Letters to the Editor
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Raising Gas Taxes
The price is fairly inelastic in the marketplace, and if you s l o w l y raised gas taxes the overall impact probably wouldn't be felt much by consumers (or would be swamped by slowly-increasing gas prices, as global demand increases while daily supply fails to keep pace). The oil companies wouldn't like it though, as it would almost certainly erode their profits, so don't look for that to happen in our lifetimes.
The price is gonna go up anyhow over the next decade. Might as well get people used to it now, so they can make decisions which will help insulate them from the certainty of high prices going forward. It could also help fund alternative transportation infrastructure in the process.
We should have started doing this in the '70s, after the initial oil embargo, when it was clear we were already too dependent on imported oil. As Winston Churchill said, America will eventually do the right thing after having exhausted every other option.
And before some idiot shrieks that I "hate the poor" because I advocate raising gas taxes, I also advocate lowering income taxes on the poor, expanding unemployment insurance, allowing low-income folks to write-off local sales taxes (an odiously regressive form of taxation which serves no social benefit when applied indiscriminately across all goods), and pursuing an industrial policy that would help to ensure anyone who's willing to work can find a decent paying job. All of this would do a lot more to help America - especially folks who work for a living - than a stupid gas tax holiday.
In contrast to the Clintons, who were gleefully happy to export good paying American jobs to any collection of sweatshops calling itself a nation, under the banner of "Free Trade". More like, "No dictator left behind." Millions of jobs were destroyed in the process, and consumer debt skyrocketed as a result. Hillary Antoinette had no problem stealing the working man's cake. The fact that she's now offering us a few stale crumbs in return is infuriating.