James Lileks has a brilliant fisking of Andrew Sullivan’s call for more gas taxes. Sullivan calls himself a conservative, criticizes Bush for spending too much, then calls for one of the most regressive taxes that could possibly be imposed on the American people. Personally, I find this more than a little inconsistant.
However, if Mr. Sullivan thinks that increasing taxes is necessary, I have a suggestion for an alternative. We need the Andrew Sullivan Homosexuality Tax. First, we make gay marriages legal. Then we impose a 300% tax on all gay marriages and a minimum $10,000 fee for issuing a gay marriage certificate. That way Andrew Sullivan can have his cake and eat it too.
You forgot about the tax on AIDS medication or a cutback on the subsidy of AIDS research to offset the cost of the war.
LOL… as much as I’d hate to pay more for gas, I’m afraid I’m with Sullivan here. Try as he might, Lileks ignored the fact that our excessive need for gas is something that could be overcome by using more efficient technologies. Serious work on cargo dirigibles, maglev technology and infrastructure, and other more efficient ways of trafficking goods and people across the vast expanses of the US won’t happen until our energy prices go up- and forcing them up artificially through taxation would likely spark serious work. One only need to look at car technology in this respect- when gas prices went through the roof in the 1970’s, people tossed their American gas guzzling battleships on the scrap heap and bought efficient little Toyotas and Datsuns… by the 1980’s, most cars being produced were using four-cylinder engines and far smaller than those in production a generation ago. When the 90’s hit and gas prices decreased again, SUV’s and muscle cars once again became all the rage. It’s taken the price shocks in the wake of the War on Terror to even get Americans to consider more fuel-efficient vehicles… nobody gave the Prius more than a passing glance until this year, when the combined effects of better tech, good advertising, and price increases have suddenly made it the hottest selling car in America, expected to sell 250,000 by the end of 2004. (The car is still as ugly as sin, though.)
The differing paradigm between Detroit (minimum necessary work for the most possible profit) and Tokyo (maximum work for long-term gain) has failed Detroit before, and it’s about to again. Rather than disciplining ourselves to conserve our resources, we’d rather take the lazy way out, at any expense to anything but the bottom line…