Stupid US Federal gasoline tax idea

[james]

And to think it all started from an April Fool joke...

But if you want to take it seriously, just how hard is it to disconnect and/or spoof a GPS unit? Or build your own signal transmitter, which (being lots closer than the satellites) tricks all neighboring cars into thinking they're flying at Mach 1.3 over the Antarctic.

And of course everyone seems to be neglecting the obvious: if the current gas tax isn't generating enough revenue to maintain the roads, raise it. And maybe a sales/registration tax on gas guzzlers, too.

[ethicalpaul]

The AP reported:

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/news/104249.php

http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/11260 ... 6051.shtml

At least there is one lawmaker out there thinking correctly about this stupid topic:

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., a senior member of the Transportation Committee, expressed some doubts about the experiment, saying it penalized fuel-efficient vehicles and was "very high-tech, very complicated and very controversial."

[bpapa9013]

Not to mention it would be a VERY huge initial investment for the government!

[fujii13]

Originally Posted by bpapa9013

Not to mention it would be a VERY huge initial investment for the government!

assuming the government is going to take a hit for it, which considering every other time that they've made some sort of change regarding safety, emissions, etc the consumer has had to fork out the extra.

[bpapa9013]

Well I mean there would be a huge cost for testing the units and then dealing with the setup to get them distributed.

Not to mention the huge clerical cost of setting up the infrastructure to deal with crunching the numbers and doling out the bills. And knowing the government the could find myriad other ways to waste money!

It would be really hard for them to manage to but ALL the burden of these expenses on the taxpayer with just this tax change!