Out of Control

Ah, I wish more policy decisions could be made on these premises. How about invading Iraq? What if we had proposed paying for, to be on the conservative side, half of the cost of U.S. operations in Iraq with a gas tax? What would the polls have looked like? Another related question is, has public sensitivity to gas prices (emotionally and economically) increased or decreased as we've seen gas prices climb in the past few years? Of course, none of the presidential front-runners support raising the gas tax because they're quite familiar with public sentiment on the subject--they all support cap-and-trade programs instead. Climate change is certainly not alone as a policy issue on which voters want action but don't want to pay for it. In fact, what might make a gas tax a little different than approving funding for other popular programs is that it is precisely the public's unwillingness to pay the tax that will determine its effectiveness. If so many people are really not willing to pay "a penny more" for gas, it will be much cheaper to curb emissions than anyone expected! A litmus test for politicians is how honest they're willing to be about the real costs of, say, cap-and-trade versus a carbon tax. I saw Bill Richardson flub this one pretty badly in the January ABC News debate, where he suggested that one of his main reasons for opposing a carbon tax is that, unlike with cap-and-trade, the costs would be passed down to consumers. (To his credit in that instance, Barack Obama clarified that cap-and-trade certainly creates costs that are passed down to consumers as well.)

Comment by: Skaidra at March 20, 2008 11:56 AM

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