Marshall Plan for Terrorists
By Callimachus | Related entries in Foreign Policy, Smart Things Said By Smart PeopleThomas Friedman (behind the dreaded and idiotic subscription wall of the New York Times) dresses down “tough guy” Dick Cheney over the latter’s passivity in the face of an energy crisis that is now America’s number one foreign policy issue. It has been for decades, actually, but people finally are beginning to notice the interconnections. Like this:
Cheney, we are told, is a “tough guy.” Really? Well, how tough is this: We have a small gasoline tax, but Europe and Japan tax their gasoline by $2 and $3 a gallon, or more. They use those taxes to build schools, highways and national health care for their citizens. But they spend very little on defense compared with us.
So who protects their oil supplies from the Middle East? U.S. taxpayers. We spend nearly $600 billion year on defense, a large chunk in the Persian Gulf. But how do we pay for that without a gas tax? Income taxes and Social Security. Yes, we tax our incomes and raid our children’s Social Security fund so Europeans and Japanese can comfortably import their oil from the gulf, impose big gas taxes on it at their pumps and then use that income for their own domestic needs. And because they have high gas taxes, they also beat Detroit at making more fuel-efficient cars. Now how tough is that?
Finally, if Cheney believes so much in markets, why did the 2005 energy act contain about $2 billion in tax breaks for oil companies? Why does his administration permit a 54-cents-a-gallon tax on imported ethanol â€â€? fuel made from sugar or corn â€â€? so Brazilian sugar exports won’t compete with American sugar. Yes, we tax imported ethanol from Brazil, but we don’t tax imported oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or Russia.
“Everyone says we need a new Marshall Plan,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy expert and the author of “The Case for Goliath.” “We have a Marshall Plan. It’s our energy policy. It’s a Marshall plan for terrorists and dictators.”
Hmmm, there’s a slogan for somebody. Now if someone can put together a program for smart and defined government intervention in the market and a wide-awake funding program for research ideas, you might even have the beginnings of a political movement.
I considered the idea of a gas tax back in 2003 or so, when Kerry was talking about it. It would have to be done very deliberately and carefully in a big, sprawling place like America with limited rail service. At the time, the problems seemed to me to outweigh the benefits. But maybe it’s not too soon for a second look.
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February 10th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I had a hard time following that. Friedman opens up sounding like an isolationist and ends up sounding like a free marketer. Cheney is a weasel, but he hardly deserves the blame for 90% of the stuff Friedman mentions. With the exception of the tax breaks for oil companies (which really burns me) pretty much all that stuff has been a problem for decades. Yet Cheney, the VP, is personally responsible for cleaning it up? What has Friedman been smoking?
February 10th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I can’t print the entire column without trampling on the copyright, but this comes toward the end of it, and Friedman is responding to specific comments Cheney made in an interview, which is explained further up the piece.