The problem isn’t so much the cost (though it matters) as it is how often they want to trade.

An *average* vehicle has an expected lifespan of 15-16 years. That includes all those taken off the road because of accidents that totalled them (not hard to total a 10+ year old car in a tiny fenderbender). So if you kept…

I know some people who used that as justification for early retirement with low savings.

Unfortunately for them they didn’t consider mitigating circumstances - like family members that died young were dying largely from cancer from chain smoking, asbestos inhalation, etc - things these people never did.

Wife and I keep my cars for what seems like forever (15 years and 19 years on our last purchases). We’re at 13 years and 7 years on our current fleet. Should get 5-6 and 10 more out of those vehicles, respectively. Spent $6000 on the older a few years ago (used purchase) and $17800 on the newer one (new off the lot).…

That’s what it SHOULD be.

But count on the regressives to find a stupid way to do it - like what Virginia tried a few years back - slap a flat fee for an EV or hybrid on to the normal registration fee.

They had that fee so high that for someone like me, who drives roughly 7500 miles per year, the total taxes on a Prius…

Hell, and remember that Trump recently denied the existence of an unnamed white house source, despite the fact that his white house itself set up the briefing with MULTIPLE news outlets and provided the source.

Most people don’t even know, I’d bet.

Hell, I’ve even had an autoworker (from a Ford plant, no less) criticize my Mazda for being foreign made but compliment my Ford for being American. Mind you, my Mazda was built in a Ford plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, and has a big UAW sticker in the window, and my Ford was made in…

case in point - the sh**-for-brains GOP state rep I have. He protests that renewable energy mandates are “too expensive” because the credits cost 0.0175 cents per kWh. Note that cost doesn’t account for the estimated 0.04 cents per kWh drop in electricity prices that has occurred from the increased competition spurred…

500 / 1600 is peanuts compared to domestic brands....

I generally agree with this, but a few points:

1) Distribution, dealer, shipping, repair, etc - those jobs will exist with or without the German (or any other) maker. If the German makes are forced out, it will increase business at the competition, and those jobs will naturally flow. This is why I hate the “indirect…

Perfectly fine with me...

Public.

Though it really makes no difference. There’s no such thing as competition when it comes to water utilities - It’s either a publicly-owned utility or privately-owned but regulated. In either case, they’re allowed to recover the costs of capital investments.

I wonder how many private water utilities are left,…

Federal gas taxes haven’t exceeded federal spending on highways and bridges since 2009. The government has been raiding general revenues to make up the difference. Even if they cut out 100% of all mass transit or “earmarked programs”, they still wouldn’t have enough gas tax revenue to cover their spending.

federal *income* taxes.

The federal tax structure is not nearly as progressive as people believe when you consider all sources of tax. Most state and local tax structures are actually pretty highly regressive.

There’s a logic behind these moves, though.

Roads will cost a certain amount to maintain regardless of how efficient the vehicles are traveling over the surface. The wear and tear is correlated to mpg, but if all vehicles improve in efficiency, the damage they do to the roads doesn’t decrease at the same time (unless…

1st:

This is EASY to solve. You have to renew your registration each year, and all they need to do is have you submit an odometer reading, from which they calculate your tax bill. They can even just rely on your honesty - because whenever you sell or dispose of a vehicle, they require a verified odometer reading, and…

And yet THAT WAS MY ENTIRE FUCKING POINT!

It was worse than average for fires in rear end collisions, but for fires OVERALL, it WAS BETTER THAN AVERAGE! You were more likely do die in a fire in virtually any of its competition. I said that at the very beginning, and you’ve been denying it all along like the ignorant…

Wow are you an ignorant, anti-intellectual little shit...

From Schwartz:
“Moreover, when all vehicle fire fatalities are considered, the Pinto turns out to have been less dangerous than the average subcompact and only slightly more dangerous than the average car.”

The very source you want to use says EXACTLY what I was…

And here’s the thing - BMW, like Ford, exports a ton of vehicles to offset the imports. Both would be hit by these tariffs, just because they centralize production and not because they’re huge net importers.

1st:

The ultimate stupidity is that he isn’t proposing offsets for the tariffs for exports.

So, for example, right now, Ford imports the Edge, MKX, MKT, and GT from Canada. But if you go to a Ford dealer in Canada, all the F-series, Mustangs, Tauruses, Continentals, Navigators, Expeditions, Escapes, Transits, Focuses,…

With that cheap plastic body cladding on the lower portion, you’d think this was a pontiac...