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The Joy of $8 a Gallon Gas
Excerpts from TFA:If MoveOn and Barack Obama really were going to bravely confront America with hard, necessary truths, they'd tell us how great $4 gas has been for us. With public transit use nationally at a 50-year high, Public transportation is usually inefficient; that is why it is usually subsidized by government, and that is why liberals want to raise taxes to further subsidize it ... traffic dropped 2.1% in the first four months of this year across the country. That mileage reduction -- along with people driving smaller cars, and more slowly, to save gas -- could mean that 12,000 fewer people will die in traffic accidents this year, according to a study by professors Michael Morrisey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and David C. Grabowski at Harvard Medical School. Air pollution has been reduced enough, according to UC Davis economics professor J. Paul Leigh, to prevent 2,200 respiratory-related deaths over the last year. Less eating out and more walking and biking could mean a 10% reduction in obesity, according to Charles Courtemanche, an assistant economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And, apparently, higher gas prices also keep econ professors employed. Cheap gas is unfair. Driving creates huge social costs in the form of traffic, health-damaging pollution and global warming that aren't suffered solely by the person buying the gasoline. All human interaction or action has social costs. High fuel prices have a social cost, but not to you, Joel Governments usually set up idiotic systems to offset such social costs (emissions trading, ethanol subsidies, taco truck regulations) instead of forcing individuals to pay for their own mess by adding a tax to remedy the imbalance. That kind of tax -- the most fair kind, really -- is called a Pigovian tax, and its use is why gas costs $8 to $10 a gallon in Europe, where they have fewer road deaths even though they drive like complete idiots. Taxes are inherently unfair. They are the most basic form of tyranny. They drain people of resources and they transfer resources from those who know how best to use the money, their very resources and their substance, to those with an agenda on how to use the resouces. If the U.S. were to slowly jack up gas taxes until we're in the $8 range, life would be better. We won't need to increase taxes to get to $8 a gallon. A liberal congress in 2008 will be enough to do so. Why is it that actually advocating tyranny ( increased taxes) is seen as an exercise in intellectual thought? Transferring resources from the owner to the usurper only changes the agenda for the owner. The tyrant is always waiting to gain your resources. Does it make liberals feel good to advocate transferring even more money to bloated state and federal governments? Inquiring minds like mine wanna know! We'd not only be safer and have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, we'd probably be happier too. Studies show that the only thing that consistently increases personal happiness is social interaction; This is a false premise. Joel thinks that Americans spend their spare time driving around and refusing to interact with other human beings. What people will do is continue to interact and demand lower energy prices. ... high gas prices have led to real estate prices falling faster in suburbs and exurbs than in cities, No Joel; real estate prices in "exurbia" and in suburbs have fallen because of the greater profit margin of building more expensive houses, which were bought then flipped. When the supply became too great, the prices plummeted. And gas had zero to do with that. ... so we may soon have more content downtown-dwellers. Those same studies show that the thing that makes people least happy is commuting, and telecommuting is way up this year. I hate commuting, too Joel. The only thing worse than commuting would be riding a publicly funded bus or mass transit system because we did not have the choice to do otherwise. We could use the tax revenue to fund public transportation. And we'd go back to the days when driving a car was a way to show people what a rich jerk you were. In other words, we would no longer need SUVs for that. No, Joel; you are acting like a rich jerk who apparently needs a Pruis and a Cooper Mini to show iwhat a jerk you are... Sure, $8 gas is unfair to poor people, but so is all of capitalism. Rich people get more of the globe's resources. No one has a right to cheap gas any more than he has a right to other things needed for a full and productive life, like an iPhone or a weekly newspaper column where you can tick people off. Actually, Joel, person for person, the rich can only consume only so much of the "earth's resources" per capita. We spent 50 years using government money to build the freeways that led to the driving-centric, mall-rat lifestyle I grew up with, so it will surely take decades more to restructure our society into something better. And as bummed as I am to pay a lot for gas, it's a fair price for improving society. I also think government should look into some kind of heavy taxation on Facebook usage. No, Joel: we didn't use government money; we used taxpayer money; money the people wanted spent and money which was used ostensibly for national defense, the main purpose the the original interstate highway act back in the 50s. The government has no money of its own since it is unable to produce anything of value for sale. Governments only take and spend, according to politics, which is why an improved society will be one that refuses to further feed the bloated monster government has become. Posted by: badanov 2008-07-11 |
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