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September 21, 2009 – Comments (6) | RELATED TICKERS: GAS , TX , CHZ
Or so says Thomas Friedman.
I agree: taxing gas/carbon makes way too much sense, in a lot of different ways. So much sense, that the USA will never even consider discussing it. Sad.
Enjoy your cheese while you can, fellas, for tomorrow we are fat and regretful.
BFB
If there is one person who I hate more than Krugman, it is Friedman.
But I totally agree with him on the gasoline tax. It is retarded not to have one.
I think you're thinking of another country. In the US, we pay about 40-120 cents/gallon in taxes on gasoline, depending on the state. That's far more than the companies providing it make in profit. It's unnecessarily high, just like all the other taxes.
We are a nation that goes to war, but does not want to sacrifice anything to win that war. Sending those who signed up the be in the armed forces is fine, but increasing taxes (even if only temporarily) to pay for the extra expenses, absolutely not.
In addition, we do not spend any time contemplating what got us into this bind. Everybody knows about 9/11, and uses that as justification for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11--we got conned into believing they did, and some fools still do).
The reason behind our middle-east involvement is, has always been, and always will be oil. We are willing to compromise everything we believe in for that commodity. We play nice with the saudis, even though they are the ones who gave the world most of the 9/11 terrorists. It is not until we wean ourselves off our oil addiction until we can admit to this truth. A significant gas and/or carbon tax would go a long way to this purpose.
Brave young men and women die every day because of our oil addiction. It is time we end this madness!
FleaBagger
I's love to see where you got that data. I couldn't find anything in my quick google search just now.
But is that the point? If the idea is to discourage the consumption what's the difference what the ratio of profit to tax is? I'm a smoker and totally supoort the idea of "sin" taxes. And here in Chicago it's really high. If my failure to be able to quit does some good (in my view) then fine. Big Tobacco seems to be making out just fine. That's what happens when you have a captive and addicted consumer, right? Plus tho I own oil stocks like XOM it really pisses me off when I read that yet again they have curtailed production to reduce U.S. reserves and uphold U.S. prices. These aren't shoes or cars where there is a market saturation point and then no more buyers., and oil doesn't have a shelf life like food. This is the lifeblood in some ways of our economy. What a boost it would be to our battered economy if the energy industries would take a little off the top of their (literally) gross margins to lower heating, transportation, production and nearly every other domestic cost you can name. They could cut their profits by 2/3rds and still make billions each. Almost unpatriotic of them the obscene amounts of profit they have made in the last 8 months. To throw around an overused word. And of course "socialist" to bandy about another one. (not to give you an aneurysm or anything Flea "I'm just sayin" :)
I agree with Krugman too
Great post
rec #9
Alex
We don't fight wars because we're addicted to oil. We fight wars because we're too stupid to drill for OUR OWN OIL.
We don't drill for our own oil,, because we've allowed radical special interests to put their own ideology above the interests of our country. Our energy policies are dictated to us by left wing-socialist acting morons that can't be reasoned with. We don’t build energy policy on common sense, the actual NEEDS of the country, market conditions, JOBS, truth or fact. Oh no, no, no. We base our energy policies on DOOM AND GLOOM and WISHFUL THINKING! When it comes to energy, we’re the dumbest nation on earth.
We get screwed by OPEC because we CHOOSE to be screwed by OPEC.We've proven over and over again that oil IS NOT going to be replaced any time soon. The more we try to replace oil with green beans and sunlight, the more we screw ourselves. The more we rely on wishful thinking, the more dependent on OPEC we become.
All you over educated left wing geniuses out there just keep dreaming. Keep believing everything some college professor who’s never worked a day in the energy sector tells you. Keep soaking up all the conventional wisdom you can suck up. It’s all crap. Just because you WANT to belive it, doesn’t make it true.
We need to be drilling our own oil. It’s the last thing on earth OPEC wants us to do. What we're doing NOW is in THIER own interest, not ours. Piss on them, we need start taking care of US!
You want to stop wars and save lives? Drill here. You want to tell OPEC to kiss off? Drill here. You want an energy independent nation? Drill here. You want millions of new jobs? Drill here. It’s just that simple.
Drilling our own oil would fix so many problems it’s unreal. Believing the lies of global warming and all the other doom and gloom nonsense isn’t going to fix anything. Believing we only hold 3% of the worlds oil supply only plays into the hands of OPEC and is total nonsense. We've got enough oil to bankrupt OPEC.
We bankrupt them, enrich ourselves,,?? Wars over oil are a thing of the past...
As long as we keep trying to make batteries out of bisquick, we will fight wars over oil.
DRILL BABY DRILL? Is that all you got? Really?
Whether you can handle science or not, we have passed the zenith of peak oil and it will be a diminishing resouce.
Sure we can rape what's left of our country and give away drilling rights for pennies on the dollar. The big oil land rush during the Bush years has already signed the death warrant on thousands of currently pristine acres.
But in a couple of decades it won't do us any good. We will have trashed the North Slope, defiled the Canyonlands and abused large portions of the western U.S.. But oil is still a FINITE RESOURCE.
You probably don't believe in global warming either, despite overwhelming evidence. It might be good to hedge our bets with green energy that does not add CO2 at the rate oil does.
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