Andrew Sullivan, a conservative, opens his Case for a War Tax — on Gas with these words:
Gas prices are too low. There. I said it.
What’s his argument for pumping up the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents per gallon to one dollar?
- Taxes are not an option; they’re a necessity. The only relevant question is, Which taxes?
- Gas prices are strikingly lower in America than anywhere else in the world.
- Gas taxes are easy to collect.
- Gas taxes encourage conservation, accelerate fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, and cut traffic.
- Gas taxes help wean Americans off the oil that requires the U.S. to be so intimately involved in that wonderful cesspool of rival hatreds, the Middle East.
Certainly his first point is hard to dispute — but it doesn’t argue for a gas tax (or against it). His second point carries no weight with me. (“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?”) His third point seems valid, but increasing the income-tax rate is just as easy.
What I find odd is that he didn’t frame his fourth point in any kind of economic sense. An efficent gas tax internalizes economic externalities; it charges people for the pollution they produce. It’s also a use tax; it charges people for the public roads they use.
I’m fairly ambivalent about his last point.
I don’t see a gas tax going over well with the electorate, but I enjoyed this spin nonetheless:
The real reason so many Americans hate gas taxes is that they see them. The government can eat away at your life with payroll taxes, but because they are usually deducted before you get to see your paycheck, you don’t notice. But the price of gas is broadcast on big placards across the country. When it goes up, eyebrows rise a notch. But that’s a good thing! The government has to tax you somehow. Isn’t it better to shift taxation to places where people notice it, so they can demand accountability? The gas tax is therefore a win-win conservative-liberal synthesis. It cuts the deficit, helps the environment and keeps the government fiscally honest and accountable.