Am I the only one who thinks gas is too cheap?
One year ago, when gas was around $2.60/gallon, I remember hearing interviews where the reporter asked, “How high will gas prices need to go before you’ll change your driving habits?” The answer was almost always $3/gallon. Here we are now, with gas prices reaching over $4/gallon, with not many signs of people making an effort to reduce their fuel consumption.
I have an idea. Let’s have a driving tax. It’ll be based on annual mileage, so the more you drive, the more you pay. If you live in the suburbs and commute an hour one way, you’ll be taxed heavily. If you live in the city and take the train to work, you pay nothing.
The tax will go into researching alternative energy and reducing overall gas prices. The lowered prices will reward those who don’t drive often by offering less of an up-front cost. Those who decide they need to drive an SUV with a huge V8 engine can pay a premium. The key is to make people with inefficient driving habits pay more.
With gas companies reporting record profits, it’s safe to say consumers are willing to pay exorbitant prices to continue driving. Why don’t we take some of that money and put it to use?
This makes no sense. Tax people for driving more? What about people who can’t afford to live in the expensive urban centers? What about families who need to drive all over town to drop their kids off? What about people who’d rather choose to live in the countryside and commute in to the city where there’s more of their type of employment? What about the truck drivers who protested high gas prices 2 days ago because they have no choice but to pay? There’s no way to tax inefficient driving habits. Perhaps an increase in the guzzler tax? Perhaps we can demand higher fuel efficiency cars (like the rest of the world has)? Maybe we can roll back the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, and maybe they’ll reconsider their 14mpg SUVs?
What we need is for our economy to revive itself and have our dollar be worth more. How to do that is anyone’s guess. Our supply isn’t hurting that bad but the value of our currency is and higher gas prices are the most visible effect of that on the American people.
Apr30
