Republicans Say the Darndest Things!

$55,000 is WAY too high a cost threshold IMO. I’m thinking more like $30,000.

The idea is to create incentives to fix the existing problems with EVs. Not hand wave them away as if they don’t exist or aren’t important.

The median new car is $48k. And you can buy a Leaf or Bolt from about $26k.

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I see the problem. I was responding to a post where you said “it is a pretty normal thing”. I thought that meant you were saying there is a high percentage.

What you meant is that some people do it, and any 100% mandate has to deal with that group, even if it is a very small fraction of the total.

Okay. The poster had said that the only thing stopping a big EV rollout was charging infrastructure. You said the technology isn’t here yet for certain specialized uses. Both of you can be making true statements.

This analogy doesn’t do anything for me.

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I’m also leery of income-based incentives. The bachelor who retired at 30 with $10,000,000 in his trust fund and several mansions and luxury cars that he owns outright could easily get his income under $150,000 for a year whereas the couple with jobs that pay $76,000 each and piles of student loans and a huge mortgage and two car loans and other debt and a bunch of young kids would not qualify.

So apply the tax incentive to the Leaf or the Bolt or other cars that decide to enter that market space, but not vehicles costing well over the national average.

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Not that the car itself is making the decision… time for more coffee. :woman_facepalming:

If you mean that income based incentives would be somewhat fairer if we included an asset test, I’ll agree. I’m not sure if the “somewhat” is worth the added complexity, that depends on the circumstances.

I think this is an issue with ACA – early retirees use non-qualified withdrawals to keep themselves under the income limit for subsidies. Maybe ACA should have an asset test, too.

My gut is that the ACA thing is bigger in total, but I have no idea how to support that with data.

Eh, I think we are arguing over degree and not kind. If I could pick a number, I might suggest setting it at the median of $48k, maybe plus 3% for inflation for 2023. Some might suggest giving a large cash-on-the-hood discount to low-income folks.

I also agree that income limits aren’t perfect, that’s a whole 'nother thing and there’s probably a thread for tax problems. This is example #438 of why we should phase benefits out rather than have a cliff, etc etc etc.

But these are kind of picking at edge cases, I think. I guess I’m not 100% on board with a hard mandate unless and until we solve very nearly all use cases. I’m also still trying to figure out how infrastructure for charging plays out. EVs increase demand, but most of EVs can be charged at night, and solar is ramping up quickly, and I don’t know how that plays out.

ETA: I’d be more on board with a plug-in hybrid mandate. I drive a Volt. I can’t claim to use zero gas, but I use on the order of 4 gallons per month.

Or just accept that we shouldn’t means-test at all as it will be a clusterf—- regardless.

If you add an asset test then people will set up trusts or figure out some other way to skirt it.

A guy with $10,000,000 in the bank probably isn’t going to buy a $30,000 car anyway. Just let him have the tax credit for the thing he’s extremely unlikely to do. That’s SO much simpler.

We should only means-test in very limited circumstances because it is so difficult to get it right. EV is not in in that pool of extremely limited circumstances.

Yeah a relative & spouse have this down pat. Low-paying hobby jobs to get the EIC. Income just high enough to not qualify for Medicaid, but low enough to get 100% subsidies on a silver plan. And they qualify for the extra benefits that essentially turn a silver plan into a gold plan.

So they’re getting the EIC and a free (or at least heavily subsidized) gold-like plan and they’ve got a house they own outright and millions in the bank.

I would suspect this scenario affects less than 1 in 10,000 American probably less than 1 in 1,000,000. Nice humble brag about having independently wealth relatives milking the system.

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Eh, they’re just FIRE adherents. There’s a whole movement about it, although I don’t know how many actually accomplish it.

DeSantis claims that the “national media regime” wanted the hurricane to hit Tampa

That exact scenario is probably rare. OTOH, back when ACA was new, I was following https://www.early-retirement.org/

There seemed to be plenty of people who were discussing this. They retired before age 65 and were in “good enough” shape financially to make that a reasonable decision. If they had some tax diversification on their assets, they could manage taxable incomes for a while.

At the time, there was a “subsidy cliff” for older people at 4x FPL (about $73k today). People were certainly talking about how to make that work.

(I’m not so moved by EITC in this story. An income high enough to not qualify for Medicaid is about $24k. At that level, payroll taxes are $1,800 and EITC is $510.)

What was it that Tucker Carlson said about hurricanes? Did he call it a “legitimate hurricane”?

SMH

Huh? No, for a family of five EITC was $6,728 for 2021 and is $6,935 for 2022.

Of course they also got all of the stimulus too, to the tune of $13,900.

Uh, your “on the other hand” is precisely what my relatives did.

And like, I don’t have access to their bank records or anything, but I know they were saying that they were shooting for $2.5 million total, all of their own contributions Roth and once they’d cleared that hurdle and paid off the house they’d retire. And they retired at age 40, so I’m assuming they have several million. Perhaps less given the recent trajectory of the stock market, but I think they have a decent amount in TIPS as that is what they recommend to others. :woman_shrugging:

So you’re cheap ass welfare queen relatives are the reason we can’t have nice things?

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Don’t hate the player, hate the game. :woman_shrugging:

And it’s “your” :wink:

Or is that now a thing, like “moron”?