No Child Left Unscrewed
This video is both funny and dead on (as long as you aren’t being too literal minded). A summer gas tax holiday is a really dumb idea, and it is just pandering to (large numbers of) stupid people. If you want to lower consumption, the last thing you should do is lower the cost to the consumer. About the only winners there are people selling the gas. I propose a summer gas tax hike! If more American voter’s could pull themselves away from American Idol Smarter than a 5th Grader Oprah whatever mind numbing thing they are watching on TV long enough to think straight and look a bit into the future that just might even be politically feasible.
May 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Spot-on of course.
I did however come across one article which presents some really good arguments for why the tax hike is a good thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/opinion/08caplan.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
It’s a very pragmatic take, and a bit of depressing realpolitik, but makes some good points. The gist of the article: Reflexive public economic populism and idiocy could well lead to a repeat of the horrible government intervention during the 70’s energy crisis, and this approach is mostly harmless in effect while simultaneously showing the Oil companies we won’t screw them (so they don’t hoard their profits but instead use them to increase output like they would certainly do if they weren’t afraid of getting reamed by the government). The idea is to alleviate the misguided and simplistic public demand for retribution without actually causing much market-destabilizing real retribution.