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June 19, 2008
Gas/Diesel fuel taxes are going up soon
Bank on it. When the Transportation Secretary starts talking like this, you don't need a crystal ball to see what comes next:
Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April than they did in April 2007, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday...
... Americans have driven nearly 20 billion fewer miles overall this year and nearly 30 billion fewer miles since November, the department said.
Peters expressed concern that the cutbacks have resulted in the collection of fewer taxes on gasoline.
Here in South Florida, we've been under "water restrictions" for quite a while. Apparently they were starting to have some effect and water usage had declined. Not surprisingly, the Palm Beach water district sent out notices a while ago that there was going to be a hearing on hiking the water rates to compensate for the loss of revenue from the reduced water usage. Of course the proposed water rate surcharge passed -- no good deed goes unpunished.
This effect is the "dirty little secret" conservation keeps when there's anything taxable or sold by government agencies involved. If you're successful, and do manage to effectively conserve something, then its not going to reduce your costs at all, because the government depends on a steady revenue flow. You the consumer will get nothing but a warm fuzzy feeling that you did some good for Gaia -- your bills aren't going down at all.