Here, I can do a better job than this entire article.
It’s currently $0.511 per gallon. There’s already a law that increases gas tax (presumably to keep up with inflation) every year in the summer. It will now be $0.536 on July 1st, so gas prices will rise $0.02 per gallon. (Less than keeping up with 8.5% inflation)
They should have just pegged the tax as a percentage (you know like sales, income, property that we pay?) so we don’t have to deal with Fox banging the drum every year.
I'd prefer gas taxes be much higher, with basic needs subsidized so that more of us can afford the necessities for longer. Burning fuel for the fun of it seems a reasonable luxury to disincentivize. Family travel (weddings, funerals, etc) seems far more important than business travel. Changing sports leagues so teams aren't flying all over the country, and instead playing their region until the finals, would be a healthy step, too. Increasing the price of raw materials might cut down on the cheaply-made stuff we ship all over the place at a whim (looking at you, plastics).
I've seen automobile conventions and trucks hauling trucks from the suburbs to rural areas to drive through the woods for the fun of it, and while the number of people who opt in to this is probably small, their carbon footprint seems huge. I'd rather reserve that for the very rich (a few private jets don't bother me; I get it, sometimes the really important decision-makers need to get places quickly), and reduce the number of very-rich people so that more people have their basic needs met and that we might gradually, not catastrophically, reduce our population.
I'm more concerned with "what they do with said taxes" than what they're taxing itself. California has one of the least-efficient operations when it comes to deliverability.
and Pelosi, and her husband's friends that miraculously keeping winning contracts-for-stuff, keep somehow nailing their stock picks right before federal money is moved to various industries.
I’m very curious what the upper limit of gas prices the public is willing to take, in a single party state. It would be fascinating to see which dollar amount tips the political scales. $12 a gallon? $20?
Truckers are largely using diesel, which has a different excise tax (currently at $0.389/gallon)[1].
Maintaining a higher rate of speed burns fuel faster. According to a random site I found[2] (sorry, I'm not a trucker), an operator self-reported that efficiency goes down by about 1mpg when speed is increased from 55mph to 65mph.
The average price of on-highway diesel in California is currently $6.277/gallon[3]. Taking a hypothetical load from Long Beach to Sacramento (~400 miles) at 55mph will take 7.27 hrs and burn 57 gallons. Doing the same at 65mph will take 6.15 hrs and 66 gallons. In this hypothetical situation, the driver saves about an hour, and spends an additional $56 on fuel.
If the driver is paid hourly (unlikely) and paid more than $56/hr (unlikely), then the faster driving could be potentially worth the increased fuel cost. This is generally not true though, and driving faster does not reduce the cost of transport.
Even if the diesel excise tax goes up $0.02/gal (my brief searching didn't find out how much it will go up), in our hypothetical scenario this only adds $1.14 to the slower haul -- which is not a meaningful amount.
You aren't accounting for the capital depreciation expense of the truck.
Longer term due to cost, environmental, and pollution issues we expect that the trucking industry will transition away from diesel fuel. Local routes will probably use battery electric power and over the road will burn natural gas.
It’s currently $0.511 per gallon. There’s already a law that increases gas tax (presumably to keep up with inflation) every year in the summer. It will now be $0.536 on July 1st, so gas prices will rise $0.02 per gallon. (Less than keeping up with 8.5% inflation)
They should have just pegged the tax as a percentage (you know like sales, income, property that we pay?) so we don’t have to deal with Fox banging the drum every year.