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Holy cow! that will Never fly here in the US. Nor will it fly in europe. Thats just ridiculous!
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How can you keep folks from driving big gas-guzzling SUVs?
The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, thinks he has an answer. He’s proposed that, in order to conserve fuel, clean the air of exhaust emissions and relieve downtown congestion, owners of big gas-guzzling SUVs should pay a $50 "green tax" each day they motor into his fair city.
While appearing a tad harsh price to pay, Livingstone's idea actually does SUV owners a favor. In the U.S., for example, most environmental activists want to ban automakers from building big SUVs as the answer to reducing dependence on foreign oil and the amount of solid matter in the air so we can swallow rather than chew it. Livingstone, at least, says companies can build SUVs and motorists can buy them, providing they have deep pockets.
The fear of many consumers is that some mope in a Chevy Suburban or Toyota Land Cruiser (yes, Toyota makes big gas-guzzling SUVs, just like Chevy and Ford) will burn up the fuel that should have been allotted to their gas-sipping compact — though I can't recall anyone's name on any gas pump designating who should or shouldn't get the fuel.
Should the London experiment be successful in forcing SUV owners to dump their land yachts in favor of fuel-sippers, you would have to wonder if mayors in U.S. cities would copy Livingstone and adopt a similar tax. You wouldn't expect the mayor of Detroit to do so, but Mayor Daley of Chicago is an avid bike enthusiast and New York is considering a congestion tax on every car, so you never know what might happen.
It would be one thing for a mayor to tax visitors to his city who drive big SUVs, but it would be political suicide to tax local residents — with local defined as voters. One reason Congress has never supported a major tax on gas to discourage the sale of gas-guzzlers is that both gas-guzzling and gas-sipping voters would have to pay. Re-election is far more important than energy dependency and clean air.
If U.S. mayors are looking for another source of revenue, however, they'd have to play fair. To be absolutely fair, if you tax a person for driving a big SUV that consumes lots of a precious resource — gas — why not tax those who consume other resources in greater quantities and at greater rates than others? So why not tax families who have lots of kids and not just one because they consume more than their fair share of grub that could feed others? Let them eat one meal a day, not three.
And who needs a three-, four- or five-bedroom house, wasting all those precious trees that give up their lives to become lumber, when one room and sleeping bags will do?
And for heaven's sake, who needs a three-car garage? Park in the driveway or on the street — mini gas-sipping cars don't take up all that much space.
Source: http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2007/08/suv-tax.html
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