John McCain Sets Up a Test To See If the United States As We Know It Is Doomed

John McCain wants to free people from paying gasoline taxes during the summer peak driving season.

To help people weather the downturn immediately, McCain urged Congress to institute a "gas-tax holiday" by suspending the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Let's examine the effects of this bit of political pandering:

1. It would decrease the incentives for people to conserve, enabling the continued flow of dollars to countries that are, in many cases, openly hostile to American interests
2. It would decrease the amount of money that goes to the repair of our crumbling infrastructure, since gasoline and diesel taxes are primarily used to build roads and bridges

The degree to which this hare-brained proposal gains traction is a measure of the degree to which this country is short-sighted and self-indulgent. If this becomes a populist wave, it's a good bet that our decline will continue. If it is dismissed as the bit of mindless pandering that it is, then maybe there's hope for us.

Comments

[Conrad]

Actually this is a brilliant idea. Gasoline taxes are removed and automobile travel increases. Increased traffic means increased wear and tear on roads and bridges. Decreased taxes mean maintainance and repairs on those same roads and bridges declines. Bridges then collapse and roads become impassible, leading to a dramatic drop in automobile traffic. Since no one can drive, gas prices will plummet, dealing a fatal blow to our middle eastern enemies.

[Frank]

Or hey, here's a thought. Why don't we build a few more refineries and start poking some holes in the ground and take advantage of the sweet, sweet ocean of oil we're sitting on in North Dakota, Alaska, and off the coast of Florida.

We didn't become the country we are by conserving. We are gluttonous consumers, full of industries that do all they can to keep up with our ravenous appetites. All except the oil industry.

The government has been trying to force better fuel economy vehicles down our throats for years, but yet our oil usage keeps going up. Instead of getting the hell out of the way and allowing the industry to try to keep up with demand, the government has cow towed to the environmentalists, restricting exploration, forcing us to depend more and more on foreign oil, to our detriment.

Here's a thought. Why don't we let the free market actually work for a change, instead of trying to force the country to use alternative energy sources that haven't produced anything except higher grain prices.

That would be a true test of our nation. If you think for one second that people are going to be turned off by the thought of paying nearly $.20 a gallon less for gas, you're out of your fucking mind.

Of course you could always make up for it and voluntarily send more money to the government. I use about 30 gallons a week, so be sure to chip in an extra $6 a week for me.

[Lee]

We deserve high taxes on oil. We are bad bad Americans who must be punished for not driving hybrids and VW Rabbits.

Economic self-flaggelation is the way to go to redeem us of our sins.

[Steve]

Why stop there? Not only should we not allow citizens to keep their own money when it comes to gas taxes, we should impose even higher taxes! Think of what the government could do if it wasn't for all those peasants who think they should keep the money they earned. It should all go to the government! From each according to their ability to each according to their needs! Put an end to self indulgence once and for all!

[Tom]

Ah, sweet reason. The socialism of charging drivers to build the roads they drive on. Certainly, Karl Marx would be proud.

[Steve]

Ah sweet reason... gasoline taxes as a barometer of the decline of a nation.

Can't have it both ways Tom.

[Lee]

Especially since these tax reductions would most benefit the working class and the poor who drive to work, and businesses that rely on over-the-road transportation.

Those that can afford a $20,000 Prius probably won't feel the same benefits the folks driving a $2000 used F-150 will.

[Tom]

So we'll put you down in favor of not paying for infrastructure and doing what we can to keep money flowing to terrorists.

[Frank]

So keeping the tax in place somehow stops the flow of money to the middle east?

And if we want people to conserve, that means using less gas. Less gas being purchased = less tax being paid.

So I'll put you down in the "not wanting to pay to upkeep our infrastructure" column as well.

[Tom]

Higher prices inspire conservation which does, in fact, lower the amount collected to build infrastructure, though not as much as zeroing-out the tax. Also, as you no doubt remember, if it were up to me I'd raise the gas tax -- a lot. There is no aspect of American life that wouldn't be better with higher priced gasoline, with the possible exception of urban sprawl. If you're a fan of traffic jams and bland, endless suburbs, higher gas prices are a disaster.

[Frank]

I can tell you an aspect of American life that wouldn't be better with higher priced gasoline. I know you have a good time making fun of the rednecks of your great state, but there are a large number of them working for lower wages, and higher gas prices increase what they have to shell out just to get to work, as well as raising prices on all their beloved Wal-Mart items, meaning they then have less to spend.

So really, raising gasoline taxes forces people to stay home more because they can't afford to drive as much as they used to (which is good, according to you), so fewer vacations, less tourist money to all those mom and pop places on the interstate, less money for infrastructure, less money spent on household goods and durable goods. Or, allow oil companies to pump more oil and build more refineries. People drive more, there is an increase in income to the government because people are able to afford gasoline, they spend more, putting more money into the economy, which increases income to small businesses as well as to corporations, share prices go up, retirement savings increase because they are invested in the stock market, and everyone is happy.

Yeah, your way sounds much better. Where do I sign up?

[Tom]

First of all -- this is important to me -- I don't make fun of rednecks. I make fun of mall people. And, to be honest, I use "hillbilly" as a kind of all-purpose categorization of rural folk who don't meet my high, high threshold of sophistication. Both the mall people and hillbillies are comparatively innocent, in my judgment, perhaps even lovable, no matter how much stretch fabric is in their wardrobes.

Now, to get back to the point, any grand social engineering scheme has it's collateral damage, particularly in the short term. In the longer term, I'm not sure we'd drive any less, particularly long distance, so the redneck stereotypes you cite in your comment would likely only starve to death for a while, but then would be just fine. In fact, they would be better for having been financially ruined by my planning.

Most of the driving we do is short trips, not the cross-country treks that aid our hillbilly brethren. The combination of an improvement in auto gas mileage and a re-think of our urban planning standards -- don't get me started on urban planning standards -- would both improve our quality of life and decrease the amount of petroleum we consume. (And, lest you imagine that I'm talking about an increase in regulation, keep in mind that there is no environment more grossly regulated than the suburban sprawl that makes it necessary to drive everywhere.)

All of that said, I understand that raising the gasoline tax is roughly impossible. There's no constituency for it at all. But it is worth thinking about the ways in which our presumption of limitless automobile travel affects our lives. It makes us fatter, poorer, and more socially isolated. It weakens our communities, is destructive to the environment and wildly complicates our foreign entanglements. It contributes to crime and disease.

The upside is, of course, that driving kills a lot of small, creepy animals (e.g., opossums) and gives teenagers a place to make out.

We're not going to need to raise taxes on oil because the price of oil is going to continue to rise. Whatever oil lies undiscovered beneath the Great Plains, in a few years there are going to be another 100 million Chinese pulling up to the pump and that's going to exert enormous pressure on prices. Habits and priorities are already changing as a result of the price incentive to consume less gas, and I, personally, am glad my new car gets 35 miles to the gallon.

My point was, and remains, that McCain's idea is stupid and counterproductive. I still think that's the case.

[Lee]

You know, we could compensate the cut in the gasoline tax with a %1500 raise in the wine tax. Bwa ha ha ha!!

It would be very similar to what this numbnuts (D-Ca) is proposing.

[Pursuit]

McCain's idea was beyond stupid......it was profoundly idiotic. Don't force me to support Tom anymore than that.

[Scott]

In fact, they would be better for having been financially ruined by my planning.

I know you think, and would posit, that you're saying that tongue-in-cheek, but there is no doubt in my mind that you think that you, Tom, Functional Ambivalent, can do a better job planning for the po' folk.

On topic, though: McCain would be a real maverick by eliminating those taxes forever, and making the feds pay for the roads out of general taxation of the public. Instead, we'll get to keep funding Dept. of Education schemes for mo' better diversity, and driving the price of corn through the roof and starving Africans to death since they are forbidden from planting GM seeds with which they could feed their own people. But you know, what are a few dead dark people an ocean away?

God, Marxists disgust me.

[Tom]

It's nice, Scott, that you were able to detect that I was joking. Sometimes that can be a problem. As my friend Wally once said, my sense of humor is "like a joke." That is, the structure of a joke is there; it's just not funny.

As for imagining that I think that I could plan better than the poor folk, quite the contrary. I'm an advocate and fan of urban chaos. What bothers me about modern suburbia is it's obsessive order. The strip mall wasteland I bemoan (and which requires heavy automobile usage)is not the result of unbridled commerce; it's a highly regulated environment in which the scale and relationship of every structure are specified by knowledgeable experts.

On the other hand, the charming New England villages and traditional small towns we all pay so much to vacation in were laid out by amateurs who had to live with the results. People don't generally design hell-holes for themselves to live in.

There's also the issue of property rights. That is, one of the reasons there are vast wastelands without a corner store in which to buy milk -- forcing everyone to drive everywhere -- is that people aren't allowed to do with their property what they like. Without restrictive zoning, when gas prices go up someone in the far-flung tract expanses is going to get entrepreneurial and start selling milk, bread and beer out of his garage, saving everyone's gas money and creating a pedestrian culture that's friendlier and more neighborly than driving down commercial strips. Regulations bar that kind of business venture, however. I, personally, think things would be better if we let people be inventive.

Far from being Marxists, the people responsible for the automobile intensive mess that are our suburbs were the Chamber of Commerce capitalists who prize order above all else. (And fire departments, which like big fire trucks with lots of shiny knobs and gauges, which need big wide streets to wheel around in.) The result: Long distances between houses, streets that invite people to drive too fast, and complete segregation of uses. (Modern architects, who were driven by Marxist principles, played a role as well, as did engineers. Are we sure we wanted to awaken the urban planning beast that lies within me?) All of that adds up to subdivision after endless subdivision, moms who spend their lives driving the kids around, burglary becoming a day job, and retirees who -- when their eyesight goes and they can't drive anymore -- have to be put in nursing homes.

My point is: your interpretation of how I look at this stuff is completely, amazingly wrong.

It's nice that you got that I was joking though. Did you also get that I was making fun of high-minded liberals?

[Scott]

Far from being Marxists, the people responsible for the automobile intensive mess that are our suburbs were the Chamber of Commerce capitalists who prize order above all else.

These guys were putting guns to people's heads and making them buy those houses? No, pretty much, people made their choice for reasons that are uniquely their own. Me, I like space and don't mind spending for it. I detest urban chaos...I like my tranquility. It's horrifying to think of being stacked up in boxes to the sky like Paris or NYC. But you see, it's my choice. I suppose next I'll be informed that my choice isn't really my choice.

The truly funny thing, though? Those same capitalists are now designing those urban walkable centers you idealize and they're selling the heck out of them to people moving in the other direction. Those darn capitalists!

I don't think my interpretation is too far off the mark, either. You're trying to make choices for people who might not like the choice you make for them. But sure, let's talk urban planning. It's a fascinating subject that I've dismissed from my Bag of Caring About lately.

[Tom]

I've got no problem with capitalists building whatever they like; that's my point. The Chamber of Commerce neurotics were writing zoning and other regulations.

[Scott]

But again, Tom...nobody had to buy a house with those regulations. Apparently those regs are acceptable and perhaps even desirable to the people doing the buying. You don't like the regs, don't buy the house. What am I missing here? Is it that you don't like people writing regulations? I don't either, but I don't think someone's wrong for making that choice on their own. Freedom of association and all that.

Hey, here's your urban planning blood brother. Peak Oil and all!

[Tom]

That is -- seriously -- the most interesting stance on government regulations I've ever heard a conservative take.

[Scott]

Wait, you said CoC-types, capitalists, setting regs, presumably for these vast subdivisions. Not government regs. Who exactly are you talking about? Because you keep saying CoC.

And even if it is government regs, my point still stands. If vast subdivisions stand empty beacuse of intrusive & undesirable regs, well, the elected leaders will eventually find that out and change those regs. And since they're elected, and don't change them, the citizens (remember them?) can throw them out and vote in a regime they find more attractive and attentive. This is the way most conservatives think, I think. I mean, I wouldn't spend my major money in a place I found philosophically unattractive (I wouldn't live in Minneapolis or Seattle.) I expect many others do the same thing.

I guess I have no earthly idea what the hell you're talking about, except your dislike for the burb-squatters with lawns and the rules they have for their lives.

[Tom]

Scott, this isn't even complicated. You're assuming a level of choice that doesn't exist, and ignoring obvious realities of the marketplace.

So here's a vivid illustration. (The illustration is fictional, by the way, even though it's written in the first person.)

I'm a guy working in a medium sized city -- Louisville, Kentucky, for example. I've got $150,000 to buy a home, which is right at the median price. I go out into the marketplace. I'd really like to live in a coherent, economically integrated neighborhood where I can walk to restaurants and the post office and the grocery store. There are lots of neighborhoods like that in Louisville, generally built between 1900 and 1920, when street cars still ran up and down the main drags and most families didn't have even one car. The neighborhoods are walkable, a couple of blocks one way or the other from just about everything you need to live.

The thing is, lots of people want to live in neighborhoods like that, and that demand drives up prices, so my $150,000 doesn't get me even close to being able to buy in one of those neighborhoods. So I have to look elsewhere.

Now, in a free market, my frustration would not have gone unnoticed. Entrepreneurs would step in to satisfy the unsatisfied demand. The increase in supply would lower the price. I'd be able to afford to live in the kind of neighborhood I wanted.

But real estate developers don't exist in a free market. They do the best they can in a tightly controlled market because the regulations pertaining to the building of residential areas have grown more specific. There are lots of reasons for that and believe me I'd be more than willing to go on at length about them, but just trust me this once: zoning standards have changed since horse and buggy days.

And what zoning standards require today is urban sprawl. They require big wide streets, a segregation of uses (no mixture of retail and residential, for example), and giant setbacks that make walking across the street something of an epic journey. That's what government specifies can be built everywhere in Louisville.

My other option is to move out to a small town and commute 20 miles to my job. Lots of people do that, and it works for them but it's hard to make the case that that's fuel efficient.

I buy a house in the suburbs, because that's where the $150,000 market is in Louisville. It's a nice house and I'm glad I have it. But I'm a 10 minute drive from the nearest quart of milk and 10 minutes more from the school that my kids go to.

You may see in this the workings of some kind of free market. That you do utterly mystifies me, but hey, that's life, right? When I look at that what I see is a market tightly controlled by government regulation that deprives developers of the ability to supply the kind of house in the kind of neighborhood that many people would prefer to live in.

Now, since I'm pretty sure the next response is that I'm in some way a liberal idiot, let me give you some background about myself and how I came to believe all of this.

Back in my magazine writing days, I spent a few years of my life writing public policy for a national shelter magazine. I traveled all over the country talking to planners and politicians and traffic engineers and architects and Just Regular Folks and presidents of homeowners' associations.

At the time, a few developers were convinced that there was a lucrative market for traditional neighborhoods. They recognized the situation I just described: prices were going up in traditional neighborhoods faster and with fewer disruptions than prices in suburban an exurban subdivisions.

A few of those developers decided to try to meet that pent-up demand, and what they found was that local, county and state governments refused to allow them to build what they wanted to build, what the market was demanding.

It took, in some cases, more than a decade to get permission to build neighborhoods patterned after the neighborhoods that are, in almost every city or town, widely recognized as the most livable. But a few developers persisted, and they found that the housing units sold faster and at a higher price than the housing in nearby sprawl. The houses, in the ensuing years, appreciated in value even when the real estate market in general hit a downturn. The reason was high demand.

You can be dismissive of me as some kind of big government liberal social engineering freak all you like, but my argument and the history of what I'm talking about has nothing to do with me thinking I'm smarter than anyone. It has to do with direct observation of the marketplace, and the change I'm advocating is de-regulation, not regulation.

In most markets, the status quo you defend as a free market is anything but. It's simply what you're used to, and you and your therapist can work out why you assume that change is inherently anti-market. But the idea that subdivisions will "stand empty" and overcome the intrusion of government into the marketplace is ridiculous. People have to live somewhere, and if government dictates one style of development, that's where people will live.

[Frank]

The two of you are arguing pretty much the same point, the difference is that in Scott's version people actually take the initiative to vote for people who will change those government bureaucracies and regulations so that they could live in the types of neighborhoods they desire, illustrated in your point.

The break down is that there are far too few people that 1. run for office with any type of plan for changing these bureaucracies, and 2. People don't have the sense to vote for them when they do.

What Scott argues, IMHO, is the way the system should work. It's basically Tom's idealistic view of the how cities should be laid out with citizens taking the initiative to create the cities they want.

The problem, as with most things, is there are far too people who care enough to try to make those changes. Plus, the general population loves their box stores, and in your neighborhoods they pretty much cease to exist, or are far enough away that everyone is going to have to drive to them, anyway.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a little piece of land out in the country where you hitch up the wagon and head in to town once a month for supplies. But I don't think any of us is going to get what we really want.

[Scott]

It took, in some cases, more than a decade to get permission to build neighborhoods patterned after the neighborhoods that are, in almost every city or town, widely recognized as the most livable.

My point, right there. Something somewhere changed and the market was then met. What I think you're complaining about is that it doesn't happen fast enough or possibly cheap enough for you. Welcome to the conservative party, where we were bitching and moaning about governmental restrictions and their impact on life way long before you.

Now, extrapolate those restrictions across every facet of life, not just walking to a bodega across the street for milk. What I can't feature is why you seem to think that the party that invented government regulation is somehow better than the other one, who've exploited it just as mercilessly, once they got past that whole 'individual' thing.

Bah...gotta get gone.