The New York Times Wrong-Headedly Propagandizes for an Obama Gasoline Tax
In quick succession over this past weekend, the New York Times brought out its heavy guns to militate for a national gasoline tax. First an editorial in Saturday's paper "The Gas Tax," and Friedman's Op-ed the next day, "Win, Win, Win, Win, Win." In putting forth an economically regressive program, the nabobs of the New York Times, who in most cases care little about paying three or four dollars more for a gallon of gasoline for their cars, vest themselves firmly in their well earned mantle of elitist shakers and movers. Of course all the good reasons are listed, calling for the urgent diminution of gasoline consumption for economic, environmental, and geopolitical concerns, even to the extent of Friedman cautioning President-elect Obama, "Without a higher gas tax or carbon tax, Obama will lack the leverage to drive critical pieces of his foreign and domestic agenda."
Not a drop of ink now, or as far as I can tell in recent memory, on another solution, one that would be fairer to all Americans, and would engage Americans in a shared sacrifice creating a universal call to arms while mounting a communal and viable offensive overcoming once and for all our debilitating addiction to fossil fuels. A solution we might well call a "Fuel Voucher Program" (FVP).
It would in fact be a "free market" variation of the gas rationing program that served the nation so well in World War II, bringing a shared sense of mission and dignity to the home front when every one pulled together. At that time there was a clear realization that a gas tax would penalize that part of the population that could least afford it and would thereby exacerbate differences among the nation's citizens, where unanimity of purpose was needed to further the war effort. Most importantly it worked. In perspective one could say today that war was fought and won, and in honor of those valiant times it would be antithetical to our heritage to now become vassals of the oil barons.
A post on August 14, 2006, "Breaking Oil's Price, Curtailing Gas Consumption, Regaining Our Self Respect," outlined the workings of the "Fuel Voucher Program." It would work as follows, and I am embellishing somewhat:
The Department of Energy or Interior would set a maximum quantity of gasoline that could be consumed in any quarter throughout the United States. The quantity would progressively be reduced nationally every quarter, initially in minimal amounts permitting a systematic but consistent change over of automobile ownership from gas guzzlers to hybrids, flex fuel capability and electric cars, so that say in seven or ten years we will have reduced our daily consumption of oil from the current usage of approximately 20 million barrels a day to 10 million bbls/day or by 50%.
Every car owner would receive a quarterly gas allocation based on that ceiling level, distributed equally among the nations car owners. Let's call them Gas Purchase Permits (GPPs). They would come in the form of magnetic debit cards giving each private car owner the same allocation of gas. GPPs could then be used by their owner or freely traded. Drivers whose allotted amount of gas didn't meet their needs or wanted more for whatever reason, could buy all or part of someone else's allocation through online bulletin boards, gas station markets, even eBay or personal transaction. The key is that the GPP plan uses market incentives to permit heavier gasoline consumers to get what they need without increasing overall consumption of gasoline. Allowances could be embedded in the program for businesses, and possibly for those required to drive long distances because of geographic location or employment where no mass transit is available. Altogether not very different operationally, though on a different scale, than a cap and trade program.
The FVP program would address the consumption of fossil fuel based gasoline only! All alternative fuels, be it ethanol, biomass, electric, hydrogen, cooking oil, or whatever the American imagination or inventiveness can substitute for gasoline, would be open-ended, and without restriction as to quantity nor usage by each car driver.
Not incidentally, this month the state of Hawaii together with the Hawaii Electric Power Company endorsed a program to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles with swappable batteries and an intelligent battery recharging network.
Aside from the enormous benefits that would ensue in a significant reduction of our gasoline consumption in areas already referred to above, the FVP program would provide a massive boost to our economy.
There are currently some 230 million vehicles plying the roads in America. Of these less than ten million are flex fuel, hybrid or otherwise gas efficient. A FVP program would provide the needed incentives to convert that massive fleet to fuel efficient cars in a fair way and over a reasonable number of years, with the government helping those with marginal incomes to trade in their cars for more fuel efficient vehicles with tax credits directly or indirectly to the automobile manufacturers.
Brazil took but three years to transition its significant automobile industry to building 75% fuel flexible cars and trucks, from a base of only 5%. In 1941 it took the partnership of government and Detroit but eight months to convert the automobile industry from building passenger cars, to tanks and military equipment. It's time once more for Detroit to become the arsenal of America's future (please see "Detroit's Rebirth as the "Arsenal for America's Future," 11.17.08).
Let flex fuel, hybrid, and electric cars become our generation's tanks!!
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If you were around in late 73, 74 when the USA endured the OPEC gas "crisis" then you should have figured out by now how big a scam this gasoline shortage/demand BS is. Gasoline could be sold
for 50 cents a gallon and that includes the state and federal taxes and the oil companies would still make billions. This is all a huge charade.
A "gas tax" is a great hurt to those who do not have time to blog. Like the single mom who drives each day in an older, lower mileage, car to a job with no heath ins. and no sick leave. And a "rebate" is going to be allocated on what scale? Lets have a police worked out with "We the people . . " in mind, not some PHD exercise in sophomoric semi absolutes.
A $100 per ton carbon dioxide emission fee would result in an increase in gas prices of $1 per gallon. On the other hand "Cap and Trade" is the textbook representation of a sophomoric semi absolute.
Compared to "Cap and Trade" schemes, a $100 per ton carbon dioxide emission fee would be quite straight forward.
If you are using about 20 gallons of gas a week the carbon dioxide emission fees would increase the amount you pay for gas in a year by $1,040. Carbon Dioxide emission fees would also increase your electricity and natural gas costs but these would typically be smaller than your costs for automotive gas.
Flat rebates, of half of the $600 billion in carbon dioxide emission fee revenue, would result in $2,300 rebates to each of the 130 million households filing tax returns. This would more than cover the costs of carbon dioxide emission fees for most people.
On the other hand, businesses, farms, truck owner operators can pass their increased costs on. However to remain competitive, they would have to become more energy efficient.
Raymond,
The combination of carbon-dioxide emission fees combined with flat rebates becomes progressive. While an emission fee $100 per ton of carbon dioxide by itself is regressive, if half or all of the revenue from the fee is rebated with a flat rebate it becomes progressive.
Check out the carbontax.org web site. It has been estimated that $100 per ton fee on carbon dioxide emissions, would bring in $600 billion to the federal treasury. If 100% of it was rebated with flat rebates to the 130 million households in the US that would be $4,600 per household per year. This is more than enough to cover increased household energy costs.
Just lift the ban on Industrial Hemp which renews itself every 4 months and gives us bio diesel from the seeds and cellulose ethanol from it's stalks....is non invasive and eats CO2 like crazy,..!
We can refine or distill it all over the country and regionally which is an enhancement of our National Security lower transport costs and leads to energy independence, and will create jobs not cost them and Lower Fuel Costs not increase them...
You want to increase fuel costs while we are on the verge of another great depression...brilliant just brilliant..!
Good grief! Why all this useless complexity. Just make gas more expensive and all this happens on its own.
Too complicated. The gas tax just needs to be high enough to pay for free education and healthcare. The rest will sort itself out. You will be amazed at how many problems that in itself will solve, people would have money to spend. It'll be uncomfortable for those that drive a lot, or bought SUV's (too bad) but it'll force (can't seem to do it willingly) us to move toward fuel efficient cars and force cities to move toward mass transit. It'll lessen big oil's power in Washington, which is one of the main reason's many cities don't have mass transit or even had it torn down (LA)
,"...the nabobs of the New York Times, who in most cases care little about paying three or four dollars more for a gallon of gasoline for their cars, vest themselves firmly in their well earned mantle of elitist shakers and movers."
Well, its better than overtly lying about what they said as you are doing. You conveniently left out the part where the increased gas tax would be returned to citizens through tax credits. I think it makes a lot of sense to make the one single thing that is the most damaging to our economy and environment more expensive to buy at the pump. frankly, it's a kind of a "Duh" thing.
I appreciate trying to reduce gas consumption in a fair manner but this seems a bit convoluted. This proposal certainly doesn't address 2 important and closely related problems: 1) The inherently inefficient model of using personal automobiles as our primary mode of transportation and 2) paying for sorely needed transportation infrastructure changes.
Our current car-centric method of transportation, where every family owns 2 or 3 cars, can only get us so far in terms of reducing energy consumption. The gains we make in this area given our current transportation model will mostly be offset by gains in the World's population. Plus the energy used and CO2 produced to simply manufacture all these vehicles is not sustainable. We must realize that the goal of producing zero-emission cars is currently valuable in leading engine technology in the right direction in terms of energy consumption, but ultimately this goal will never be reached - even electric cars have to be charged from another source of energy. Now is the time to start planning for incentives and infrastructure changes that transition us from our car-centric mode of transportation to our future mass-transit-centric mode of transportation.
Obviously, this transition would need to be gradual because the expense would be too high to incur all at once and because our economy would need sufficient time to adjust without causing too much financial hardship. This FVP does not address how to pay for the cost of transitioning to an mass transit based infrastructure.
neoconumb,
Personal transportation is in many cases inherently more efficient than mass transit. For example walking! Walking, using the low efficiency human power, is about a 200 mpg equivalent transportation. Riding a bicycle is about 600 mpg equivalent transportation.
On the other hand Amtrak gets about 39 passenger mpg equivalent. While full utilization of passenger seats would increase this there is a fundamental inefficiency in mass transit. Its capacity has to be sized for maximum expected ridership. Then energy has to be expended to move this excess capacity around.
Individual personal transportation does not suffer from this problem and as walking and the bicycle show, personal transportation can be substantially more efficient the 39 mpge.
See the wikipedia reference on transportation efficiency:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation
Regards,
Raymond, There is already "rationing" going on between nations based on price and currencies. It is called Demand destruction. We had a taste of it this last summer, and will get to eat it again when the economy begins to recover.
I do appreciate that you are at least examining different ideas, but if you think about your idea for more than a minute, or read some of the counter-arguments posted here in the comments, you can see it aint gonna fly. The gas tax is already in place and needs no new bureaucracy- just raise the tax, feel the pain, and conserve- done.
Aside from our own "successful" experience of rationing during dangerous times, there are no ongoing examples of success, and many examples of corruption. The world may have to go to rationing eventually in order to maintain food supplies, but then we are getting close to Mad Max scenarios.
I'm ready to by a Chevy volt or other like type vehicle. I think the Volt is GM's last chance at getting it right.
Honda, Toyota, or Nissan will give you a solution and it won't cost $ 40k. GM is history.
This is a pretty fair and equitable way to reduce gas consumption. However, this proposal doesn't address 2 important and closely related problems: 1) The inherently inefficient model of using personal automobiles as our primary mode of transportation and 2) paying for sorely needed transportation infrastructure changes.
Our current car-centric method of transportation, where every family owns 2 or 3 cars, can only get us so far in terms of reducing energy consumption. The gains we make in this area given our current transportation model will mostly be offset by gains in the World's population. Plus the energy used and CO2 produced to simply manufacture all these vehicles is not sustainable. We must realize that the goal of producing zero-emission cars is currently valuable in leading engine technology in the right direction in terms of energy consumption, but ultimately this goal will never be reached - even electric cars have to be charged from another source of energy. Now is the time to start planning for incentives and infrastructure changes that transition us from our car-centric mode of transportation to our future mass-transit-centric mode of transportation.
Obviously, this transition would need to be gradual because the expense would be too high to incur all at once and because our economy would need sufficient time to adjust without causing too much financial hardship. The Fuel Voucher Program does not address how to pay for the cost of transitioning to an infrastructure that is predominantly mass transit based.
I wasnt to know why a mass movement to monorail is not in the works. We could blanket this country in this cheap and easily maintained form of transportation in a couple years, and rid ourselves of the noisy and expensive light rail that has proliferated over the decades.
Considering we just weathered through gas at over $4/gallon, I think it's long past the time for a $1/gallon tax.
We've spent the last few decades fleeing from a sensible energy policy until long past the time it starts doing us harm. To add further insult to injury, we also spent all that time enriching people who hate America... conservatives numbered among them.
We need to stop electing Arabian Candidates like Reagan, Bush, Cheney, and start electing smart Americans who have OUR nation's best interests at heart.
The best answer is to tax imported oil. It would force oil companies to use the leased land they are holding. The tax would increase each year - so this would be an incentive to produce vehicles that use alternative energy.
Doubling the gas tax, from 18 cents per gallon to 36 cents per gallon, will generate an additional $38 billion per year. Use this money to purchase GM, Ford and Chrysler, enabling them to re-tool their assembly lines to create the most fuel efficient vehicles ever made.
http://inspiredeconomist.com/2008/12/16/obamas-green-job-plan-x-10/
Then offer Americans a generous trade-in on their old S.U.V's, for slick and fancy new eco-friendly vehicles, thereby reducing our dependence on foreign oil and our trade deficit. It's the only sensible solution. Americans who until recently were paying $4 per gallon for gas, will not feel, or notice a small 18 cents additional tax.
I didn't have to peruse the comments section for long to find a plethora of those who are precisely why this theoretically and ideally good starting point is a non-starter. You'd be better off skipping straight to the Road Warrior scenario.
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