IT WILL ONLY WORK WHEN PEOPLE HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE TO GAS CARS! If they don't have public transportation, this does nothing. If they can't buy non-gas cars either, this does nothing. The goal will not be accomplished, whether you do it or not. Much like Iraq. Just because you want it to happen and you try it, it won't make it happen unless the conditions beforehand will allow the outcome to be what you want it to be. The conditions as they are now will NOT let a gas tax come to the goal you want it to.
The poor need alternatives, not rebates or taxes. THAT IS WHAT WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT! GIVING PEOPLE ALTERNATIVES!
The only way a gas tax would possibly work is if we already have the programs in place for people to use as an alternative. Otherwise, it is like giving up meat while only keeping meat in the freezer and no other foods.
A person at another website used this graph to try to prove their point:
http://www.theoildrum.com/...
2002 (+) 1.8 M bbl/dy Price $20/bbl-> $31/bbl
2003 (+) 3.4 M bbl/dy Price $31/bbl-> $31/bbl
2004 (+) 2.4 M bbl/dy Price $31/bbl-> $42/bbl
2005 (+) 0.3 M bbl/dy Price $42/bbl-> $62/bbl
2006 (+) 0.1 M bbl/dy Price $62/bbl-> $72/bbl To date.
What was it before 2002? I'll tell you that 2002 was the LOWEST IT HAD BEEN IN 20 YEARS!!! Yet in 2002 gas prices were in the 1.89 range, up from the 1.00 in 7/8 years ago, when it was higher. That means that in 1999,2000, and 2001 it was HIGHER than it was in 2002, 2003, or 2004.
Also notice that gas prices in 2005 were at 2.00pg when bbl was at 60 dollars, yet it went up to 70 and we are now at 3.00pg.
This doesn't make sense at all.
That is a superficial analysis that doesn't look ONCE at the average price of gas along with those numbers or the years preceding the gas hikes.
It seems to me that some people are more interrested in being proven right about peak oil (which almost no one disagrees with anyway, at least that it will eventually happen) than they are concerned with making the transition as easy as possible. They WANT the transition to be hard. They WANT people who "ignored them" to suffer.
P1: "Haha, I told you so!"
P2: "Uh, I agreed with you."
P1: "So why didn't you change earlier?"
P2: "I have no public transportation and no way of not using a car to get to work."
P1: "Well, then you should have listened to me! Haha! You have to PAY for using that car, even if you'll lose your job!"
Democrats have always stuck up for the poor in the past and they better well continue or they will lose more than just elections.
I think we would all be better off if we find alternatives, not try to punish.