Cheap Gas Is a Thrill, but a Costly One

[vdeane]

Most of the waste in the federal general budget comes from the military-industrial complex.  That list, even if accurate, is like trying to pay off student loans with some pennies you found in the road.  In any case, transportation spending isn't supposed to come from the general fund in the first place; it just does because Congress is unwilling to do what needs to be done and restore the gas tax.

*  Besides indexation for inflation--which won't have much of an effect at present because the inflation rate is so low--the base fuel taxes have to go up radically.  The consensus in the dying days of the Bush administration, which has not been acted on under Obama (for reasons that are not altogether his fault), is that the gas tax needs to be tripled to meet identified needs for upkeep and capital expansion.

The dollar has lost 33% of its value since the 1990s.  That doesn't seem low to me!

From what I know, pavements are especially going to get worse as NYSDOT focuses on keeping bridges from falling down.  I've also heard some managers say that the time is coming near for when we're going to have to close down significant links in our transportation system due to them simply being unsafe.

Oh dear.  Would that result in decommissioned/realigned state highways, or would "road closed" and detour signs simply be slapped down a la the "temporarily" closed rest areas?  I'm starting to worry that my ability to clinch NY's touring route system (as is my goal) may become impossible.

[J N Winkler]

The dollar has lost 33% of its value since the 1990s.  That doesn't seem low to me!

It is roughly in accord with the inflation target we have as part of our monetary policy (2.5% annually, if memory serves).  Indexation has been tried and abandoned in Wisconsin and Massachusetts (at least), but I have never heard of a retroactive indexation proposal (i.e., increasing the gas tax a set amount to recoup purchasing power lost to inflation from a certain time in the past, and then indexing the increased value to inflation thereafter).

[US 41]

This will be my last post on this particular topic. Whether or not you agree is your choice.

There are really 4 things the government of a country are responsible for (in this case the US).

1) Having a strong military so they can defend themselves from other countries and terrorists. (This includes border patrol and having police throughout the country.)

2) Having a good transportation system so people and goods can travel easily across the country. A good transportation system is also very useful for the military, which is why Eisenhower wanted an interstate system. He wanted what Germany had. A successful economy has a good transportation system. (The Democrtic Republic of the Congo has mostly dirt roads. Their economy is awful.)

3) Protecting American's interests. I support free trade with Canada and Mexico because they are our neighbors, but that is it. Free trade with places like Columbia doesn't help American workers. Raising tariffs on countries like China and Vietnam wouldn't be a bad idea either. Bringing over refugees from Syria or spending millions to teach Moroccans pottery is not in the best interest of Americans. Letting people collect food stamps for 50 years of their life is not in the best interests of American workers. Giving citizenship to illegals is not in the best interests of American workers.

4) Last but not least we have a constitution. If something is not in the US Constitution, then it is the state's responsibility. If something is not in the state's constitution, then it goes to the county. Any department in Washington that is not a cabinet, should be gotten rid of immediately, because it is non-essential. We as a country to spend money on stuff that is essential. We (federal and state governments) would have more than enough money for transportation, military, etc. if we only spent our money on essential programs. Downsizing the government is key. If our ancestors wanted to live somewhere with big government and high taxes they would have stayed in Europe.

The last point I will make is most Americans are truly fed up with the government. If our own president won't stand up for the country, who will? Americans want a government that protects the interests of America, not the interests of refugees and illegals. Donald Trump is saying stuff that most Americans actually agree with and that is why he is winning big in the polls right now.

[kkt]

If you don't think the government wastes money than you're not paying attention. We aren't 18 trillion in debt because the government is spend taxpayer money wisely. Tolling interstates would be an option that more and more people are starting to support. Only idiots think high speed transportation is free. Interstates cost the most to maintain, so they should be tolled. Sorry but Mexico is right in this case.

Here's some money we could've spent on something important, but instead it was wasted. Spending 27 million to teach Moroccans pottery is not wise spending. It doesn't even help America.

* The government spends about $100 million every four years to subsidize parties at the political conventions.
*The Department of Agriculture spent $2 million to fund an internship program. The program hired one full-time intern.
*Last year, $120 million was paid to dead federal employees.
*A total of $146 million was paid for federal employees to upgrade their flights to business class.
*The government spent $2.6 million to encourage Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly.
*The Department of Health and Human Services provided an $800,000 subsidy to build and IHop in Washington, D.C.
*The National Institutes of Health has given $1.5 million to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston to study why "three-quarters"  of lesbians in the United States are overweight and why most gay males are not.
*During 2012, $25,000 of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
*The U.S. government spent $505,000 "to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs"  last year.
*NASA spends close to $1 million per year developing a menu of food for a manned mission to Mars even though it is being projected that a manned mission to Mars is still decades away.
*Over the past 15 years, a total of approximately $5.25 million has been spent on hair care services for the U.S. Senate.
*The U.S. government spent $27 million to teach Moroccans how to design and make pottery in 2012.
*During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000. They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.
*A total of $10,000 of U.S. taxpayer money was actually used to purchase talking urinal cakes in Michigan.
*Vice President Joe Biden and his staff stopped in Paris for one night back in February.  The hotel bill for that one night came to $585,000.
*The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $300,000 to encourage Americans to eat caviar produced in Idaho.
*The National Institute of Health recently gave $666,905 to a group of researchers that is conducting a study on the benefits of watching reruns on television.
*The National Institute of Health also spent $592,527 on a study that sought to figure out once and for all why chimpanzees throw poop.
*The federal government spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
*The IRS spent $60,000 on a film parody of Star Trek and a film parody of Gilligan's Island.
*Last year, the federal government spent $96,000 to buy iPads for kindergarten students in Maine.
*The U.S. government spent $200,000 on "a tattoo removal program"  in Mission Hills, Calif.
*Last year, the government spent just under $1 million posting snippets of poetry in zoos around the country.
*The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $300,000 on a study that concluded the first bird on Earth probably had black feathers.
*The federal government spent $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees and poinsettias.

Nobody ever said the government doesn't waste any money.  (If you can point to any large organization, public or private, that doesn't waste any money, I'd like to see it.)  However you realize all those "wastes", even if they're all true and don't have any justification, put together wouldn't be a drop in the bucket for all the deferred highway projects?

[J N Winkler]

To add some perspective:  the overall US highway budget (all levels of government) is on the order of $100 billion annually, and the federal contribution is quite small as a fraction not just of total spending but also total discretionary spending.

A few hundred thousand dollars here and there in an organization the size of the US Government is not waste.  It is pumping loss.

[Pete from Boston]

This will be my last post on this particular topic. Whether or not you agree is your choice.

(political screed snipped)

Rather than throwing political bombs and then declaring you are storming off, how about not turning this into such a political soapbox to begin with?

[US 41]

This will be my last post on this particular topic. Whether or not you agree is your choice.

(political screed snipped)

Rather than throwing political bombs and then declaring you are storming off, how about not turning this into such a political soapbox to begin with?

Actually I'm not storming off. I'm just making my point and moving on. Arguing and arguing over a particular issue doesn't help anything. I'm just putting my facts and opinions out there and if you agree with them, great! If not oh well. There's nothing any of us can do about government spending, so it's pointless for us to keep debating about it. I'm just stating my opinions and facts. I don't want to pay higher taxes when the government wastes so much tax money already.

[noelbotevera]

Still waiting till solar cars kick off....

[Duke87]

Still waiting till solar cars kick off....

Never going to happen. At least not in the way you're thinking.

A typical electric car is rated somewhere in the vicinity of 100 MPG equivalent (note: this is point of use efficiency, not source efficiency, which makes it a misleading metric - but that's another debate for another time). If we run some math off that:

100 miles/gallon / 120,000 BTU/gallon x 3413 BTU/kWh = 2.84 miles per kWh

Depending on where on Earth you are, the sun's energy will deliver somewhere in the range of 3 to 8 kWh per day per square meter on average. A typical car has a footprint of maybe 8 square meters, which if we assume it can harvest the sun's energy at 100% efficiency (which it can't, not even close with current photovoltaic technology) gives us anywhere from 24 to 64 kWh to work with. This in turn gives the car a maximum theoretical daily range (with appropriate batteries, of course) of 70 to 180 miles per day. Given that solar panels are not more than 20% efficient, this is realistically more like 14 to 36 miles per day. Less if it's cloudy, or it's winter, or you park in the shade, or so on and so forth.

Now, the way this could work is if you took a battery powered car and allowed it to plug into banks of solar panels wherever it parked. And indeed, this has been put forward as a plan for powering electric cars in a renewable manner. But solar panels mounted on the car alone won't work because there is not enough surface area to collect the required amount of energy.

[Mr_Northside]

Nobody ever said the government doesn't waste any money.  (If you can point to any large organization, public or private, that doesn't waste any money, I'd like to see it.)  However you realize all those "wastes", even if they're all true and don't have any justification, put together wouldn't be a drop in the bucket for all the deferred highway projects?

A-Freakin'-Men!