Yes to higher gas taxes and their benefits

MSN has a simple argument for how higher gas taxes could actually benefit the economy.

There’s only one fly in this ointment, but it’s a huge one. Author Vad Yazvinski agrees with Greg Mankiw that we ought to use the proceeds from a $1/gallon increase in the gas tax to cut corporate taxes.

WRONG!

Instead, the estimated $100 billion could be spent on mass transit development and urban neighborhood/traditional neighborhood design development.

But, the federal government should only support the latter in cities whose state governments have TND-friendly legislation.

Not all that $100 bil would go to these two areas, though.

Part of it would go to a voucher fund to help buy gas burners — and oil burners — off of poor people for more efficient cars of today. Texas has such a program at the state level.

Part of it would be used to fund aspects of the well-needed “Manhattan Project” to get us beyond the Age of Oil.

But, Yzvinski is wrong about how to use it, let alone wrong that the corporate income tax rate is not “ridiculously high,” as he claims.

Cut gas taxes, cut Texas jobs

A 90-day suspension of the federal gasoline tax could cost Texas half a billion dollars, and, as a result, 20,000 jobs over the next four years.

There are no easy answers on Peak Oil. Period.

Grow up, Americans, drop the blinders, and get rid of the idea of American exceptionalism.

Besides, the D.C. talk is of a much-needed raise, probably 10 cents a gallon.

Unless you want some Texas bridge to join the Minneapolis-St. Paul one near I-35 to join it in falling into some river, you should willingly pony up. If you live here in the Dallas side of the Metroplex, you may recall TxDOT found a hole in the pavement in a lane the Mixmaster section of I-30 earlier this summer.

A public poll argument for raising the gas tax

According to the Washington Post, gas would have to rise to a whopping $5.65 a gallon to seriously impact driving habits. A majority of people who have not already altered their driving habits (the story doesn’t say how much, or if they were even asked that) said, on average, that was their cutoff line.

Phase in a $1/gal increase in the federal gas tax, at 20 cents a year over five years, strong enough to be a stick but not so heavy as to be a club, and you’ve got another leg of federal energy policy. In addition to more money for highway funds, you could also do pass-throughs with the money to get more states to do buyback aid programs for the most serious older gas-guzzlers now on the roads, in the hands of people too poor to upgrade.

That’s part of a larger survey on inflation worries.