Donklephant » Blog Archive » Economists Against Gas Tax

Economists Against Gas Tax

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Economy, Hillary, McCain

Brookings’ Henry Aaron sends over a statement (.pdf) signed today by 150 economists opposing the gas tax holiday.

They include Nobelists Joe Stiglitz, James Heckman and Daniel Kahneman, as well as a Clinton O.M.B. director, Alice Rivlin, and Robert Shapiro, the chief economic adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.

Here’s the statement from the economists (linked above)…

In recent weeks, there have been proposals in Congress and by some presidential candidates to suspend the gas tax for the summer. As economists who study issues of energy policy, taxation, public finance, and budgeting, we write to indicate our opposition to this policy. Put simply, suspending the federal tax on gasoline this summer is a bad idea and we oppose it.

There are several reasons for this opposition. First, research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers. Second, it would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation. Third, a tax holiday would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed. Fourth, the gas tax suspension would threaten to increase the already record deficit in the coming year and reduce the amount of money going into the highway trust fund that maintains our infrastructure.

9 of the economists are members of faculty of Indiana University.

More as it develops…

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Economy, Hillary, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Economists Against Gas Tax”

Randy Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 am
Those who vote Obama need the Obama style help …

This photo was on the news this morning …

http://www.thebasicsabout.com/Obama/M-Obama2.jpg

Right in the FRONT ROW ….
Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
It sounds like these economists favor high gas prices generally. When gas goes over $4.00/gallon this summer, nobody should complain. This is good I guess, because high gas prices should never be an issue again. Hell, lets increase the tax to an arbitrary number so it would prevent people from buying gas altogether. That way, oil companies wouldn’t get any profits at all.
Jim Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
Gas is not high the dollar is falling! Punch the price of gas from 1980 of $1.30 into a inflation calculator price in 2007 =$3.95. Put the price of milk from 1929 .45c –price today should be $5.95.Ya know why you can’t live on one wage. Punch the wage of a journeyman grocery clerk $7.50 in 1971 the result $42 is what a clerk should make in 2007 , now in 2008 $44. In 2008 the Fed stole $200 dollars a day from the worker by printing money. Think a GM worker is overpaid now?
lvtfan Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 6:22 am
It seems to me that we should be collecting much higher royalties on the oil. The national treasury deserves these funds, not the Jed Clampetts and the Exxon-Mobils. Neither of them had any more role in creating the oil in the ground than any other individual or corporation, and it is just plain wrong for them to be permitted to treat this increasingly scarce and very important NATURAL resource as if they had somehow been involved in its creation.

Collecting higher royalties would not change the price gas at the pump by a penny — but it would put funds in our common coffers instead of in private pockets — and those private pockets aren’t entitled by any logic I can defend.

I happen to agree that lowering the gas tax temporarily would be a mistake. The consumer would see no benefit, and we’d need to make up for the lost revenue with other taxes that would be equally or more injurious to our economy.

What we really need to do is get our entire incentive system straightened out. My study suggests that the answer starts with Land Value Taxation. Check out http://www.wealthandwant.com/, http://www.answersanswers.com and http://lvtfan.typepad.com for more information.
Jimmy the Dhimmi Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 6:59 am
From today’s Wall Street Journal:

This tiff over gas and oil taxes only highlights the intellectual policy confusion - or perhaps we should say cynicism - of our politicians. They want lower prices but don’t want more production to increase supply. They want oil “independence” but they’ve declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand. They want more oil company investment but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment. And these folks want to be President?

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.