I read in the news today that Congress is thinking of lowering the gas tax. Why would anyone want to do this? They state that high gas taxes hurt the lower and middle classes. Well, this is one of those unverifiable statements that politicians like to make to get votes. Higher gas taxes raise costs for everyone. Obviously, the price of gas is higher, so we get hit at the pumps. Less obviously, shipping costs go up. Businesses have higher mileage costs. Therefore, prices go up across the board. So yes, higher gas taxes cost everyone more money. That explains why they would want to reduce the gas tax, right?
Wrong.
First of all, gas prices in the United States are lower than just about everywhere else in the world. Many countries pay upwards of $4 or $5 per gallon. These countries have poor and middle class people who manage to get around. Now many of these countries have better public transportation and smaller, more efficient cars. So what? We can have both of these things.
Pretty much everyone agrees that we need to burn fewer petrochemicals and we need to reduce pollution. In cities, especially, automotive exhaust is a big problem. The air is dirty. People suffer from much higher rates of asthma and allergies. We also have a limited supply of oil and we have much better uses for it than burning it up. If we made all of our oil into pharmaceuticals, recyclable plastics, and other products, it would last a lot longer and serve us a lot better than if we burned it up. We would also avoid the nasty by products. Well, you don't get people to stop using something by making it cheaper.
Higher gas prices in this country would encourage people to use less. People would find alternatives, such as carpooling, public transportation, fewer and shorter trips, etc... Suddenly, there would be an incentive for improving public transportation in big cities. Car manufacturers would actually be able to make money off of small, efficient cars. They would also have an incentive to make smaller, more efficient cars as consumers would be buying them. Right now, cars are smaller and more efficient than they ever have been. Big cars are going away. The Chevrolet Caprice, the best selling car in America in the late 70's and 80's is no longer in production. People are already buying smaller cars, right?
Wrong.
The best-selling vehicle in America today is the Ford F150 pickup. This is not a small truck, this is their full-sized model. The second best-selling vehicle in America is the full-sized Chevrolet pickup. Sport Utility Vehicles are probably the fastest growing class of car. Trucks are not restricted by the government like cars. Consumers are still buying large, inefficient vehicles. They're just buying trucks instead of cars.
We need to break Americans of the gas-burning habit. The only way to do this is to raise the price of gas. Oil companies are going to set prices by the market. The easiest way to raise the price is to raise taxes. Yes, this will cause hardship. Consumers will pay more. Oil companies will have lower profits. Big deal. If we raise the taxes slowly enough, people will adapt. We might as well do this now instead of waiting until it's all gone and the price goes up at some rate over which we have no control. Raising gas taxes would also have the added bonus of increasing the budget. Though I have little faith that the extra revenue would be used to decrease the Debt.
Oh well. It just goes to show that politicians have no idea what they're talking about and/or don't care to bother educating the public. They just tell us what we want to hear, even if it's not true.