Polls there close at 7:30 p.m. Exit polling shows huge overwhelming opposition to ObamaCare, and those voters are overwhelmingly voting for John Raese. Nevertheless, exit polling has showed Joe Manchin leading. Here is an opportunity to see just how (in)accurate those exit polls are.
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May 2013
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The best way to accomplish this is a gas/carbon tax. The incidence of this tax would fall in part on Russia/Venezuala/Iran. The second best way is actually Obama and McCain’s carbon cap schemes, assuming it was implemented in such a way that it perfectly resembled a gas tax in economic terms. Hopefully we will not squander the federal revenues from this carbon tax equivalent on giveaways to favored Democratic special interest groups like unions and the AARP.
Dellis,
Do you mean a tariff? Otherwise I fail to see how a tax hurts Iran or Russia. Also, is this something implemented only in the United States or worldwide somehow (The U.N.)?
How does China fit into this? Would China be helped or hurt by a gas cartel?
Rick, China would certainly be hurt. It is a big consumer of non-Chinese energy.
Graham,
I would highly recommend studying incidence theory in economics. To quote Mankiw: “A basic principle of tax analysis — taught in most freshman economics courses — is that the burden of a tax is shared by consumer and producer. In this case, as a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”
A good example of this principle was in the early 90s when Congress passed a luxury tax on yacht owners. The result was massive layoffs throughout the yacht construction and services industry.
If we taxed gas at $1 a gallon, OPAC would only be able to raise gas prices say 50 cents without U.S. consumers driving less, taking mass transit, and buying more efficient cars. The result would be billions for the U.S. treasury, weakened anti-American petro-states, and less gas/carbon consumption.
Dellis,
Right, but would this work on a world scale? It seems that if the U.S. isn’t buying much natural gas, a cartel could just sell it elsewhere, as the U.S. doesn’t dominate world consumption of natural gas quite the way it does petroleum.
Also, it seems that it’s awfully risky to raise taxes on something like natural gas in an already shaky economy. You’re raising taxes on ordinary people who don’t really have any choice in buying natural gas. It’s a necessary commodity. Possibly even moreso than gasoline in that natural gas heats homes.
Dellis, “If we taxed gas at $1 a gallon, OPAC would only be able to raise gas prices say 50 cents without U.S. consumers driving less, taking mass transit, and buying more efficient cars. The result would be billions for the U.S. treasury, weakened anti-American petro-states, and less gas/carbon consumption”
Ain’t gonna work, if this were the energy policy you would see more erosion of American manufacturing sector and sharp increase of cheap foreign goods importation which are manufactured by using less taxed fossil fuel. The billions of energy tax dollars collected by US treasury will be used to pay for increased importation. The carbon tax and alternative energy is a colossal Manhattan Project in energy, it requires global collaboration instead of confrontation.
We could use the gas/carbon tax revenues to offset the corporate tax and individual payroll taxes, so that it would be revenue neutral. In effect, the hostile petro-states would be paying taxes instead of us.
And I agree that this will not solve worldwide dependence on carbon-based fuels. But it is a start.
Gordon,
I’m curious, what would you have Washington do to address this issue?
Dellis,
You mention mass transit. Among the reasons that many people don’t use mass transit is that it isn’t there. I live in Manhattan. In 1958 I began teaching at Richmond College, which was located not far from the Staten Island Ferry. I took the subway to the ferry, rode the ferry to Staten Island, and walked to the college. Eventually, the college merged with Staten Island Community College and later moved to a big beautiful campus in the Willowbrook section of Staten Island. At that point, a trip to the college by public transportation took an hour and a half, but driving through the Holland Tunnel and over the Bayonne Bridge took 35 minutes. I began communting by car. Express buses came into existence, but they ran infrequently, and if I missed one after a night class I was stranded.
Public transportation will never replace the car because there are too many different places that people want to go. But we really need more possibilities. There is an abandoned track on the north shore of Staten Island that could be opened and perhaps connected to train line across the Arthur Kill or the Kill Van Kull. Nobody knows; nobody cares. Nobody ever raises the issue of using public transportation as an additional weapon in the war against OPEC and any future gas cartel. As far as transportation is concerned, one wouldn’t know that we are approaching a presidential election.
Talk about public transportation, Obama and McCain!
Natural gas not being oil, taxing oil products and expanding variety in transportation are really separate issues. Transportation is not the main thing we or the Europeans or Japan use gas for.
I don’t think we all agree, either, with Dellis’ premise that the world is, in any objective sense, “too” dependent on carbon fuels.
At any rate, Europe, which is a huge market for oil and gas, has had much heavier taxes on these fuels’ products for decades than the US has. This has not done anything to keep fossil fuel prices from going up, or Russia from continuing to see advantage in holding Europe’s gas market hostage. It hasn’t made the Europeans any less dependent on oil and gas either. (In fact, virtually all of the early compliance they achieved with their Kyoto goals came from shifting power generation from coal to gas, BEFORE Kyoto was even signed.) The heavy cost of oil, gas, and power in Europe has, however, made its economy even less competitive than America’s in many areas.
The best way to keep Russia from heading up a near-monopoly on gas is to exploit the gas reserves in nations that will not join Russia in such an effort, such as the US and Canada. Monopolies always develop with government collusion, and are best broken with competition — not regulation against the self-interest of absolutely everyone involved, from producer to distributor to customer.
Graham, I would have the United States follow the playbook used by the Reagan administration to drive down energy prices. I would also push hard on renewable energy sources and nuclear generation.
If you got ideas or comments, let’s hear them.
Our problem today is not OPEC or a possible gas cartel, which have as their aim, higher energy prices, but the tumbling cost of energy. That threatens to undermine the brave efforts at alternative energy that are underway. Those alternatives can’t compete with oil under $75 a barrel.
Which makes Dellis’ idea of a tax on gasoline (and natural gas) a particularly good one. Tom Friedman has been demanding that for decades. Much of the right has, stupidly, bridled at the idea. Not I. It makes sense. Without such a tax device the energy cartels will always constitute a sword of Damocles discouraging investments in alternative energy infrastructure. They will always be able to lower the price and wash alternative energy efforts away.
The price of oil promises to fall further. At some point, lets say if a gallon of gasoline hits $2.50 – $3 a flexible tax that rises as the cost falls would be appropriate. Such a price support will assure people like Boone Pickens and venture capitalists that they won’t lose their alternative energy investments even if OPEC opens its faucets all the way.
I would not call this a tax but rather payback for the substantial subsidies gasoline receives. Up to a third of our military has the mission, and is structured, to protect our access to oil. That alone effectively subsidizes gasoline for around $200 billion a year. At least another $100 billion is spent on the medical and environmental damage caused by gasoline. Those costs should have from the first been charged to the motorist at the pump. If he now pays an extra dollar per gallon he/she is simply meeting part of the real cost of driving an internal combustion engine fueled by gasoline or gas.
Incidentally Dyer, driving our cars is the main thing we use gasoline for. We heat our homes with oil and gas, and our power plants are mainly powered by coal.
And George Jochnowitz, as your own example suggests, the reason we rely on cars, certainly in the cities, is because we choose to. We could choose to invest in mass transit, subways, buses, electric trams. We have neglected those for 60 years. Many of Europe’s cities have excellent public transportation systems. In London, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Zurich etc., it is easy to get around quickly and comfortably, without a car.
Dellis,
If J Liu is against your plan, it must be a good one. He’d love to see America fail. He thinks China has a chance to become the big dog on the block. Too funny. You cant be a pack leader when you’re pi$$ing with the puppies.
He apparantly expects us to believe that China manufactures nearly worthless crap for Walmart using robots powered by natutral gas, rather than coolies, prisoners and other wage slaves. He also expects us to believe that our government will use tax revenue to import Walmart level crap for private companies. (He’s a little too hooked on central planning.)
Carbon taxes on our own people is pretty lame, but if it impedes the naked Imperialism of Russia and China it’s worth it. Any tax thast hurts them more than us is worth it.
Gordon,
Can you please spell out what the specifics were of the “playbook used by the Reagan administration to drive down energy prices”? I lived through the Reagan years and only recall, in Jan. 1981, his removal of price controls on gasoline which allowed market forces to drive gasoline prices up at first and then down. We are already there with that approach.
Regarding nuclear energy (the industry in which I have worked since 1976) the nuclear power business “hit the skids” during the Reagan years and the utilities shifted heavily to natural gas.
I am a big fan of Reagan, but I can’t remember energy poilcy being his strong suit. In fact, Bush’s transformational Energy Policy Act of 2005 has been far more impactive in promoting options; particularly nuclear energy.
Again, can you fill me in on some other specific Reagan energy policy successes?
nacl — Gasoline comes from oil, not natural gas.
Bates Estabrooks, thanks for the important question. Reagan, trying to depress Soviet receipts, leaned on the Saudis and other oil producers to keep crude prices as low as possible. Moreover, there were initiatives to try to depress gold and mineral prices to the extent that was possible.
I would have to agree that, in the domestic arena, Reagan policies were unimpressive.
Worry not Rininger, I do not want America to fail; I want neocons’ unilateralism to fail and it will.
J.E. Dyer, you advise me,
“nacl — Gasoline comes from oil, not natural gas.”
Right you are, gasoline is cracked in oil refineries.
But my point was to unwrinkle your post #11 where you claimed: “Transportation is not the main thing we or the Europeans or Japan use gas for.”
I don’t think that’s true. In America at least transportation IS the main thing we use oil for. Our cars, trucks, buses, and planes are the principal consumers of our petroleum products. The rest goes into home heating and industrial products like plastics. Some of our power plants use oil but most still burn coal.
nacl — my reference to gas in this context was to natural gas. Transportation is not the main thing we use natural gas for. As for oil, 50% of each barrel consumed goes to the production of gasoline (motor fuel). The rest goes to various non-fuel chemical solutions, plastics, etc.
My underlying point was that natural gas and oil are two different markets. The oil market is cartelized today, although the power of the cartel is not nearly as absolute as it was 30 years ago. The natural gas market is not cartelized. As Gordon points out here, Russia would like it to be.
Changing our transportation habits, and taxing motor fuels, are not ways to address emerging monopolist wanna-bes in the natural gas market, which has little intersection today with transportation and motor fuels. Bottom line. That may change at some point, if efficient and cost-effective ways can be developed to use natural gas in transportation. But that’s not a market reality today.