Friday, December 12, 2008

Plunging Oil Prices   [Jonah Goldberg]

I am no lover of taxes. But the taxes I hate least are consumption taxes. We are currently spending literally faster than money could be printed (good thing Uncle Sam can give it away in its ones-and-zeros form). If gasoline prices are dropping by 50 cents to a buck or more, doesn't it make sense to raise the tax on gas a penny or two a gallon now? That is, if gas taxes are ever going to be raised at all? The falling prices will still amount to a tax-cut for drivers, but the revenue could be used to defray some of the costs for all of this infrastructure "investment" coming down the pike. It seems like every time gas hits $3 per gallon, Charles Krauthammer and others say "we blew our opportunity to raise gas taxes when it was cheap." Well, it's cheap now.

Update: Lots of email already on all sides of this. Let me just broaden my point for a moment. Again: What has two thumbs and doesn't like taxes? This guy [note: I am aiming my thumbs Jonahward].

But we know the spending is happening no matter what. Indeed, we know that too much spending has already occured, never mind the mother-of-all public works projects to come. So yes, I agree with all of you lovers of smaller government. But if we're going to have bigger government — and we know we are! —  we should pay for it. The deficit this year was $1 trillion dollars! Besides, aren't gas taxes supposed to pay for things like new highways and whatnot?

Indeed, paying for it is one way we might get smaller government over the long haul.  Big increases in government are far more popular when you don't ask people to pay for them. (I will note for honesty's sake that this is something of an argument against my proposal in that we should make the taxes for bigger government as visible and painful as possible).

Last, when gas goes back to $3 a gallon, we will have a tool for alleviating the pain at the pump: a big gas tax cut!

12/12 09:02 AMShare