From an online comment thread at the NYT
“Meg”: Look, the reason Chinese cars are affordable is that they are subsidized by the Chinese government. Heavily. Removing import restrictions on these cars would devastate the American car industry. We are talking hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. How about instead we have the American government subsidize affordable cars here, or return to requiring CAFE gas mileage standards which created all those options in 2012.
Clifford Winston: If you want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions, charge them a vehicle-miles-travel tax. Some states are exploring the idea.
Eissendad*: Actually if you “want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions” shouldn’t you charge a fuel tax? Charging “a vehicle-miles-travel tax” doesn’t incentivize fuel efficiency it incentivizes driving fewer miles, something that is harder to do in rural America.
Clifford Winston: A VMT tax has the benefit over the fuel tax of being sufficiently flexible to address multiple automobile externalities including congestion, emissions, and safety.
Winston is right. A VMT tax could address congestion, emissions and safety. But he did move the goalposts. In his first response to the original post, he brought up fuel efficiency, and his next response suggested that a fuel tax is non optimal for externalities like congestion, emissions and safety. The challenge is to incent both fuel efficiency and other positive externalities.
One of my favorite books on the negative externalities of automobiles is Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” It’s the biography of Robert Moses, who is mostly responsible for modern day New York City, although he never held elective office.
*not me, this is one of my brothers
Clifford Winston: If you want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions, charge them a vehicle-miles-travel tax. Some states are exploring the idea.
Eissendad*: Actually if you “want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions” shouldn’t you charge a fuel tax? Charging “a vehicle-miles-travel tax” doesn’t incentivize fuel efficiency it incentivizes driving fewer miles, something that is harder to do in rural America.
Clifford Winston: A VMT tax has the benefit over the fuel tax of being sufficiently flexible to address multiple automobile externalities including congestion, emissions, and safety.
Winston is right. A VMT tax could address congestion, emissions and safety. But he did move the goalposts. In his first response to the original post, he brought up fuel efficiency, and his next response suggested that a fuel tax is non optimal for externalities like congestion, emissions and safety. The challenge is to incent both fuel efficiency and other positive externalities.
One of my favorite books on the negative externalities of automobiles is Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” It’s the biography of Robert Moses, who is mostly responsible for modern day New York City, although he never held elective office.
*not me, this is one of my brothers
Joel:
Labor outside of Overhead is such a small portion of the cost of manufacturing. Continuing whacking of it made no sense 30 years ago when I was consulting at Ingersoll Engineers, Whack materials and throughput rather than Labor.
Better throughput minimizes costs.
During one recession, we were able to keep employees by pursuing lower costs in our costs of manufacturing of which Materials was the giant in it. How did we do it? As the Materials Manager, I took my crew aside and told them to review all orders against demand and order what was necessary to support manufacturing. Delay and cancel Material orders.
Before my jackass boss (who came from sales) laid me off, my group of planners kept the company profitable for 13 of 14 months (one month Parker Hannifin Fluid Power suffer a small loss). The Controller traced the profit back to us. I explained what using past demand was doing and we would use such to plain inventory with minimal safety stock. I was a MRP/MRPII guru then. The department I managed use of MRP and the forecasts gave us a clear picture.
Tell “Meg,” Only dinosaurs continue to “whack” Labor and you know of a dinosaur who did differently and addressed the largest cost of manufacturing a product . . . that being Materials and secondarily the Overhead involved in it.
Looking at my Library of old books: Plossl and Wight “Production and Inventory Control“
Shorter Dr Joel: it’s gaslighting
What “Clifford” has done is distract from the original intent: reducing carbon emissions. May not have been your intent but that’s how I read it, the discussion started with EVs and ended with ICEs
Could just be me …
What do they do in China and Europe? It sure isn’t driving large vehicles with oversized engines with way too much horsepower.
Fix the issues and mandate smaller vehicles and more efficient engines with less cubic inch engines.
LMAFO–“Look, the reason Chinese cars are affordable is that they are subsidized by the Chinese government.”
Bush threw $80 Billion at the auto industry in 2008. It helped stave off collapse but didn’t address the root problem.
The reason most US manufacturing and farming is uncompetitive is because the US has the Dutch disease. Yes, US exports are not dominated by oil, natural gas, or some other commodity (though Trump is trying hard to change that.) The US’ primary export is dollars and financial services. Trade in dollars determines the dollar’s value, which makes it overvalued for industrial and agricultural products.
Does the US have Dutch disease?
China OTOH is trying mightily to avoid becoming overly financialized and having the yuan become a reserve currency. China also invests heavily in infrastructure not stock speculation.