Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobobob420 | Hacker News Reader

Well thanks to taxpapers electric vehicle companies are able to reduce the costs as stated in article. in general I wish tax payers got more opportunities to directly vote on where our money is going. A taxpayer should get a yearly report to indicate exactly where their money goes and which representatives voted for them.

View on HN

At the same time you should thank taxpayers for artificially low oil prices as well.

How are gas prices subsidized? I'm asking in good faith because I truly don't know.

A large chunk of the DoD budget, for one thing.

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Fifth_Fleet

One way:

The US government's policy of "encouraging" countries to sell their crude in USD (in a "nice country you've got there, shame if something happened to it" way) keeps them in effective control of the price of oil. The last time someone tried to sell in Euros instead [0], the US DOD spent more than $1,000,000,000,000 [1] proving their willingness to back up that threat.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeur...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

great spend of taxpayers money. I would like to give my thanks now to the politicians who decided to subsizide oil prices so my fellow Americans can reduce their gas bill.

Can’t tell if serious or not. Asking people who don’t drive to subsidize those who do seems counterproductive.

Oh the US is great at burdening everybody with car infrastructure costs, even if they don't drive. Just look at minimum parking requirements.

People who don't drive still buy things that were moved across the country (and world) using oil.

Thats like saying If you don’t have kids your property taxes shouldn’t go to the schools in the town. Almost everyone in America needs a car to survive and make a living. Have some realism

Well tax payers get benefit from massive the supply chain running on gas and keeping price competitive for millions goods and services.

People elect goverment and officials, both at local and federal level to make informed decisions that weight in numerous factors. If people had more direct control over and line-item veto and vote, we may not make the best decision as a whole. At least for some contentious issues, you sometimes get to directly vote on state referendum.

And you get politicians getting bribed, er, lobbied, to legislate against the will of the people and/or the actually informed decision to make. It's not like a representative democracy is a clear win over a direct vote, or we'd have universal healthcare by now.

It's out there. Go read it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com