 Hey, we're back, we're live, we're here for MG in America, and we have not one of the people who died. You have the CEO, the president, you have the president, and his picture is on the screen right now. We also have Jeff Gissel, who joins us also by Skype Audio. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. Wonderful to be here. I'm happy to be here. That's great. I'm not talking about what's happening in Italy. I know, you know, it's hard not to talk about what's going on in Washington. But there's also things happening in the Union. Even as all the tumble happens in Washington. Where are you guys located today? I'm at a friend's home separating myself from a dinner party in Georgetown. I'm missing the dessert. That's wonderful. It's a lovely time to be here today. So we thought we would talk about things that we touched on before. That is the problem with tax reform and whether a tax on gas would help. Lou and I talked about that a few weeks ago, and I wonder if we can visit that again and extend it. Do you still think that's so? Do you still think that's doable? Do you still think that would work? And has the tax reform initiative changed so as to moot out that possibility? Let's talk a little bit about a get out of tax reform. I think one is actually economy by getting a gun of... Let's say a less tax structure dam or direct investment. We make this more competitive against our trading partners. And we get faster economic growth. Unfortunately, even with what we call dynamic scoring, people talk about a value. And if you look at the lack of generating... Well, let me ask one question that strikes me is, you know, I must say that I do not agree with very much that it's doing. And I keep wondering whether we need tax reform. Just as I wonder whether we need to repeal Obamacare. But I wonder, do we need tax reform? You know, he wants to spend $54 billion more for military. He's got a plan for all kinds of infrastructure. I'm not sure what the situation is in the case of the Mexican wall. But he's got plans to spend enormous amounts of money. Wouldn't another possibility be not to spend that money? I'm not going to get all the cuts he wants. I'm not going to get all the spending he wants. Why do we have such a long economic growth? Lou, how do you reconcile that? How do you reconcile that with two things that are happening right now? Number one is unemployment is way down. And secondly is new jobs for college graduates. You know, the wages that are paid, the salaries that are paid are way up. And the market until... The piece you're missing is the participation rate of the 25 to 65 year olds in the National economy. And that number is fundamentally activity and the deliverance of wage growth. It's unemployment is one thing. But we're not getting wage growth and we need productivity. Yeah. Well, let me throw one other thing into the pot here. If you talk about increasing the federal gas tax, I mean, not in a positive effect in a sense that it probably incentivizes renewables, but the states, the states need money too. And for that matter, Puerto Rico needs money and Hawaii needs money. Hawaii is not in good shape at all. And I'm sure there are other states around that are in bad shape. And this is a source of income for them too. And I expect some of them are likewise going to be raising the gas tax. And then you have two increases in the gas tax, one federal, one state. So what's the upshot of that to have them both go up at the same time? I guess it still incentivizes renewables, but it may have a bad effect on the public or in some way on the economy. Jeff, what do you think? I think that the Republicans and then the odd Republican that stuck in there structure was looked at as a behavior modification to policy. Yes. The Trump administration is looking at it in an entirely different way. It might be too abrupt as an instrument of social policy to the needs of this economy. Well, Lou, you sent us some slides, some graphs. We'll put them on the screen now and I'll tell you what's on the screen and you can help us understand them. Why don't we show some of those graphs now? Here's a graph called Carbon Tax on Transportation Fuels 2017. Our transportation fuels are detached in the federal level. And if we calculated these taxes and say we don't have taxes on transportation investment of the social cost of carbon. We've gotten so much hate mail over that chart. Okay. We have one more slide that you sent along and let's take a look at that one too. And I don't know if you recall the title of it. It's Federal and State Gasoline Taxes. And it shows, I guess, both... Let's see. I can't tell the difference. It's a blue. So it's just a chart. It's just a chart adjusted for inflation since 1993. If it were just adjusted for action, not the 18.4 percent. You know, it strikes me that it's going up. And I think if not this particular initiative, other initiatives will force it up the need for government to have more money. And it's a good target. I want to talk about Jeff's point. It's very regressive. Yes. So Andy says this debate or something. I'm telling you a very interesting anecdote when I was in California last week. The Latino caucus of the Democratic Party. A lot of people have a real hard time living on the functions very expensive. It's coming on this season. Yeah. So how do you accommodate that? How do you... I think you have to lead me. So in the very same tax reform bill, you have to give a break to the lower income groups. I think you do. I think this will make it more powerful. Probably not that public policy here. Is there anything we can do to refine the gas tax? Right now it's regressive. It's sort of a flat tax on the amount of gas you buy. I'm wondering if there's anything we can do to make it more sophisticated. In other words, maybe... Yeah, interesting. We're going to take a short break, you guys. When we come back, I'm going to talk about Hawaii. I want to talk about the fuel tax in Hawaii and how it affects transportation. And it's another issue that is very timely. We'll be right back with Lou Plurici and Jeff Kessel of E-Prank. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. And I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At DiveHeart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. DiveHeart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, DiveHeart has helped children, adults and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. DiveHeart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search DiveHeart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Lou Pruiracy and Jeff Kissell of E-Princk on the East Coast, I guess I would say, whether it's Washington or New York. And the second part of our discussion on energy in America here is, what about Hawaii? What about a fuel tax in Hawaii? Where are we? What can we do? What can we do about aviation, for example? Jeff, can you give the landscape on that? Well, Hawaii has a number of ways to tax its fuel and people don't see them all. Clearly they do that at the pump, but also Hawaii has what they call the barrel tax. So every barrel of imported oil, and it's all imported obviously, is taxed at a specific rate. That goes into the power generation sector. It goes into the transportation, surface transportation and air transportation, as well as marine transportation fuels. So there's a lot of money taken out of fossil fuels before they get into the economy in Hawaii. Now that, unfortunately, has not seemed to alter behavior very much in terms of driving. We still have a lot of people alone in there. We're building a rail system. I'm not going to comment on how successful that enterprise is at present. You're a smart man, Jeff. You're a smart man. You've got to start to think about it. You've got to start at one end or another. You've got a piece of string. You can't figure out how long it is. You measure just the middle, 20 miles to the gallon. Some get more, some get less. We know that they're 40 miles to the gallon, but I can tell you how to get 40 miles to the gallon at no additional cost. Yes. And that puts somebody in the passenger seat. And that's what is missing, is missing a really important opportunity. If you want to change behavior, being on the auto companies, you have got to do something to alter behavior and capacity. So they're raising prices. Fuel is the biggest area for cost. Power is not so motivated because they get to pass along all of their fuel costs to their customers in the economy, bridges and education and hospitals. You've got to do things that will allow you to free up more money. One of them is to double the miles per gallon by putting somebody in the passenger seat. They're practically killing the solar and wind industries because we have refused to invest in our grid. So the grid could take more renewables. We have actually raised the cost of renewables in hospitals, food and the other necessities for our citizens to live in. Yeah. Well, so let's dwell for a minute on the idea of somehow incentivizing more than one person to ride in a fossil car or whatever kind of car. How do you do that? How do you change conduct? What's the way you set it out theoretically and how do you implement that plan so it works? You've got to start telling the truth. The truth is we have about 15% renewables in our electric supply on the average. As you guys say in Hawaii, charging charges, electronic transponders are told. You can get time of use charges on the roadways. Then you eliminate the issue of aggressiveness of the tax because you can actually get people. Well, you need some kind of technology to do that. How would that technology work? After switch, if I got more than one person in my vehicle, I put it to two or three. Well, but it costs money to deliver that technology. Although I have to say that in the larger sense, that's a small price to pay to achieve a better system. I know that in Singapore, they've had this kind of thing for a long time. You drive past with a chip or a sensor and it knows. It charges you and you get a bill at the end of the month for every toll road or every road that's chargeable that you might pass on. But if you did that in the US, I suppose it would be appropriate in every state, not only Hawaii, but it would cost a bundle of money. I'd like to be the guy who owns the electronics firm. Probably are one of the guys that owns it if you're on a neutral fund because a lot of people on the front of my bumper that opens the gate to the developing on Myspace and that's politics. That's what we have to overcome. Do you think people, Jeff, do you think people in Hawaii would oppose that? I mean, there have been various efforts where the government lay down some rule or another to require carpooling. And in each case that I'm aware of, these initiatives have not worked simply because the government has not enforced them and it hasn't been a matter of money. It's been other things but not money for the individual driver. But if I take your approach, your idea, your model that you just described seems to me people in Hawaii would agree and would go along with it. Don't you think so? Or do you think there'd be opposition? It's been tried. Like you said, there's very little that's new. You're not all as a translator yet. Thank you for that. By the name of E. L. V. Wright. Sure. And in the late 1970s, did a bunch of studies to distance your miles. Just like the airlines have revenue passenger people, that we could set statewide goals for vehicle passenger miles just like renewable energy, provide incentives and disincentives for achieving that. I don't think it's good by regulation. You should deal with economic intent. Wright. Well, it strikes me that that is a pretty good way to approach things because the bottom line of it is that we will limit the amount of unnecessary vehicles on the road and limit the amount of unnecessary driving on the road and we won't have as much congestion and hopefully our roads won't deteriorate at the same rate they deteriorate now. So I guess the question I would put to you both is that initiative, I guess your initiative as you described it, Jeff, would not involve necessarily an increase in the general tax on gas, the state tax on fossil fuel. In fact, it might expand it in some way to electric cars as well. It would bring more is that that kind of attacks or behavior than driving housing behavior. It will chewing so. We will really be making better use of our fuel and limiting not the absolute sales to a more sustainable economy overall. Yeah, interesting idea. So Lou, my question to you is if other states adopted programs like that, could these programs coexist? Could they live in the same world as the idea of increasing the, you know, the barrel tax, increasing the tax on a gas, a gallon of gas for purposes of tax reform to, you know, balance the tax reform? Can we do both at the same time? I think the tax reform is basically a political problem and how do we get enough revenue so we can get as low as the other tax to getting the corporate tax down, to getting that rate to the more competitive level to live in an opportunity economy, not in a distributed economy. So people are pretty upset. Yeah, yeah, and that really undermines the national direction that way. We need more, we need more money. We need more money in the economy and arguably we also need more money in the government. And that's the mission here in the 21st century. Well, thank you both. Thank you, Lou, Pulireci, and thank you, Jeff Kissel, both of Eprink. Really appreciate the discussion. Even at far ends of the country this way. And I hope we can talk again in the next couple of weeks. And the best to both of you. Thanks so much. Aloha, aloha both.