fuel prices

[Ivan141]

Ghe ghe..Mux..I see the economical theory that you are trying to reference..but your argumentation is still somewhat sloppy.

Why would the oil company have to pay the tax? They just produce the stuff, how you use fuel further is totally your own buisiness (makes a great cleaning agent!). I would think that its much more fair that the guy who does the polluting (aka U) pays.
The impacts of the pollution influence our whole society. So I think it is reasonably fair that the government takes measures to prevent it, in the name of us collectively. They are usually also the ones who do/sponsor most of the clean up work etc.

Internalising the external car is so difficult that we'll not see progress in the coming years. Pollution and other impacts depend on a lot of factors, for example time of day, traffic volume (regarding for example noise), traffic state (congestion means cold catalyst aka more fumes, congestion also means people/buisinesses wasting time and time=money), route choice (some routes are below the pollution treshhold and could be made relatively cheaper etc) etc.

The weird thing is that the whole of the scientific community has come to an understanding regarding a driven-distance based taxation. Expect one of those GPS boxes in your car somewhere in the coming century. And I'll probably be making a lot of money designing related systems..Dont worry..I'll spend it on nice things.