Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Very simply -- and I know most of you either have done this or can do it --
If you drive 10,000 miles a year. Your car gets 25 mpg. Gasoline is $4/gal. Your annual cost for gasoline is $1600/yr.
Same factors. Except gas is $5/gal. Annual cost for gasoline is $2000/yr.
$400 more a year is not going to kill anyone. And it's doubtful that gasoline will rise to $5/gal. At least not in 2015.
If you don't have a monthly budget and an annual budget written on paper or done on Excel or with other budget software, you really must do them. Otherwise, you don't know what is going out each month and each year.
Everyone hates the word 'budget', but if you don't have one -- well, again, you simply do not know where all your money is going. Because it's just too easy to stop every workday morning for a $4 coffee. If you add it up and write it down -- that's at least $1040 a year. You certainly don't have to give up your coffees, but maybe 2-3 mornings a week would be fine for you.
I truly do not mean to sound patronizing or demeaning, but if you ask a roomful of people how many do not budget, 3/4 of the room will raise their hands. And individuals will say, "I don't have to. It's all up here." -- as they tap their head. Or they'll say, "Well, no, but I don't run out of money before the end of the month, so I must be doing ok."
Get a budget down on paper or on software. You may find that a $.75 increase in gasoline is not as scary as it sounds.
Very simply -- and I know most of you either have done this or can do it --
If you drive 10,000 miles a year. Your car gets 25 mpg. Gasoline is $4/gal. Your annual cost for gasoline is $1600/yr.
Same factors. Except gas is $5/gal. Annual cost for gasoline is $2000/yr.
$400 more a year is not going to kill anyone. And it's doubtful that gasoline will rise to $5/gal. At least not in 2015.
If you don't have a monthly budget and an annual budget written on paper or done on Excel or with other budget software, you really must do them. Otherwise, you don't know what is going out each month and each year.
Everyone hates the word 'budget', but if you don't have one -- well, again, you simply do not know where all your money is going. Because it's just too easy to stop every workday morning for a $4 coffee. If you add it up and write it down -- that's at least $1040 a year. You certainly don't have to give up your coffees, but maybe 2-3 mornings a week would be fine for you.
I truly do not mean to sound patronizing or demeaning, but if you ask a roomful of people how many do not budget, 3/4 of the room will raise their hands. And individuals will say, "I don't have to. It's all up here." -- as they tap their head. Or they'll say, "Well, no, but I don't run out of money before the end of the month, so I must be doing ok."
Get a budget down on paper or on software. You may find that a $.75 increase in gasoline is not as scary as it sounds.
Most people who work drive more than 10k a year and most families have two people driving to work.
Average miles is around 16k per year, double that for a two worker household, now we are at 32k a year. So at $4 a gallon an average working family spends $5,120 a year on gas, this increase in taxes could push that up to $6,400 a year.
The median household income for California is just over 50k. So this tax increase, not the tax, but just the increase is taking 1/50 of all earned income or out another way two people will lose a weeks worth of pay (80hrs of labor) just to pay for this increase.
Most people who work drive more than 10k a year and most families have two people driving to work.
Average miles is around 16k per year, double that for a two worker household, now we are at 32k a year. So at $4 a gallon an average working family spends $5,120 a year on gas, this increase in taxes could push that up to $6,400 a year.
The median household income for California is just over 50k. So this tax increase, not the tax, but just the increase is taking 1/50 of all earned income or out another way two people will lose a weeks worth of pay (80hrs of labor) just to pay for this increase.
Your calculation assumes that both earners absolutely need to drive, cannot carpool ever, and have no public transportation options. Consider that even places like Redding have a bus system, and smaller, isolated towns don't have people driving 16,000 miles per year. This makes your calculation only valid for a small percentage of places in California, but that's fine, we'll talk about that small percentage of places.
Personally, I believe that a small financial hardship on that small percentage of people who are completely, utterly incapable of changing their lifestyle is worth making a bit of progress on saving our coastal communities from sea level rise. Ever visited Miami? Go sometime in the next 15 years, who knows when a storm surge might change it forever.
Your calculation assumes that both earners absolutely need to drive, cannot carpool ever, and have no public transportation options. Consider that even places like Redding have a bus system, and smaller, isolated towns don't have people driving 16,000 miles per year. This makes your calculation only valid for a small percentage of places in California, but that's fine, we'll talk about that small percentage of places.
Personally, I believe that a small financial hardship on that small percentage of people who are completely, utterly incapable of changing their lifestyle is worth making a bit of progress on saving our coastal communities from sea level rise. Ever visited Miami? Go sometime in the next 15 years, who knows when a storm surge might change it forever.
So your argument for increasing the taxes of the middle and lower class working people is because of an Un prove scientific theory. The oceans are not rising, people are not going to be under water, the earth has actually been cooling over the last decade. And even if what you are saying is true and co2 emissions are going to raise sea levels to the point of flooding cities. Most of the world is expanding and creating multiple times more emissions than here in the US (that is why so many products cannot be made here and are made over seas). So to prevent the killing of the world we should bring our full military force against these countries before it is too late and millions of Americans are harmed by a raising ocean.
The reason they call it average miles traveled is because it is the average, not a small amount. Plus taking public transportation is more expensive than driving anyways.
Unless you live in a city with a world-class public transportation system such as Toronto or London, two cars are a must, since only one city (SF) in California has such a system, yet has become unaffordable for lots of folks thanks to the same environmental zealots starting with our Governor due to the 'no growth' and open space laws mantra he's been addicted with since the seventies and which has since spread throughout our government, resulting in 35+ years of assaults on the standard of living of the middle class in this state, which explains why several million of them have left the state over the past 20+ years.
Democrats and environmentalists just aren't friends of the middle class and never have been; our gasoline and housing prices are the irrefutable proof of that courtesy of those two entities which have no peer when it comes to killing jobs, with our clueless President right behind them and leading the massacre on the middle-class, with California being the poster child.
Brown's fixation with his HSR choo-choo will wind up being another financial disaster that no one will use; no one will want to take a 3 1/2 hour or more long train ride from LA to the Bay Area when they can take a 45-minute plane ride instead as they've been doing for over 40 years on any of the 350+ weekly flights from LA to the Bay area.
Liberals have always been stubborn as well as stupid when it comes to economics and regulations, yet cannot understand why the current US economy has been comatose under their watch with no hope of improvement for the little guy.
They certainly won't be buying any of those $400K+ condos popping up in downtown LA, yet another present from the liberals in Sacramento to their fellow one-percenters, the overwhelming majority of whom are whites, with NO Asians having any desire to live there and only a smattering of wealthy blacks and/or Hispanics being able to afford them.
Their fixation on multi-unit housing at the expense of SFRs is yet another assault on the middle class, with the very predictable result being our sky-high housing prices, another 'gift' of theirs to the middle-class and working poor citizens of the state with the nation's highest poverty rate as a recent front-page article in the LA Times pointed out recently.
Unless you live in a city with a world-class public transportation system such as Toronto or London, two cars are a must, since only one city (SF) in California has such a system, yet has become unaffordable for lots of folks thanks to the same environmental zealots starting with our Governor due to the 'no growth' and open space laws mantra he's been addicted with since the seventies and which has since spread throughout our government, resulting in 35+ years of assaults on the standard of living of the middle class in this state, which explains why several million of them have left the state over the past 20+ years.
Democrats and environmentalists just aren't friends of the middle class and never have been; our gasoline and housing prices are the irrefutable proof of that courtesy of those two entities which have no peer when it comes to killing jobs, with our clueless President right behind them and leading the massacre on the middle-class, with California being the poster child.
Brown's fixation with his HSR choo-choo will wind up being another financial disaster that no one will use; no one will want to take a 3 1/2 hour or more long train ride from LA to the Bay Area when they can take a 45-minute plane ride instead as they've been doing for over 40 years on any of the 350+ weekly flights from LA to the Bay area.
Liberals have always been stubborn as well as stupid when it comes to economics and regulations, yet cannot understand why the current US economy has been comatose under their watch with no hope of improvement for the little guy.
They certainly won't be buying any of those $400K+ condos popping up in downtown LA, yet another present from the liberals in Sacramento to their fellow one-percenters, the overwhelming majority of whom are whites, with NO Asians having any desire to live there and only a smattering of wealthy blacks and/or Hispanics being able to afford them.
Their fixation on multi-unit housing at the expense of SFRs is yet another assault on the middle class, with the very predictable result being our sky-high housing prices, another 'gift' of theirs to the middle-class and working poor citizens of the state with the nation's highest poverty rate as a recent front-page article in the LA Times pointed out recently.
So your argument for increasing the taxes of the middle and lower class working people is because of an Un prove scientific theory. The oceans are not rising, people are not going to be under water, the earth has actually been cooling over the last decade.
Yes, and the Earth is flat, too. Please cite some valid sources that have not been funded by the oil industry if you'd like to claim that something 98% of scientists agree with is false.
Quote:
And even if what you are saying is true and co2 emissions are going to raise sea levels to the point of flooding cities. Most of the world is expanding and creating multiple times more emissions than here in the US (that is why so many products cannot be made here and are made over seas). So to prevent the killing of the world we should bring our full military force against these countries before it is too late and millions of Americans are harmed by a raising ocean.
Until we're doing everything we can to reduce emissions, we have no right to ask it of the rest of the world.
Quote:
taking public transportation is more expensive than driving anyways.
Either cite a source, or give your own experience, one of the two - this is how argument/discussion works. According to AAA, the average cost to own and operate a vehicle for 2014 in the United States is nearly $9000. Lets say you use one of the most expensive public transportation options in California, Caltrain. A 6 zone pass is $338 per month, allowing you to travel from Gilroy all the way to San Francisco. Lets say you also have a VTA bus pass, which is $70 per month. The two together would be $4896 per year, still much less than the average cost to own a private motor vehicle.
Most people who work drive more than 10k a year and most families have two people driving to work.
Average miles is around 16k per year, double that for a two worker household, now we are at 32k a year. So at $4 a gallon an average working family spends $5,120 a year on gas, this increase in taxes could push that up to $6,400 a year.
The median household income for California is just over 50k. So this tax increase, not the tax, but just the increase is taking 1/50 of all earned income or out another way two people will lose a weeks worth of pay (80hrs of labor) just to pay for this increase.
According to AAA and the government stats, the average American drives 12,000 a year.
And if you are a family of four living on a little over $50,000 a year in CA, you can't afford to live there, even with no gasoline tax increase.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You certainly don't have to give up your coffees, but maybe 2-3 mornings a week would be fine for you.
You may find that a $.75 increase in gasoline is not as scary as it sounds.
