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To: Road Walker who wrote (182539)	11/8/2005 6:10:13 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

looking at drop in demand it appears much of the problem was corrected by price. supply and demand. to put a lux tax out of gas hogs also hurts auto industry. these cars are usually the highest profits for them allowing them to produce more low profit cars. if, we push opening up the gas and oil fileds off south carolina back in 1980 we would have some huge production going on right now, same with off florida and calf. and perhaps alaska. If congress didn't let power companies run to natural gas and if General Electric didn't mfg and sell gas only turbines we may not be in a natural gas problem right now. power companies are sucking up over 25% of product. Surely, it would have been a benefit to force them to clean up the burning of coal and heavy fuels vs switching to product in short supply. My alternative to gasoline would be allocations. smaller gas tanks, require more stops at service stations. inconvience to buyers of gas hogs. it would help low income not have to pay higher prices for gasoline to get to work and it would encourage the mom with the huge suv to trade down otherwise she will be spending half her week getting gas.. i doubt they would tolerate that for long. ps i ran allocations in 1972 and it worked fine. very little overhead, i believe they did it again in 1980 or so.. seemed people adjusted quickly. No huge structure to implement the program and its already built by the industry to put back into action on a moments notice.

To: Road Walker who wrote (182539)	11/8/2005 9:38:25 AM
From: willcousa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

OT - You should remain concerned about government intervention unless it is in very broad form as the government's decisions become political when particular forms of energy or technologies are chosen to be favored.

To: Road Walker who wrote (182539)	11/8/2005 9:48:16 AM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Government intervention should be necessary when the market isn't capable of solving a problem. In this case, the market is clearly able to solve the problem. SUV sales are collapsing. Demand is declining. Government intervention at this stage of the game just does not make sense. And it will cause problems that you don't envision in your analysis. You want a gasoline tax to account for the pollution externality? Sure, I think there's a solid argument there. That's an economic issue that the market may not be able to solve. But I don't see a solid argument for what you're talking about.