Pay by mile - taxing road use?

AndrewFlannigan said:
They can be used in such a way but should they be used in that way?

Why would a supposedly socialist government think it right to give a financial benefit to wealthier citizens, while placing an additional burden on poorer citizens? I base that question on the observation that wealthier citizens are much more likely to purchase electric vehicles than poorer citizens, who are most likely forced to buy older cars, which are in turn much more likely to have internal combustion engines.

Perhaps those able to purchase new electric cars should pay higher VAT on their cars, to be used as a subsidy to assist poorer people to buy electric cars, instead of petrol or diesel cars.
Click to expand...

Because taxes, rather like sales commissions, are one way of driving behaviour. If you have a policy to change over to EV's, you simply tax the other options, so that people "choose" to behave in the manner you want. It ain't rocket science.....
 
Jelster said:
If you have a policy to change over to EV's, you simply tax the other options, so that people "choose" to behave in the manner you want.
Click to expand...
But why should we, the majority, permit you, the minority, to force us to do something,?

Isn't that fascism?
 
cambsno said:
But one your in favour of I assume as 62% of people favour EV subsidies and in the Politics thread you think politicians should do what the public view is?
Click to expand...
Which 62% is that?

Did anyone travel the length and breadth of the British Isles to ask every adult their opinion?
 
jerry12953 said:
"is it a bribe?"

Like offering people feed-in tariffs to fit solar pv panels.

No more than giving the self-employed tax relief if they take out personal pensions. For example.

If it is a bribe it must be one of countless bribes offered by the Government to help persuade people to do what they want people to do.

Or to give yet another example, the massive "bribes" the government gives the fossil fuel companies to search for more oil and gas fields.
Click to expand...
You have answered your own questions.

All those are bribes and all those bribes were intended to persuade the recipients to do things that benefitted them over others. For such things not to be bribes, the money would have to be given to every citizen equally, without any condition regarding its use.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
But why should we, the majority, permit you, the minority, to force us to do something,?

Isn't that fascism?
Click to expand...
There's been a discussion elsewhere about this, which you were sometime involved in.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Which 62% is that?

Did anyone travel the length and breadth of the British Isles to ask every adult their opinion?
Click to expand...
You said that the government should do what the majority want.

Just think about how many laws and regulations need to be approved and then think how the governments will know what to do.

You can’t have it both ways. In this survey the majority agreed with ev subsidies. So the democratic thing is to continue.
 
cambsno said:
In this survey the majority agreed with ev subsidies.
Click to expand...
But not a majority of the whole population. In fact, probably a tiny fraction of 1%.
cambsno said:
So the democratic thing is to continue.
Click to expand...
On a matter of importance, you have to get the opinion of everyone, otherwise you just have a dictatorship of the minority.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
But not a majority of the whole population. In fact, probably a tiny fraction of 1%.

On a matter of importance, you have to get the opinion of everyone, otherwise you just have a dictatorship of the minority.
Click to expand...
So how could the government do this in order to be democratic?
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
But why should we, the majority, permit you, the minority, to force us to do something,?

Isn't that fascism?
Click to expand...
Governments control, that's what they do. Your idea of 100% democracy is never going to work. We select MP's (through voting) to make decisions for us, based on the state of the nation. They do this through policies which are turned into plans, and then sometimes the government give favourable terms to early adopters to get the plan moving. Tax breaks and the like are there to drive the behaviour of the people.

I don't really care if you don't like it, it's called life. If you're not happy with how we do things, maybe you should emigrate to somewhere that will please you. The one thing the government don't do is force you to live here.
 
cambsno said:
So how could the government do this in order to be democratic?
Click to expand...
It can't.

Not if 'democratic' means 50.01% of the population want it. We had this a few months ago - the suggestion that most decisions should be decided by referenda. As Jelster says in a reply to Andrew: "Your idea of 100% democracy is never going to work".
 
I watched a programme about Socrates yesterday, recorded a while ago. He made the mistake of disagreeing with some people who thought they knew all the answers. ;)
 
Well you have not given answers, like how could the government ask 100% of the people for views on all decisions.
 
cambsno said:
Well you have not given answers, like how could the government ask 100% of the people for views on all decisions.
Click to expand...
You appear to think I'm under an obligation to answer your questions but, like yourself, I'm merely thinking aloud here.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
I watched a programme about Socrates yesterday, recorded a while ago. He made the mistake of disagreeing with some people who thought they knew all the answers. ;)
Click to expand...
You sure that wasn't about various Russian Generals? :LOL:

You are always free to disagree, but the needle does seem rather stuck on that record..... I don't like putting people on my ignore list, but sometimes I have to for my own sanity.
 
As I posted in a different thread ice car sales are falling because manufacturers are making it difficult for buyers to obtain new vehicles without long delivery times, they are worried about huge fines if they don’t hit ev sales targets, Guy in the dealers says many people aren’t going for this and either keeping the cars they already have or buying from manufacturers with ice stock available. I looked at a new corsa today, £10k, nope double that., and it comes with a puny 1.2l engine, 130 hp he says, how long will it last getting abused and working hard? Mmmmmm was the answer.
 
mj4456 said:
As I posted in a different thread ice car sales are falling because manufacturers are making it difficult for buyers to obtain new vehicles without long delivery times, they are worried about huge fines if they don’t hit ev sales targets, Guy in the dealers says many people aren’t going for this and either keeping the cars they already have or buying from manufacturers with ice stock available. I looked at a new corsa today, £10k, nope double that., and it comes with a puny 1.2l engine, 130 hp he says, how long will it last getting abused and working hard? Mmmmmm was the answer.
Click to expand...

Well, it had to happen sometime. May as well be now. There's also been COVID and the factor of chip shortages and of course, cars are now the new consumables, like toasters - they are(were!) built to be cheap and repairability isn't a factor. Looks, marketing, PCP, selling the dream, that's what the car market is about now.

Why did it have to happen sometime? Well, fossil fuels are finite. We might look at them and say "plenty of oil for me!" but there isn't plenty of oil for our children. That's quite apart from the devastating effects on our planet from our unfettered use of fossil fuels.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Indeed they are but we already have the technology to create analogues of the fossil fuels from little more than sunlight and that nasty Carbon Dioxide that nobody (except plants) likes.


Perhaps, if the resources going into electric propulsion instead went into scaling up artificial fuel production, everybody would be happy?
Click to expand...
Scale, my dear boy, scale.

Show me the scale of your dream and how what you propose matches the scale of fossil fuels.
 
Pound Coin said:
Scale, my dear boy, scale.

Show me the scale of your dream and how what you propose matches the scale of fossil fuels.
Click to expand...
The histories of commerce and engineering both show that scale follows demand.

If this technology can be launched at an attractive price and marketed successfully, then it will inevitably scale up. It probably wouldn't be the original inventors who make the big profits, Henry Ford didn't get into cars until the basic technology was well established but cars were playthings for the very rich. His contribution was to figure out how to mass produce a cheap car that would supply the needs of many different customers.
 
The future of EVs (cheap) is with the Chinese, they are leading the technology, BYD especially but the USA and the EU are forcing large import Tariffs to protect there silly legacy ICE industry making the same stuff as they were in the 90s and 2000s etc just different but the same.

The irony is how many ICE companies cars are now made in China?
 
Last edited:
AndrewFlannigan said:
The histories of commerce and engineering both show that scale follows demand.

If this technology can be launched at an attractive price and marketed successfully, then it will inevitably scale up. It probably wouldn't be the original inventors who make the big profits, Henry Ford didn't get into cars until the basic technology was well established but cars were playthings for the very rich. His contribution was to figure out how to mass produce a cheap car that would supply the needs of many different customers.
Click to expand...
If what technology?
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Choose one, hide it behind your back and I'll try to guess what you're thinking.

Or not.
Click to expand...
You suggest that 'this technology' will scale up.

What technology? If we are ready to scale it up, so it is in place soon, it must be here now. So, what technology?
 
An area twice the size of Wales could fuel the entire aviation industry...

Road uses 7 times the fuel that aviation does.
Residential just a bit less that aviation total
Ships, about the same.
Industry about the same.

So, to replace fossil oil for the above with this wonderful, an area 20 times the size of Wales.

Raises questions like: Is there enough material in the world to make the solar panels needed for this?
 
Pound Coin said:
Raises questions like: Is there enough material in the world to make the solar panels needed for this?
Click to expand...

or we could just use the panels to create green electricity
there is a thought
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top