No one does stupid...
... quite like the government.
The brain surgeons in our fearless legislative body have come up with some staggeringly idotic 'solutions' to the spike in gas prices. Take a gander!
Not to be outdone, the two presumptive candidates for New Hampshire's governorship have offered similar thoughts.
I wish I could even feign surprise that our leaders - and by implication, we - are coming up with this uninspired drivel for the coming energy crisis. But no, I'm not surprised, and neither are you. We expect completely uninspired ideas like this.
But let's say we actually wanted to create incentives for alternate transportation and fuels. Wouldn't we want to increase the price of gas and make excess driving more costly? Why yes, we would. So, in that spirit, I offer some minor proposals:
- Increase state and federal gas taxes by 10 cents per gallon with a phased-in approach. The extra revenue would be dedicated to public transit and related infrastructure.
- Increase tolls on turnpikes and interstates in regular lanes, while keeping carpool-lane fares constant. Again, use the funds for public transit and related infrastructure.
- Increase or create tax exemptions on fuel-efficient and alternate-fuel cars.
This may not be much to start, but I think it's better than making the problem worse. Other thoughts?
posted by Joshua @ 8:56 PM
10 Comments:
I have many thoughts which I'll add in later, but I just wanted to say my favorite Republican solution to this problem was to give everyone $100 for gas. I have no idea which genius thought this up, but I will happily take my $100 even though I don't drive a car.
I think the car-pooling and telecommuting credits are the beginning, yeah. The most important thing is to slowly reorient society's methods of transit to more sustainable methods.
I mean, I'm as big a capitalist as anyone, so I'm loath to have the government say "you will do X," but dependence on foreign sources of energy is sort of a national security thing, you know?
I was thinking about this the other day, and it occurred to me that free market capitalism does not imply (as we often seem to claim it does) a total aversion to government involvement in markets and people's decisions. A purely open (unmanaged system) will always quickly degenerate into a completely broken system as those quickest to understand the rules, exploit them to break the system in their favor. Thus, very strong and very active involvement (of the sort the preserves and patches a fair rules system, not of the sort that seeks to make people's every decision for them) by government is always necessary to provide the stable (and fair) framework in which the free market can work its magic.
Likewise, Liberty, while it has been proven to give birth to some of the greatest of human achievements, is not the same as a lack of rules. The purpose of a liberal government is to take leadership on those collaborative and long term issues which must be tackled if the entire enterprise that supports liberty is to endure. Our current energy crisis qualifies as such an issue without a doubt. Tax the hell out of gasoline, I have no problem with that (and not just because I live in NYC). Tacitean has hit it on the nose when he says that we must gradually shift the way people think about transportation in their lives. Also, Prometheus' suggestion of incentivizing telecommuting is excellent. Of course, you would have to be careful with that one because some industries cannot as easily (or effectively) delocalize their workers, and giving breaks to those that can might create some odd economic imbalances (for instance, accelerating the flight of manufacturing jobs in favor of pure services - an issue about which many people have some rather strong feelings).
One of the biggest probelms we will encounter in trying to create a more sane transport culture in the US is the car-centric system we have already built. There are many areas (the newer ones mostly) of the country which were designed (in some cases, that is a strong word for what was done) with the automobile (and the cheap fuel prices that were its contemporary) in mind. Exhibit A: Los Angeles, which is many times larger and more sprawled out than it needs to be. City planning seems to have been ruined by cheap oil.
RIght on, Socratic. Right on.
Cato,
Well, we do know how to fix it. We have to choose the lesser of two evils here: dependence on foreign oil and a finite resource or higher gas tax. Admittedly these are unpalatable choices, but hey, we've had this problem since 1973. This is what happens when you wait around for three decades.
And the thing is, this - to me - is a case where 'gross waste of government' is going to happen anyway, since everyone seems bent on using the government to make driving a car easier. Subsidizing oil companies is what we are currently doing. If the alternative to that is higher prices and some move, however limited, toward a more reasonable pattern of development of transportation, I'll take it.
And this is the crazy libertarian saying this.
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