The American Spectator

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American Muscle

11.7.07 @ 12:01AM

OFF THE RICHTER SCALE
Re: Eric Peters's Cruel Irony:

Cruel Irony, by Eric Peters, should be required reading for the Ford dealer in West Los Angeles. In the showroom they had four monster Mustangs. All "super v8's" and super priced!!! The "Boss 302" coming in at a staggering $67,000 + tax. Yikes.

While I muse of rumbling on LA streets with Richter scale registering power, the $3.65 per gallon is making me look at a Subaru or a VW.

I realize some folks have the cash to afford "American muscle," but can Ford, GM etc. afford building cars that just get dusty in showrooms.

I wonder if at stockholder and board of director meetings anyone dares ask...what went wrong?
-- Len LaBounty
Santa Monica, California

This country needs to move away from petroleum powered automobiles for two basic reasons; national security issues and environmental concerns. Even if all the car companies produced many more attractive models of hybrids, it would only minimally impact the U.S. demand for imported oil.

The use of hydrogen to power cars, trucks and yes, even locomotives and airplanes can be accelerated if the federal and state governments pass legislation exempting the producers of any hydrogen powered vehicles (including golf carts) from income taxes on profits for, say, 20 or 30 years. Also exempt should be suppliers and distributors of hydrogen.

If this were enacted there would be an absolute gold-rush by thousands of individuals and companies to perfect this technology and the means to produce and distribute hydrogen. Just as the profit motives of geeks initiated -- and still does -- the very rapid progress of computer and computer chip technologies, this same incentive can be utilized to promote the use of hydrogen powered vehicles.

It is imperative that research on hydrogen powered vehicles be expanded to as many firms and individuals as possible. We cannot rely solely on the federal government (the largest, most inefficient, most wasteful, and most corrupt consumer in the world) and a few auto companies to provide this research. The former giants XEROX, Digital Equipment, WANG, etc., proved incapable of adapting to changing technologies within the computer arena; it fell upon smaller, more innovative individuals and companies (mostly U.S. based) who had the vision, the requisite level of geekness, and yes, profit motive, to provide the benefits of computer technology to the masses.

Similar results can be achieved with hydrogen technologies given the proper incentives.
-- CA
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

When gas was plentiful and cheap I pretty much agreed with Rush Limbaugh's line of thinking: Hey, this is America, we're all about freedom, and so if somebody wants to drive a big, gas-guzzling SUV then the government shouldn't punish them for doing so and other people shouldn't criticize them for it.

But that was then, and this is now. Now it has become clear to me that the profusion of SUVs and gas-guzzlers have contributed significantly to the increasing demand for gas, which inevitably has helped to increase the price because supply has remained relatively constant. So now it's personal. Even though I drive a small, fuel-efficient car I still have to pay more to tank up, in part because others insist on driving vehicles that waste an increasingly precious resource.

It's not a big leap from that insight to a better understanding of why so much of the rest of the world looks scornfully upon Americans for our profligate consumption of, well, just about everything.
-- Chuck Vail

An inflation calculator used to bring forward the cost of regular gasoline from 1980 to 2006 will ring up $3.33 per gallon. Gasoline is getting cheaper as time goes on. It is the other costs of vehicle ownership that are climbing like financing, insurance registration, the regulation tax that requires air bags, matching bumpers, crash survivability, child car seats and the cost of roads is also a factor.
These facts are from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics table 3-14.

Eighty-eight percent of the time since 1960, the average amount of money spent on transportation was between 11 and 12 percent of disposable income. This remarkable statistic proves that taxes can be raised without harm to the economy provided that the use of the tax money generates additional productivity. Otherwise, raising taxes only reduces disposable income. State and Federal taxes went up sharply to finance the construction of the Interstate system of roads. Since about 1990, those same gas taxes have gone down in real terms due to inflation.

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