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But SUV/light-truck sales have inched up from 45% of total vehicle sales
to
49%, so we'll screw ourselves again soon, either way. Foreign oil
producers
were getting $700 billion/year from us not long ago. They know we're too
knuckleheaded to impose a big gasoline tax, so the Russians, Iranians, and
Venezuelans are counting on us to come through for them, once again.


And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

That's hard to say Wes but it could be used to keep your kids from having to
pay off every dime of the trillions of dollars being borrowed to do
something to keep you in your job today. There is five hundred trillion
dollars or more in the system that is going to have to be bled out over time
and that's a lot of money by anyones standards.

Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

You can't tax oil directly but you can target a tax that will produce the
specific desired result without much trouble at all. Especially in the age
of computerized pumps. In a healthy economy you wouldn't see gas below five
dollars per gallon if I had my way.

The people that fear such a thing most aren't American consumers Wes. It's
the producers that are scared to death oif such a thing and rightfully so.
We'd be declaring economic war on them and it's the war Bush should have
declared instead of the mess he created instead.


JC

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But SUV/light-truck sales have inched up from 45% of total vehicle sales
to
49%, so we'll screw ourselves again soon, either way. Foreign oil
producers
were getting $700 billion/year from us not long ago. They know we're too
knuckleheaded to impose a big gasoline tax, so the Russians, Iranians, and
Venezuelans are counting on us to come through for them, once again.


And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

Wes

Right here in the U.S. of A., as opposed to what will happen if we *don't*
put a floor on prices -- which is to send the equivalent amount to Saudi
Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, the U.A.R., Kuwait, etc., etc.

Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say, two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US. Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to blame
for something we did to ourselves.

We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But SUV/light-truck sales have inched up from 45% of total vehicle sales
to
49%, so we'll screw ourselves again soon, either way. Foreign oil
producers
were getting $700 billion/year from us not long ago. They know we're too
knuckleheaded to impose a big gasoline tax, so the Russians, Iranians, and
Venezuelans are counting on us to come through for them, once again.


And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

Wes

Right here in the U.S. of A., as opposed to what will happen if we *don't*
put a floor on prices -- which is to send the equivalent amount to Saudi
Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, the U.A.R., Kuwait, etc., etc.

When I asked where will the revenue go, I ment it in the sense of how it is going to be
used. Government will spend it on something. One would like to see debts paid down but I
would not bet anything worth much on that. I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will want to keep the
revenue.

Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If I make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other low wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be a big bite out of
the budget.


Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say, two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will exist by
legislation.


Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US. Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of choice?
The chance of me ever owning a car getting 30 mpg again is slight. I know the roadmap a
head.


We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us get out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of at this time.

Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Wes

PS

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

"John R. Carroll" wrote:

And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

That's hard to say Wes but it could be used to keep your kids from having to
pay off every dime of the trillions of dollars being borrowed to do
something to keep you in your job today. There is five hundred trillion
dollars or more in the system that is going to have to be bled out over time
and that's a lot of money by anyones standards.

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it. It is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.


Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of using windmills to
generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few 'green' ideas I liked.
Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for re-election.


You can't tax oil directly but you can target a tax that will produce the
specific desired result without much trouble at all. Especially in the age
of computerized pumps. In a healthy economy you wouldn't see gas below five
dollars per gallon if I had my way.

I have to ask you how far do you drive? Not everyone lives in a high density population
center. Too many solutions, including light rail seem to be city/metro centric ideas.

The people that fear such a thing most aren't American consumers Wes. It's
the producers that are scared to death oif such a thing and rightfully so.
We'd be declaring economic war on them and it's the war Bush should have
declared instead of the mess he created instead.

Last one first. I don't see Obama making big changes so far. Iraq is winding down, surge
in Afghanistan. Game still on.

Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired, the anti nukes block new nuclear power
plants. The save the fishies hate hydro. Then the endangered species types will block
transmission line corridors and wind farms. The Kennedy clan didn't like windmills in
their bailiwick.

I am not very hopeful.

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But SUV/light-truck sales have inched up from 45% of total vehicle sales
to
49%, so we'll screw ourselves again soon, either way. Foreign oil
producers
were getting $700 billion/year from us not long ago. They know we're too
knuckleheaded to impose a big gasoline tax, so the Russians, Iranians,
and
Venezuelans are counting on us to come through for them, once again.


And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

Wes

Right here in the U.S. of A., as opposed to what will happen if we *don't*
put a floor on prices -- which is to send the equivalent amount to Saudi
Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, the U.A.R., Kuwait, etc., etc.

When I asked where will the revenue go, I ment it in the sense of how it
is going to be
used. Government will spend it on something. One would like to see debts
paid down but I
would not bet anything worth much on that.

When the economy is going well, pay down the debt. When it's not, don't. One
useful way to look at this is in terms of GDP: you want the debt to go down
as a percentage of GDP when GDP is growing. Absolute numbers don't matter as
much as fractions of economic activity. When the GDP is flat or dropping,
depending on the reason for it, the smart thing often is to increase the
debt.

I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will want
to keep the
revenue.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems. Setting
good policy can help solve problems.


Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If I
make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other low
wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be a
big bite out of
the budget.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income. That
covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place their
incentive to use less gas.



Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say,
two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a
market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE
standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will
exist by
legislation.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will still
want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to encourage
them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards. The
car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it was
still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on to
the customer.

And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying to
squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the
standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they sell a
good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're just
following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep their
heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they create
some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you want a
straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a
gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.



Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch
about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US.
Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to
blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of
choice?

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the whole
country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers, and
the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

They did that in Germany for years, with a tax on engine displacement on top
of their high fuel taxes. I don't think we need an engine tax. A substantial
gasoline tax ought to do it.

The chance of me ever owning a car getting 30 mpg again is slight. I
know the roadmap a
head.

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for July,
BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many
people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think it's
the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down
again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the
market.



We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They
almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the
market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us get
out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of at
this time.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it doesn't
help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise taxes
quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps
adjusted to the state of the GDP.


Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside
for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there would
be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without the
coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we
therefore do. d8-)


Wes

PS

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

We did, Wes. And I hope yours was the same.

--
Ed Huntress

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

And where would that big gasoline tax go pray tell?

That's hard to say Wes but it could be used to keep your kids from having
to
pay off every dime of the trillions of dollars being borrowed to do
something to keep you in your job today. There is five hundred trillion
dollars or more in the system that is going to have to be bled out over
time
and that's a lot of money by anyones standards.

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it. It
is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.


Hardly. Given todays technology, you could abate the tax at the pump
completely with a card for anyone driving preferred vehicles.
Your card could also hold a profile that would "prebate" the tax. Use more -
pay more. Car pooling works, even in small shops.



Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those
indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of using
windmills to
generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few 'green'
ideas I liked.

Big Rigs are one of the few efficient uses of petroleum for transport.
NG ain't going to happen.
Taxing those guys would be foolish and there isn't any need to do so.

Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load
sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation
would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd
hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for
re-election.

Yeah, bull**** Republican values will finally have to align with reality.
There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party.
It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national level
to make hard choices.
Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have what
we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them with
that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which
is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman to
say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the country
was well served, let's not have this happen again.



You can't tax oil directly but you can target a tax that will produce the
specific desired result without much trouble at all. Especially in the age
of computerized pumps. In a healthy economy you wouldn't see gas below
five
dollars per gallon if I had my way.

I have to ask you how far do you drive?

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the road
next week.
I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at more
than four dollars per gallon.

Not everyone lives in a high density population
center. Too many solutions, including light rail seem to be city/metro
centric ideas.

The people that fear such a thing most aren't American consumers Wes. It's
the producers that are scared to death oif such a thing and rightfully so.
We'd be declaring economic war on them and it's the war Bush should have
declared instead of the mess he created instead.

Last one first. I don't see Obama making big changes so far.

Really? He isn't even our President and he's effected a huge change in
public perception.
OTOH, I've seen George W. Bush make dramatic changes in everything from his
stewardship of America to the active promotion of policies that have lead
our economy to the brink.

Iraq is winding down, surge
in Afghanistan. Game still on.

Nobody gives a **** about either of them Wes and you shouldn't either. Let
them fight their own battles. We can, and should, help out but it's their
beef. Your job, and mine, is to feed our families and grow America into the
future with a higher standard of living for us all. Their job is to explain
to us why helping them is a good idea. I haven't heard or seen anything from
them yet unless their mouthpiece is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and
I thought the dude at that adress worked for you and I.
That means not sacrificing our wants and finding a way to deliver. Convinced
as Americans all seem to be of our superior nature, the time has come to
rise to the challenge and quit blaming others for our own failure to get it
right.
When you are told the costs are to high your response ought to be something
to the effect that Americans are at least as capable as the rest of the
world - go back to the drawing board and figure something out or you're
fired.

The way to keep Saudi Arabian citizens from crashing commercial jets into
American real estate is to bankrupt their country.
The way to keep Afghanistan in line is to pulverize them remotely with
drones from time to time. They are savages.
The real problem in that area is something that you didn't mention -
Pakistan and their nukes.
We tried to get them to buy into PASS but they wouldn't. That means they can
launch at will and undetected.



Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired,

That isn't going to happen either. Look for yourself.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../gen_tabs.html


the anti nukes block new nuclear power
plants.

BS. The problem with Nukes is they take ten years to build and they are only
a bridge.
They also have another distinctive drawback. The fuel is EXPENSIVE and
nobody wants it in their back yard.
Something nobody talks about, but they actually do exist, is environmental
sacrifice zones.
Look it up.



JC

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:08:38 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


I have to ask you how far do you drive?

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the road
next week.
I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at more
than four dollars per gallon.


Sorry, but that doesn't answer the question. How far do you drive to
work each day. We don't care how far you drive to your cottage every
weekend, or to the golf course, or for "$50 hamburgers" with your
'vette club buddies.

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:08:38 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


I have to ask you how far do you drive?

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the
road
next week.
I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at
more
than four dollars per gallon.


Sorry, but that doesn't answer the question.

Actually it does. He said " I have to ask you how far do you drive?"

How far do you drive to
work each day.

It's 112 miles round trip to the vendor I was working with.
At the moment, I'll be running between LA and San Jose two or three times a
week for a month.

We don't care how far you drive to your cottage every
weekend, or to the golf course, or for "$50 hamburgers" with your
'vette club buddies.

That's pretty funny. Hamburgers at a good joint haven't been below $60.00 in
years.
LOL

JC

"John R. Carroll" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it. It
is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.


Hardly. Given todays technology, you could abate the tax at the pump
completely with a card for anyone driving preferred vehicles.
Your card could also hold a profile that would "prebate" the tax. Use more -
pay more. Car pooling works, even in small shops.

Not really. When you are in a pool and the driver or passenger has to work extra hours it
falls apart. When is the last time you car pooled? Been about 30 years for me.



Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those
indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of using
windmills to
generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few 'green'
ideas I liked.

Big Rigs are one of the few efficient uses of petroleum for transport.
NG ain't going to happen.
Taxing those guys would be foolish and there isn't any need to do so.

NG isn't going to happen? Why?

Rail is way more efficent unless you think JIT is the holy grail.


Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load
sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation
would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd
hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for
re-election.

Yeah, bull**** Republican values will finally have to align with reality.
There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party.
It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national level
to make hard choices.

Oh so the Obama administration is going to trim the UAW? I'm starting to laugh.

And to throw you a bone, when Republicans try to play as Democrats they are going to loose
every time.


Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have what
we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them with
that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which
is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman to
say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the country
was well served, let's not have this happen again.

I've written my Dems a few times. They are very good at phrasing bend over in a reply.




You can't tax oil directly but you can target a tax that will produce the
specific desired result without much trouble at all. Especially in the age
of computerized pumps. In a healthy economy you wouldn't see gas below
five
dollars per gallon if I had my way.

I have to ask you how far do you drive?

My 1985 Corvette is sporting 273,815 miles and my 1990 is going on the road
next week.
I did 20,000 miles in four months this summer on the '85, all of it at more
than four dollars per gallon.

Would you say that gas at 4 dollars really isn't a budget killer? You are speaking from
the perspective of someone that doesn't think 30K is a good wage in these times. (I think
30K would suck, I love my job, I love my job...)

I think your perspective is out of line with the main stream.



Not everyone lives in a high density population
center. Too many solutions, including light rail seem to be city/metro
centric ideas.

The people that fear such a thing most aren't American consumers Wes. It's
the producers that are scared to death of such a thing and rightfully so.
We'd be declaring economic war on them and it's the war Bush should have
declared instead of the mess he created instead.

Last one first. I don't see Obama making big changes so far.

Really? He isn't even our President and he's effected a huge change in
public perception.
OTOH, I've seen George W. Bush make dramatic changes in everything from his
stewardship of America to the active promotion of policies that have lead
our economy to the brink.

Obama hasn't done anything. He can't. He sticks to 'one President at at a time'. If I
was him, I'd use that tactic. I *hope* GWB and Obama are talking though.

Iraq is winding down, surge
in Afghanistan. Game still on.

Nobody gives a **** about either of them Wes and you shouldn't either. Let
them fight their own battles. We can, and should, help out but it's their
beef. Your job, and mine, is to feed our families and grow America into the
future with a higher standard of living for us all. Their job is to explain
to us why helping them is a good idea. I haven't heard or seen anything from
them yet unless their mouthpiece is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and
I thought the dude at that adress worked for you and I.
That means not sacrificing our wants and finding a way to deliver. Convinced
as Americans all seem to be of our superior nature, the time has come to
rise to the challenge and quit blaming others for our own failure to get it
right.
When you are told the costs are to high your response ought to be something
to the effect that Americans are at least as capable as the rest of the
world - go back to the drawing board and figure something out or you're
fired.

I bet Obama stays in Afganistan. I'm a strong believer in self defense be it at a
national or personal level. I think we get rolled on defending the world.

Considering how Nato has supported us, I'm ready to call the troops back from all of
Europe.



The way to keep Saudi Arabian citizens from crashing commercial jets into
American real estate is to bankrupt their country.
The way to keep Afghanistan in line is to pulverize them remotely with
drones from time to time. They are savages.
The real problem in that area is something that you didn't mention -
Pakistan and their nukes.
We tried to get them to buy into PASS but they wouldn't. That means they can
launch at will and undetected.

I don't know what PASS is. Likely target is India. India will deal with it.





Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired,

That isn't going to happen either. Look for yourself.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../gen_tabs.html


Thanks for the link.



the anti nukes block new nuclear power
plants.

BS. The problem with Nukes is they take ten years to build and they are only
a bridge.
They also have another distinctive drawback. The fuel is EXPENSIVE and
nobody wants it in their back yard.
Something nobody talks about, but they actually do exist, is environmental
sacrifice zones.
Look it up.

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next door.

Wes
--
Reply to:
Whiskey Echo Sierra Sierra AT Alpha Charlie Echo Golf Romeo Oscar Paul dot Charlie Charlie
Lycos address is a spam trap.

"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top of
their head. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

When I asked where will the revenue go, I ment it in the sense of how it
is going to be
used. Government will spend it on something. One would like to see debts
paid down but I
would not bet anything worth much on that.

When the economy is going well, pay down the debt. When it's not, don't. One
useful way to look at this is in terms of GDP: you want the debt to go down
as a percentage of GDP when GDP is growing. Absolute numbers don't matter as
much as fractions of economic activity. When the GDP is flat or dropping,
depending on the reason for it, the smart thing often is to increase the
debt.


Having seen how excess social security funds have been 'invested' do you really trust
government to do the right thing?


I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will want
to keep the
revenue.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems. Setting
good policy can help solve problems.


Previous response applies.


Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If I
make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other low
wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be a
big bite out of
the budget.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income. That
covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place their
incentive to use less gas.

So you belive tax policy should be a tool of social engineering?




Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say,
two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a
market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE
standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will
exist by
legislation.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will still
want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to encourage
them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards. The
car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it was
still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on to
the customer.

If you have 4 or 5 kids, something that tax policy seems to encourage, they are not going
to fit in a sub compact.

People that are not schooled in physics seem to get that more mass vs less mass means you
have a better chance of surviving a head on. So you want to force those that are not as
well off into cars they will die in when the rich roll over them?


And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying to
squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the
standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they sell a
good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

My 2001 Saturn is an excellent car. 161,000 miles and counting.

Not a great winter car since Governor Grandholm is balancing the budget by not plowing
roads. Of course that means many of us living where I do are looking at suv's again since
we need to get to work to keep that job.


This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're just
following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep their
heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they create
some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you want a
straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a
gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.


That only affects the lower level classes. If I made 300K a year, I'd drive anything I
liked. It is not clean in any way.




Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch
about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US.
Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to
blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of
choice?

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the whole
country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers, and
the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

The hummer drivers are unable to give these things away. At least there were not able to
a few months ago.

Based on your logic all private jets should be outlawed too. More efficient to fly
commercial.


They did that in Germany for years, with a tax on engine displacement on top
of their high fuel taxes. I don't think we need an engine tax. A substantial
gasoline tax ought to do it.

The chance of me ever owning a car getting 30 mpg again is slight. I
know the roadmap a
head.

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for July,
BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many
people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think it's
the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down
again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the
market.

Good Dems.




We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They
almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the
market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us get
out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of at
this time.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it doesn't
help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise taxes
quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps
adjusted to the state of the GDP.

Are you supporting the "Laufer Curve"? Seems like one side likes low taxes and another
thinks high taxes will maximize revenue.



Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside
for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there would
be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without the
coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we
therefore do. d8-)

Well, a lot of people use good sense. Usually the lower on the scale of earnings the
better sense they display. The ones thinking they are living large will shrug off gas
taxes as they live outside their means.

I'm not a fan of social engineering. Social engineering is government working backwards.

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it.
It
is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.


Hardly. Given todays technology, you could abate the tax at the pump
completely with a card for anyone driving preferred vehicles.
Your card could also hold a profile that would "prebate" the tax. Use
more -
pay more. Car pooling works, even in small shops.

Not really. When you are in a pool and the driver or passenger has to
work extra hours it
falls apart. When is the last time you car pooled? Been about 30 years
for me.

It's been a while for me too Wes but when that happened the others played
chess in the break room.




Personally, I'd roll out a graduated tax on autogas tomorrow. You could
index it to some group of economic indicators so that until those
indicators
are strong enough the tax would be zero and exempt commercial vehicles
in
the long haul/LTL industries permanently.

The first part keeps us from digging a bigger hole. Pickens idea of
using
windmills to
generate electricity and move heavy truck to NG was one of the few
'green'
ideas I liked.

Big Rigs are one of the few efficient uses of petroleum for transport.
NG ain't going to happen.
Taxing those guys would be foolish and there isn't any need to do so.

NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.


Rail is way more efficent unless you think JIT is the holy grail.

Capacity is a problem with rail. You also have to get goods to and from a
rail head.
Our highway system is an excellent choice for anything perishable like food.
There isn't a silver bullet.



Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load
sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation
would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd
hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for
re-election.

Yeah, bull**** Republican values will finally have to align with reality.
There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party.
It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national
level
to make hard choices.

Oh so the Obama administration is going to trim the UAW? I'm starting to
laugh.

Sort of. The Treasury is going to provide the debtor in possesion financing
GM needs to file for bankruptcy.
That won't eliminate the UAW but the exsting contracts will be null and
void.
The same is true with GM's retiree benefit program. It'll just be gone as
far as GM is concerned.
Still laughing?

What is actually going to happen is that Cerberus is going to end up with
GMAC, GM and Chrysler are going to become one company and you and I are
either going to provide loan gaurantees or loans to make that happen through
the auspices of a shrink wrapped bankruptcy filing.
Remember you heard it here first.
LOL


And to throw you a bone, when Republicans try to play as Democrats they
are going to loose
every time.

What we are facing isn't going to involve a partisan solution.
Anyone from either party that plays things that way will end up out of
office in short order.
Should the Toyota Republicans not get with the program, their constituents
will toss them out on their ass so fast they won't know what happened.
That's my feeling anyway. Everyone is well and truly tired of this crappy
approach to governing.



Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have
what
we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them
with
that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which
is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman
to
say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the
country
was well served, let's not have this happen again.

I've written my Dems a few times. They are very good at phrasing bend
over in a reply.

Why would you take that sitting down?
Keep writing and here's a tip. Hand write your letters.
You would be surprised at the result.


Would you say that gas at 4 dollars really isn't a budget killer? You are
speaking from
the perspective of someone that doesn't think 30K is a good wage in these
times. (I think
30K would suck, I love my job, I love my job...)

I think your perspective is out of line with the main stream.

Well, I'm getting thirty one miles to the gallon on the freeway Wes so you
are probably right.
I think everyone ought to get at least that.


Obama hasn't done anything. He can't. He sticks to 'one President at at
a time'. If I
was him, I'd use that tactic. I *hope* GWB and Obama are talking though.

I'd be surprised if there weren't cooperation but only to a point.
Bush IS still our President and that has to be respected. Obama turning into
mister big britches wouldn't go over well at all and I think he's conducting
himself well enough.


I bet Obama stays in Afganistan. I'm a strong believer in self defense be
it at a
national or personal level. I think we get rolled on defending the world.

We'll stay for a while and grow our force there. I don't see how the result
can be especially good but I don't think Obama will continue to push a bad
hand beyond reason. We'll see.


Considering how Nato has supported us, I'm ready to call the troops back
from all of
Europe.

I'd do the opposite. We need to get them commited to the fight.
Someone will need to define just exactly what the fight is first but the
world is pretty turned off to Bush right now.
Hopefully, the incoming administration will be able to take advantage of
whatever good will the change in leaders generates.
From all appearances, that could be considerable.




The way to keep Saudi Arabian citizens from crashing commercial jets into
American real estate is to bankrupt their country.
The way to keep Afghanistan in line is to pulverize them remotely with
drones from time to time. They are savages.
The real problem in that area is something that you didn't mention -
Pakistan and their nukes.
We tried to get them to buy into PASS but they wouldn't. That means they
can
launch at will and undetected.

I don't know what PASS is. Likely target is India. India will deal with
it.


Well we do not have a coherent energy policy.

The carbon crowd wants the end of coal fired,

That isn't going to happen either. Look for yourself.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../gen_tabs.html


Thanks for the link.

NP




the anti nukes block new nuclear power
plants.

BS. The problem with Nukes is they take ten years to build and they are
only
a bridge.
They also have another distinctive drawback. The fuel is EXPENSIVE and
nobody wants it in their back yard.
Something nobody talks about, but they actually do exist, is environmental
sacrifice zones.
Look it up.

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next door.

OK but I'll want to shut off your electricity for the ten years it will take
and ten years after that there will be a much better solution on the nuclear
front. Fission is what we can do today, fusion is the long term future. Be a
little patient and reap the reward. Your kids will regardless.

I've got to hop. One of my guys is having trouble with a turn key I did.
They moved everything from one shop (vendor) to another and the top dogs
woke me up at three thirty this morning to get me rolling. The Vietnamese
food in Witchata is first class if you don't mind the neighborhood.
LOL

JC

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw

Another market that has crashed Ed.


JC

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top of
their head. d8-)

But how do they taste?

Wes

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got to
believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years someone
could come up with something spiffy.

JC

JC

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:49 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw

Another market that has crashed Ed.


JC

Because you can buy cheaper crabs from China?

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:49 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster
Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw

Another market that has crashed Ed.
Because you can buy cheaper crabs from China?

People are buying fewer crabs as they stretch food budgets.
Crabbers are starting to get out of the business in the Chesapeake Bay area
all together because they can't make any money.

JC

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

When I asked where will the revenue go, I ment it in the sense of how it
is going to be
used. Government will spend it on something. One would like to see
debts
paid down but I
would not bet anything worth much on that.

When the economy is going well, pay down the debt. When it's not, don't.
One
useful way to look at this is in terms of GDP: you want the debt to go
down
as a percentage of GDP when GDP is growing. Absolute numbers don't matter
as
much as fractions of economic activity. When the GDP is flat or dropping,
depending on the reason for it, the smart thing often is to increase the
debt.


Having seen how excess social security funds have been 'invested' do you
really trust
government to do the right thing?

Disregarding the fact that social security "surplusses" are actually a net
loss after corporate tax deductions for payroll taxes, how would you have
wanted them to be "invested"?

Think about where you'd put the money. In Treasury bonds? So that we owe the
money to ourselves, and gain interest -- but with the other hand
we're...paying the interest? g

These things get simplified in the popular explanations so that people can
relate to them as if they're like a family budget. But they're not.



I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will
want
to keep the
revenue.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems. Setting
good policy can help solve problems.


Previous response applies.

If you get specific, we can follow the money around the track for an example
or two. Then the question boils down to this: Do you want that money to stay
here, where it swaps hands among Americans (efficiently or not; it doesn't
matter much), or do you want it going to Saudi Arabia?

It's our choice. My bet is that we'll continue to send it to Saudi Arabia,
because the benefits of taxing gasoline are a little too hard for the
average voter to follow. All they know is they don't like taxes -- or much
else, for that matter.



Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If
I
make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other
low
wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be
a
big bite out of
the budget.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income. That
covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place their
incentive to use less gas.

So you belive tax policy should be a tool of social engineering?

All tax policy is a tool of social engineering, and always has been. It's
just a question of whether you want to do the engineering, or to let Exxon
and Iran do the engineering by default.





Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say,
two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil
producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more
of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a
market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE
standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will
exist by
legislation.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will
still
want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to
encourage
them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards. The
car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it
was
still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on to
the customer.

If you have 4 or 5 kids, something that tax policy seems to encourage,
they are not going
to fit in a sub compact.

Well, then, put them in a horse-drawn wagon. g Too bad. They should have
smaller kids...


People that are not schooled in physics seem to get that more mass vs less
mass means you
have a better chance of surviving a head on. So you want to force those
that are not as
well off into cars they will die in when the rich roll over them?

Yup. Get rid of the riff-raff. g Get rid of 75% of the 3-ton SUVs, and
we'll all be a lot safer. Tax the hell out of them and you'll get the
numbers down.



And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying to
squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the
standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they sell
a
good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

My 2001 Saturn is an excellent car. 161,000 miles and counting.

That doesn't make it an excellent car. I have an axe that I use regularly.
It's almost 90 years old and it still has the original head. g It's a
long-lived axe but I wouldn't call it excellent.

If you want to try an excellent car of about the size of your Saturn, take a
test drive in a 3-Series BMW. As I told a couple of GM engineers one year at
IMTS (admittedly, it was a long time ago), if that doesn't make you want to
come home and kick in the doors of your Chevy ****box (or Saturn), you're
not a car guy.

The engineers were not amused, BTW, but they didn't have a rejoinder,
because neither of them had ever been inside of a BMW. That didn't stop them
from bad-mouthing the "yuppies" who bought them.


Not a great winter car since Governor Grandholm is balancing the budget by
not plowing
roads. Of course that means many of us living where I do are looking at
suv's again since
we need to get to work to keep that job.

It's a funny thing, but we got along fine without SUVs for around 70 years,
so I'm not impressed with their attitude. The best snow car I ever had was a
'64 VW bug with studded tires, which carried me to the ski slopes for years,
when everyone else was stopped dead. It got 36 mpg on the highway.



This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're just
following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep their
heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they create
some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you want
a
straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a
gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.


That only affects the lower level classes. If I made 300K a year, I'd
drive anything I
liked. It is not clean in any way.

What are you, a communist? d8-) The object is to make the economy work for
all of us, or for as many as possible. I'm not impressed with low-income
people who tell me they're deprived because they can't fuel their SUVs.



Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch
about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US.
Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to
blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of
choice?

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the
whole
country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers,
and
the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

The hummer drivers are unable to give these things away. At least there
were not able to
a few months ago.

Based on your logic all private jets should be outlawed too. More
efficient to fly
commercial.

Nowhere in anything I've said have you heard me suggest "outlawing"
anything. You're making that up in your head.



They did that in Germany for years, with a tax on engine displacement on
top
of their high fuel taxes. I don't think we need an engine tax. A
substantial
gasoline tax ought to do it.

The chance of me ever owning a car getting 30 mpg again is slight. I
know the roadmap a
head.

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for
July,
BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many
people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think it's
the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down
again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the
market.

Good Dems.

I don't think political affiliations have anything to do with how much
people bitch about what the government is doing wrong. The ones who think
they know how to do better tend to be the ones who never graduated from high
school. They have all the answers.



We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like
markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They
almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the
market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us
get
out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of
at
this time.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it
doesn't
help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise taxes
quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps
adjusted to the state of the GDP.

Are you supporting the "Laufer Curve"? Seems like one side likes low
taxes and another
thinks high taxes will maximize revenue.

The Laffer Curve is a much-abused device that Laffer himself calls a
"pedagogical device" for use in the econ classes he teaches. Of course it's
valid -- the idea has been around since the 13th century. It's just that
nobody knows where the intersection point of those two curves lies. The most
expert analysis says it's at a total tax rate of 65%. I suspect that's in
the right neighborhood.




Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside
for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there
would
be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without the
coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we
therefore do. d8-)

Well, a lot of people use good sense. Usually the lower on the scale of
earnings the
better sense they display.

Nonsense. Their lack of sense is how they got on the bottom of the scale in
the first place.

The ones thinking they are living large will shrug off gas
taxes as they live outside their means.

If they have enough money, they *can* shrug off gas taxes.


I'm not a fan of social engineering. Social engineering is government
working backwards.

Everything that government does is social engineering, especially taxation.
And big companies that have real market power do the rest of the social
engineering for us.

--
Ed Huntress

"John R. Carroll" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

If I had certainty that it would pay down debt, we could consider it.
It
is a regressive
tax as I mentioned to Ed.



Not really. When you are in a pool and the driver or passenger has to
work extra hours it
falls apart. When is the last time you car pooled? Been about 30 years
for me.

It's been a while for me too Wes but when that happened the others played
chess in the break room.


NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.

I think the idea was to divert NG consumption from electric power plants to heavy truck.
Then use wind to balance off the loss in capacity. Pickens never mentioned using EV's as
a load sink to create a sorta base load capacity but he should have. Maybe that was too
much to spoon feed people.


Rail is way more efficent unless you think JIT is the holy grail.

Capacity is a problem with rail. You also have to get goods to and from a
rail head.
Our highway system is an excellent choice for anything perishable like food.
There isn't a silver bullet.

No there isn't. I worked for a place that brought in heavy loads of material. The rail
road often lost in in a JIT enviroment. We have GPS and other technology to improve the
sitiuation.



Electric vehicles, networks and using cars that are charging as a load
sink that can be
dropped to keep traditional baseline running w/o firing up NG generation
would be a piece
of the puzzle.

Don't forget though that many voters feel the price of gas acutely. I'd
hate to have my
name on that one if I was a member of the house or senator up for
re-election.

Yeah, bull**** Republican values will finally have to align with reality.
There isn't anything conservative about today's Republican party.
It's time you realized that we elect people to office at the national
level
to make hard choices.

Oh so the Obama administration is going to trim the UAW? I'm starting to
laugh.

Sort of. The Treasury is going to provide the debtor in possesion financing
GM needs to file for bankruptcy.
That won't eliminate the UAW but the exsting contracts will be null and
void.

That is going to have to happen. I feel sorry for those affected but economic reality
can't be avoided forever.

The same is true with GM's retiree benefit program. It'll just be gone as
far as GM is concerned.
Still laughing?

No. I'm not a GM worker. I've supported the greedy beast as an employee of a couple
suppliers.


What is actually going to happen is that Cerberus is going to end up with
GMAC, GM and Chrysler are going to become one company and you and I are
either going to provide loan gaurantees or loans to make that happen through
the auspices of a shrink wrapped bankruptcy filing.
Remember you heard it here first.
LOL

You may be right. Too big to fail. Where have I heard that?



And to throw you a bone, when Republicans try to play as Democrats they
are going to loose
every time.

What we are facing isn't going to involve a partisan solution.
Anyone from either party that plays things that way will end up out of
office in short order.
Should the Toyota Republicans not get with the program, their constituents
will toss them out on their ass so fast they won't know what happened.
That's my feeling anyway. Everyone is well and truly tired of this crappy
approach to governing.

The 'Toyota' legislators are not going to vote against their constituants interests. Most
of them are in the south where wages are not as high as many blue states. Not a lot of
love for the UAW down there.




Don't pull the plug on them when they do so or we will continue to have
what
we do and don't put them in office unless you are willing to trust them
with
that responsibility.. They aren't any better than their constituents which
is why George W. Bush is such an embarassment.

You'll know things are on the right track when you write your Congressman
to
say that their vote cost you something, but thanks, the good of the
country
was well served, let's not have this happen again.

I've written my Dems a few times. They are very good at phrasing bend
over in a reply.

Why would you take that sitting down?
Keep writing and here's a tip. Hand write your letters.
You would be surprised at the result.


I have Levin, Carl Levin. There isn't a chance I could send him a message he would take
notice of unless it was flying fast, made of dense material with a good cD and aimed at
his head.

The only good Dem, John Dingle got forced out of his chairmanship on his energy committee.


Would you say that gas at 4 dollars really isn't a budget killer? You are
speaking from
the perspective of someone that doesn't think 30K is a good wage in these
times. (I think
30K would suck, I love my job, I love my job...)

I think your perspective is out of line with the main stream.

Well, I'm getting thirty one miles to the gallon on the freeway Wes so you
are probably right.
I think everyone ought to get at least that.

You get that with a vette? Sweet!


Obama hasn't done anything. He can't. He sticks to 'one President at at
a time'. If I
was him, I'd use that tactic. I *hope* GWB and Obama are talking though.

I'd be surprised if there weren't cooperation but only to a point.
Bush IS still our President and that has to be respected. Obama turning into
mister big britches wouldn't go over well at all and I think he's conducting
himself well enough.

I think Obama is playing it well. I don't lean his way but he seems to be doing the
political thing with a lot of good judgement giving what he has to balance.


I bet Obama stays in Afganistan. I'm a strong believer in self defense be
it at a
national or personal level. I think we get rolled on defending the world.

We'll stay for a while and grow our force there. I don't see how the result
can be especially good but I don't think Obama will continue to push a bad
hand beyond reason. We'll see.

I'll stand back and watch. Dropping rummy and the surge worked in Iraq.


Considering how Nato has supported us, I'm ready to call the troops back
from all of
Europe.

I'd do the opposite. We need to get them commited to the fight.
Someone will need to define just exactly what the fight is first but the
world is pretty turned off to Bush right now.
Hopefully, the incoming administration will be able to take advantage of
whatever good will the change in leaders generates.
From all appearances, that could be considerable.

I really don't think the EU has the back bone. Great Britain excepted.

I'd love to sit in when Hillary lays down the law.

I also don't believe in good will. You know we don't have friends, we have nations with
compatible interests.

You have a good night.

Never thought of a Vette as an encono car I could see my self driving one of those!

Wes

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster
Creek plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw

Another market that has crashed Ed.

Well, lobsters are down something like 40%, but I haven't priced crabs.
Those darned things cost three times as much as good steak.

--
Ed Huntress

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to
do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top
of
their head. d8-)

But how do they taste?

Like chicken.

If you go upstream near the reactor, you can get them pre-cooked.

--
Ed Huntress

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came
out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary
of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got to
believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years someone
could come up with something spiffy.

JC

With turbines, it's all about operating temperature. No ceramic turbines
yet; I predicted them 25 years ago after researching and writing about new
ceramic technologies, but fortunately I didn't put any money on it.

As a Pratt & Whitney Aircraft engineer once said to me, "son, there are
engineers here who would sell their mothers for another 200 degrees." d8-)

The peak combustion temperature in a piston engine is almost twice as high
(Kelvin) as the peak temperature in a gas turbine. That's why turbines are
limited in efficiency. The stationary applications getting those huge
efficiency numbers (61% is now the record, with a new GE turbine set) are
actually from combined-cycle turbines that run a steam turbine with the
waste heat.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came
out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary
of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got to
believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years
someone could come up with something spiffy.

JC

With turbines, it's all about operating temperature. No ceramic turbines
yet; I predicted them 25 years ago after researching and writing about new
ceramic technologies, but fortunately I didn't put any money on it.

As a Pratt & Whitney Aircraft engineer once said to me, "son, there are
engineers here who would sell their mothers for another 200 degrees." d8-)

They should have been paying better attention then Ed.
I did the first ceramic stators for the F-22 in 1998/99.
Honeywell, and they are still a customer, has had them in production in Mesa
Arizona for several years now.
What you don't want to ask is the price but the latest production versions
of the plane have about 40 percent more thrust.
I think if you can find an on lone history somewhere you'll see the jump in
the spec. for the system.
LOL

See me later, I really have to boogie.

JC

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came
out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary
of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got
to believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years
someone could come up with something spiffy.

JC

With turbines, it's all about operating temperature. No ceramic turbines
yet; I predicted them 25 years ago after researching and writing about
new ceramic technologies, but fortunately I didn't put any money on it.

As a Pratt & Whitney Aircraft engineer once said to me, "son, there are
engineers here who would sell their mothers for another 200 degrees."
d8-)

They should have been paying better attention then Ed.
I did the first ceramic stators for the F-22 in 1998/99.
Honeywell, and they are still a customer, has had them in production in
Mesa Arizona for several years now.

I should have pointed out I was talking about automotive turbines, and
rotors are the hard part because there's no practical way to cool them in
very small turbines. The P&W reference was an aside about operating
temperature of gas turbines in general.

The hope for automobile/truck turbines was for Norton's polymer-mixed
injection-molding method for silicon nitride. They could make them fairly
cheap, and they did have some good prototypes they made for the driven
turbines in turbochargers. But there was enough diamond grinding involved to
bring them to finished dimensions that they never got the car makers
interested. The aircraft turbine people showed some interest but it never
caught on, for reasons I never tracked down.

What you don't want to ask is the price but the latest production versions
of the plane have about 40 percent more thrust.
I think if you can find an on lone history somewhere you'll see the jump
in the spec. for the system.
LOL

See me later, I really have to boogie.

OK.

--
Ed Huntress

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:37:28 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top of
their head. d8-)

You're kidding, right? There have been no radioactive releases from
there, have there?

I lived next door to (15 crow-miles) and swam downstream of the San
Onofre nuke plant for 34 years and never knew it was there other than
the occasional test of the warning horns. Those were highly publicized
prior to testing so nobody got hurt or panicked.
http://tinyurl.com/mhs6k

--
We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:35:07 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
If you get specific, we can follow the money around the track for an example
or two. Then the question boils down to this: Do you want that money to stay
here, where it swaps hands among Americans (efficiently or not; it doesn't
matter much), or do you want it going to Saudi Arabia?
snip


It all depends if you regard yourself as an American citizen or a
"Citizen of the world."

Far too many of out governmental officials (e.g. "trade
representatives") and CEOs are now "Citizens of the world" even
though their salaries and pensions are paid by the US taxpayers
and nominally American corporations.

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:37:28 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to
do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top
of
their head. d8-)

You're kidding, right? There have been no radioactive releases from
there, have there?

I'm kidding, right. But not about the size of the crabs. They'd make a good
nightmare. Did you ever see the movie "The Loved One," where Mr. Joyboy
tells about his bad dream, in which the lobsters are tearing apart Mom's
flesh? (Mom weighed 400+ pounds.) I think these are the critters.


I lived next door to (15 crow-miles) and swam downstream of the San
Onofre nuke plant for 34 years and never knew it was there other than
the occasional test of the warning horns. Those were highly publicized
prior to testing so nobody got hurt or panicked.

Hmmm. This explains a few things. d8-)

http://tinyurl.com/mhs6k

--
Ed Huntress

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:43:47 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:37:28 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Wes" wrote in message
...

snip

I've said before and I'll say it again. Put a nuke plant next door and
give me reasonably
priced power and I'm all for it. Beats having a chemical plant next
door.

Wes

Nukes are underappreciated. The cooling water stream from our Oyster Creek
plant grows the biggest crabs you ever saw -- they're as big as roosters.
And that green glow makes them easier to catch at night. All you have to
do
is get past the extra claw or two and the third eye sticking out the top
of
their head. d8-)

You're kidding, right? There have been no radioactive releases from
there, have there?

I'm kidding, right. But not about the size of the crabs. They'd make a good
nightmare. Did you ever see the movie "The Loved One," where Mr. Joyboy
tells about his bad dream, in which the lobsters are tearing apart Mom's
flesh? (Mom weighed 400+ pounds.) I think these are the critters.

Warmer waters breeds larger wildlife, but that's not always a bad
thing. I wouldn't mind getting a kilo of meat off _each_ crab leg.


I lived next door to (15 crow-miles) and swam downstream of the San
Onofre nuke plant for 34 years and never knew it was there other than
the occasional test of the warning horns. Those were highly publicized
prior to testing so nobody got hurt or panicked.

Hmmm. This explains a few things. d8-)

Turd.

--
We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:20:36 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:52:07 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:



NG isn't going to happen? Why?

It isn't any better than diesel.
The hot ticket for long haul big rigs is gas turbines. Ford or GM came out
with one years back but it was expensive up front and people were leary of
technology more so than today. The damned things burn about anything.



Only problem is, like jets, there thermal efficiency is DISMALL.

Not over the road.
That's the only applicatoin where they make sense.
They were actually pretty good ( about equally efficient) and I've got to
believe with the advances in techno;ogy over the last thirty years someone
could come up with something spiffy.

JC

JC

The magnificent 'Big Red' Ford's US experimental 600hp gas turbine
truck did a couple of coast-to-coast promotional trips in the early
sixties. And what a beast...it managed the trip at an average 40mph
delivering a eye-watering 2.9mpg. Well fuel was cheap then.

In the mid-nineties Volvo unveiled its Experimental Concept Truck
which had a constant speed gas turbine engine powering an electric
generator and traction motor. Thus the GT's greatest positive
attribute---i.e.best efficiency at a constant speed and load---were
fully utilised.

Now Turbine Truck Engines of Florida is sucking up R&D dollars on
development of their "detonation cycle" gas turbine with regenerators
(heat exchangers to preheat the intake air and reclaim some exhaust
heat) that they claim will increase fficiency by 30% or something like
that..

I'll believe it when I see it.
Currently the best technology out there for over-the-road transport is
propane augmented common rail turbo-diesel..
Not aware of any manufacturer using even that technology on a large
scale.

"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:



Having seen how excess social security funds have been 'invested' do you
really trust
government to do the right thing?

Disregarding the fact that social security "surplusses" are actually a net
loss after corporate tax deductions for payroll taxes, how would you have
wanted them to be "invested"?

Think about where you'd put the money. In Treasury bonds? So that we owe the
money to ourselves, and gain interest -- but with the other hand
we're...paying the interest? g

I know where you are going. The sum of money in social security is so large that the
government would end up having an interest in about every publicly traded firm and also
other countries treasury bills and stock. That could prove unacceptable to many people.



These things get simplified in the popular explanations so that people can
relate to them as if they're like a family budget. But they're not.

I know that.





I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will
want
to keep the
revenue.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems. Setting
good policy can help solve problems.

So you are saying if keeping gas at 4 dollars proves good policy, government will
willingly give up the additional revenue when the price of oil rises? Since I'm
predicting the future, 'feelings' or 'gut check' matter.



Previous response applies.

If you get specific, we can follow the money around the track for an example
or two. Then the question boils down to this: Do you want that money to stay
here, where it swaps hands among Americans (efficiently or not; it doesn't
matter much), or do you want it going to Saudi Arabia?

Well when we are getting it cheap, I'd rather drain theirs. Our exploitable physical
resources are a huge part of the wealth of this country.


It's our choice. My bet is that we'll continue to send it to Saudi Arabia,
because the benefits of taxing gasoline are a little too hard for the
average voter to follow. All they know is they don't like taxes -- or much
else, for that matter.


About half the people don't mind taxes at all since they really don't pay them. That is a
dangerous point to be at.





Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad. If
I
make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other
low
wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would be
a
big bite out of
the budget.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income. That
covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place their
incentive to use less gas.


Got to maintain that 50% of Americans that don't pay taxes.

So you belive tax policy should be a tool of social engineering?

All tax policy is a tool of social engineering, and always has been. It's
just a question of whether you want to do the engineering, or to let Exxon
and Iran do the engineering by default.

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power destroy.






Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over, say,
two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil
producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more
of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a
market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE
standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will
exist by
legislation.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will
still
want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to
encourage
them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards. The
car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it
was
still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on to
the customer.

If you have 4 or 5 kids, something that tax policy seems to encourage,
they are not going
to fit in a sub compact.

Well, then, put them in a horse-drawn wagon. g Too bad. They should have
smaller kids...

Let them eat cake?



People that are not schooled in physics seem to get that more mass vs less
mass means you
have a better chance of surviving a head on. So you want to force those
that are not as
well off into cars they will die in when the rich roll over them?

Yup. Get rid of the riff-raff. g Get rid of 75% of the 3-ton SUVs, and
we'll all be a lot safer. Tax the hell out of them and you'll get the
numbers down.

The rich or upper middle class will still have their SUV's. The well off get to be
flattened. Btw, the less well off will be running tin cans that have been lightened up to
achieve higher cafe numbers so more of the SUV's can be sold. That is a distortion.




And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying to
squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the
standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they sell
a
good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

My 2001 Saturn is an excellent car. 161,000 miles and counting.

That doesn't make it an excellent car. I have an axe that I use regularly.
It's almost 90 years old and it still has the original head. g It's a
long-lived axe but I wouldn't call it excellent.

Excellent is subjective. It was reasonably inexpensive. Seldom let me down and gets me
to work and somehow hasn't rusted out on my Northern Michigan roads.


If you want to try an excellent car of about the size of your Saturn, take a
test drive in a 3-Series BMW. As I told a couple of GM engineers one year at
IMTS (admittedly, it was a long time ago), if that doesn't make you want to
come home and kick in the doors of your Chevy ****box (or Saturn), you're
not a car guy.

I'm sure it is a fun car. Of course the entry price and price of repair parts might be a
bit more than I want to pay for transportation.


The engineers were not amused, BTW, but they didn't have a rejoinder,
because neither of them had ever been inside of a BMW. That didn't stop them
from bad-mouthing the "yuppies" who bought them.

I would hope these engineers designing cars had experience in all the competitors product.
One the joys of flying somewhere on business was getting to try out a new car (rental) at
my employers expense.



Not a great winter car since Governor Grandholm is balancing the budget by
not plowing
roads. Of course that means many of us living where I do are looking at
suv's again since
we need to get to work to keep that job.

It's a funny thing, but we got along fine without SUVs for around 70 years,
so I'm not impressed with their attitude. The best snow car I ever had was a
'64 VW bug with studded tires, which carried me to the ski slopes for years,
when everyone else was stopped dead. It got 36 mpg on the highway.

Well if I was driving my 68 Plymouth with limited slip, I could blaze my own trial but
that cars days are over. Studded tires are illegal here btw. I'd buy and mount them in a
heart beat if legal.

Yes, the Beetle was a good snow car. And if the heating system still worked, warmed up
pretty quick.



This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're just
following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep their
heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they create
some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you want
a
straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a
gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.


That only affects the lower level classes. If I made 300K a year, I'd
drive anything I
liked. It is not clean in any way.

What are you, a communist? d8-) The object is to make the economy work for
all of us, or for as many as possible. I'm not impressed with low-income
people who tell me they're deprived because they can't fuel their SUVs.

I'm showing that Libertarian side again.

Actually minivans are pretty good idea for large families.



Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch
about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US.
Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to
blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom of
choice?

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the
whole
country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers,
and
the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

The hummer drivers are unable to give these things away. At least there
were not able to
a few months ago.

I notice a lot on the road now. I don't know the typical price of a Hummer but I have a
feeling if that didn't scare off the buyer, the gas tax won't either.

Based on your logic all private jets should be outlawed too. More
efficient to fly
commercial.

Nowhere in anything I've said have you heard me suggest "outlawing"
anything. You're making that up in your head.

Taxing to death is close to outlawing and it takes a legislation to create a tax.




[snip]

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for
July,
BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many
people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think it's
the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down
again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the
market.

Good Dems.

I don't think political affiliations have anything to do with how much
people bitch about what the government is doing wrong. The ones who think
they know how to do better tend to be the ones who never graduated from high
school. They have all the answers.

Well, those that went to elite schools have been running this country for years. Look
where we are now.



We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like
markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They
almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the
market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us
get
out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out of
at
this time.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it
doesn't
help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise taxes
quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps
adjusted to the state of the GDP.

Are you supporting the "Laufer Curve"? Seems like one side likes low
taxes and another
thinks high taxes will maximize revenue.

The Laffer Curve is a much-abused device that Laffer himself calls a
"pedagogical device" for use in the econ classes he teaches. Of course it's
valid -- the idea has been around since the 13th century. It's just that
nobody knows where the intersection point of those two curves lies. The most
expert analysis says it's at a total tax rate of 65%. I suspect that's in
the right neighborhood.

I'm wiping my coffee off the screen atm. God only asked for 10%. Btw, the Treasury will
always accept donations if you feel you are not paying enough.






Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month aside
for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there
would
be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without the
coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we
therefore do. d8-)

Well, a lot of people use good sense. Usually the lower on the scale of
earnings the
better sense they display.

Nonsense. Their lack of sense is how they got on the bottom of the scale in
the first place.

What? I think we better look at those that thought their house was a piggy bank. The
people I know that are standing on their hind legs and providing for themself just want to
pay the thing out.

Credit Default Swap isn't something us blue and grey collar types were responsible for. Y


The ones thinking they are living large will shrug off gas
taxes as they live outside their means.

If they have enough money, they *can* shrug off gas taxes.

So we are back to the war on the middle class.


I'm not a fan of social engineering. Social engineering is government
working backwards.

Everything that government does is social engineering, especially taxation.
And big companies that have real market power do the rest of the social
engineering for us.

Government engineers by force. Companies have to sell you a product. Big difference.

Happy New Year btw,

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:



Having seen how excess social security funds have been 'invested' do you
really trust
government to do the right thing?

Disregarding the fact that social security "surplusses" are actually a net
loss after corporate tax deductions for payroll taxes, how would you have
wanted them to be "invested"?

Think about where you'd put the money. In Treasury bonds? So that we owe
the
money to ourselves, and gain interest -- but with the other hand
we're...paying the interest? g

I know where you are going. The sum of money in social security is so
large that the
government would end up having an interest in about every publicly traded
firm and also
other countries treasury bills and stock. That could prove unacceptable
to many people.

There are only so many things a government can invest in, as a passive
investor. So they spend it on the "investments" that improve infrastructure,
or education, basic science, etc. There are no "trust funds," as you're
doubtless aware.



These things get simplified in the popular explanations so that people can
relate to them as if they're like a family budget. But they're not.

I know that.





I have a feeling government will just get
addicted to it and squander it. Then when oil prices rise they will
want
to keep the
revenue.

Your feelings are interesting, but feelings don't solve problems.
Setting
good policy can help solve problems.

So you are saying if keeping gas at 4 dollars proves good policy,
government will
willingly give up the additional revenue when the price of oil rises?
Since I'm
predicting the future, 'feelings' or 'gut check' matter.

If we had a good policy, the tax would slide a bit with market prices -- but
only a bit, because, if you just taxed the difference between market price
and some target figure, the suppliers would have no incentive to keep their
prices down. You actually would have a counterproductive incentive if you
did it that way.

Most of the policy ideas for a gas tax set a floor price, and then have a
declining tax rate as market prices rise. But the declining rate is only
partial; higher market prices must result in higher prices at the pump. You
can't just flatten the pump price.




Previous response applies.

If you get specific, we can follow the money around the track for an
example
or two. Then the question boils down to this: Do you want that money to
stay
here, where it swaps hands among Americans (efficiently or not; it doesn't
matter much), or do you want it going to Saudi Arabia?

Well when we are getting it cheap, I'd rather drain theirs.

The more we tax it, the more it drains theirs. They need an income and lower
prices means they have to pump more oil. At least, many of them do,
including Venezuela.

But the object is to reduce our dependency. With cheap prices, you just
perpetuate it, no matter where the oil comes from.

Our exploitable physical
resources are a huge part of the wealth of this country.

Sure. But you won't have much left for very long if you don't shift the
price to encourage less use of oil, and more use of alternatives.



It's our choice. My bet is that we'll continue to send it to Saudi Arabia,
because the benefits of taxing gasoline are a little too hard for the
average voter to follow. All they know is they don't like taxes -- or much
else, for that matter.


About half the people don't mind taxes at all since they really don't pay
them. That is a
dangerous point to be at.

That doesn't stop tax increases from being the third rail of politics.
Advocating a tax increase has killed many political careers.




Next, a gas tax is regressive. Something I keep being told is bad.
If
I
make 500K a
year, gas isn't a problem. If I was working at walmart or some other
low
wage job out in
flyover country where the comute tends to be over many miles it would
be
a
big bite out of
the budget.

The serious gas tax plans include a credit, usually based on income.
That
covers lower-income people financially while still leaving in place
their
incentive to use less gas.


Got to maintain that 50% of Americans that don't pay taxes.

Nonsense! Practically everyone pays taxes -- sales taxes, payroll taxes, gas
taxes...and property taxes, either directly or, if they rent, indirectly.


So you belive tax policy should be a tool of social engineering?

All tax policy is a tool of social engineering, and always has been. It's
just a question of whether you want to do the engineering, or to let Exxon
and Iran do the engineering by default.

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of course it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be nothing
worth destroying.

What's the problem with getting involved in your politics and making things
happen the way you think they should? That's the way this government was
designed to work. If you don't, it doesn't work. And if you don't get
involved, you have no room to complain.


Put a $4 floor on prices, using an adjustable tax (phased in over,
say,
two
years), and it will keep a lid on demand that will force the oil
producers
to play at a much lower different supply/demand equilibrium; keep more
of
the money in the US; shift the market so that US car builders have a
market
for fuel-efficient cars; create a market for alternative energy; etc.

US car builders don't need a market. The dems have increased CAFE
standards and I suspect
the standards are going be tweeked upwards very soon. The market will
exist by
legislation.

That doesn't create a market. That just distorts a market. People will
still
want bigger cars and the car makers will do everything they can to
encourage
them to buy them, just like they did with the original CAFE standards.
The
car makers paid a penalty if they made too many low-mileage cars but it
was
still more profitable for them to make the cars and pass the penalty on
to
the customer.

If you have 4 or 5 kids, something that tax policy seems to encourage,
they are not going
to fit in a sub compact.

Well, then, put them in a horse-drawn wagon. g Too bad. They should have
smaller kids...

Let them eat cake?

Let them drive something that makes sense. They're already getting tax
deductions for their rug rats, fer chrissake. d8-)

If you're going to have multiple kids and you want to drive a big car, you'd
better make a big income. If you don't make a big income, then either don't
have all those kids, or don't expect to be able to drive a car that you
might have if you were loaded.

I have a hard time following you here, Wes. On one hand, you sound like a
libertarian, on the other, like an egalitarian. Big cars and big SUVs are
for people with lots of money. If you don't have lots of money, then don't
expect to live like you *do* have lots of money. I don't, but I have no
problem with people who have lots of money buying what they want. If it
hurts me -- and sucking up gas at 12 mpg hurts me because they're driving up
demand for oil -- then those people should pay for that external cost
they're imposing on the rest of us. Tax 'em. If they buy a big house, it's
no skin off my nose. So tax rates on real estate values should actually
decline somewhat as prices go up. They may be soaking up slightly more
services than I am (it requires more fire engines to put out their house
fires g), but not a straight multiple of their house value.



People that are not schooled in physics seem to get that more mass vs
less
mass means you
have a better chance of surviving a head on. So you want to force those
that are not as
well off into cars they will die in when the rich roll over them?

Yup. Get rid of the riff-raff. g Get rid of 75% of the 3-ton SUVs, and
we'll all be a lot safer. Tax the hell out of them and you'll get the
numbers down.

The rich or upper middle class will still have their SUV's. The well off
get to be
flattened.

I assume you mean that the *less* well-off get to be flattened. g You
bought that argument from GM and Ford really well. They LOVE that argument.
They don't want you to think about the fact that they could build safer
small cars, or that we could simply reduce the number of multi-ton barges on
our roads and increase our statistical chances of remaining intact by a
large margin.

Btw, the less well off will be running tin cans that have been lightened
up to
achieve higher cafe numbers so more of the SUV's can be sold. That is a
distortion.

CAFE is a distortion that produces several unhappy incentives. Taxing fuel
is a lot better.


And then the small cars they make are junk, because they're just trying
to
squeeze a distorted market and they're building the cars to meet the
standard. That's why their small cars are mostly junk now. When they
sell
a
good one, it's usually because they build it overseas and imported it.

My 2001 Saturn is an excellent car. 161,000 miles and counting.

That doesn't make it an excellent car. I have an axe that I use regularly.
It's almost 90 years old and it still has the original head. g It's a
long-lived axe but I wouldn't call it excellent.

Excellent is subjective. It was reasonably inexpensive. Seldom let me
down and gets me
to work and somehow hasn't rusted out on my Northern Michigan roads.


If you want to try an excellent car of about the size of your Saturn, take
a
test drive in a 3-Series BMW. As I told a couple of GM engineers one year
at
IMTS (admittedly, it was a long time ago), if that doesn't make you want
to
come home and kick in the doors of your Chevy ****box (or Saturn), you're
not a car guy.

I'm sure it is a fun car. Of course the entry price and price of repair
parts might be a
bit more than I want to pay for transportation.

Sure. You pay more for excellent cars. I wouldn't buy one, but I'm a
card-carrying cheapskate.

The engineers were not amused, BTW, but they didn't have a rejoinder,
because neither of them had ever been inside of a BMW. That didn't stop
them
from bad-mouthing the "yuppies" who bought them.

I would hope these engineers designing cars had experience in all the
competitors product.
One the joys of flying somewhere on business was getting to try out a new
car (rental) at
my employers expense.

I agree. But they did not. I happened to sit with these guys in a lunch
cafeteria at IMTS, and I was appalled at what I heard. They didn't know much
of anything about their competition, and they didn't care. They were good
and ****ed off by the time I left and they were glad to see me go. d8-)

In my travels and coverage of the car manufacturing industry I've heard that
refrain more than once.




Not a great winter car since Governor Grandholm is balancing the budget
by
not plowing
roads. Of course that means many of us living where I do are looking at
suv's again since
we need to get to work to keep that job.

It's a funny thing, but we got along fine without SUVs for around 70
years,
so I'm not impressed with their attitude. The best snow car I ever had was
a
'64 VW bug with studded tires, which carried me to the ski slopes for
years,
when everyone else was stopped dead. It got 36 mpg on the highway.

Well if I was driving my 68 Plymouth with limited slip, I could blaze my
own trial but
that cars days are over. Studded tires are illegal here btw. I'd buy and
mount them in a
heart beat if legal.

Yes, the Beetle was a good snow car. And if the heating system still
worked, warmed up
pretty quick.

The trick was to get one or two of those J.C. Whitney fans that you stuck
under the back seat, which drew air through the heater jackets on the
exhaust pipes and blew it into the car's windshield heaters and floor vents.
They were $15 each and they made all the difference. They sold a lot of them
in Michigan.




This is not maliciousness, greed, or collusion on their part. They're
just
following the market incentives as we've set them up, trying to keep
their
heads above water. CAFE standards are better than nothing but they
create
some perverse incentives that work against us in the long run. If you
want
a
straightforward, clean incentive that pushes in the right direction, a
gasoline tax is the best one anyone has come up with.


That only affects the lower level classes. If I made 300K a year, I'd
drive anything I
liked. It is not clean in any way.

What are you, a communist? d8-) The object is to make the economy work for
all of us, or for as many as possible. I'm not impressed with low-income
people who tell me they're deprived because they can't fuel their SUVs.

I'm showing that Libertarian side again.

Actually minivans are pretty good idea for large families.

Sure. I had one for 15 years. I sometimes wish I had it back.




Other than that, there will be lots for short-sighted people to bitch
about.
And they will. There's little chance any of this can happen in the US.
Most
likely we'll just go through the same old cycle again, in which we buy
bigger cars and trucks when prices are low, then prices go up and we
all
bitch, and US car builders tank again. Then we'll find other people to
blame
for something we did to ourselves.

Well foolish people will buy bigger cars. Should we out law freedom
of
choice?

Don't outlaw it. Just make it expensive to make choices that hurt the
whole
country. There's an external cost when thousands of people buy Hummers,
and
the external cost is higher gas prices for everyone.

The hummer drivers are unable to give these things away. At least there
were not able to
a few months ago.

I notice a lot on the road now. I don't know the typical price of a
Hummer but I have a
feeling if that didn't scare off the buyer, the gas tax won't either.

Based on your logic all private jets should be outlawed too. More
efficient to fly
commercial.

Nowhere in anything I've said have you heard me suggest "outlawing"
anything. You're making that up in your head.

Taxing to death is close to outlawing and it takes a legislation to create
a tax.

Well, then, don't tax it to death. Just tax it into a deep coma. g


[snip]

As we can see already from the truck/car sales ratio (that 45% was for
July,
BTW; the 49% was for November. I forgot to mention that), a great many
people don't. They just blame it all on market manipulation and think
it's
the government's job to ferret out the evildoers and to get prices down
again. What they don't recognize is that they're the ones regulating the
market.

Good Dems.

I don't think political affiliations have anything to do with how much
people bitch about what the government is doing wrong. The ones who think
they know how to do better tend to be the ones who never graduated from
high
school. They have all the answers.

Well, those that went to elite schools have been running this country for
years. Look
where we are now.

Hmm. How about, the most powerful country in the world, with one of the
strongest economies?


We doom ourselves to this cycle. The market is just behaving like
markets
do, despite the mostly futile efforts of OPEC to control prices. They
almost
never succeed at that and they're failing big-time right now. But the
market
will do it for them, once economies bottom out of this slump.

Likely so but low energy cost may be one of those things that help us
get
out of this
slump. You seem to be advocating digging a deeper hole to climb out
of
at
this time.

It will be a shot of heroin -- it can put a lid on the pain, but it
doesn't
help anything in the long run. But timing is important. If you raise
taxes
quickly now, you'll stall any recovery. It has to be phased in, perhaps
adjusted to the state of the GDP.

Are you supporting the "Laufer Curve"? Seems like one side likes low
taxes and another
thinks high taxes will maximize revenue.

The Laffer Curve is a much-abused device that Laffer himself calls a
"pedagogical device" for use in the econ classes he teaches. Of course
it's
valid -- the idea has been around since the 13th century. It's just that
nobody knows where the intersection point of those two curves lies. The
most
expert analysis says it's at a total tax rate of 65%. I suspect that's in
the right neighborhood.

I'm wiping my coffee off the screen atm. God only asked for 10%.

God didn't offer us aircraft carriers, MRIs, air traffic controllers, or the
Internet. He didn't do medical research or transportation research; nor did
he run a police force or fire department.

Btw, the Treasury will
always accept donations if you feel you are not paying enough.

Sure. And you can write it off on your taxes. d8-)


Right now I'm driving the same, putting a extra 200 bucks a month
aside
for when the
economy goes over the edge. Hope it doesn't happen.

Well, if we could count on everyone to use good sense like that, there
would
be no need for any regulation and we'd be making smart choices without
the
coercion of gasoline taxes. But we can't, because people don't, and we
therefore do. d8-)

Well, a lot of people use good sense. Usually the lower on the scale of
earnings the
better sense they display.

Nonsense. Their lack of sense is how they got on the bottom of the scale
in
the first place.

What? I think we better look at those that thought their house was a
piggy bank. The
people I know that are standing on their hind legs and providing for
themself just want to
pay the thing out.

The people who are standing on everyone else's legs own three or four houses
free and clear. d8-)


Credit Default Swap isn't something us blue and grey collar types were
responsible for.

Of course not. Most of them wouldn't know how if they wanted to.

I don't see much evidence of good sense from people at the bottom of the
economic scale, Wes. Mostly what I see is people playing by other people's
rules, which is why they're at the bottom of the economic scale.

The ones thinking they are living large will shrug off gas
taxes as they live outside their means.

If they have enough money, they *can* shrug off gas taxes.

So we are back to the war on the middle class.

We are back at the fact that if you want play like you have money, then
you'd better have money. If you clerk at a grocery store or work in a tool
crib, don't expect anyone to feel sympathy if you can't afford enough gas
for your Ford Expedition.



I'm not a fan of social engineering. Social engineering is government
working backwards.

Everything that government does is social engineering, especially
taxation.
And big companies that have real market power do the rest of the social
engineering for us.

Government engineers by force. Companies have to sell you a product. Big
difference.

You can always decide not to use gasoline or buy food in a supermarket. You
can hide in a bunker if you want to. Otherwise, you can hardly turn around
and spit without being under the thumb of big corporations everywhere.


Happy New Year btw,


You too, Wes. I've started early. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of course it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's how it's
used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy. By taking
a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's how it's
used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy. By taking
a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

Ed, you asked where the "silly aphorism" came from. Now you know.

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power
destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of
course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be
nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any
state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's how
it's
used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy. By
taking
a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

Ed, you asked where the "silly aphorism" came from. Now you know.

Right. Thanks for the silly aphorism reference, Joe. g

The funny thing is that I remember McCulloch very well, but not that quote.
The case was about federal supremacy -- which was affirmed by Marshall's
decision. I think the aphorism has taken on a life of its own, stripped of
context, and that people who quote it would be nonplussed to learn what
Webster was talking about: the authority of the federal government to set
tax and banking policy, over the heads of the states.

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power
destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of
course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be
nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any
state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's how
it's used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy. By
taking a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

Ed, you asked where the "silly aphorism" came from. Now you know.

Right. Thanks for the silly aphorism reference, Joe. g

The funny thing is that I remember McCulloch very well, but not that quote.
The case was about federal supremacy -- which was affirmed by Marshall's
decision. I think the aphorism has taken on a life of its own, stripped of
context, and that people who quote it would be nonplussed to learn what
Webster was talking about: the authority of the federal government to set
tax and banking policy, over the heads of the states.

I don't know that Webster would agree with you here. I think that while
there was a specific case then at hand, the statement was general. It's
clearly true. Let's say that by some mistake a SUV-hater is anointed
King, and immediately imposes a very large annual tax on SUVs. How long
will SUVs survive?

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power
destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of
course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be
nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any
state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's
how
it's used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy.
By
taking a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

Ed, you asked where the "silly aphorism" came from. Now you know.

Right. Thanks for the silly aphorism reference, Joe. g

The funny thing is that I remember McCulloch very well, but not that
quote.
The case was about federal supremacy -- which was affirmed by Marshall's
decision. I think the aphorism has taken on a life of its own, stripped
of
context, and that people who quote it would be nonplussed to learn what
Webster was talking about: the authority of the federal government to set
tax and banking policy, over the heads of the states.

I don't know that Webster would agree with you here. I think that while
there was a specific case then at hand, the statement was general. It's
clearly true.

As Justice Holmes said, "hard cases make bad law." McCulloch was a hard
case -- one of the series of cases that attempted to sort out the relations
of the states to the federal government, with absolutely no Constitutional
guidance to go by.

Generalizing the specific arguments used in hard cases leads to absurd
conclusions. Of course the power, as Webster said, "an unlimited power to
tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy," is a great power that has to
be used judiciously. But Webster argued several cases affirming the federal
power over the states. What he was talking about was the danger of
destroying federal power by unlimited power of the states to tax. That's the
irony here, which is lost on the small-government conservatives,
particularly those who rail against the federal government.

Let's say that by some mistake a SUV-hater is anointed
King, and immediately imposes a very large annual tax on SUVs. How long
will SUVs survive?

Hopefully, not for long. d8-)

There are two ways SUVs can die out. One is by driving us all into penury by
driving ever deeper the hook that the Arab states have in our throats. The
other is by shifting the supply/demand curve by making them very expensive,
hopefully by means of a gas tax that will help us get off our dependency.

Which do you prefer? Do you like sending $700 billion/year to Middle Eastern
countries that want to destroy us? Is that your idea of the benefit of
letting the market determine the outcome?

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:03:15 -0500, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


[snip]

I'm a fan of less engineering. The power to tax is the power
destroy.

I don't know where you got that aphorism, but it's a silly one. Of
course
it
can provide the power do destroy. But without it, there would be
nothing
worth destroying.

Daniel Webster and John Marshall.

Google is your friend: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1798.html

Joe Gwinn

Except that's not what Webster was arguing. He was arguing FOR federal
taxation power over the *states*, in McCullouch v. Maryland. He wasn't
talking about the value of taxation in general. Nor was Marshall, who
essentially quoted Webster.

The irony here is that the example you're citing is the origin of the
jurisprudence concerning the Necessary and Proper clause of the
Constitution, which says that the federal government can override any
state
law that interferes with federal power.

As I said, of course it can provide the power to destroy, if that's how
it's used. Without it, used properly, there's nothing left to destroy. By
taking a quote out of context Wes has flipped its meaning on its back.

Ed, you asked where the "silly aphorism" came from. Now you know.

Right. Thanks for the silly aphorism reference, Joe. g

The funny thing is that I remember McCulloch very well, but not that quote.
The case was about federal supremacy -- which was affirmed by Marshall's
decision. I think the aphorism has taken on a life of its own, stripped of
context, and that people who quote it would be nonplussed to learn what
Webster was talking about: the authority of the federal government to set
tax and banking policy, over the heads of the states.

I don't know that Webster would agree with you here. I think that while
there was a specific case then at hand, the statement was general. It's
clearly true. Let's say that by some mistake a SUV-hater is anointed
King, and immediately imposes a very large annual tax on SUVs. How long
will SUVs survive?

Joe Gwinn


Indeed. the statement is most valid.

Ed just doesnt like to think about the implications and tends to try to
avoid them.

Gunner

"Upon Roosevelt's death in 1945, H. L. Mencken predicted in his diary
that Roosevelt would be remembered as a great president, "maybe even
alongside Washington and Lincoln," opining that Roosevelt "had every
quality that morons esteem in their heroes.""