President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the rich,” who he calls “millionaires and billionaires” but who, under most of his proposals, are those who make more than $250,000 a year ($200,000, if they aren’t married). And I want to get rid of wasteful government tax credits and subsidies, especially those that mainly benefit the middle classes and above.
Here is an idea that meets both criteria. It taxes the rich (by raising the amount of taxes they pay) and it eliminates a tax credit that really only benefits the upper middle class and above: Eliminate the subsidies and tax rebates for electric cars. Think about it. Who are those subsidies going to? Are poor people or even working or lower middle class people buying electric cars? Do regular working people have enough money to buy a “hobby” car that makes a nice political and environmental statement but costs more than cars with internal combustion engines? To ask the question is to answer it. These cars are being bought, to the extent that they are being bought at all, by the upper middle class.
The liberal-left buys electric cars to show-off their environmental consciousness.* And I have no problem with them doing that. I just don’t see why we have to subsidize this choice of theirs – especially when our deficit is so large and we have so many other needs.
As President Obama said in a different context, I am not telling upper middle class people that they can’t have an electric car. I’m just saying that, in our present fiscal situation, they just need to pay a little more to for it.**
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* When Toyota came out with its hybrid, Toyota made the Prius look different than its other cars. When Honda came out with its hybrids, Honda just put a hybrid engine (and battery packs) in its existing cars and put a little nameplate on the back that said it was a hybrid. Toyota’s Priuses sold; Honda hybrids didn’t – because you couldn’t tell they were hybrids. After all, what is the purpose of driving a “statement” car if nobody can tell you are doing it?
** Supporters of the electric car subsidies and tax credits (other than those who are just trying to get government money for themselves) will argue that the purpose of the subsidies is to help the environment by encouraging people to buy electric cars (and to help develop the electric car industry). Well, President Obama talks about how rich people are willing to help America by paying more taxes. Why doesn’t he also ask his friends (i.e., upper middle class liberals, the target market for electric cars) to help American by buying electric cars without a tax credit?
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