RSS
Home
9 reasons a higher gas tax is good for America
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
After languishing for years as far-fetched concept cars, fuel-efficient vehicles have finally taken center stage at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Among the news splashes: General Motors has announced plans to start building lithium-ion battery packs for the Chevy Volt in Michigan. Ford officials say they’re hoping to put four new hybrid or electric vehicles on the market during the next four years. And Chrysler says it plans to have an electric car on the road by 2010 with more to follow soon after.
With the federal government breathing down Detroit’s neck, it’s clear that automakers have finally accepted that smaller, fuel-efficient cars are their future. The hitch: plenty of consumers still haven’t gotten the memo. Prices matter, and now that gas prices have plunged from their $4 plus peak last summer, sales of SUVS and other gas-guzzling cars are starting to creep up again while demand for hybrids and other small fuel-efficient cars is softening.
There’s one glaring—though unpopular—solution: raise the gas tax. For nearly 20 years, Americans have paid the same small tax on gas—about 18 cents on the gallon—even as inflation has accelerated at a steady clip. The end result: we pay artificially low gas prices that have encouraged us, and especially the politicians who represent us, to turn a blind eye to the societal costs associated with overuse of automobiles.
Recently, a growing chorus of newspapers, think tanks, expert panels, and politicians have finally started summoning the political courage to call for increased gas taxes. Their efforts are encouraging, but they’ll most certainly be met with plenty of irrational and entrenched opposition.
As the debate over the gas tax-heats up, here are nine arguments to unload on your gas-guzzling friends about why higher gas taxes are good for America. (Click on each argument for additional information).
1. Higher gas prices will prop up Detroit.
2. Higher gas prices will enhance national security.
3. Higher gases prices will help combat climate change.
4. Higher gas prices will help pay for needed road maintenance.
5. Automakers support increasing the gas tax.
6. Higher gas prices will help fight obesity.
7. Higher gas taxes will decrease congestion.
8. Higher gas taxes will make our roads safer.
9. Gas taxes need not be regressive.
Note: Most likely, however, if you commute by bicycle frequently, your pals will tend to write you off as some sort of car-hating, anti-American, leftist hippy who doesn’t have a clue about how the economy works.
Don’t let them. Even committed conservatives, such as Weekly Standard writer Charles Krauthammer, have started to summon the intellectual courage to call a spade a spade. In this thorough piece that every gas tax skeptic should read, Krauthammer calls the benefits of higher gas taxes “blindingly obvious” and proposes an immediate $1 increase in the federal gas tax that’s would be coupled with a $14 decrease in payroll taxes.
Krauthammer’s idea is a good one. America has far too much to lose by once again passing up an opportunity to impose what he calls a net-zero gas tax that will make our nation safer, our lifestyles more sustainable, and our environment more livable.
Agree with me? Share this article with your friends, with your Congressperson, or with Barack Obama. A change like this won’t happen unless millions of Americans stand up and demand it. Disagree? Post a comment or email me at bike.examiner@gmail.com. I'll post criticisms in a separate post later.
.jpg)
Photo Courtesy of the Associated Press
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
- Rep. Boehner: Please refrain from making any more boneheaded comments about biking
- Vote now on whether you would support a crackdown on cyclists in the DC area
- Amtrak trains run at far from full capacity
- Forget bikes the Senate wants to see more guns on Amtrak
- What does Rush Limbaugh have to say about bicycling?
