Gas Taxes

In the wake of news that California has been reaping a windfall from the gas tax in recent weeks, it's time to reconsider that tax.

It should be raised, maybe doubled.

The gas tax certainly isn't popular, especially now. Georgia temporarily repealed hers following the price spikes that accompanied Katrina. Michigan and Florida are thinking about following suit.

Let's hope Michigan and Florida "keep thinking," as James Surowiecki convincingly argues in the September 26 issue of the New Yorker (page 76).

"To begin with," Surowiecki continues, "unless cutting taxes brings Gulf Coast refineries back online, it's unlikely to have any real impact on prices. And if prices do drop, that will exacerbate the problem of supply shortages and long lines.

"What we need now -- as even President Bush, hardly a conservationist, has said -- is for people to drive less, not more. And that means paying more for gas, not less."

Even though American voters (sometimes demeaningly called "consumers") might experience elevated blood pressure hearing this kind of talk, it's hard to pick holes in Surowiecki's logic. Sooner or later, one way or the other, the U.S. is going to have to deal with the end of cheap oil (I hope everybody by this time has become a regular reader of Jim Kunstler's "Clusterfuck Nation"). The only question is whether we're going to do so in a planned, rational, creative way, or whether we're going to grope blindly into unplanned disaster.

As unpopular as gas taxes are, they're extremely low compared to what people pay in other countries. They're also fair, and collected in the most equitable possible way, according to the unanimous opinion of economists who disagree about nearly every other kind of tax. And now, they have the potential to provide revenue to strapped state economies.

Raising state gas taxes would be a win-win-win situation: it would cut down on the amount of driving people do and encourage motorists to buy smaller cars, it would provide money to the states, most of which are broke, and it would begin to effect a solution to the global warming problem.

There's a lot more to be said on this score.