Re: theWatt Podcast 77

You may be right about cigarettes, but various factors (smoking bans, public opinion, taxes) will be hard to separate out. In any case, there are still about 20% of American that smoke versus about 25% perhaps 20 years ago, or 45% 50 years ago. So most of this reduction came well before the very high taxes were applied to cigarettes. I would suggest that changing attitudes was the key factor there. Since the recent application of high taxes, the reduction in the number of smokers is more modest and might be the result of taxes or other factors, it is hard to know.
It looks like if you use the number of cigarettes as a metric (rather than the percentage of smokers) then the recent reduction is more impressive. Perhaps the high tax has been successful in reducing the number of cigarettes smoked more so than the number of smokers. Again, it is hard to separate out various factors. In any case, I am sure taxes (high prices) reduce usage of anything (cigarettes, electricity, gasoline), my main point here was about how effective it is. I just think the California electricity situation shows that there are more important factors in reducing consumption than taxes or increased prices.

Regarding your comments about the car companies, I am not sure how to support or refute your claims of ill-will on the part of the car companies. Allow me to put forth another proposal about the SUV craze in the USA that I think is supported by the facts.

The CAFE standard itself created the SUV craze. The USA government created the CAFE standards (in the mid 70's and implemented into the mid 80's). The key thing to realize is that there are two standards
1) Cars had to be 27.5 MPG CAFE
2) Light trucks had to be 20.5 MPG CAFE
and for completeness, any vehicle over 6000lbs is not regulated for MPG.
OK so the average car needs to be 27.5MPG. This is not good news for cars that I grew up with which is the 9 passenger Plymouth Fury Station Wagon. It is difficult to imagine improving that car to get 27.5 MPG. So what is the solution. Make this into andSUV (by the way a category that didn't exist before CAFE). Now we can buy SUVs and miniVans that can get 20.5MPG because they are classified as "light trucks". As a result of CAFE, people that wanted larger cars (like station wagons) were forced to buy "light trucks" instead because station wagons where pretty much legislated out of existence.

I think what is humbling to me is that the intent of the law was to increase fuel efficiency. I think the laws makers wanted more fuel efficient vehicles. However, it actually set into motion the whole SUV craze. This is the law of "unintended consequences" If you look into the data, the SUV craze seems to correlate well with the introduction of CAFE. Of course this does not prove that it caused the SUV craze, but it seems likely.

I don't doubt the power of marketing and that the car industry has worked hard to sell us whatever vehicles they are making. I am just not sure that Toyota's advertising techniques for the Prius (which I own) are much different than their advertising for the Toyota Tundra pickup.

Someday someone will have to explain to me the evils of GM and McDonalds and Walmart because I just don't get it. I just see them as businesses. Really more neutral than good or evil.
Thanks
John C. Briggs