All these reasons is why I support passing a law that would automatically raise the gasoline tax by 20 cents every year for the next 10 years.
I don't think gas tax is the answer. We ought to tax the cars themselves, more tax for more emissions/worse MPGs.
A gas tax is really really regressive, since most poor people can't afford to just buy a more fuel efficient car like the rich folks can when gas spikes. If you expand the gas guzzler tax though, you impact the demand side of the equation, then suddenly its not so profitable for the automaker to make giant crew cab pickups anymore.
I agree with ol1970, the automakers are making what the customers want. We just need to change what the customers want.
This thread is about clown cars. Is it really a huge societal concern that poor people cannot afford gas-guzzling clown cars? As others have mentioned, the more fuel-efficient vehicles tend to be the cheapest anyway.
The U.S. has become far too vehicle-centric in the design of its infrastructure. Poor people especially should be living in places where a car is not as necessary. Maximize the dollars they do have instead of wasting them on transit.
If cars are expensive and gas is expensive, we'll adapt! We'll have more bike lanes, buses will be utilized more commonly, sidewalks are omnipresent (have you ever noticed that some suburban areas don't have sidewalks!!?? I digress...), etc.
I don't think we can change what people want en masse until gas is expensive.
I don't think we will adapt though. What will happen is that the rich will still drive places they don't need to, still in gigantic cars, and the poor will be more and more fucked as their salary covers less and less of their daily needs. Not only that, since the poor are the ones most priced out of automobile transportation, only poor people will want buses and trains. The surest way to make something "uncool" and therefore unused is to attach the "only poor people use it" stigma.
You need to change the behavior of the people at the top to effect the culture, and if the rich aren't influenced to change their transportation habits, then no change will happen.
I think the last time the U.S. had $4 gas for an extended period, there were plenty of changes in consumer auto habits. If they didn't stick, that at least tells me the general consumer is pretty elastic (and that there will still be an element of burn/use it all up before we are
forced to use alternatives). Imagine if the U.S. had $6 or $8 gas!
There will always be plenty of rich people spending exorbitant amount of money on bells and whistles regardless of the economic situation. What they buy or how they think of things doesn't really alter my behavior much. I'm sure there are plenty of people that are swayed by stigma but I wouldn't expect to find many on this board or in the general lower and middle class (IMO - if stigma can alter your behavior to spend more money frivolously, you aren't lower or middle class, you're pretty well off). The guy commuting by himself in his $60,000 7 seat vehicle who looks down on those that ride the bus somehow give me more satisfaction as I sit on the bus/metro browsing via the free wifi and doing the crossword and sudoku, gently unwinding after a day of work rather than sitting in traffic. At least it would have if I still commuted in DC, now I work remotely and my commute is only 17 stairs and about 30 feet but I am still tickled at the notion. I am thankful for the wealthy and their spending, though. Various technologies get the kinks worked out that after they become more mainstream, they are more efficient and have a more favorable price point.
Some places you need a car more than others, I get that. I think change can come from bottom up, or at least "middle up". If enough lower class and middle class people do something or demand something, the powers at be will accommodate those demands so they can make a buck off of it. If a certain layout/infrastructure or type of public transit isn't adequately suiting what people are asking for, then I would argue not enough are demanding it. We might just agree to disagree.
I'm normally fairly sympathetic to the bottom 20-30% of households and the barriers/systemic cycles they face but somehow the lower class of the U.S. bitching about how the still-subsidized cost of a gallon of gasoline is making the cost of their commute for their privately owned vehicle higher just doesn't tug at my heartstrings that much.