New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has been promoting an idea that makes some sense but won’t sell at the ballot box: a $1-a-gallon gas tax, to be called the “Patriot Tax.” Last week he mentioned it on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” then expanded on the idea in the Times: “The billions of dollars raised by the Patriot Tax would go first to shore up Social Security, second to subsidize clean mass transit in and between every major American city, third to reduce the deficit, and fourth to massively increase energy research by the National Science Foundation and the Energy and Defense Departments’ research arms.” Best of all, in Friedman’s view, the tax would hike gas prices to a level that would make gas alternatives economically competitive. It’s a thought — though not one any U.S. politician could win on.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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14 Comments
caca grande toro as gster said.
Bush could say ANYTHING, even this, and his 30 percenter bushbots would hail it as a great pronouncement and rush to the polls to ratify it.
And if they didnt? Diebold would!
Amazingly enough, though I’m not sure I could support the hike (I want to know the details), that’s an idea that has legs. Certainly, serious development of alternative energy won’t happen until it is economically viable.
I’d tie the tax directly to funding research on alternative energy and mass transit, however, and leave other issues aside. SS’s mess will have to be fixed, but not on that dollar.
KFG- Did I have that phrase turned around ?
G
I dont know gster. I recognized the words, but dont know their proper order. I speak texmex or spanglish, not spanish.
hehe and I speak it muy poco y muy mal too
care to converse in low german? :)
Ja, ich bin herr lustig, und gster is einen uber coconut, erlich!!! :)
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
Thanks Ian, with friends like you, who needs enemas?
I forgot- Have an average day!
And price the average American – you know, that guy that the Bushbots long ago forgot – right out of such essential things as commuting to work, etc.
A typically idiotic idea from a man with a six-figure East Coast salary who’s out of touch with American reality.
Tomas wants to change the subject. My standard reply is GFY…..AH.
I saw him on TV desperately trying to convince everybody that high gasoline prices were do to gouging at the pump or at the well-head by them there oil companies…G-D Lunatic.
I love to see a Zionist sweat.
Jungle Jim,
Mass transit is okay. I don’t use it here–because it isn’t available. But in other places, where you can get picked up every 10 minutes, and somebody else drives, I’ve done buses, subways and above-ground light rail. I’ve also ridden a bike to work. I’d be happy if Wichita had a sound mass-transit system and bikelanes, but these are a little too over-the-head of Wichita’s leaders at this time. Maybe in 20 years.
On taxing gasoline to promote alternative transportation and alternative energy, why not? Do you think the invasion of Iraq is free? Someday the invasion of Iraq will either be paid by American taxpayers, or else foreigners will own a majority share of America’s capital base, and working-class Americans will be third-class citizens in their own country. We are going to be “taxed” whether we want to, or not.
We do not have a revenue problem.
We have a spending problem.
Want to shore up SS for those under 55?
Allow some investment choices in the 12% of our payroll being “invested” by the govt.
“Investment choices”……………….smell the rank odor of privatization again.
Where does all that 401k money dissapear to every time the fed mutters something even slightly negative?
Heartlander, there’s a world outside of Wichita, hard as that apparently is for Wichitans to believe.
Many, many people commute here to work daily from as far as 100 miles way. Freedman’s nutty plan would bankrupt them.
Society has for decades incentivized people to move out of the metropolitan area and now environmental nuts want to penalize them for doing precisely what the economy has urged them to do.
The idea is insane; I won’t support it and thank God, neither will the majority of Americans. The solution is a rapid-fire, incentivized push to develop alternative fuels – like the ethanol that Wichita industries are at the forefront of developing.
Leave it to a six-figure salary journalist to come up with an idea to finish off what’s left of the American middle class.