Monday, October 03, 2005
Tax That Gas!
Mike Jackson, Chairman and CEO of Autonation, Inc., appeared today (3 October 2005 around 11:20 a.m. EDT) on CNBC in an interview with Liz Claman. The interview was, quite probably, prompted by his remarks last week at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. He stated that “a tax hike was ‘long overdue.’” This tax, he explained, would “raise the demand for fuel efficiency” and “justify the cost of the technology” (hybrid cars). Sounds good, but…
Is that what taxes are for? A reverse-carrot ploy? A new twist on the “sin tax” on cigarettes and alcohol? Instead of motivating us with a reward (the carrot dangled in front of the rabbit), a tax motivates us to avoid. Sort of like shock treatment. Is this really a viable answer to reducing oil consumption and, therefore, reliance on foreign oil? Or just fill tax coffers to fund more pork projects?
Worse still is the idea that such a tax will make us independent of foreign oil (based on the warped concept that the reason we are dependent on foreign oil is that we all drive too much, not that environmentalists keep us from getting at our own oil or that choking governmental regulations keep new innovations from being developed and/or implemented.
Add to that the reasoning of Jackson and others, in an article titled “HybridCars.com, up to 135,383 by the end of August 2005, an increase of over 14 times from 9,350 in 2000.
Do we really need a gas tax to spur the numbers higher?
Dr. Michael Tamor, manager of Ford’s Sustainable Mobility Technologies, stated in that same item, “‘If you think about the 15- to 20-year timeframe, you could argue that all vehicles are going to be hybrids.’” Part of the problem with hybrids is the price, but Toyota is making “hybrids much cheaper and in greater numbers.” This seems like a better solution than a gas tax.
By the way, Jim Press, who heads the U.S. arm of Toyota Motor Corp., is one of the backers of the tax hike, claiming that to get the real cost of gas, we have to “add to that $3 a gallon the cost of a war in Iraq, the cost of losing American soldiers to keep a pipeline of oil going.”
Yeah, right, Jim, that’s why we’re in Iraq. Just another war for oil – like Kuwait. Freedom for the citizens of those countries and stamping out terrorism is a total smokescreen, but no one has you fooled. Wink!
Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill
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