Tax gasoline: More is better!

We aren’t paying enough for gasoline.

If we continue to buy gas in the range of $1.40 to $1.90 a gallon, we’ll go back to our frivolous ways of consuming with abundant pleasure. I think we can do better, but we need government intervention.

I accept the theory that a free market is the economic model most likely to provide the best possible standard of living. Even the staunchest Republicans would acknowledge, however, that a free market often fails to provide big-ticket items that benefit us all—infrastructure, for example. So government builds roads, and subsidizes the construction of railways, electric grids and so on.

Similarly, we rely on our government to protect us—from foreign invaders, terrorists, and sometimes, from ourselves. Without government protection, bald eagles, condors and ocelots probably would be extinct in the continental United States.

Now we need the government to step in and protect us from ourselves again. We really were better off when gas prices spiked to $4 per gallon. The whole country woke up.

We started debating whether we should be drilling off shore. We debated whether we should continue to spend $700 billion per year buying oil from countries whose subjects and citizens apparently hate us (see Al Qaeda). We started debating whether we were offering enough support to companies that pursue alternative energy production. We debated whether our government had been providing enough incentive to auto makers to design and build energy-efficient vehicles.

These debates, although acrimonious at times, have led to constructive ideas. With gas prices plummeting, I’m afraid all the good intentions will come to naught. We need to get gasoline prices back over $3.50 per gallon. If we raised federal taxes to push prices up, we would become the recipients of several benefits.

We’d raise $21 billion (1) the first month—enough money to keep GM and Chrysler in business for another quarter. Demand for their products would stay low, except for extraordinarily fuel-efficient vehicles. Industry would invest more resources in developing vehicles with better fuel efficiency and alternative energy sources. Demand for gasoline would stay low, keeping world oil prices down. Consumption of gasoline would stay low, reducing greenhouse emissions. We stoke the economy with development of clean energy sources and with production of fuel-efficient cars, while sticking it to extremists by depriving them of money for terror-training madrasas.

All right, I admit household expenses would increase by about $3200 per year in the near term, but that’s a small price to pay for achieving our economic and security goals. The cost would continually decrease as we shifted to ever-more-fuel-efficient vehicles. Put the family in two Toyota Priuses (hybrid sedans) instead of two Toyota 4Runners (gasoline-powered SUVs) and you would save $3400 per year. (2) Until your family does change cars, a little tax is a tiny price to pay for a big nudge toward saving polar bears. This, I think, ought to be the moral imperative felt by every human.

Copyright by Todd Lederman, 2009

If this idea makes sense to you, please click on the links to the left and write your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate.


1. U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2008). Petroleum Basic Statistics. Department of Energy. Retrieved 12/31/2008 from: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html
2. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/ (2009). United States Department of Energy. Retrieved 1/12/2009 from: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm