I'll never be elected:

[urbpan]

The government should do something about these gas prices!

(namely: add a two-dollar per gallon tax to them)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Here here! I'd vote for ya.

[droserary.livejournal.com]

oops, that was me. Just returned from jetsetting and forgot to log in. I blame jetlag.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bazilisk_/]

My mom and I were just talking about this. Friedman is right. This is a great idea.

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===I would agree, but they would use the money to fund even more roads, and not do anything in regards to public transportation, or even really repair the roads we do have with something designed to last more than 5 years....

[droserary.livejournal.com]

Great point. It's actually in the Washington State Constitution that any money collected from the gas tax must be used only for road improvement projects. I wish they would invest in more public transportation!

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===That is rather cool...

===(as a side-note, Divorce Your Car! : Ending the Love Affair with the Automobile goes into a bot of the things that seem to have led to the undercutting of so many public transportation systems..)

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===bot=bit....grr, typoes.

[anais2.livejournal.com]

...Which would make it still cheaper than it is in the rest of the world. People forget about that.

We feel entitled to hog up resources; and we expect it to come cheaply, too.
America could use a wake-up.

[droserary.livejournal.com]

"Rest of the world" - sort of... Gas in Kuwait is around $0.50 US per gallon.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

And a pack of cigarettes is $2 (or something like that) in North Carolina. It's $5.50 in MA.

For the rest of the world that's not sitting on an oil well, it's expensive.

[godstatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cigarettes here (Kentucky) are about $2.20 a pack. A pack in Miami of the same brand? $7.85. What a difference a seventeen-hour drive makes.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

In NH they're ~$2.50/pk (no tax there). An hour drive, less if you're a speed demon.

[anais2.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm referring mainly to Europe- although we did pay $7. in Austria 10 years ago!

[droserary.livejournal.com]

*nods* Two reasons for that: The US is the number 1 consumer of oil, so the biggest consumer sets the price (in the near future, expect to see competition for oil resources with China) and most countries in Europe have a higher tax on fuel (the US is currently about 40.4 cents per gallon [18.4 cents per gallon federal, varying rates in states with an average of 22 cents per gallon] - compared to the UK, which has about a US$3.37 per gallon tax for "conventional unleaded petrol").

We really need to increase the gas tax, which would hopefully curb consumption--our main problem. But the US didn't develop like Europe. We developed when fuel was inexpensive and plentiful, and so our infrastructure requires large amounts of cheap fuel to continue to function. Soon, I hope to see more and more "new urbanist" development projects that advertise easy walking distance to shopping, employment opportunities, and mass transit instead of sprawling suburbs that advertise large lots, remote locations, and enormous McMansions that only the wealthy can afford.

*slowly kicks away soapbox*

[turil.livejournal.com]

As many have pointed out before (comedian Jimmy Tingle did it most humorously) gasoline is much, much cheaper than bottled water.

[cailin-t.livejournal.com]

you suck, booooo. ;P

[rumorofrain.livejournal.com]

Hear hear!

[bezigebij.livejournal.com]

You'd have no trouble getting elected here. What's the rest of your platform?

[godstatic.livejournal.com]

I'll vote for you once I get my hybrid. :)

As the most versatile nation in the world (arguably), it's really embarrassing that we haven't come up with a realistic alt-fuel. Well, I suppose we really have come up with several, but none of them are as profitable as gasoline, which I'm sure matters a lot to the people in power.

The state of the world makes me want to go live alone, nude in the wilderness.

[richmackin.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is my friend Jeff (not you, he has another f) IS running for state rep, and he agrees. That's not his platform, though.