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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (78520)	7/31/2006 10:28:20 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Taxes on gasoline distort the market but at least they work through the market. They give people the freedom to decide how to respond to the higher costs, and over time they will find the most efficient way to do so. That's better, both in terms of freedom and in terms of efficiency than even more intrusive solutions. And yes this change happens over years. That is better than trying to force change all at once. Change over time is less expensive and disruptive than sudden change. BTW - I don't have a problem with more research and development of energy alternatives. In many ways I would support that ahead of an increase in gasoline or other energy/fuel taxes. But basic research takes even longer to have any serious effect than a gasoline tax increase. Also the basic research on many alternatives has largely already been done. What's needed is development and deployment. But development and deployment will have to largely be funded by the private sector. Also it won't happen much unless the price of current energy sources go up. I anticipate the real prices of current alternatives will go up over time. That will get these alternatives deployed (although your talking years or decades, major changes like this happen slowly). If you want to speed up the process a bit (although it would still be slow) taxes on conventional fuels and energy sources would do that. It would penalize the poor and middle class disproportionately, for one thing. Any expensive change will penalize the not-rich more than the rich in terms of the impact they feel from it. The rich might be effected more in straight dollar terms, but will, in most cases, feel less "pain" from the change. The more efficient the change is the less overall pain will be felt. Pushing the change gradually, and allowing market forces to work will make the change more efficient and less costly. Note: I don't actually support such taxes, but if you think you have to have a big government taxes are most likely the best way to do it. It would also take a very long time to work R&D of new solutions followed by deployment would take longer. Not that I'm against it for that reason (or any other), but any change on this scale will take a long time. Possibly that change could be compressed to years instead of decades, but only at an enormous cost, one that probably isn't worth paying, and one that probably can't be imposed in most democracies, absent a crisis on the scale of World War II. Gasoline taxes will have minimal immediate impact, but over 5 years that impact will greatly increase, and over 10 years the impact can be very large. The problem with market driven solutions to problems like this is that the people with the most money and the most power in the market don't have any motivation to change their behavior. People with money usually want to keep their money and get more. If a commodity becomes more expensive, than you have more incentive to conserve it, and to find alternatives. Corporations and investors will have a lot of incentives to do these things. Normally there would also be an incentive to produce more but because taxes go to the government not the energy companies, there wouldn't be extra incentive from them, however the current high price of oil provides that incentive, and that incentive is likely to increase over time. Sure rich individuals may want to use more oil or energy in general than they have to, and the higher prices might not change their individual actions, but the actions of the stubborn rich will not be a big deal. Change the actions of the non-rich and the more flexible rich and you get the overall improvement you want. Try to change the actions of the stubborn rich and you get creeping totalitarianism in exchange for very little extra benefit in terms of energy security or the environment. even our current President has to at least pay lip service to the idea. Arguments that even Bush supports an idea go nowhere with me. One thing we can both agree on is that Bush is far from perfect.