Tax on owning older cars will be next

I forgot who first said it, but I find it more true as time goes by: "I try to get more cynical every day, but lately I just can't keep up."

Comes now Juan Paxety, asking, "Did Obama announce the end of used cars?"

In his speech about the GM bankruptcy yesterday, President Barack Obama (from the New York Times) said:

And that’s why I’m calling on Congress to pass fleet modernization legislation that can provide a credit to consumers who turn in old cars and purchase cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars. (emphasis added)

Turn in old cars. It’s long been a talking point of liberals and environmentalists that cars older than a given age should be removed from the highways. ...

President Obama used the words "turn in" not "trade in." He will give folks a credit - I suppose that means an income tax credit - for doing this. This sounds like the used cars will go to the government and be removed from the market. No more used cars. You either buy an expensive putt-putt new car, or you go without. It appears that he’s set out to destroy the used car market.

That's only step one, though. The next step is to tax the possession of cars older than a certain number of years. It'll be about 15 years at first, but the "old car" tax will steadily reduce the age of cars subject to special taxes to about five years.

Think I'm making this up? It's already being done. Who would already suffer this taxation but the formerly free British people?

Tens of thousands of cars will become almost worthless as a result of the decision to raise road tax on older models with higher carbon dioxide emissions by up to £245 a year.

Many families will find that they cannot sell their cars even though they are in good working order and no more than seven years old.

The Times revealed yesterday that the Treasury had quietly abolished the exemption from higher road-tax rates for cars that emit more than 225g of CO2 per km and were registered between March 2001 and March 2006.

That from May 2008. Then there's Germany, France and Italy:

France and Germany are already giving money to their citizens if they scrap an old clanker to buy a new, fuel-efficient car. It's time now for Italy to do the same. The government, led by Silvio Berlusconi, has decided to offer a €1,500 tax cut for those who purchase a new car and scrap one which is at least 10 years old. The official reason is, of course, to protect the environment, since any car older than 10 years is likely to be more polluting than a modern one. Of course, this might also boost the country's car industry at the same time. I mean, car production in Italy is at the same level today as it was in 1961

This makes a perfect storm of convergence for the Obama administration. The sequence will go like this:

1. Mandate (well, dictate) that new motor vehicles achieve 35 mpg by 2016, which Obama has already done.

2. Announce tax credits for cars older than X years taken off the road. We'll also be told that it's patriotic to buy a new car to help save the environment and rejuvenate the domestic auto industries.

3. Then will come tax penalties for hanging on to cars older than so many years. Look for an excess-emissions tax like Britain has. But wait, you say, emissions testing is not done across the country or even (like here in Tennessee) everywhere in one state. Won't matter, The emissions tax will really be an age-of-car tax, based on EPA-published averages for engines and model years. Your car's actual, measured emissions won't matter.

Update: I should also point out that the EPA has already claimed the authority to set vehicle speed limits in order to regulate emissions. Eleven months ago, the EPA "issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) that would impose a number of unthinkable regulations on the economy and everyday life. " More about that here.