Rural Power Companies: Forced Greening?

The government isn't subsidizing when it employs tax credits and tax exemptions, so your whole argument fails because your premise is so deeply flawed from the outset. Calling them subsidies is a "progressive" attempt to have everyone accept what the "progressive" defines the word to mean, which isn't going to happen here, at least not with me.

SNAPS is a subsidy; Section 8 housing is a subsidy; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are subsidies. There is much in actual subsidies that the federal government doles out, but tax credits and tax exemptions are not among them.

Something the Dog Said wrote:

jf1acai wrote:

And no, taxes are not profit, which I assume you were trying to set up as a trick answer.

I disagree. Taxes are 100% profit to the government, which has invested nothing, and has risked nothing. It was not a trick question at all, who profits the most? - the government.

Nonsense. The road taxes in the retail price of gasoline are not profit, but the most fair way possible to put the cost of building and maintaining roads on the actual consumers who use those roads. The taxpayers, through their representative government, have decided that rather than impose additional taxes on those who may not use to build and maintain roads, to have those who actually use them to pay for them. The taxpayers have invested tremendously in the intial building of those roads and the road taxes enable those roads to be further built. The road taxes have no impact on the oil companies but do enable the oil companies to further profit from the consumers having roads to travel on.

Or would you rather have additional taxes levied on all taxpayers or go back to dirt unmaintained roads? Taxes are in no way "profits", particularly in this case where the road taxes go to build and maintain roads.

Nonsense. Part of the fuel taxes that everyone pays are actually "deficit reduction" taxes enacted under Reagan that have absolutely nothing to do with paying for the roads and highways and everything to do with finding a way to hide the excessive cost of government.

Another point is that even those who do not use the roads benefit from those roads, so why should they not be paying taxes to help build and maintain them? Even if you are one of the new converts to high density urban population concentration, in the effort to reduce global warming of course, the food you consume, the clothes that you wear, the smart phones that you focus all your attention on, all of these came to you from the roads which you are, in Dog's view at least, not paying any taxes to support.

Of course that too is a fallacy. The taxes that the truckers pay, roughly 10x what an individual pays to drive their car on the road (higher tax rate on the fuel multiplied by the number of gallons of fuel needed to travel the same distance) are passed along to the consumer as one of the components in the final cost of the product. You see, business don't pay taxes, they collect them. When a business pays a tax, it is not in any manner different from when they purchase a raw material or labor - it all gets factored into the cost that the consumers of the product pay when they purchase product. Raising taxes on businesses is, for all intents and purposes, raising the taxes that you pay in a hidden manner so that you are not aware that your taxes have been raised.

PrintSmith wrote: The government isn't subsidizing when it employs tax credits and tax exemptions, so your whole argument fails because your premise is so deeply flawed from the outset. Calling them subsidies is a "progressive" attempt to have everyone accept what the "progressive" defines the word to mean, which isn't going to happen here, at least not with me.

SNAPS is a subsidy; Section 8 housing is a subsidy; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are subsidies. There is much in actual subsidies that the federal government doles out, but tax credits and tax exemptions are not among them.

Your characterization is deeply flawed and false. Avoiding paying taxes while receiving government services is a subsidy from the taxpayers. Your bizarre attempt to characterize everything as a 'progressive' conspiracy goes to how outside realty you have become.

PrintSmith wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote:

jf1acai wrote:

And no, taxes are not profit, which I assume you were trying to set up as a trick answer.

I disagree. Taxes are 100% profit to the government, which has invested nothing, and has risked nothing. It was not a trick question at all, who profits the most? - the government.

Nonsense. The road taxes in the retail price of gasoline are not profit, but the most fair way possible to put the cost of building and maintaining roads on the actual consumers who use those roads. The taxpayers, through their representative government, have decided that rather than impose additional taxes on those who may not use to build and maintain roads, to have those who actually use them to pay for them. The taxpayers have invested tremendously in the intial building of those roads and the road taxes enable those roads to be further built. The road taxes have no impact on the oil companies but do enable the oil companies to further profit from the consumers having roads to travel on.

Or would you rather have additional taxes levied on all taxpayers or go back to dirt unmaintained roads? Taxes are in no way "profits", particularly in this case where the road taxes go to build and maintain roads.

Nonsense. Part of the fuel taxes that everyone pays are actually "deficit reduction" taxes enacted under Reagan that have absolutely nothing to do with paying for the roads and highways and everything to do with finding a way to hide the excessive cost of government.

Another point is that even those who do not use the roads benefit from those roads, so why should they not be paying taxes to help build and maintain them? Even if you are one of the new converts to high density urban population concentration, in the effort to reduce global warming of course, the food you consume, the clothes that you wear, the smart phones that you focus all your attention on, all of these came to you from the roads which you are, in Dog's view at least, not paying any taxes to support.

Of course that too is a fallacy. The taxes that the truckers pay, roughly 10x what an individual pays to drive their car on the road (higher tax rate on the fuel multiplied by the number of gallons of fuel needed to travel the same distance) are passed along to the consumer as one of the components in the final cost of the product. You see, business don't pay taxes, they collect them. When a business pays a tax, it is not in any manner different from when they purchase a raw material or labor - it all gets factored into the cost that the consumers of the product pay when they purchase product. Raising taxes on businesses is, for all intents and purposes, raising the taxes that you pay in a hidden manner so that you are not aware that your taxes have been raised.

Once again you mislead and distort. 60% of federal gas taxes go directly to fund bridge and highway projects. 40% go to transportation related projects. Zero goes to deficit reduction, that is simply a falsehood once again. Try to keep it honest for once.

Something the Dog Said wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: The government isn't subsidizing when it employs tax credits and tax exemptions, so your whole argument fails because your premise is so deeply flawed from the outset. Calling them subsidies is a "progressive" attempt to have everyone accept what the "progressive" defines the word to mean, which isn't going to happen here, at least not with me.

SNAPS is a subsidy; Section 8 housing is a subsidy; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are subsidies. There is much in actual subsidies that the federal government doles out, but tax credits and tax exemptions are not among them.

Your characterization is deeply flawed and false. Avoiding paying taxes while receiving government services is a subsidy from the taxpayers. Your bizarre attempt to characterize everything as a 'progressive' conspiracy goes to how outside realty you have become.

What are you talking about? You give no specifics.

Are you just talking about oil companies, or all highly profitable companies? Do you agree we are talking about tax deductions and tax credits? Or do you have some other "subsidies" in mind?

If you consider tax credits and tax deductions to be subsidies, then all of us that pay income taxes, and even many that don't, are subsided as well. So what's your point?

Per Mike Rosen's facebook page British Petroleum Solar is expected to do well if this anti-rural bill passes.

Something the Dog Said wrote: Once again you mislead and distort. 60% of federal gas taxes go directly to fund bridge and highway projects. 40% go to transportation related projects. Zero goes to deficit reduction, that is simply a falsehood once again. Try to keep it honest for once.

It appears that I might be somewhat in error here upon further checking. While true that the tax was originally implemented as a "deficit reduction" measure under Reagan, Bush and Clinton, in 1997 the Republican controlled Congress did pass legislation which transferred the proceeds of the tax to the Highway Trust Fund and did put an end to those revenues being used for deficit reduction as originally enacted. Don't have to say this often, but it appears that you are at least partially right this time Dog.

The fact remains that those tax increases were temporary measures. Being passed initially for the purposes of "deficit reduction", they are not permanent taxes and must be reauthorized from time to time. In fact, unless Congress reauthorizes that $0.184 per gallon tax on gasoline by the end of September of this year, the tax rate will automatically be reduced to the existing permanent tax rate of $0.043 per gallon.