You are worried about the "Conservatoids" giving your social security dollars to Wall Street while at the same time bragging that you will be financially secure because you invested your retirement money in a ROTH IRA? I assume that ROTH IRA account is all cash since you wouldn't trust your money with wall street, right? Or possibly you meant that you just don't trust government with your money since they might give it to boogeymen, like Haliburton and wall street bankers? If so, maybe those Conservatoids have a point about letting individuals control their money instead of taxing it out of them and spending it on what it knows is best for them.

On a per car basis, the economic impact due to environmental externalities would be so incomprehensibly small that it is a moot point anyway. Think about it: * Cars are not the only source of C02, they are not even the biggest source of ANTHROPOGENIC CO2. * Hybrids still produce CO2, they just marginally less. * Climate change could have a lot of negative economic impact, but no one really knows for sure. Despite what "The Day after Tomorrow" tried to tell us, climate change doesn't necessarily equate to global super storms. On a global scale, some regions will benefit from additional rainfall and climates conducive to increased agriculture. * Those impacts are not even a given. climate modeling is extremely complex and involves an extreme number of variables. If some others shift unpredictably (and they will) it could negate or exacerbate warming in ways that make your extra 10MPG kinda seem pointless. For example, a minor change in solar output or volcanic activity over a prolonged period of time. Given the uncertainty, you'd need to assign a % probability to the costs of various scenarios in your model and certainly wouldn't assign 100% of any future climate externalities to the cost of a car. * Depending on who you ask, the major costs of climate change are probably around 100 years out. $1 spent on a car today is very likely going to be a heck of a lot more valuable than $1 in property damage from a hurricane in 2110. This all ignores the reality that the cost/benefit calculation of the original article is based on a consumer buying a car today, who will very unlikely be around to incur the cost of climate change, if there even is a measurable amount of cost.

Dragging out the tired old oil company conspiracy again huh? So the car companies co-operate with this evil plan despite an overwhelming demand for a product that they could profitably sell, to prop up another industry? I suppose that works under the assumption that all big companies are evil, and thus colluding to screw the planet like some evil super-villain alliance. In the real world, I severely doubt that type of cartel-esque arrangement would hold up long. Forgive me, but I only see the Quid, but the pro quo seems to be missing in that arrangement. Gas never stays expensive long because it is still extremely plentiful, and so far the most efficient way to produce mechanical energy for mass consumption.

When are people going to get it through their heads that corporations NEVER pay taxes? They just collect them from us in the form of higher prices and pass them along to the Government, sometimes. It gives legislators a free pass to pretend they are taxing someone else and entreat us to entitlements and freebies that we are in fact paying for ourselves, then expect reciprocation in the form of votes. We should just end corporate taxation and stop playing silly shell games with our money.