Big brother wants to ride along

[misterx]

Interesting story in several ways. As more people switch to hybrid cars, the states are getting less money from gasoline taxes. I can't imagine this having much of an overall impact at this point, at least around here, where every other vehicle on the road is an SUV or large pickup truck, but that is their argument. The kicker is their solution to this. It's not "adjust the gasoline tax". It's installing a GPS device in your car, to track everywhere you go, "so they can compute mileage", and tax you by miles driven. Now if that isn't a thinly veiled ulterior motive, I don't know what is.

Bizarrely, this story barely touches on the privacy issues.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/14/eveningnews/main674120.shtml

Way to go, penalizing people who buy environmentally friendly cars, btw.

Comments

[marasca.livejournal.com]

Interesting. You'd think the lost gas taxes would ultimately be balanced out by savings in environmental cleanup, treating kids with asthma thanks to bad air, etc.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

You'd think, but then we wouldn't have to carry around GPS devices.

[marasca.livejournal.com]

True, true. I bet for most people it would already be easy to track location and patterns pretty well with the combined information from credit card and discount card scans, toll payments with EZ Pass, metro/subway card swipes, etc.

I was thinking that next thing we know we'll have to carry GPS systems when we walk so they can charge us a sidewalk tax, and then I thought of the song "Taxman" by the Beatles. :)

If you drive a car
I'll tax the street
If you take a walk
I'll tax your feet...

[galador42.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. You should check out the new daily_oblivion for regular news updates, because you seem interested in the same kind of news as we.

[misterx.livejournal.com]

The first story was about a judge using a penis pump.

What kind of news are you interested in over there?

[galador42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you would have to dig further back, actually. Seems as though it's been mostly fluff stories lately. conspiracy101 is a goodie, too.

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

Considering my odometer is fucked up in my truck, as is my gas gauge, requiring me to reset the odometer every 130 miles, they wouldn't get much from me. *WEG*

[misterx.livejournal.com]

I just find it fascinating, because in essense if you didn't carry around this GPS device, you'd be committing tax fraud.

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

My thinking is, if they want me to have a GPS on my 86 truck, then they can pay to have the gauges fixed and to put it in. Cause I'm not paying for it.

[kasalari.livejournal.com]

This is too scary. First the patriot act, now this. George Orwell's 1984 is on its way >.>