DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Taxes - and why we'll never get ahead

A few comments. What I'm about to post reminds me of the California city that, a number of years ago, was asked to reduce water consumption. Conserve water. The town/city did conserve. They conserved so much, that at the end of the year, the town/city said "hey, we need to raise your water rates as we didn't make enough to pay our bills." In other words - thanks for saving water - now you have to pay more for using less.


Here's an interesting article: Why Your Gas Taxes Are Going Up, Sooner Rather Than Later

https://www.yahoo.com/autos/why-your-gas-taxes-are-going-up-sooner-rather-118211802837.html


We're all supposed to save gas. Conserve. Use less, save the world (who cares that the rest of the world doesn't give a flying leap). Go electric, we're told. Buy vehicles that get better gas mileage, even if it costs you more to buy them.

From the article: With gas prices still low and Americans driving more than ever, many states have found an answer to the pressing question of how to fix broken roads: Higher taxes on gasoline — and more fees on cars that don’t need it.

Here's more: More fuel-efficient vehicles mean that gas-tax receipts will only keep falling, and nothing scares government transportation planners quite like pitches for cars like the next-generation Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, which Chevy says a typical owner will drive 1,000 miles between fill-ups. Most of the money-raising ideas approved by states so far have also tried to wean road repairs from relying solely on gasoline or diesel sales, mostly through fees.

The Georgia law not only ended a $5,000 state tax credit for buying electric vehicles — a deal that had made Atlanta one of the nation’s largest EV markets outside of California — but places an extra $200 a year tax on electric vehicles, in lieu of the money lost from liquid fuel taxes.

In other words, "hey, we want you to conserve..........hey, wait, we NEED your money, and we WILL take it one way or another....conserve too much, we'll raise the taxes."

"Buy electric vehicles to save the worl........what da hell? Tax revenues decrease? If they use less gas? Dayum......beat them over the head with higher taxes. That'll show them."

Ohio Turnpike. "hey, we're going to build a highway, charge tolls, and when the construction is paid for, we'll stop charging". Construction is paid for. and "whoa, whoa whoa - we're going to actually INCREASE the tolls - cause we can't do without that money."

Indiana turnpike - pretty much same scenario - right up until they LEASED the road for 90 years? 80? In order to balance their budget.

The Ohio Lottery was supposed to fund our schools. Yet schools are trying to raise levys almost every year to fund themselves. State got money - and said "hey, we need it for us - not schools."

Gov't. is CONSTANTLY looking to take more money - it's never ending.

I'm ranting, I know.

I'm for raising taxes.

our best growth GDP, and lowest unemployment was when we was investing in ourselves, aka taxes.


i don't know much about the economy yet, still in school. However, paying attention to the teacher and looking at history, there's a pretty common theme:

corporations don't add jobs because the taxes got lowered.
our country sucks the worst when taxes are constantly lowered.
our country was the best when taxes were raised.

also, it's the WAY our tax money is being used that's another big problem. We are spending way too much money on foreign countries, and less and less on our own people.

just spit balling here,

Spending is the problem - not taxes. Our gov'ts just can't do without money - but they never quit taking money - that's the problem.

"Once project X is paid for, the tax will go away". Yeah, right.

Buy more economic vehicles to save money. "Hey.....we ain't getting ours - raise taxes".

Oh, no - they're not "taxes", they are fees - and they're going up.

"Hey - we really need you to use less 'X' - but, we ARE going to charge you more for your lesser usage."

Well, i still think taxes is the issue. it will always be, combined with other factors.

They could lower taxes and charge something else.

I see you're trying to put this on the government, but corporations have just as much blame.

right now we're fighting a battle, and people are trying to pick and choose which side their on, when in reality, individuals are going to lose regardless.

Everyone always ignores effective tax rate. Taxes, regardless of the year have been fairly steady since the beginning of the federal income tax. This is just another issue to divide us that basically means nothing without REAL tax reform. Tweaks here and there to what has existed since taxation started are relatively meaningless even though the tax rates seem as if they have changed substantially.

1981 is when I would have fared the worst as far as tax rates go with what I make today. Not exactly the peak of US economy to say the least. Effective tax rates since 1990 (I started my first "real" job in 1994) have remained basically unchanged. Here is a site with a calculator:

http://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913/

As in every tax thread I must post, I am a huge proponent of the Fair Tax. It is unlikely to ever happen, but I can hope.

It will never happen .... because taxes are a game of playing one group against another, and you can no longer do so with the fair tax. Further, there are large groups of people who are quite happy not only never paying a penny in federal income tax, but also in taking a large chunk of money from the government for doing .... nothing.

Swish, my only issue with your post is that you seem to draw a direct positive correlation between taxes and the economy and I don't believe it's that simple.

As far as Arch's original post, we need the roads, we need new ones and we need the old ones repaired.. the roads, the bridges, all of it. It doesn't matter so much if they are used by 100,000 big SUVs or 100,000 Prius's every day, the road and bridge cost the same. So yes, if we are using less gas, which is a good thing, then we do need to come up with the money some other way. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Just like the water example, most of the costs of running a water treatment plant are fixed, it costs $xxxx to run and maintain that plant a year, then a small variable cost depending on the amount of water that it produces... so even if you use less water, your fixed costs don't change. The alternative, with growth, is to build another water treatment plant or keep expanding the old one.. and water is a fixed resource... so again, learning to use less is a good thing but the cost to use less doesn't change what it costs to run that plant. So I have no problem with that either.


No they don't. Corporations, all businesses, add jobs when demand for their products and services increase. If demand remains constant but taxes are lowered, it just results in more profit.. in a perfect world that profit is shared with employees through increased wages or bonuses. It seems that the "sharing" isn't happening the way it should. I wonder if there is a way to incentivize companies to pay higher wages.... give tax breaks for higher wages maybe? That's me just spitballing.


A few % raise or lowering of taxes has very little impact on our economy one way or the other. I think one of the biggest things that drives our economy is consumer confidence. When the consumer base has confidence that the economy is in good shape, they spend money. When they believe the economy is in bad shape, they sit on their money. Money only benefits the economy when it's moving. So when the economy slows, lowering taxes to give people (not giant corporations, real people) more money to spend to move the economy is a good thing.


When the economy is good, go ahead and bump taxes up... that's what Clinton did. Our economy didn't take off because he raised taxes, but raising taxes during a great economy did help us balance the budget and put a dent in the debt.

In general, we absolutely do have too much of our nations wealth concentrated in too few hands... they aren't spending it, they are sitting on it, hoarding it, it's not doing the economy a whole lot of good. Unfortunately, the absolute LEAST efficient way to get that money from the very wealthy to those who would spend it... is taxes. Because a relatively small percentage of the money the wealthy would pay in taxes would actually ever end up in the hands of the people that could use it. A significant portion of it would get lost in the bureaucratic steps it takes to collect it and then distribute it. We need a more direct path so the obvious answer is to raise wages.

Again, in my perfect world, corporations that make a giant profit, would voluntarily raise the wages of it's employees.. I get all of the arguments against that, but its's what should be done. I honestly don't know how a CEO sleeps at night knowing that he makes $8 million a year, has $500 million in the bank, and a lot of his employees either aren't getting raises at all or they are getting raises that barely keep up with cost of living increases. I couldn't do it.

So I'm kind of stuck.. I'm pretty sure I know what would alleviate a lot of our problems, but I detest the government intervening to force it.... but we are almost to the point where that is going to have to happen.

That is my nightly rant.

Arch I do understand what you're saying but let me pose a counter point to what you are proposing.

The gas tax is used to upgrade and maintain highways and bridges. The cost of materials to do this work steadily rises. The gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993. Regardless of better fuel efficiency, the gas tax would still need to be raised. It's simply impossible to maintain and improve our highway and bridge infrastructure based on 1993 rates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/raise-the-gas-tax-to-fix-americas-roads.html?_r=0

Now none of us like higher taxes. But I do believe we need to weigh which taxes actually help the country and which taxes don't. Just looking at the state of our bridges alone tells us that there needs to be an influx of cash to address the issue.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/24/us-usa-infrastructure-bridges-idUSBREA3N1FQ20140424

Now I've never been one to scream about tax hikes. I am for cutting many of the loop holes in our tax code, but not a direct raise in taxes. In this case I differ. It's a tax that hasn't been raised since 1993 that simply can't continue at that rate to keep up with road and bridge work which directly impacts us all.

Roads and bridges, bases in Saudi Arabia, Naval Escorts of tanker ships, Coast Guard services for the Gulf Oil Industry, Ports, Pipelines...

Exxon, FedEx and Wal-Mart "Make" Billions relying on all of this.

Pedestrians' payroll taxes are "Taken" for an Interstate that serves as a 6-mile detour and a Wal-Mart Intersection that becomes a 2-minute, dangerous delay.

Makers and Takers. Redistribution. Subsidies. Don't tread on Me. Hmmm...Walk the Walk!

Good point, it would probably be better if they didn't pay tens of billions of dollars in corporate tax and employ tens of thousands of people who also pay taxes.. and gas could be $7/gallon and a t-shirt could be $25... then we'd all be better off... Damn takers.

They don't call it a tax so to speak, but my personal favorite is the "gas delivery charge" on my Duke Energy bill that is 35 bucks a month.

Maybe I'm ignorant to this but what is so expensive about delivering it?

I love the water company. I can use no measurable water in a given month, as they only deal in whole units, and yet I will have to pay a $30 (approx, I can't remember exactly off the top of my head) sewer bill. They can also use a rounded measure, so I can go from 1 unit to 2, over the course of 3 moths, using 0.6 or 0.7 units per month, and pay for 3 units over 2 months despite using only 2 units of water in total. Of course the sewer bill is based off of the water usage.

Usually it is just me in my house, yet my water bill is $75_ per month. My electric bill is lower that that, and my gas bill is lower than that 7 or n8 months out of the year.

Yea Youngstown. One of the highest income tax rate in the state, and horribly expensive water. (that is only going to get more expensive over the next few years)

move to Columbiana my electric water and sewage bill are all on one single bill and run about 130 per month about 8 months out of the year. I jumps during the summer with the air running but we have 3300 square feet to cool, and thats for 2 people. our property taxes are also much less.