Letters to the Editor
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At some point it becomes shameless...
I don't argue with people's belief that Hillary is the better candidate, she may well be (personally I prefer Obama, but he has his fleas too).
However, the unending litany of pro-Hillary (often anti-Obama) screed is getting ridiculous. Salon at least ought to recognize a large part of its readership supports Obama and have a little pitty on them. It's getting pathological frankly.
Pretty soon Salon is going to have to but a notice at the bottom of their pages:
I'm Hillary Clinton and I approved this e-zine.
Paid for by the Hillary Clinton for President committee.
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My head hurts
A state tax holiday is different from a national tax holiday in that the state reduction in prices can be seen compared to neighboring states, but the national cannot.
This article is a load of supposition, guesses and flawed analysis that made my head hurt as I struggled to get through the whole thing.
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Who is this klown?
200 reputable economists have denounced this.
And yet a defense of the Panderer In Chief appears on salon.
Anybody surprised?
http://gastax08.blogspot.com/
Please click the link and read.
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Here's the petition against the gas tax holiday.
An Open Statement Opposing Proposals for a Gas Tax Holiday
In recent weeks, there have been proposals in Congress and by some presidential candidates to suspend the gas tax for the summer. As economists who study issues of energy policy, taxation, public finance, and budgeting, we write to indicate our opposition to this policy.
Put simply, suspending the federal tax on gasoline this summer is a bad idea and we oppose it.
There are several reasons for this opposition:
First, research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers.
Second, it would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation.
Third, a tax holiday would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed.
Fourth, the gas tax suspension would threaten to increase the already record deficit in the coming year and reduce the amount of money going into the highway trust fund that maintains our infrastructure.
Signers of this letter are Democrats, Republicans and Independents. This is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of good public policy.
Sincerely,
Henry Aaron
Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
Gilbert E. Metcalf
Professor of Economics
Tufts University
Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2001)
James Heckman, University of Chicago (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2000)
Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2002)
Roger Myerson, University of Chicago (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2007)
Eric Maskin, Institute for Advanced Study (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2007)
Angus Deaton, Princeton University (President-elect, American Economic Association)
and the list is much larger than this.
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Moronic idea
It was a moronic idea then, and it is a moronic idea now. It is, simply, an idea designed to appeal to idiots. This is apparently Frost - a total fool.
The gas tax offers this proposition: I will give you a bag of potato chips, and you will give my your vote. That's what Hillary and McCain offer - an amount equal to the cost of a bag of potato chips.
My vote is much more valuable than that. if you believe that your vote is worth 3 dollars, vote for the Chief Liar. If not, vote for the sensible candidate.
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Salon is toast and so is its favorite candidate
This is the final straw. The Clinton bias at salon is insane. Here we have a bellicose AIPAC candidate, voting for the war, for Kyl/Lieberman, sounding more like McBush every day..talking about obliterating countries when answering a hypothetical question that she should not have answered..and you are write stories to defend this sleazy politician. Bye salon.
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George Frost... economist?
I would very much hope that the next time Salon publishes an article weighing in on the merits of a complex economic issue, the editors opt for commentary by at least one economist. Last I checked, Mr. Frost is a very able lawyer, as you can tell from his cultivated ability to argue--using post-hoc fallacy, magical thinking, and straw men--all of the points except the chief one: is a gas tax holiday a legitimate and useful policy tool?
He fails to mention that there is no elasticity now in the market place, that the current price of gasoline at the pump does NOT reflect the high cost of oil--the refiners and retailers are taking the hit on the margin, not passing along their increased costs for crude--and the fact that making it illegal for the oil companies to increase prices in the absence of a gas tax would not have any bearing on the perfectly legal ability of retailers to increase prices at the pump.
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Crisis pricing vs. speculation pricing (why the tax break is silly)
I have lived through a "tax holiday" from my own state, Georgia, too, and I too saw prices drop. However, without paying attention to the context, extrapolation is utterly meaningless. Why was there a tax holiday in Illinois? Why did Georgia do the same? What were the goals?
In both cases, there was a temporary panic price or crisis price. In the case of Georgia, there was pipeline damage after Katrina, and so, to ameliorate the panic pricing of $3.00 a gallon for gasoline (which had been purchased and gone into reserves at $1.00 a gallon), there was a tax holiday. The idea was to "get past the rough patch," when the pipeline would be repaired. In other words, the expectation was that the price pressure would no longer be present at the end of the holiday.
Is there any reason to believe that oil speculators will no longer be betting on supplies by the end of this summer? Is there a reason to believe that Middle East supplies will be more stable, then? Is there a reason to believe that new suppliers will be online by then? Is there a reason to believe that there will be less domestic demand by then? In short, is there any reason to believe that current prices are "panic" or "emergent" prices? If so, then we might expect prices after the "holiday" to be lower than before -- just as occurred in Illinois and Georgia. If not, there is no reason to believe that anything like that would occur.
Furthermore, if you wish to perform a genuine analysis, you will look for Illinois vs. surrounding states before and after. You will look at Georgia vs. middle West states before and after. Did Chicago pay more than its neighbors before the "holiday?" Yes. Did they pay more after? Yes.
Without the context of pricing and supply, the argument based on the dollar per gallon is, to be polite, meaningless, and, to be rude, a smoke bomb.