re: Taxes can have a very minimal social engineering aspect and its usually better that way.
I suppose they could in the abstract, but they don't. Cigarettes, liquor, gambling... taxes to support schools, taxes if you own property, higher taxes if you make more money... I could go on and on. It's all social engineering.
re: The main downside is that there is a real cost to reduce our oil use by 25%.
And real benefits, that I mentioned in my last post: Presumably gas purchases would go down, feeding new money into the economy. Also, with reduced demand, the commodity price of oil should go down, compounding the effect. I think I read that oil represents ~25% of our trade deficit, so reduced consumption helps in that regard.
re: If it was simple and obviously cost effective for the individual consumers of oil, than it would have already happened.
There are a lot of vested interests in the status quo. I think if almost anyone but Bush were in the WH, this would be a top priority, not only for the economy but for the "war on terror".
re: The secondary downside is that the government becomes even more involved in controlling the economy. The further we go down that path the worse the long run results will be.
Yeah. But on balance, this issue is so important to the US economy and our security, the government needs to lead.
John |
