Krauthammer's Insane Gas Tax

A segment on Your World with Neil Cavuto on Fox News just pointed me in the direction of Charles Krauthammer's new op-ed piece on Townhall.com (link here). Krauthammer, one of the new generation of fawning state-worshippers (neoconservatives) to whom there is no problem the government cannot solve with brutal force, came out in his article with a proposal to fix the price of gas at $3 per gallon by legislative fiat, with the tax possibly exceeding $1 per gallon.

Hijacking the language of free markets, Krauthammer talked of "reducing demand" artificially through this tax (of course he never mentioned how such a tax would cripple the entire economy with the increase in energy prices) and of "letting the market decide" what kind of automobiles will be developed in the face of the astronomical gas prices.

This is all justified in his mind by the fact that we are "being held hostage" by Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Since we have troops in the Middle East dying for oil (at least he admits this much), we owe it to them to try to liberate ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil. The way to do this, of course, is by forcing every gas station to charge $3 per gallon by robbing hard-working people of their hard-earned money. Of course Krauthammer says that the money gained through this tax should go towards decreasing, say, Social Security taxes, but past experience has taught us that such a trade is never truly a trade -- the tax will be passed and Social Security taxes will remain as high as ever.

The same government who was just absurdly threatening oil companies over "price gouging" should now perpetrate real price gouging by forcibly holding the price of gas far above the market rate. In Krauthammer's muddled mind, the way to liberate ourselves from unfavorable external influence is not to develop new sources of energy, nor is it to educate or encourage people to voluntarily use less gas, it is to forcibly introduce a massive tax on one of the most central commodities in our market, and thereby cripple every part of the economy that relies on energy (that is to say, every part of the economy).

Being wealthy and constantly occupied by the fanciful absurdities of his inept mind, Krauthammer doesn't think of the results on the average American, whose quality of life will be significantly lowered by the leeching of such a tax. With the average American buying 690 gallons of gas per year, Krauthammer's tax, which would most probably become $1 per gallon or greater with coming decreases in gas price, would rob poor families and middle class families alike of $700, $1400, $2100 or even more per household per year, depending on the number of cars in the family. To Krauthammer, this money is the difference between one sofa and another. To the rest of America, this can be the difference between the possibility of a college education versus a long hours of physical labor, or the difference between eating at McDonald's every night or eating healthy foods. As bad as this is, it does not even consider the wasteful costs to business of complying with the tax, or the costs of the bureaucracy necessary to enforce such a tax.

Furthermore, as I mentioned above, Mr. Krauthammer's "trade-off" between Social Security taxes and this gas tax is almost certain to transform itself into simply an added tax. That is how things work in Washington. So in reality, Mr. Krauthammer proposes an increase of $700 - $2100 (or more) per family per year in taxes, just to speed up a process that is already working to develop alternative sources of energy, and to comfort Krauthammer's sense of paranoia regarding the evils of oil-supplying countries. Needless to say, Krauthammer is as wrong about this as he is about almost everything he discusses.