"America's sudden change in car-buying habits makes suitable mockery of that absurd debate Congress put on last December on fuel efficiency standards.... You want more fuel-efficient cars? Don't regulate. Don't mandate. Don't scold. Don't appeal to the better angels of our nature. Do one thing: Hike the cost of gas until you find the price point.
Unfortunately, instead of hiking the price ourselves by means of a gasoline tax that could be instantly refunded to the American people in the form of lower payroll taxes, we let the Saudis, Venezuelans, Russians and Iranians do the taxing for us -- and pocket the money that the tax would have recycled back to the American worker.
But instead of doing the obvious -- tax the damn thing -- we go through spasms of destructive alternatives, such as efficiency standards, ethanol mandates and now a crazy carbon cap-and-trade system the Senate is debating this week. These are infinitely complex mandates for inefficiency and invitations to corruption. But they have a singular virtue: They hide the cost to the American consumer.
Note that Saudi Arabia has decided to increase their oil output. They say they want to help us who depend on oil for out economy. They are just looking out for us
Think maybe they are getting worried that $4 a gallon gas is causing us to consider alternatives to oil? Like maybe the sudden interest in electric cars and gas-electric hybrids?
Maybe now is the time to adjust the US gas tax to insure that the pump price of gas never falls below $4? That any drop in the market price will trigger an increase in the tax to keep the pump price at or above $4. Maybe we need McCain's "gas tax holiday" in reverse? Reply to this
6/16/2008 1:54 PM
Paul Riehemann wrote:
<Maybe now is the time to adjust the US gas tax to insure that the pump price of gas never falls below $4? That any drop in the market price will trigger an increase in the tax to keep the pump price at or above $4.>
Excellent point.
Also agree on <Maybe we need McCain's "gas tax holiday" in reverse?> When people are asked what they think of a gasoline tax holiday on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = terrible; 10 = great), many will say 1 -- that it's a terrible idea. Economists certainly fall into this group. Soooo.....why not a federal tax shift from income to non-renewable energy?
