California Considers Tracking Your Car 902
dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."
Dont they already do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Informative)
Since a prius will drive much further on a tank than a person in an H2, if both individuals drive 100 miles, the person in the H2 pays significantly more in taxes. They're proposing to change the system so that its based on how far you drive, not how much gas you use.
Wait a sec ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This proposal will have the opposite effect
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
This proposal will have the opposite effect
The opposite effect being, of course, either that efficient cars will be discouraged or that gas-guzzlers will be encouraged.
Neither is true. There is no government encouragement to drive a gas-guzzler under this taxation plan, there is simply no tax-based encouragement NOT to.
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:4, Informative)
This is the kind of sensationalist crap you see on Slashdot -- WAY blown out of proportion.
From working in a gas station before, I can tell you how much of the price of gas is government tax -- about HALF. I've seen the invoices that gas stations pay for gas. So, I would seriously have to look at exactly how this kind of tax would compare to the gas tax we already have.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "gas tax" both Federal and State? So, this driving distance tax would only eliminate part of the current gas tax.
Of course, in my position this kind of change may be just fine for me because we tend to stay very close to home (within 50 miles) because we have a young family.
This kind of change would probably hit commuters the most because of the high cost of housing in the urban areas. Remember, even if this would encourage people to move to the urban areas in California, that doesn't mean they would. They still have to have a job that would support buying a $600k-$900k+ house. A large percentage of people I work with just could not afford it, and companies like ours faced with losing employees or handing out raises would simply leave California.
This kind of tax change would make the exodus from California go through the roof and in the end probably decrease the total amount of taxes the state collects. The governator isn't going to let that happen.
So, it probably won't happen, but it's nice to "entertain" it...
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The proper role of government is to preserve the constitutionally-limited negative (which do not require the enslavement of others) rights of citizens.
The government has no business encouraging or discouraging any legal activity. Such "encouragment" necessarily violates the rights of someone.
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Our attitude to oil consumption is more like the guy falling off a building saying to himself on the way down "so far, so good..." A soft landing is possible, but we better start knitting a parachute sometime soon.
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, its nice to encourage people to by efficent cars, but they shouldn't need added encouragement, since the car using less gas is their encouragement.
Anyways. You forget road wear, no matter what your milage is, your still putting wear and tear on a road, and clogging it up and so forth. If you drive a whole lot, your using that system more then those who don't use it much. Maybe a person has a car that gets 1 mpg, but only drives to ch
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I agree, it's stupid to tax gas. Poor people buy almost as much gas as the super-rich, so most of the gas tax is paid by them.
Here's an idea: How about a progressive income tax?
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The big issue is not paying for road wear (if we based taxes entirely on road wear due to vehicle use every trucking company in the country would be taxed out of business over night) caused by vehicles, but rather the road capacity they necessitate. A semi needs about 2-3 times the capacity (space) of a passenger car; passenger cars, SUVs, light trucks, etc. basically require the same road capacity. The purpose of this GPS system (which seems overly intrusive to me, even if it does make a lot of sense in many respects) is to base taxes on the actual cost incurred by a car - not for repairs due to wear inflicted by the car, but costs incurred by building and sustaining a road system with enough capacity to handle the traffic. The vast majority of maintenance work done on roads is not due to traffic volume, it is due to natural processes like weathering. Larger, higher-capacity roads cost more to build and maintain than smaller roads. From this perspecitve it makes a lot of sense to tax people based on how much they drive (how much capacity they use) rather than how much gas they use (which, as far as road wear and capacity goes, has little do do with the costs incurred).
In my opinion we shouldn't be looking at reducing gas taxes (they should and do provide an added incentive for people to drive more efficient cars), but it is reasonable to look at other criteria for basing taxes on as well. This GPS is just way to invasive; law enforcement already uses things like FasTrak passes to track people's movements, you know that they aren't going to be able to help themselves from getting hold of the GPS data (and in many ways it would be their responsibility to do so).
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence progressive taxes are for people who have no idea wtf they are talking about (i.e. Basic Economics).
No, progressive taxes are for people that need to eat. The basic idea is that the first bit of income pays for your food, basic shelter, and clothes. After that, it's just improvements to basics and adding luxuries. By the time your tax burden hits 18%, you're sitting pretty in a big house with a nice Porsche (not that Boxter trash) in the driveway.
Honestly, in the old days of the republic, you pai
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming a perfect consumption tax correlated 1:1 with income. No one has ever proposed anything like this. This is what they call attacking a straw man. I take this as a tacit admission that you can't actually think of a good argument against progressive income taxation if you have to resort to that.
You're also assuming that the value of money is a linear function. Again, this assumption is flawed. In terms of raw dollars, is there any difference between giving someone who makes $10,000/year another $1000 and giving someone who makes $100,000/year another $1000? Even in terms of percent: is there no difference between giving someone who makes $10,000/year another $1000 and someone who makes $100,000/year another $10,000? If the value of money was determined by a linear function you would not be able to see any subjective differences between these two cases, either in total or in terms of percent. The difference is, it ought to seem like the person that makes $10,000 would spend the additional $1000 on more food for their kids, but for the other person it would go to buying more luxury toys. Yes, and that's making a moral judgment on what people should and should not have. If you honestly think it's some perverse moral calculus to see a difference between rich people buying more luxury cars and poor people having more food, than that's an interesting definition of morality you have.
As for your second ammendment threat, go hog wild: overthrow the government, I encourage you. If lower taxes would put you over the threshold of affording that Porsche Boxster you've always wanted, I'd like to see it happen.
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several good reasons for progressive taxation. First, rich people receive a disproportionate amount of the benefits taxes pay for. Large portions of the government, from law enforcement to defense, are devoted to protecting property, both physical and intellectual, which is primarily owned by wealthy people. Second, people have a decreasing marginal utility for money. This means that taxing s
Re:A progressive income tax IS what we need (Score:4, Interesting)
I just calculated what the effect on me would be if we replaced the Federal income tax (FICA) with a national sales tax, as some GOP'ers have been considering. And you know what?
At a $15/hour wage, a national sales tax (a national consumption tax) would put *more* disposable income in my pocket than the current income tax. The income tax does not start looking better for me until the national sales tax reaches about 50% -- and the current claims by the left is that we would have to set it at about 30% in order to reap the tax revenues as the govn't currently takes in via the income tax.
A sales tax is far-more fair, for the simple reason that if you so choose, you don't *have* to buy anything, and thus, you pay nothing in taxes. It'd be a miserable, agrarian lifestyle (much like that of the Amish I suspect), but it could be done.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
Now, to reduce the regressive nature of the sales tax, were it me, I would eliminate *all* sales taxes on life-necessities: food, any health/medical supplies (including prescriptions), and possibly housing (but not land; the property tax should definitely stay, so as to prevent people from hoarding land).
And I would further raise the sales tax on items which have socially-negative effects: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana (if it's ever legalized), possibly firearms (I'm a gun nut, of course, but I also recognize the socially-negative aspects of them), and so on. I'd probably place a luxury tax on grossly-expensive items (items that only the top 5% of income earners typically purchase -- again, the Rolls, the Bentley, the 50' yachts, etc.).
That way, the tax is made at least somewhat progressive, but still is optional -- people are left free to decide whether or not to pay the tax (by consuming).
You know, a national sales tax ought to appeal to the leftie anti-consumerist, anti-materialist mentality which says that "Americans consume too much! Ach, it makes me sick that all people do is buy stuff! Waaahh!" Funny that they've been silent on the issue.
Anyway, whether the GOP will be so smart as to implement my version of the sales tax is another question...
I'm curious why you think low-income people shouldn't pay taxes. Don't they owe a responsibility to the state? By what right do they *deserve* a free ride? The right of being poor? Under your system, if everyone could get a free ride off the rich by being poor, I think I would remain poor too, just so I could loaf around and do nothing on the rich man's dollar.
Gosh, how nice it would be to sit around and let the rich man work for me. Boy, the world owes me a living!! LOL.
Re:taxing the rich MORE reduces their power (Score:3, Insightful)
It's closer to 13%. Both Cheney and Heinz Kerry published their tax returns. It's also worth pointing out that even though the rate was 90% (prior to the Kennedy years), few people paid it. You are also mixing book rates (90%, then 70%, then 28%, and now 15-35% depending on type of income) with effective rates. The effective rate when tax rates were 70% was much lower than that. Tax loopholes aren't new. In fact, Ross Perot got his own personal
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I may well be wrong as I'm not practising as a traffic / pavement engineer, but your regular corolla / family sedan is not the culprit in wearing out roads
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the reason for the ZEV mandate, and for the billions of dollars wasted by GM and Ford on unworkable electric cars. As late as 2001, the California government still thought that 10 percent of vehicles sold in 2003 would produce no emissions [popularmechanics.com] other than water... because, golly, they'd passed a law saying so!
Of
Re:Not really (Score:5, Funny)
Let's be honest here, Not everyone can drive a primus around.
In fact, no one can, because it doesn't exist. Maybe you were thinking of the Prius [toyota.com]?
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
A Prius with a low-ball mpg rating of 44 (a real-world number I've heard) and its 11.9 gallon tank can go over 500 miles. How far apart are gas stations where you're talking about? I think the basic problem here is you're assuming the Prius is electric. It's not; it's a hybrid. So why can't the truck be a hybrid?
No, people in rural areas will use more efficient vehicles. Last I checked, electric power also made it out there -- why do you think an all-electric vehicle wouldn't be practical in 10-30 years?
No, it's the perfect tool. It pays for the impact of vehicles in the same way as gambling, smoking, and alcohol pay for their impact: through a sin tax. A gas tax encourages more efficient vehicles, shorter commutes, and public transportation. Taxing mileage only encourages the latter two.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree it's the perfect tool, I wish that we would stop calling them "sin" taxes. For one, not all of us believe in "sin". For another, wouldn't it be more appropriate to call it (ab)use taxes? Think about it: you (ab)use your lungs (through smoking), you pay to fix them; you (ab)use your liver (through drinking), you pay to fix it; you (ab)us
Re:Not really (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually.... (Score:3, Informative)
The agriculture industry in the central San Joaquin Valley produces about 1/10 of the California "GDP". (That doesn't include the Imperial valley down around San Diego.)
10% of GDP is 10% of GDP, whether it comes from an urban area or a rural area.
The only place where lower taxes come into effect is the endpoint sales tax on groceries. Sales tax revenues are consumed locally - so you don't really lose.
FWIW, since A
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:3, Insightful)
You should not be able to pay more in order to disregard the environment. The health of the environment should not be for sale, it should be a factor on everyone.
Re:Wait a sec ... (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, one tidbit of information I took away from that article was the fact that roads last longer if you use them, but not if you abuse them. Remote roads that are seldom used actually break up faster than roads that are moderately used. Cars use them, constantly rolling them flat; trucks abuse them, constantly squeezing them like a toothpaste tube.
So this has nothing to do with budget shortfalls (Score:5, Insightful)
But the fact is that very few people drive such hybrids, even in California. Far more Californians drive gas-guzzling SUVs; a drive through LA used to surround you with Ford Explorers, but now those seem to be outnumbered by the much larger vehicles like Expeditions and such. A gas tax is a better way to collect income and provide a market incentive to reduce air pollution (as opposed to a regulation, like smog checks, which are expensive to enforce and provide an incentive to cheat rather than to conserve).
So really, this is just a proposal to make sure that people who actually switch to efficient technologies keep subsidizing those who don't. It's completely retarded. It is not only counterproductive to the desire to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution, but requires that the state spend an additional $100 per car just to implement.
Expensive + counterproductive to societal goals = bad government. Bad government! No cookie!
Dumb dumb dumb dumb....
gas saving technology unwelcome (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9510/cleaner_engine/ [cnn.com]
here we are 10 years later and no production cars come equipped with such a system, nor is there anything like it in the after market. The details of it seem simple enough, prototypes have been demonstrated to work well and manufacturing costs as well as tcoo are lower than the current line o
Re:gas saving technology unwelcome (Score:3, Informative)
While I'd like fuel efficiency (hence the reason I have and usually drive a 95 del Sol - nearly 40 mpg with no exotic
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, you have some wealthy people driving hummers around. However, a Prius is frickin A expensive too! Much more so than a regular car.
No, in California, if you are poor you can drive a POS car belching smog, and don't have to fix it. If your car is older than 25 years or so, then it's a "classic" and you don't have to pass smog checks. There are no safety inspections because that would hurt the poor.
California's laws and regulations dealing with vehicles are in
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:4, Informative)
Also, 25 years old would mean cars made before 1980. I don't doubt that there's a lot of '85 - '95 cars on the road, which are also less safe and more polluting, but there can't be all that many 25+ year old cars -- they would either have to have been maintained well, or they would have fallen apart by now!
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Prius is enormously expensive for what you get.
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Informative)
The newer ones are far larger. It's quite a nice four-passenger car, with a reasonably roomy hatchback and other bits of storage space.
And, the new ones are more powerful and more fuel efficient than the older ones. You just cannot imagine the lengths that Toyota engineers went to to get the last few percent of fuel efficieny and pollution-control. Thermos bottles to retain heat in the coolant, carbon canister to trap startup hydrocarbons, drive-by-wire braking to do only regenerative braking until below 5 MPH, fins and baffles under the car to route air more efficiently...the list is almost endless. It basic Synergy drive, which throws in for free a CVT by basically using electricity the way other cars use transmission fluid, is the best known radical system, but it's only the beginning.
Ob-topic -- this is an insane scheme. I have to agree with the tinfoil-hat crowd that the only reason this makes sense is to get the GPS units into the cars for some other purposes -- like making it more expensive to drive through downtowns in rush hour (as they do in London, Singapore, and other rediculously congested cities.)
There are so very many ways that the State (and the state) benefit from more fuel efficient cars, that reducing the incentive to drive them is remarkably short-sighted. Treating the fuel tax as a carbon-dioxide tax really does make sense -- those Hummers and SUV's really do impose a cost on everybody else. Reducing the gasoline-delivery infrastructure is a good thing, from reducing the number of tankers that need to port in California, reducing the number of tankers on the roads, reducing the number of leaky gas tanks under service stations...these reflect costs on everybody that the gas tax goes some part of the way to paying for. Fewer kids dying of asthma would be a good thing.
If they want more money from the gas tax, they should just raise the tax.
Thad Beier
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what's happening in a nutshell:
A group of people decided that they wanted to get Californians to start using public transportation and not use their cars for so many things. So they decided to stop building freeways, on the hypothesis that if there was no more room on the freeways, people would stop coming to California. This goes back to Gov. Jerry Brown, and the idea failed miserably.
Next, they decided to build carpool lanes, which would encourage people to, if not taking public transportation, at least get a few more people in the same car. Wrong again. They don't even have a decent state-wide model for carpool lanes: in SoCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes 24 hours a day. In NorCal, carpool lanes are carpool lanes only during normal rush-hour traffic, and are normal lanes otherwise. Hence, some freeways have had their capacity increased by anywhere from 20% to 50%, and the lanes are not usable by the vast majority of drivers.
So then they jacked up gas tax rates, promising to build more freeways and add lanes to the congested parts (except then governors, Democrat and Republican, including Schwarzeneggar, started "borrowing" the funds from the gas tax to pay for general fund stuff, and the roads further deteriorated and failed to get expanded). The increases was also allegedly to encourage people to buy smaller vehicles that would be more fuel efficient and cause less wear and tear on the roads. Despite past measures that had largely failed because the California car culture is basically impossible to buck, people actually did buy newer, fuel-efficient cars (but still drive them alone), and gas tax revenues (and hence funding for pet projects that have nothing to do with the roads) went down.
So now they're in a corner. How do they get the taxes back? Why, based on mileage, of course! And with a GPS unit, they can also see when you go over the speed limit or perhaps lane change too often and send you automatic tickets or tax your auto insurance (who may also get a report on your driving habits and thus raise the rates on their own). This isn't part of the proposal *yet*, but I can imagine someone is thinking it.
They're also talking about watching when you're using certain high-use roads, and increase the tax based on congestion, so if you go to work on the 5 through Los Angeles or Orange County at 7:45am, then you get an extra tax because you're helping to cause slow traffic. You know what the really ironic thing is? The people behind this idea are almost exactly the same people who were yelling about how toll roads were going to punish the poor people who couldn't afford them, and now they've come up with a method to not only inflict what are essentially tolls, but to inflict them potentially on every single public road and street in the state.
(Wow, that's a big nutshell. I wonder if there's a walnut in there.)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the problem isn't the SUV or the Hummer or the people that drive them (who I personally detest because mo
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Technology can't break the laws of physics.
- There's no way to get around the carnot efficiency in a heat engine. Maybe if billions of dollars were invested into a hydrogen economy you might be able to get up to 40 percent efficency with fuel cells, but if the hydrogen comes from fossil fuels and you account for the losses in the H2 production process, you're better off sticking with internal combustion engines.
- THere's no way of avoiding newton's se
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasing the fuel efficiency of cars through CAFE-type legislation decreases the cost/mile required to operate them. This does not provide any incentive for a vehicle user to travel a shorter distance, rather it allows them to travel further. Legislation like CAFE alone does not work because it does not hit the end user, the consumer, in the one place where she or he will feel it: the pocketbook.
A gas tax is a better solution in a market-driven economy. It hits the end-user where they will feel it and creates a new demand, in this case for fuel-efficient car. There's a reason that small Japanese cars became popular in the 70's and it sure as heck wasn't fuel efficiency related legislation.
The government doesn't need to "tell" to megacorporations anything in this case: they'll go where the money is, whether it's in H2's or hybrids.
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Funny)
Nah...if that were happening, we would see people moving farther and farther from the cities. First, into suburbs and then even farther, maybe to something called an "exurb." Obviously that isn't happ...
Oh, wait. It is.
If a gas tax causes unfairness (because the poor buy as much gas as the rich), it can always be fixed by rebates (possibly means tested but not necessarily).
A
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider, for example, how some municipalities make millions of dollars a year from parking fines. In Boston, that's traditionally been a major revenue source, and meter cops were encouraged by quotas to overinterpret the law and nail people who were 12 inches out of compliance with distance to the curb, or 1 minute overdue on their meter, etc. (This only began to subside a bit in the late 1980s after the infamous case of a driver in Boston who pulled over, fell out of his car, and lay on the sidewalk having a heart attack; as you can guess, a traffic cop proceeded to ticket his car WHILE HE WAS LYING THERE and the whole sorry scene was captured in a photograph for the Boston Globe's front page.)
Anyway, just because cities and towns develop a dependency on this form of revenue does not mean it is a fair or proper way to raise money. In fact, it encourages people to have contempt for the law and for the law to have contempt for people. Stupid, stupid.
We already pay an enormous amount of taxes to keep our cars on the road. Initial sales tax (in most states), annual excise tax based on the value of the car, automobile insurance which is highly regulated and taxed in most states, gasoline sales tax, tolls, license plate renewal fee, drivers license renewal fee, and speeding and parking fines. No doubt I'm forgetting a few things. Ted Kennedy's luxury tax if your car is > $100K?
I believe that gasoline actually should be taxed much more than it is. Go ahead, California; raise the gas tax to $1 a gallon. It's regressive taxation, admittedly, especially for contractors who have to drive vans and pickup trucks and the like, but overall it will help spur the adoption of alternative fuels such as corn-based methanol and coal- or solar-based hydrogen, which will be tremendously beneficial long term. And dare one mention public transportation? Cities without practical bus and subway systems--well, the voters should face the music and ante up for these programs, because as the boomer population ages it's going to become ever more important. Twenty years from now there are going to be about 90 million 75-year-olds out there driving; look out, world.
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that this would target green cars, too (Score:3, Insightful)
A tax based on how far you drive does make a certain amount of sense (ignoring the method used), in that tax-payer money goes to building and maintaining roads. However, as someone who drives a high MPG car (Honda Civic), I admit that I prefer methods that target gas guzzlers disproportionately. Of course, one could also argue that gas guzzlers tend to do more harm to the environment, etc., and should pay more, but then that kind of sounds like they're buying the right to poison us.
Of course, what it rea
Re:Except that this would target green cars, too (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Except that this would target green cars, too (Score:3, Insightful)
buying the right to poison us
This is how many "everything should be a market" would like pollution to work. It may sound evil when you word it that way, but at least there's a monetary incentive to pollute less. In some schemes, corporations can buy and sell tickets that allow them to pollute a certain amount. A company may gain money by polluting less and selling its tickets (to other companies who will then pollute more). Alternatively, organizations could purchase tickets and then destroy them, or th
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. And if they really wanted to tax "time on the road" rather than "fuel burned", couldn't they ask you to report your vehicle's mileage on a yearly basis? Areas with emissions testing (California?) already report mileage; it shows up in online VIN reports. Sounds somewhat less intrusive.
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dont they already do this? (Score:3, Informative)
My state is toying with this too. The problem is that they don't have a legal right to tax you for time you drive on your private roads or more importantly, out of state. I live on the border of Washington & Oregon, so without either some kind of border crossing monitoring station, or a GPS system, they can't know when I'm actually driving in the state.
If this is such a grave issue, then we should just raise the gas tax overal
I blame Proposition 71. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I blame Proposition 71. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I blame Proposition 71. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for stem cell reasearch, but highly aginst pork-barrel research programs which seem to be concerned with garnering more research money.
Cue GPS hackers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cue GPS hackers... (Score:5, Funny)
Dealership: Your odometer says you have 100k miles.
You: Yea, so appraise me for 100k mile then.
Dealer: But your in-car GPS reports 20k mi.
You: oh cra...oh, blame the aftermarket wheels. screwed up the circuference.
Re:Cue GPS hackers... (Score:5, Funny)
Disclaimer: I may or may not live in California.
Re:Cue GPS hackers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cue GPS hackers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I already got the letter about this one... (Score:5, Funny)
--------
State of California
1 Aahnold St.
Sacramento, CA
Dear Skyshadow,
While we in the state of California appreciate your interest in our state and the contributions you've made while living here the last fours years, it has become increasingly apparent that you're not getting the message. So, let us be direct:
Get the hell out.
Frankly, all of you refugees from Jesusland are seriously overpopulating our state, and we can't afford it anymore. We figured you might have gotten the hint after we destroyed our public school system with Prop 13. We thought you would have put it together when we started referring to pet owners as "guardians" like they were our fucking kids or something. And, really, we're stunned that electing the guy from "Commando" as our governor didn't make you reassess living here.
C'mon, how much is nice weather, a neat bridge and decent wine really worth? A crappy 900 sq. ft. house in Walnut Creek with a postage-stamp sized yard is a steal at $400k because of all you idiots flooding in! Go home!
Anyhow, by now we're sure you've read about our plan to implant a GPS tracker on your car and tax you for every mile you drive. We're proud of that one -- we know you're driving an hour each way to and from work because of the sky-high housing prices around the Bay Area (again: your fault), and we figure that nicely conveys our point. And frankly, if this doesn't get our message across, we're going to have to resort to simply grabbing you out of your bed in the middle of the night and feeding your to that Great White we have on display down in Monterey. Don't think we won't. Hell, we'll feed her your goddamn cheesehead cats, too. Try us.
Move back to Wisconsin. We're not kidding.
Love, California
Re:Yeah, I already got the letter about this one.. (Score:3, Informative)
What's next,.... (Score:4, Interesting)
GPS Blackbox (Score:3, Interesting)
This way car owners can go to a fee-station any time to pay whatever tax whatever state wants to charge per mile travelled.
New Revenue Source ... For Me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Revenue Source ... For Me (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a bad idea. The price of gas has no bearing on either the amount of pollution or the amount of wear and tear on the roads. It'd be just one more reason for the state to look the other way while the oil companies rob us blind.
"Oh, you're closing another profitable refinery to reduce the gasoline supply and drive prices up? Good! That makes our %5 tax bring in more!"
no thanks
Hrmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't this one be filed under "Your Rights Offline?
Just saying is all...
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
For once... (Score:3, Insightful)
Odometer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Odometer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Odometer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Odometer (Score:5, Insightful)
California is only entitled to tax you for miles you drive in the state of California. The minute you cross the border into Nevada, Oregon, or Mexico, you can't be taxed.
Therefore - if you're going to tax by the mile, you must use a GPS tracking device to ensure that only miles taxable within your jurisdiction are taxed. Otherwise you're one judge's gavel away from having your tax law thrown out. Don't fuck with the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Of course, taxing by the mile is an asstastic idea to begin with - but even in the "green" People's Republic of Kalifornia, it doesn't matter how green the idea of "tax the H2 more than the Prius" might be... the only green that matters to a politician is the color of his subjects' money. (and/or the money of the GPS device manufacturers' lobby :)
Re:Odometer (Score:3, Informative)
If the roads are costing the state too much to maintain, and they don't want all residents to shoulder the burden equally, then they need to increase the tax on gasoline... plain and simple. People who do sufficient amounts of their driving outside the state of Calif. will probably be able to regularly fill up outside the state and therefore won't have to pay the higher taxes.
Not that I'm a proponent on high gasoline taxes, but only someone without the slightest grip
Gas taxes?? (Re:Odometer) (Score:5, Insightful)
And this will sorely punish the SUV owners that the tree huggers keep bitching about simply by virtue of fuel usage. So, in a way, you are getting taxed by the mile and for having an eco-unfriendly car.
Granted, the whole idea is utter bullshit to begin with...
Re:Odometer (Score:3, Insightful)
Another tax on the working class (Score:5, Insightful)
This really won't bother your Hummer drivers. They are already getting hit with gas-guzzler taxes.
Could somebody explain this to me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a reason for this or is it just because republicans haven't been successful with the federal budget? (not trolling)
Re:Could somebody explain this to me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also many states are required by their own laws to balance their budgets.
Tried that over here (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tried that over here (Score:3, Informative)
It's not so much the fact that we love to drive. It's the fact that we lack useable public transportation. Many cities had fabulous rail and light rail systems 100 years ago but in our wisdom they tore up the tracks. For many of us, the car is the only option.
That being said, only a complete moron would even consider taxing a car that weighs in over 300
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
We have some of the highest sales tax, the highest standards of living, permits are required to do anything short of wiping my ass and whacking off.
I propose a tax on ravers. We have enough of them. San Francisco could wipe out our debt in and of itself. It's simple to do it too: if the number of dead glowsticks in your apartment/mom's basement weigh more than your furniture, you get taxed. They certainly have the money for it. If they can afford those E hits....
Just a thought,
Joe
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
We should tax all LLCs 110%. I'm tired of having small businesses that sell furniture, dialup internet, food and liquor. Also I'm sick of all those icky poor people these kinds of places seem to attract.
Also it would be nice if we taxed trucks $1/mile, since they pollute the most, cause the most road wear and deliver things to stores like Wal-Mart. Also truck drivers dress like poor people.
Also we should require additional taxes on bottled water imported to the state. I'm tired of seeing ugly people drink the same brand of water as I do. The milky white city water should be plenty good enough for them.
We should also tax mops and other cleaning supplies. There are a lot of janitors that aren't paying their fair share. We can use these funds to create a wildlife preserve to protect animals from Lysol.
If that doesn't drive out all the poor people, I don't know what will. (if you didn't notice, California's state goverment hates poor people)
Arnold will tax (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to expose the 13-car owner 'govner for what he is - aggressively hostile to everything the average guy or gal needs.
Sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonetheless, rather than tracking your mileage, I'd much rather see gas taxes increased so that the more you drive, the more money the state gets for road maintenance, mass transit, etc. Right now, gas taxes are a fixed number, rather than a percentage of the gas price. You could also include the cost of auto insurance in the gas price, so that everyone's automatically insured to some required minimum, and then you could get more insurance on top of that if you wanted it, rather than the situation now, where it's illegal to drive without insurance (in California) but millions of people, mostly immigrants, do it anyway.
This would also put more of the burden on vehicles that get worse gas mileage, which also tend to be larger, heavier, cause more road wear, are more dangerous to other vehicles, and emit more pollutants.
And of course, people in the U.S. (and especially Southern California, where I live) are so obsessed with being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, and not having to pay for it (even though someone has to pay for it!), that they fight gas taxes tooth and nail even though proper application would reduce traffic (by providing more transit options). Europe has the right idea.
They tried that over here (Score:3, Informative)
It stranded long before implementation.
And since the American populace loves to drive and loves their cheap gass price, I don't think that the government will be able to do this successfully.
(Pardon my typos and possible bad grammar, I'm dutch, so english isn't my first language)
wouldn't it be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
1984, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Defrauding the System (Score:3, Funny)
So in effect this is a tax on people who flunked physics 101. Just like lottery is a tax on people who failed Math.
Governmental mixed messages (Score:3, Interesting)
They subsidize the roads with tax dollars, then wonder why we don't take the bus.
They tax gas to keep us from buying it, then complain they have budget problems.
The State taxes me so I don't drive, but the Feds let me take it off my (business) taxes.
They want jobs, but they can't stand it when we make money.
What's a self-employed nerd to do?
The sex tax. (Score:3, Insightful)
THE SEX TAX
Every male will have a chip installed in his sex organ. This chip would provide the following functions:
- It would provide extra stimulation during the sex act.
- Via a Bluetooth interface, the male would be able to specify sexual parameters, such as extra lasting time, longer orgasms, etc.
- The chip would record all sexual activity and categorize it as follows:
- Masturbation
- Vaginal intercourse
- Oral intercourse
- Anal intercourse
- Other intercourse
- The male would have to report all sexual activity on a government document. Government computers would then match these documents against records received wirelessly from sex organ implants. (This step is performed to make the process error-prone on the male's part.)
The male would then be taxed accordingly. Mistakes made in filing the appropriate paperwork would result in interest, fines, interest on the fines, penalties, interest on the penalties, and interest on the interest.This new technology would create a new revenue stream for the government. Additional benefits for the male include:
- A spousal sex monitoring system, accessible via the web. Using this service, for which women could pay a monthly fee, wives will be able to monitor their husband's sexual activity, uncovering extramerital affairs, dirty masturbational habits, etc.
- Proof of rape allegations. This service would provide women with a method of proving that a male had engaged in sexual intercourse with them. Of course, since there would be no female implant, a woman who is completely unrelated to the male, but who knows that the male had a sexual rendezvous at a certain time, could allege that the male had raped her. Proof would exist that the male had sex, but the male could not present any evidence that the sex had occurred with a different woman. According to the law, the male would be assumed guilty until proven innocent, and the law will provide for only one way for the male to prove his innocence: Sign all assets, property, and money over to the government.
The new law will be called: The Millenium Sexual Freedom Act of 2005.Yes, this will obviously benefit both the male population, by providing innovative services that all males want, and the government, by providing a much needed revenue stream.
Of course, in the typical government style, the money would be used for anti-sex education.
Tax by CAR WEIGHT, dumbasses!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some other states apply their car tax by the vehicle's weight, due to the very sensible reason that a heaver car wears down the roads more than a lighter car, and therefore more repairs (and hence, more cost) are required with heavy cars.
Obviously, SUVs and luxury cars pay more, while lighter and frugal cars pay less, PLUS it just makes sense: if you chew up the pavement and make more potholes because of your heavier car, then you SHOULD pay more.
Of course, this makes too much sense for my state's DMV to figure out...
Oregon Already Proposed This (and /. Covered it.) (Score:3, Informative)
Oregon Slashdot Article [slashdot.org]
Round up the usual suspects... (Score:5, Insightful)
At smog-check time, the GPS memory gets down-loaded into a database... Remember Gray bought $82M worth of Oracle licenses.
Then when a crime goes unsolved, the local police only need to search the monster database of who was where and when. Round up the guilty, and sentence the convicts.
Remember Big Brother is Watching
I'm beginning to think Americans are suffering from a lack of studying Orwell.
Purpose is transparent. (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of this logically, as some of the others here already have. If the state were interested in taxing you based upon milage, they would simply record your odometer readings at each emmissions inspection and bill you accordingly for your tabs. Yeah, I know about the in-state/out-state argument, why not just ignore that and set the median tax at something reasonable.
If the state were interested in reducing polution and oil consumption, they'd simply increase the already in place tax on gas and let the people in their Prius' slip through with their good milage. There are not really that many of them, and you could always give truckers a rebate at the end of the year if you feel sorry for them. Yeah, you COULD buy gas in Nevada or Oregon or Mexico, but you'd use up that gas getting back across the border, making any savings moot. Besides, the number of people living on the border is pretty fractional.
Seems clear to me, the intention is NOT about simply taxing vehicle use based upon how far you drive, but something more nefarious. Something like the car rental places have been implementing. Looks like California wants to incorporate GPS into the new "black boxes" discussed on cnet a few days ago, those boxes that the government & insurance industry wants to put into your cars in order to give you better rates and let you prove that you're law abiding. They'd have the ability to track all vehicles.
Each of the other taxation methods (checking odometer / gas tax) are simpler and already have the infrastructure necessary to implement in place. Both would accomplish the desired goal (more money for state based upon usage). Because something like this would be all new and would involve MUCH new infrastructure, it seems clear that simple revenue is NOT the intent of this proposal.
California is a big enough market, that they cause defacto standards for cars. The lawmakers know this, and I'm guessing that they are acting as the "stalking horse" in order to get all cars in America fitted with such devices. I don't think the insurance industry alone has the clout to pull this off over the objections of the car driving public, but if each of the players asks for some little addition, they might all be able to get their way. Think of it like this, insurance wants feature A, Feds wants feature B, and state wants feature C. Expect all three features in one DMCA protected box that you must not tamper with, under penalty of law. Expect lawyers to get access to ALL recorded information.
I would expect this proposal to move just about as quickly and silently as the copyright modifications moving through the Senate currently... Think fast and quiet.
I'd heard the Beatles were making a come-back... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's one for you, nineteen for me,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
Taxman.
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Don't ask me what I want it for
(Taxman Mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more
(Taxman Mister Heath),
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Now my advice for those who die,
Declare the pennies on your eyes,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
And you're working for no-one but me,
Taxman.
'Fool on the Hill' was taken already, I guess.
but cars last 20 years in CA (Score:5, Interesting)
dumb!
Do it! (Score:5, Funny)
We here in GA welcome our new CA overlords!
Y'all want grits, right?
Oregon proposed this and it went nowhere (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask a bunch of questions:
who will pay for the devices?
What about shared cars?
Does travel outside the state count?
How about the tourists?
Rental cars?
and on and on and on.
It will die the same death Oregons proposal did.
Big Brother is watching and charging you for it (Score:3, Insightful)
How stupid are these people??? If you leave the current gas tax it has it only way of adjusting it self. People who drive more, buy more gas. People with SUV's and other gas guzzlers by more gas. Even illegal aliens with no license and unregistered cars, still pay gas tax.
Then we shall we get into the invasion of privacy with the GPS tracking everywhere we drive.
Re:Gentlemen, start your engines! (Score:3, Insightful)